HOME BASE BUILD IV
Residency Catalog January 2013
THE HOMEBASE TEAM Anat Litwin – Founder and artistic director Heather McKee – Director HB Berlin Adrian Brun – Curator HB Berlin Nikki Hendrikx – Manager HB Berlin Bas Kools – Design & Development Sarah Lüdemann – Site manager HB Berlin Photography by: Grzegorz Lepiarz, photogl.com HomeBase Project info@homebaseproject.org www.homebaseproject.org HomeBase LAB Thulestrasse 54 13189 Pankow, Berlin
– Introduction –
HomeBase is a nomadic, site-specific residency and research program exploring the notion of home. It operates on the intersection of contemporary art and social change, and asks to foster a sense of interconnectedness and innovativeness within urban communities, linking art into the everyday living, bringing people together to work on core questions around our shared humanity. After inhabiting four buildings in changing neighbourhoods in New York Greenpoint, SOHO, Sugar Hill Harlem, Lower East Side - HomeBase continued it’s journey and traveled in 2010 to a deserted brewery in Pankow district in Berlin, where it established the HomeBase LAB - a year round home for artistic and urban research. Since we have been building. Over the last three months the HB team and HB BUILD IV artists have been living, creating, learning and reflecting here at Thuestraßse 54. Cultivating and nurturing a creative discussion that touches many different aspects of home, adding a new floor to the metaphoric building, and a new layer of memory to the historic brewery walls. The HB BUILD IV artists have been feeding a communal fire of curiosity, using their passion, work, talent, thoughts, hospitality and care, in the different spaces in and outside of the building. To curl into creative comfort of home, to extend above the ordinary, and rise to the occasion that our time confronts us with - how as artists can we lead society to new horizons, stimulating beauty and meaning in habited corners of the world. We see the HB Festival ‘Feier und Flamme’ as our opportunity to invite you to our home, to meet, greet, witness and engage in the heat that has been created on-site throughout the Winter, to galvanise your heart near the HB Flame. Last spring we extended our HB journey home on to a new continent, and headed to the heart of the Middle East where we are currently forming the next HomeBase Project parallel to the Berlin location. This will take place in Summer 2013 at the historic Hansen Lepers Hospital in Jerusalem. We also take this opportunity to invite you to join our journey onwards, reflecting on home and healing in our next destination, opening new ways for art and social innovation to collide locally and across the globe. Anat Litwin, Artistic Director & Founder, HomeBase Project
– Curatorial –
Each season a brand new chapter in the book of the old brewery opens up through the HomeBase LAB residency, yet again hosting a new international artistic community which has been carefully selected to foster uncountable possibilities and opportunities, arising from the coexistence of creating and living on site. Reflecting on the topic of ‘Home’ over a period of three months, the project explores ways in which space, construed as a field of diverse identities, interpersonal relationships, and multidisciplinary art praxis is negotiated. As a result, the artistic and discursive values of collaborative processes and works create the exhibition’s dynamic tissue - a massive imprint of the investigation, exploration and research of drawing together stories which can translate and transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. This multilayered artistic experiment transforms the LAB itself into a living installation that proudly opens its doors to the public to reveal the traces of the experience and to celebrate the culmination of the process of creating one communal piece, a living and kicking organic sculpture. This forth round of the HB BUILD program was marked by the winter season and an outstanding group of extremely collaborative, generous and dynamic artists. It brought about neighbourhood public actions during a week long seminar, as well as creations within the individual studios and communal spaces in the brewery building. Creative investigations include amongst others research about domesticity and the unhomely, the reframing of public and private, neighbourhood archeology, the reappropriaton of memory, social intervention and the Internet. This publication documents its shape while offering a short view of the process, summarising the works presented in the exhibition in the broader context of the participating artist’s creative practice and their home/studio spaces through images, reflections, and personal letters home - in which the private and the public blend and become one. Adrian Brun Curator HomeBase Berlin
– Anat Litwin –
To: the center of the world and back again, From: a couch in the nomads land, Musrara Neighborhood, Jerusalem Traveling through the city, through deserted back yards, gardens, narrow ally ways, by walls of ancient stone and new built homes, through traffic jams and shopping malls and bustling markets, glimpsing at balconies, through bared windows, into peoples living rooms - everywhere you look, someone in Jerusalem is praying. Someone is bending down, crouching, bowing, mumbling sentences from a sacred book, wrapping themselves up with a scarf, with a leather string, covering their head with a hat, a hood or a shall, talking to god. Someone is holding on to charms, counting beads, chanting, touching their heart, crossing their chest, gasping, clapping, dancing whispering to the clouds, entering some celestial home.
But what lights up and opens up here for me in this complex city, are homes of artists and cultural leaders who insist in gracing this city like gems, shining with talent, insight, social consciousness and progressive creative vision. Artists who bring into town a heartfelt warmth of working collaboratively, outside of the confined boundaries of the studio, the gallery, the art world, and into the streets of Jerusalem, artoperating within the public sphere. Creative leaders who work towards crossing walls of alienation, weaving the spirit of the city, its sacredness, human factors, mundane realities and contrasts into a vivid tapestry of meanings, a poetry of forms. It is these new friends which I have met here, who enable instants of re-imagining Jerusalem as a gateway for beauty, connectivity, peace and joy, who trigger within the instinct to create here a home.
– Adrian Brun –
The heart is flushed with cold solution, removed, and placed into cold sterile electrolyte solution for transport. The recipient operation is performed by using cardiopulmonary bypass. The recipient heart is removed, and the donor heart is inserted in its place. During the procedure, the ventricles are excised, leaving the great vessels, right atrium, and left atrium of the recipient. The donor heart is then sewn. View of the recipient's chest after the heart is removed. Suturing of the donor heart. Note that the left atrial surgical communication is performed first. Completed operation. Note suture lines on now-implanted heart.
– HomeBase Artists –
Eyal Dinar (IL) Shelley Etkin (IL/US) Alanna Lawley (UK) Ilya Noé (MX) Galen Olmsted (US) Clara Sampaio (BR) Vera Schöpe (ES) Misael Soto (PR/US) Malthe Stigaard (DK) Hanae Utamura (JP)
– Eyal Dinar –
– Shelley Etkin –
“Soon it’s obvious that what you thought was flat actually has an underside, an edge, a core... We’re all angles of the thing that once looked flat. We bring its body to life. As it fleshes out, forms ridges, tests edges, bares a hidden belly and a beating heart at its core, the thing that once looked flat is recognizable as the other world we are creating. We make it home for each other. We open its doors when we offer kindnesses and we pass through those doors when we say yes. We make windows when we tell the stories”
Home was once... a series of imaginations built castles and legends glowing secrets kept warm a score of running aways tunneling through collages of stuff with a steady pulse under the layers “But is home the place you come back to when you’re full or is it where you go to be filled up again?” –Off the Map
my mouth is a chimney
my mind calls in echoes: return to dirt transform it to mud jump into a pool of the unknown and watch the circles ripple leak a little wink at the moon host a picnic for survival squat in the dirt and grow flowers just don’t lose yourself while getting lost leave a feather in the doorframe, so you might find sanctuary again the clouds are always streaming
my first visitor is a fox circles round slinks gracefully away i trace her path uprooting, regrounding transplanting as she vanishes
When the moon comes down, I will not be here.
I Will Squat in the Dirt and Grow Flowers is a movement research meets ritual exploration. I am drawn to the HomeBase Greenhouse as a home turned inside out, a domestic space abandoned in winter, blurring the boundaries between private and public territory. The project attempts to thaw wilderness from beneath the frost, reviving? Through my body I inhabit this space, offering an internal world within a ‘transparent’ container. The piece digs through questions of in/visibility, transplantation, uprooting, containment, concealment, and recycling inhabitance. I am offering a channel for the many ghosts and incarnations of the physical material (architecture, composted dirt, body.) Through the movement of these elements I create 'action paintings,' revealing layers of imprints. My practice is in collaboration with other HomeBase BUILD artists, through translation and exchange. My engagement is also in conversation with my own transition from rural to urban rhythms and modes of relating. This performance airs private treasures through windows and cracks, exploring the many possible vessels of connection available within this world. Offering a climate of peering & perceiving, I invite the witnesses to explore and join in my interaction with the elements.
Come. Do not hide. Remember. Lost. I am not lost, I wait in the midst of a sea-forest.
SHELLEY ETKIN is an Israeli-American interdisciplinary artist. She is a queer feminist mover, educator, and activist. Shelley graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a degree in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Rooted in somatic practices such as witnessing and kinesthetic empathy, Shelley's work investigates integration, connectivity and empowerment. Her practice draws from a background of contemporary dance, democratic education, community organizing, and anti-violence work. She is committed to improvisation as an alternative pedagogy.
shelleyetkin.com
photography Nadja Sayej & Eyal Dinar –– poetry Vera Schoepe
Shelley strives to offer audiences an opportunity to explore their own ways of seeing and connecting with other people and their ecospheres. Currently, the work manifests in site-specific research and performance in natural and built landscapes, private nooks and public squares.
– Alanna Lawley –
emoh yenruoj A .esiR .esir A ot moordeB yawllah ,yawllah ;moorhtab ot ot moorhtab ot yawllah ,yawllah .nehctik-ot-egnuol .egnuol ot nehctiK ot egnuoL ot yawllah ,yawllah ,hsaW .moorhtab .tap ,burcs ,yrd ot moorhtaB ot yawllah ,yawllah .ehtolc ,moordeb
hsup evitatnet A tub ,egnuol ot kcab ot yawllah ot kcab ot kcaB .moordeb hguorht nehctik eht -ot-egnuol eht tnorf eht ot yawllah .esolC .nepO .rood .ekiB .nedrag kcaB .ediR
dna ezah ,dnuoS .gof yvaeh
yawllah moordeB thgirb ,ksed nehctik .retupmoC .thgil egnuol ni retupmoC ,nehctik :nehctik ot dna moordeb .yawllah
.)e( d i r A
.gof yvaeh ,goF dewollof ,yad thgirB .gof yvaeh
Alanna Lawley (UK)
.e v i r r A
marT .skcarT .skcart
.es.uaP
A journey home A rise. Rise. Bedroom to hallway, hallway to bathroom; bathroom to hallway, hallway to lounge-to-kitchen. Kitchen to lounge. Pau.se.
Lounge to hallway, hallway to bathroom. Wash, dry, scrub, pat. Bathroom to hallway, hallway to bedroom, clothe. Bedroom hallway kitchen desk, bright light. Computer. Computer in lounge to kitchen: kitchen, bedroom and hallway.
A tentative push back to lounge, but back to hallway to bedroom. Back to the kitchen through the lounge-tohallway to the front door. Open. Close. Back garden. Bike. Ride.
Sound, haze and heavy fog.
dna ezah ,dnuoS .gof yvaeh
A r i d (e). Tracks. Tram tracks.
Fog, heavy fog. Bright day, followed heavy fog.
.go dewollof
A r r i v e.
.e v i r r A
All of me, 10,000 Lux for you (Full Spectrum (anti S.A.D) light box with UV for Vitamin D synthesis) All of me, 10,000 Lux for you plays with full spectrum lighting used in the treatment of Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D) or Winterdepression. Through her construction, Lawley attempts to reverse the increase in Melatonin and reduction in Serotonin production processes that can cause depression in the winter months due to lack of light. Exploring the contradiction of an architecture designed to provide assistance, she plays with the balance of curing the disorder and causing insomnia due to overstimulation. The site-specific construction plays with mediated and shifting experiences of repulsion, seduction and denial of access, fostering an ultimate feeling of uncertainty.
www.alannalawley.com alanna.lawley@gmail.com
Alanna Lawley graduated with a BA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art and Design in 2005. Through her international practice she has exhibited work in the UK, Germany and the US, and is currently based in Berlin.
o Lawley constructs temporary and representational environments. These environments are influenced by the spatial and architectural considerations of the individual towards private space and in particular towards the home. Lawley investigates how fragmented spaces can generate experiences of disassociation, anxiety and isolation; emotions that deny the viewer the freedom to ever fully orientate themselves in a specific time or place.
.
– Ilya Noé –
Ilya Noé is a visual/performance artist, curator and scholar of performance studies. Born and mostly assembled in Mexico City, Ilya has since expanded her zone of propagation by intermittently popping up on all sides of the Atlantic and the Pacific to trace lines and build spaces by hand and on foot. On 11/11/11 she became a resident of Berlin. Ilya represented her country in Venice’s OPEN 2000, became a UNESCO-Aschberg Laureate in 2003, and a year later was recipient of one of Mexico’s National Young Art Awards. A special guest at the II European Landscape Biennial in Barcelona and twice at the International Biennial of Cerveira, she has previously been an artist-in-residence at prestigious institutions in Canada, Portugal, the US and Catalonia. Her work is represented in European and North American public collections. Currently trying to stay a-pace and in-place as she concludes her PhD at the University of California, Ilya is interested in troubling the conventional opposition between theory and practice, art objects and performances, nouns and verbs, events and documents, originals and copies, producers and consumers, settlers and nomads, the rhizomatic and the arborescent. Her dissertation focuses on situated, responsive and co-extensive art-making outwith normal hegemonic modes and structures by way of the simple acts of walking, gifting and collaborating as distinct modes of knowing and making. www.ilyanoe.com
ILYA NOÉ
Dear homes,
Ilya
S[c/t]roller ∩ DENK MAL... #1
For the past couple of months I have been walking from home to base and back, trying to listen closely and actively to place, attending to the small, the subtle, the unstable and the slow. I have set out to make connections at ground level, on foot and on the go, without losing sight of disconnections. I have approached location as an itinerary rather than a series of fixed points, and sites and situations as active dialogical agents rather than as mere context, backdrops or things that exist a priori. I have walked alone and alongside; both my own and assisted by ‘the scroller’, a custom-made device with which I am able to map the paths my attention travels in continuous (and decidedly non-linear) single-line drawings as I traverse space. During one particular outing with Vera and Hanae, as we were digging for asides and overlooked corners, we encountered an odd and mysterious object embedded in the sidewalk. A metallic frame, too tall to be intended for locking bikes, too awkwardly positioned to hold advertisements. Hanae swung from it, Vera photographed it, I measured and sketched it, we asked passersby about it. Now long after learning its original intended use, I’m still being strongly drawn to this contemporary ‘menhir’, still making drawings of it, still drawing attention to it and all its possible different uses and meanings. By restoring it and honoring its presence in a more ‘official’ way, I’m hoping to set it in motion in a way that it remains untranslatable, unknowable and in process; oscillating between the banal and the valuable, fixity and movement, being a relic and a monument.
–Galen Olmsted –
– Clara Sampaio –
_Adaptation Mutation. The effort the language has to 'make' in order to stay alive _Translation To translate experience into words – the attempt to create new words _Expression How background experience changes my way of seeing / perceiving new things I'm always trying to make connections. For me, that's what architecture is all about. How does one experience a space? How does a space create experience? 1. Using universal “symbols” I try to recreate those efforts in communication: -The physical struggle to pronounce words -The psychological behavior towards a situation that has been imposed -Interpretation rather than translation -Making comparisons through sound only – signifier -Gestural similarities <<CONNECTING>> 2. LINGUA. minha pátria é minha língua. (digital video, B&W, 2`36`) The video piece was inspired by Brazilian musician and songwriter Caetano Veloso's song Língua. HomeBase residents struggle to perform, in their mother tongue, the translation of the sentence-title, while I focus on their bodily movements, muscles 'reactions, the awkwardness of the gesture. 3. Leaf.a.msg (leaves, installation) Looking for a way of mapping my experience in Berlin, first by cultural contrasts and then to silent moments back at the studio, I've been collecting leaves. This delicate approach made me want to communicate with them. I exchange song lyrics from Clube da Esquina (Brazilian group created in the 70s by Milton Nascimento, Lo Borges, Beto Guedes, among others) and the leaves give me silent stories about adaptation: expressions of their ephemeral lives and tiny veins.
Clara Sampaio
(1986) is a Brazilian architect, in love with lines, patterns, cities and people. Since 2005, she studies visual arts and architecture, combining these two fields into an expanded one. Her most recent artworks are Urban [dis]agreements (2011-work in progress), a photograph serie about architecture and art interfaces; and a collaborative installation work called [come on in ] itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s an invitation (2011). Today, she lives through the joyful differences between Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. clrsampaio.tumblr.com
– Vera Schöpe –
Vera Schöpe uses Photography and other Art media to document questions of memory, identity,and territory. She has conducted research, produced multimedia installations, and directed intercultural workshops internationally, mostly on the topic of borders and hybrid cultures. In her work, she explores the poetry and politics of public and private space and the need for the viewer to assert his/her bearings in a new set of variables. Her citycartographies are informed by interviews and local histories. A graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie in France, she informs her projects with multidisciplinary research in History, Geography, and Cultural Studies. The aim of this body of work is to establish a point of arrival and make sens of lingering absences. Using old family albums, Vera confronts, layers, and sews images in order to create an incipient archive of recovered memories. This project originates from a book by the same title that mixes her grandfather’s and her own Photography archives and explores questions of origin, memory, and nationality. The installation at HomeBase-Berlin offers personal cartography of here and now.
FREE FROM vera schรถpe
w w w . v e r a s c h o e p e . c o m
carrying festering lingering growing asking receiving making sense divesting observing layering crying howling remembering gestating judging marking waiting uprooting clarifying distancing weeding embracing surrendering waiting breathing walking receiving measuring seeping covering developing knowing erasing repressing letting go drawing forgetting crossing sowing learning repairing
hindering claiming listening mapping transcending reaching seeking writing painting digging realizing owning answering clutching defining seeing resting understanding threading recoiling distilling inducing facing
sublimating hiding becoming shielding missing thinking stagnating accumulating organizing dancing digesting shaping allowing changing nurturing healing planting restoring accepting revising
FREE FROM vera schรถpe
– Misael Soto –
Misael Soto
During my time in Miami, and now in Berlin, I have been ex communal, shared experiences and participatory performa I am drawn to the accidental, ephemeral, and transcenden my works are contextually- and project-based, and freque shape of sweeping, nearly utopian gestures, giving of myse and time to others. I position works in and out of an arts c an institutional setting, white cube-type space, or an ever out in the “real” world or on the Internet. The novelty, ep and communal nature of my practice refocuses people’s at present through ideas of presence, collectivism, and unive
Born in Puerto Rico (1986) and currently based in Miami, I Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelors Degree in Art History fr Atlantic University (2008).
xploring ative situations. ntal. Many of ently take the elf, resources, context, be it in ryday context, phemerality, ttention on the ersality.
graduated rom Florida
misaelsoto.com misaelsoto.tumblr.com instagram.com/misaelsoto twitter.com/misaelsoto statusupdating.tumblr.com twitter.com/statusupdating #home #homebasebuildiv #berlinbeard #pankowprojectionproject #hostingprojekt #trustus #thestatusupdate #letterhome
Misael Soto
During my time in Miami, and now in Berlin, I have been ex communal, shared experiences and participatory performa I am drawn to the accidental, ephemeral, and transcenden my works are contextually- and project-based, and freque shape of sweeping, nearly utopian gestures, giving of myse and time to others. I position works in and out of an arts c an institutional setting, white cube-type space, or an ever out in the â&#x20AC;&#x153;realâ&#x20AC;? world or on the Internet. The novelty, ep and communal nature of my practice refocuses peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s at present through ideas of presence, collectivism, and unive
Born in Puerto Rico (1986) and currently based in Miami, I Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelors Degree in Art History fr Atlantic University (2008).
xploring ative situations. ntal. Many of ently take the elf, resources, context, be it in ryday context, phemerality, ttention on the ersality.
graduated rom Florida
misaelsoto.com misaelsoto.tumblr.com instagram.com/misaelsoto twitter.com/misaelsoto statusupdating.tumblr.com twitter.com/statusupdating #home #homebasebuildiv #berlinbeard #pankowprojectionproject #hostingprojekt #trustus #thestatusupdate #letterhome
â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Malthe Stigaard â&#x20AC;&#x201C;
Malthe Stigaard Malthe Stigaard is an artist researching on social interaction in contemporary society. Stigaard both creates social space through the design of social places and alters existing social places by adding performative elements. His research on contemporary society questions the norms of formalised social interaction and creates opportunity for alternatives.
Social Space (Work in Progress), Installation 2013
Presentation with a Sleeping Person, performance 2013
The Photographer, performance 2013
The Mausoleum
It was through social media that the ability to construct our own image rose to become accessible to everyone. Suddenly we had access to the same tools that normally was reserved for movie stars and politicians. We all became our own PR agent. And we started to live our lives for the camera, for the joy of standing in front of the lens and distribute ourselves to a larger audience still protected by the delay. And not only for a mere 15 minutes, no for an eternity. We would live on even after our death, like a mausoleum of characters, performing through our life and leaving a trace of digital photographs and videos that could be preserved without loss over time. We never imagined how huge an archive it was possible to build. For each day millions of people died and the archive grew until we were no more and the last person alive sent it into space to travel timelessly among the endless possibilities of life only one day to be inevitably discovered. And when this species opened the archive they would finally laugh from wonder.
– Hanae Utamura –
‘Between Windows/Walls’ ’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’ ’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’ ’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’ ’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’ ’’’’’’’’’’’’’’�’’’’’’’�’ ’’’’’’’�’’�’’’�’’’’’’��’’’�’’��’ ’’’’�’’�’’’’’’�’’�’’’�’’�’’��’ ’’’’’�’’’’’’’’’’ �’’�’’’�’’�’’’�’’’’’’’’’’’’’ ’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’�’’’’’’�’’ ’’’�’’’’’’�’’’’’’’’’’’’’’�’ ’’’’’�’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’ ’’’’�’’’’’’�’’ �’�’’’’�’’’’’’’’’’’�’’’’’’’’’’’�’ ’’’’’’’’’’�’’’’’’’’’’’ ’’’’’��’’’�’’�’’’’’’’’’�’’’’’’��’ ’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’ ’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’� ’�’’’’’’’’’�’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’ ’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’ ’’’��’’’’’’’’�’ �’’’’’�’’’’’’’’’�’’’’’’’’’’’’ ’’’’’’�’�’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’�’ ’’’’�’’’’’�’’’’’�’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’ ’’�’’’’’’’’’’’’�’’’’’’’’’’’’’’ ’’’’’�’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’ ’’’’�’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’�’’’’’�’’’’ ’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’�’’ �’’’�’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’�’’ ’’’’’’�’’’’’’’�’’’’’’’’�’’�’’’’ ’’’’’�’’’’’’�’
Hanae Utamura contemplates the human condition in urban and natural landscapes on earth using video, sculpture and photography. Her work is best known by her secret performance series, in which the artist, always a small, anonymous gure, makes subtle, insistent and sometimes dangerous interventions in natural or built environments. Her practice proposes how simple, physical, non-verbal experiences can transform our beliefs about the world around us, leading to change as an echo of her actions.
– Heather McKee –
â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Bas Kools â&#x20AC;&#x201C;
Layers of home combining the public and the private the numbers and the emotions, knowledge and instinct, you and the other ...
– Sarah Lüdemann –
That night I fished a chicken’s vertebra out of the soup to keep it as a lucky charm… they smiled because they knew of that world… there
was
that
music
playing…it
moved
my
core, touched my inmost, introverted self… I cried laughing…somebody cried and laughed with
me
because
he
knew
of
that
world…
I am home…right here right now…
– Nikki Hendrikx –
HomeBaseProject.org HB BUILD IV Catalog January 2013