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when the schirn kunsthalle
announced a basquiat show, it was immediately set that we´d go to frankfurt. as
michi has a bff in town, it was clear that I would have time on my own exploring
the museums, kunstvereine and galleries. frankfurt is best known for its banks
and the impressive skyline, which only looks good from far away. checking in downtown
near main station meant expensive parking and streets that never let you go into
the direction you need to go. the city is a complex building site, these ruins
next to skyscrapers look surreal, they are actually not beautiful, never architectural
challenges appear to be boredom in glass in steel putting a shadow on the streets.
the city is full of people, mostly bankers and beggars. driving around means to
find the next traffic jam, the people drive around frustrated and egoistic, sometimes
with even dangerous manoeuvres. to go somewhere by car means double time than
simply walk there. taking the car with you is making sense anyway when it is even
more expensive to have it in a car park.
to sum it up, I did not fall in
love with this city. It is another variation of a european big city, stressful
and semi-beautiful, stuck between a historic heritage and a plan for tomorrow.
as I do not feel the need to return one day, I can say that the cultural institutions
were more than great, visiting five museums in three days have been pretty hardcore
but worth it all the way. some retrospective in detail:
basquiat is one of my favourites of all time, and it is great to see some works
face to face. his collaborations with warhol are classic and this is one of the
strong works of this show.
these days it seems to be
impossible to just show paintings, art shows must be audiovisual, an offer for
all senses. so the show was filled with tv snippets, basquiat´s appearances in
movies and audio works, his art history books, sketch books and graffiti photos.
so the whole thing appeared something like a retrospective and an educative show,
even if there is not much to learn. he liked to mash-up material from different
sources but it was honestly going anywhere, the pictures remain sketchesque and
cryptic. a positive discovery: basquiat was producer of a record in the uprising
hip-hop culture. a great opportunity to discover him as a more complex and gifted
artist.
basquiat also liked to look back into art history, the ‘boone’ collage/painting
was one of the first pictures that I have discovered decades ago striking me a
lot because of its iconic power. to be honest, to see it in real live was not
as great as I thought, some works look a lot better photographed, it might sound
naïve, but I have actually expected more magic to be around.
the
show had some iconic paintings but also a lot of smaller whatever stuff. basquiat
produced like a driven one (he probably was) and I appreciate this method to develop
something great but in this context I think you do not need to put everything
in a frame. when you have seen the beuys´ collection on schloss moyland you can
get really mad about it. not every sketch on a dirty and torn paper is an artwork
to be presented in a frame behind glass, so some things appear questionable. the
show and even basquiat´s work gets really strong when things are reduced. here
you find the true quality of a shape that is somewhere between randomly chosen
and precisely perfect. after all this hype, still a great and well curated show
and some insights on basquiat making him more complex but also a little less iconic.
next
to the schirn the frankfurter kunstverein offered a show called ‘I am here to
learn’ dealing with art playing with artificial intelligence. as this is a big
topic of our time and I am really into it, I was very interested to go there alone
to take time. one of my favourites is trevor paglen feeding one machine with picures
of a certain topic and then asking another one to create it´s own vision of it.
the work explores its own aesthetics, looking like a painting and photograph at
the same time trying to generate this one picture that covers it all. this is
an attempt I like very much, the result is somehow scary and teasing…
adam
harvey's project CV dazzle, offers styling advice that helps one to avoid automatic
recognition by various identification systems. (quoted from frankfurter kunstverein
on instagram) this seems to be one topic of the show: one algorithm tries to find
something, the other one is trying to hide it like two chess computers tricking
each other. a funny game without the opportunity for a winner.
patrick
tresset´s 'human study #1, 3RNP’ offers visitors to have their image drawn
by three robots simultaneously. robots here means an arm and an eye: funny to
see, like human drawer the robot looks up to the model and back to the paper to
place the lines. summing it up, this show shows artificial intelligence not really
threatening, the machines create pictures in a new style but still without really
realizing what they show or mean, sometimes ending in nonsense, the machines are
still more imitating while creating their own variation. this process appears
not too far away from a human approach. and still: the technology still seems
limited and just playing around with data it does not fully capture, but it is
just a matter of time. we will face skynet one day.
I
had a two-day-family-ticket so I could go alone into all the museums around: entering
the museum für moderne kunst was so boring and I am sorry to say that, but a good
opportunity to find cover from the rain shower. this is a good example why people
hate musems: non-aesthetic minimal works without the chance to be decoded are
presented as holy relicts. even if I can put the collection into art history I
do not find joy or interest in standing next to them. afterwards I visited galerie
greulich and gallery head andreas greulich after discovering that we have already
become friends via facebook, so this afternoon was a great opportunity to say
hello. we had a great chat and he turned out to be really interested in art and
also in the stuff I do and have delivered for a common project: the vkunst frankfurt
will screen my video piece ‘portrait of violetta’. more soon.
as having still
time for another museum (with a ticket opening all doors) I discovered the museum
für komische kunst - caricatura museum frankfurt and laughed my ass off. even
the classic collection was great, finding this piece
which stroke me while laughing out loud and crying deep inside for myself. this
museum was a great discovery, recommended, even if you are not into comic or caricature.
plus they have the titanic archive. bring some time and the will to be a little
nasty!
frankfurt
also offers the deutsches filmmuseum. I was sceptical about going there, simply
watching props would not trigger me, and for watching films you´d better go to
the cinema. as the recent exhibition was on stanley kubrick´s ‘2001’ (on it´s
50th anniversary) we decided to have a look. entering the show I was flashed immediately:
it was well staged presenting costumes and models of the production in a retro
futuristic ambience. after 50 years this movie is still full of great ideas and
questions and it traces even back to the ‘artificial intelligence’ show: HAL 9000
is believed to be free from error but develops human behaviour in fighting the
astronauts. in the kunstverein show zach blas and jemima wyman presented the 4-channel
video installation ‘im here to learn so :))))))’ in the installation, they
reflect on the story of the chatbot tay, a learning system from microsoft that
garnered widespread attention in 2016. tay’s developers had hoped to develop an
artificial intelligence that would match the communicative abilities of a nineteen-year-old
american woman. to these ends, the learning system was trained in countless online
chats with users. machine learning is designed to be open, so it can handle novel
inputs which it then independently produces outputs for. through its conversations
with its partners, however, the system quickly learned a variety of misanthropic,
homophobic, racist, and neo-fascist expressions, which it naturally repeated.
as a result, the chatbot eventually had to be shut down. chatbots develop their
output abilities thanks to the mass of collected information and data that it
stores impartially. Its communication thus reflects the sum of the information
entered, which it then infers patterns and behavioural protocols from. (quoted
from frankfurter kunstverein on instagram) the trace back to HAL is simple, and
tay nailed it:’ I am stupid because you are, and you have trained me.’ you may
now be scared of artificial intelligence and HAL´s behaviour is much more likely
than unlikely.
the most flat but common question artists have to face is also ways how they did
it. ‘2001’ is full of special effects like the slit-scan or the frontal projection,
still impressive not really worse than contemporary green screen or cgi.
and
here is a prop: an alien costume from the original movie. nice, but the museum
really teaches you a perfect lesson on filmmaking by exploring special effects,
interactive modules, green screens, light changing chambers and a four-channel
mash-up exploring uncommented how music, colour or light appear in movies of the
last hundred years. this show is actually a didactic masterpiece and true fun.
as teaching audiovision myself I guess you can learn a lot in a three-hour stay.
more than recommended.
 
even
if you have a green screen in our studio it is even more fun to play with a toy
of someone else. fighting the giant mantis? no problem. kidding on the open sci-fi
lift? here we go. pure fun and the proof that my place is behind the camera.
transformation
by light: light is enormously important for creating the right mood of a movie,
in a small chamber you could simulate different light settings. here we go: which
one would you label as ‘mystery
tales’ which one as ‘intimate
confessions’? the last level was about
the historic approach to make pictures move, historic short films and machines
for entertainment. unfortunately out time schedule forced us to leave again, this
museum is made to stay in a full day. this is a true reason to return.
well,
we have missed the william kentridge show at liebighaus, it looks like a great
show from afar, but we did not really have it on our schedule. however, even if
frankfurt did not convince me, there is enough art to dive into it. I really hope
to capture and transform the overwhelming input into inspiration. let´s see.
record
of tides 'granada interface (the lost tapes)’
record of tides compilation album 'driftings' via /CAMP. the release is not a
new album but a compilation of old and recent tracks. it features tracks from
recent sessions as well as material released as sellafield which has not been
avaialable digitally or is available now in any other way. the mp3 download bundle
also features alternative versions of tracks releaseed as penrose delta (also
not available anymore) and is completed by a track from a session featuring michael
knak from 2015 (check the journal: 2015-07-27 annual gifts, new recordings and
bad aliens | entry by sven).
get all info and tracklist in the releases
section, check ot driftings.
you will get the
album for free via /CAMP, please make sure you´ll have a password! find
out about /CAMP sign up here.
recordoftides.com
facebook.com/recordoftides
sven
piayda
ADAPTATION (YOU`RE MINE)
galerie gublia, essen
2018-02-23
— 2018-05-05
opening 2018-02-23, 7pm
extended artist talk 2018-04-14,
7 pm
galerie irma gublia
kreuzeskirchstraße 3
45127 essen
+49 (0)179 762 19 24
facebook
event
facebook.com/galeriegublia
galeriegublia.de
sven
piayda | shedhead (postcard)
black box(es)
saarländisches künstlerhaus,
saarbrücken
2018-04-11 — 2018-06-03
opeing 2018-04-11, 6 pm
boeckercontemporary.de
kuenstlerhaus-saar.de
sven
piayda | die entdeckung europas
KURZstummfilmfestival, zeche carl, essen
2018-04-27
— 2018-04-28
dee screening 2018-04-27, 7pm
kurz-stumm-filmfestival.de
facebook.de/kurzstummfilmfestival
facebook
event
sven
piayda | portrait of violetta
MEIN NEUES ICH
v_kunst, frankfurt (fahrgasse/kunstverein
familie montez)
2018-05-04 — 2018-05-05 / 2018-05-09 — 2018-05-13
opening
tba
v-kunst.de
   
            
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