Inspector Casino's Detective Show

Van B naar A en weer terug

2012-01-18T15:20:00.012+01:00

The English version will be published soon on this website. Keep yourself informed by subscribing!

Update van 'Duitsland, de hoop van Europa!'

Ik doe nu circa twee-en-een-half jaar projecten in Berlijn en ik kan met blij gemoed melden mijn focus weer enigszins te verleggen. Berlijn is een mooie stad, zeker in de zomer, maar ik mis de hitzige vibes. Alles gaat echt langzaam, het is goed om te wonen, een atelier te huren of uit te rusten, maar dat is niet genoeg. Een stad moet ook een economische basis kunnen bieden en perspectieven voor persoonlijke en zeker ook financiele groei. Dat is waar Berlijn tot op heden, voor de (ongesubsidieerde) kunstenaar, in faalt. Ik heb het niet over de expats die 'uitgezonden' worden met een prettig salaris en het liefst nog een fijn appartement in het centrum, dat is een zeer kleine groep uit een andere league met bovendien een halsband om, net zoals de uitgezondenen in de diplomatieke wereld. Zij zijn de beter betaalde loonarbeiders, maar met strikt omschreven taken. Daar kan ik mij als vrijbuiter natuurlijk niet onder scharen. Ik onderhoud wel relaties met hen, maar op strikt zakelijke basis en met een duidelijk eigen program, dat ik het liefst zélf schrijf.

Natuurlijk hangt alles af van wat je zelf weet te creeren, voor mij is dat een eigen galerie/Art space geweest, radioprogramma's voor verschillende zenders en een internationaal netwerk opbouwen in de kunstwereld. Ik kom nu in het stadium dat ik over de eerste roes en de daarop volgende 3 'roezen' heen ben en deze stad, het land en de mensen wat kritischer ga bekijken. Kritisch betekent ook: wat heeft dit land en deze stad nu écht te bieden?

Ik schreef in december 2010 het volgende en mijn analyse blijft in grote lijnen hetzelfde:

'Er is in Berlijn weinig werk. Er is weliswaar een creatieve sector, maar alles is zo 'Duits', er is hier nauwelijks sprake van een integratie van de Duitsers en de 'expats', laat staan met de grootste immigrantengroep, de Turken. In begin 2010 was er veel in het mainstream nieuws over een boek van een bankman, Sarasin, die vijftien jaar na Paul Scheffer, Pim Fortuyn en anderen in Nederland, nu in Duitsland een discussie ontketend heeft over het mislukken van het 'multicultureel experiment'. Hij heeft vooral kritiek op de Turkse gemeenschap die zich beperkt tot het voeren van groentewinkels en andere kleine retail, maar niet echt in de Duitse bureaucratische structuren weet door te dringen'.

Ik zie nu dat deze 'scheiding' een meer of minder bedoelde 'segregatie' is. De Berlijnse Duitsers hebben helemaal geen behoefte aan extra concurrenten, dus die worden, indien mogelijk, zoveel mogelijk op afstand of in afhankelijke posities gehouden. In alle bedrijven die ik heb bezocht, waar ik projecten heb gedaan of voor heb gewerkt is het management vrijwel volstrekt Duits. Zelfs bij internationale bedrijven krijgen de Duitsers vrij spel, zo lang ze maar doen wat hun opdracht is: winst maken, op alle geoorloofde wijzen. Als ze hierin falen dan wordt er ingegrepen, dus zorgen de Duitsers, als nijvere baasjes, ervoor strikt hun instructies op te volgen. In Berlijn betekent dat: lage lonen bieden omdat er een gigantisch arbeidsoverschot is en de Duitse politiek goed meespeelt door geen minimumloon te eisen. De nog steeds Duitse voorliefde voor gezag zorgt ervoor dat het middenkader niet opkomt voor meer rechten en beter loon, maar juist als vertegenwoordiger van de 'baas' werknemers gaat controleren en, indien nodig, ontslaan.

Ik moet zeggen, als Nederlander die toch qua cultuur veel dichter bij de Duitser staat dan verwacht, de Duitsers zijn open, maar tot op zekere hoogte. Ze moeten je echt nodig hebben willen ze je echt kansen geven. Het doet mij denken aan een mooi sociologisch thema: binnen- en buitensluiting. Behoor je niet tot de Duitse incrowd, dan is het erg moeilijk om voor vol te worden aangezien. Op feestjes en andere 'netwerkbijeenkomsten' ontmoet ik veel 'expats' die dezelfde ervaringen hebben, maar vaak nog harder in hun oordeel zijn: omschrijvingen als 'hierarchisch ingesteld', 'alleen respect voor autoriteit' (juist datgene waar Duitsers zich zogenaamd voor schamen) etcetera komen steeds weer terug en dan hoor je het vooral van Amerikanen die hier al jaren wonen. Professionals die jaren ervaring hebben in hun vakgebied worden gewoon niet aangenomen, of je nu architect bent of in de mediasector werkt, Duitsers gaan voor...

Natuurlijk heb je een sterke alternatieve (Duitse) scene, zeker ook in Berlijn, maar ik begin mij wel af te vragen in hoeverre deze zoveel verschilt van de traditionele, Duitse cultuur, die van het conservatieve, burgerlijke, zakenleven en bureaucratie, met een vleugje christelijke religie, een bestuurslaag met een mentaliteit die nog steeds de dienst uitmaakt in Duitsland. De kunstenaarswereld is een uitzondering, maar eigenlijk vrij marginaal en dus niet kenmerkend voor 'de Duitse ziel'. In het zakenleven gaat het er rigoreuzer aan toe dan in Nederland. Voldoe je bijvoorbeeld in je proeftijd (van 6 maanden!) niet of kunnen ze je niet meer gebruiken, dan vlieg je eruit. Het enige dat je krijgt is een doorbetaling van 2 weken (!!) van je salaris, dat is het enige recht dat je hebt.

Met een jaarcontract heb je iets meer zekerheid, maar dan nog zijn er genoeg mogelijkheden om 'de wegen te laten scheiden met wederzijdse instemming'. Als 'werknemer' (dit woord klopt niet want je GEEFT werk!), kun je echter niet zo maar weg, zonder al je rechten op te geven. Minimaal 1 maand opzegtermijn of 'wederzijds overeenkomen' dat je per direct opstapt. Echter, je verspeelt dan ook je rechten op een uitkering. Als je zelf opstapt heb je 3 maanden geen recht op een uitkering. 'Opstappen' wordt bepaald op het moment dat de overeenkomst hierover wordt getekend, je moet echter binnen 3 dagen je dan melden bij een uitkerende instantie. Als je nu bijvoorbeeld overeenkomt nog een paar dagen te werken (dus opstappen per volgende week), heb je geen tijd om je binnen 3 dagen te melden en verlies je extra 3 maanden recht op een uitkering. Dat betekent in zo'n geval dat je 6 maanden geen recht hebt op een uitkering! Lang leve Duitsland, de hoop van Europa!

Geen minimumloon, een eenzijdig ontslagrecht (want voor een groot deel ten gunste van de 'werkgever', die zoveel mogelijk voorkomt dat een werknemer een contract voor onbepaalde tijd krijgt, want dan heb je wel vergelijkbare rechten als in Nederland), weinig sociale rechten (zie uitkeringsrechten), de Duitsers zijn vrij rigoreus geweest in het afbouwen van het 'Rijnlandse model', een politiek model dat in het verleden vaak als tegenhanger van het 'Angelsaksische model' werd geponeerd: er is weinig van over: weinig rechten als werknemer en als werkloze. Veel mensen werken voor 400 euro per maand (de zogenaamde 400 euro banen), je praat natuurlijk wel over een groep mensen zonder opleiding en veel specifieke werkervaring, maar zelfs al heb je die wel, dan is er weer geen werk. Ik ben veel getalenteerde mensen tegengekomen, met (design en andere) diploma's, interessante werkervaring, maar ze mogen blij zijn als ze elke maand de eindjes aan elkaar kunnen knopen. Een zelfstandig huis huren is er met zo'n laag inkomen natuurlijk al helemaal niet bij, dus wonen veel mensen in een 'WG' (Wohngemeinschaft'), een soort woongroep en hopen op betere tijden, die niet gaan komen als ze niet zelf de knoop doorhakken en hun slecht betaalde baantjes verruilen voor een eigen project dat naast inkomsten ook meer voldoening geven zal.

Dan de Nederlandse economie, die lijkt toch veel dynamischer dan ín Berlijn. Hoewel het een verademing is om verlost te zijn van de Nederlandse media en hun gepapegaai, in Duitsland is het al niet veel beter gesteld; ik heb het niet over de beruchte bladen als 'Bild' en vergelijkbare Berlijnse kranten, zelfs een blad als 'Die Zeit', dat ik vroeger toch graag las, is bij nader inzien, maar een krant die ook geloven moet aan de Duitse mediahypes en zelden als intellectueel uitdagend te omschrijven valt.

Die Zeit is eigenlijk een soort 'Volkskrant', met dikke katernen en proberende om maar zoveel mogelijk gebieden te dekken om lezers te trekken. Afgezien van de achterhaalde filosofie die hier achter steekt, tonen de verkoopcijfers al jaren dat dit soort concepten hun langste tijd gehad hebben, maar aangezien ze in Duitsland op een aantal vlakken achter een land als Nederland aan lopen, moeten ze hier nog aan 'diversificatie' gaan doen, het verspreiden van risico door bijvoorbeeld, als krant(!), ook reizen, lezingen, concerten etc. aan te bieden.

Voor de middenklasse van nu, behept met enige educatie, lijkt dit nog wel te werken, maar de nieuwe digitale generaties hebben geen enkele boodschap aan dit soort mediaconcepten, ze zijn dus tot uitsterven gedoemd, als de predigitale genratie (45+) uitsterft, is het met hun koninkrijk ook gedaan en dat beseffen ze maar al te goed. Ik ben benieuwd wat voor stuiptrekkingen ze nog gaan maken, hun doodsstrijd wordt met het jaar interessanter, ik heb het nog niet eens over hun vooringenomen politieke posities (De Volkskrant als Pvda-krantje, de Telegraaf als VVD/PVV/CDA-krantje, Trouw als Christenkrantje, in Duitsland Die Zeit als SPD-krantje, Bild als CDU/CSU/FDP-krantje etc.), deze zijn voor de goed geinformeerde digitale generaties ook steeds minder te pruimen. In Nederland zie je als laatste stuiptrekkingen 'NRC Next' etc., in Berlijn zijn ze nog niet zover.

Ik speek over 'Berlijn' en soms over 'Duitsland'. Het zijn eigenlijk twee verschillende competities. Berlijn is een soort 'Klokkenluider van de Notre Dame', een jichtige oude man met een bochel, die langzaam voortbeweegt en met zijn voet sleept. De dynamiek van 'Duitsland', met zijn up-to-date productiesector en 'Gründlichkeit' is anders, een 35-jarige in het pak gestoken Duitse man of vrouw, met kortgeknipt haar met een laag gel, een 80-er jaren designerbrilletje en een laptoptasje (of de laptop er echt in zit moet je nog maar afwachten). Hij of zij heeft altijd haast, loopt vastberaden met een Tommy Hilfiger shirt en Boss-namaakpak naar de S-Bahn. De gebochelde klokkenluider neemt altijd de U-Bahn, maar dat terzijde.

Duitsland de hoop van Europa? Dan krijgt Europa het flink voor de kiezen. Door slim manoevreren kan elke Europeaan proberen te voorkomen naast de klokkenluider in de U-Bahn terecht te komen, door een goede opleiding te scoren waarmee hij een kleine Volkswagen of beter nog, een Audi kan veroorloven. De toppers, met hun Maserati, worden alleen toppers door in hun studententijd al tegen het business-establishment aan te schurken in de hoop daar wat investeerders te verleiden voor hun weinig originele en vooral op kostenbesparingen gerichte bedrijfsplannen (voorbeeld: de Duitse Zalando-oprichters, zoek daar maar eens naar op het web). Maar ja, een paar van dat soort investeerders en je hebt op je 35e wel een Ferrari, zo op te halen op de Salzufer in Berlijn!

Over opleidingen gesproken, ik schreef hierover in 2010:

'De universiteiten en het hoger onderwijs in Duitsland doen mij erg denken aan hoe het in Nederland was in de jaren '80, veel bureaucratie en ingeslapen docenten. Een extra euvel is de ontoegankelijkheid: (...) er is een stevige, formele selectie aan de poort': ik ben veel mensen tegengekomen die überhaupt niet aan studeren zijn toegekomen, omdat er een beperkt aantal plaatsen beschikbaar is per studie, voor de gelukkigen zijn de kosten wel laag, maar wat met die andere 75%? Die kan maar het beste hopen op een carriere in een bedrijf. Natuurlijk worden zij gezagsgetrouw omdat zij immers elders weer helemaal opnieuw kunnen beginnen, omdat ze geen enkel papiertje hebben, behalve hun middelbare schooldiploma en dat is in Duitsland zeker niet genoeg. Om de toiletten te poetsen heb je niets nodig, maar zodra het om betere banen heb je zelfs aan een buitenlandse bachelor of master niet voldoende. In contrast tot de mooie verhalen over 'stroomlijnen van het Europese hoger onderwijs', in de Duitse praktijk worden voornamelijk Duitse bachelor of masterdiploma's erkend (en moet je ook nog het liefst Duitser zijn, ik ken Nederlanders die 'Diplomingenieur' zijn, maar nergens worden aangenomen).

En dan het kunstonderwijs: de kunstacademies zijn onderworpen aan bizarre lesstructuren waarbij je maar 1 docent hebt, die als een soort God kan bepalen of je wel of niet mag afstuderen en waar je minimaal 3 jaar bij 'in de klas zit' (het lijkt de lagere school wel). Ik kan mij een gesprek met een Duitse studente in Amsterdam herinneren die mij al op dit onderwijssysteem wees en ik moet zeggen dat ik haar nu pas begrijp. Gesloten, archaische structuren die ook weer een speciaal soort 'werknemer' produceren, ik weet niet waar sommige commentatoren het vertrouwen in Duitsland vandaan halen als 'de motor van Europa', het kan zijn dat de industrie in het Westen nog steeds redelijk meekomt en een groot deel van de slecht functionerende economie subsidieert (inclusief het voormalige Oost-Duitsland), maar om daar nu de hoop van Europa op te baseren, lijkt mij nog steeds te ver gaan.

Het Duitse model werkt ook alleen in Duitsland en zal voor Europa nooit en te nimmer werken. Ik kan mij voorstellen dat enkele Duitse Mephisto's (ik doel nu op dezelfde jongens en meisjes die op hun 35e hun Ferrari op de Salzufer bestellen) likkebaardend naar de huidige financiele verhoudingen in Europa kijken. Aangezien de 'Griekse crisis' vooral een crisis van de Franse banken is, gaan de Duitse financierders nu (indirect) de Franse banken geld lenen en krijgen we dus volledig andere machtsverhoudingen in Europa. De Fransen worden...afhankelijk van Duitsland! We weten waartoe dat kan leiden. Taak voor landen als Nederland om de voorspelbare komende conflicten te voorkomen, want dat wordt pertinent het einde van de Europese Unie.

Voor mij persoonlijk dus tijd om de vraag te stellen wat ik de komende periode ga doen. Ik heb in Berlijn aardig wat contacten gelegd, vooral met Kunstprojectruimtes, kunstenaarinsitiatieven, kunstenaars, mediamensen etc. en die zou ik graag eens naar Nederland halen. Mijn radioprogramma's waren ook een succes, in die zin, dat er binnen een bepaalde kring echt naar geluisterd werd en de zenders gauw een plaatsje vrijmaakten voor een van mijn programma's, wat dat betreft alle lof. Maar ja, het gaat wel veelal om de onbetaalde klussen, de betaalde klussen liggen bij de grote privé - en staatsmedia en ook dat lijken vrij gesloten (Duitse) bastions te zijn, ben er ook nog weinig echt inspirerende mensen tegen gekomen. Duitsland, de hoop van Europa? Het schrikbeeld van 'Opa Europa' komt dan wel erg dichtbij.

Meer Europa volgens Duitse benadering betekent: meer ondoorzichtige, bureaucratische structuren met allerlei mechanismen om veel mensen buiten te sluiten, arbeidsrechten volledig afbouwen, het minimumloon niet instellen en indien aanwezig afschaffen, waardoor slecht functionerende bedrijven, die leven van de marge op laagbetaalde arbeid, naar je land komen (denk aan de telemarketingsector, zo 80's en 90's, maar in Berlijn nog aanwezig), al decennia geen cent investeren in sociale integratieprojecten en dan klagen dat er sprake is van segregatie, terwijl je alleen maar decennia geprofiteerd hebt van de goedkope, ongeschoolde arbeid van dezelfde migranten.

Nee, de 'Berlijnse republiek' is een leuk experiment, maar faalt volledig in zijn cohesie, zijn sociaal programma en daardoor in het voorkomen van sociale conflicten. De vraag lijkt gerechtvaardigd: wat staat dit land en Europa te wachten, met een crisis die teweeggebracht is door een wereldwijde financiele sector, die zelfs de liquiditeit van staatsbegrotingen kan doen vervliegen. De zelfbenoemde 'liberalen' van allerlei allooi, die helemaal geen liberalen zijn, maar papegaaiende lakeien die geparachuteerd zijn door lobbyende multinationals (kijk maar eens goed naar de cv's van de zogenaamde huidige 'politieke klasse') staan al weer gereed om het geld weg te halen van alle projecten die nog voor enige sociale cohesie zorgen, om het bij dezelfde kleptocraten te deponeren die juist verantwoordelijk zijn voor de huidige 'financiele crisis'. Het wordt tijd dat het volk weer het heft in handen neemt en dat wat er nog overgebleven is van 'de staat' gebruikt om de 'maatschappelijk verantwoorde' ondernemingen bij de lurven te pakken in plaats van de agenda's te laten bepalen door deze multinationale freeriders.

Berlijn is een interessant voorproefje voor wat de Duitse politieke klasse voor Europa in petto heeft en daar moeten de andere landen, de Nederlanders incluis, maar eens heel goed naar kijken. De VS lijken een leuke bondgenoot en zij gebruiken Nederland graag als bruggehoofd in Europa, maar Duitsland is, niet alleen economisch, veel belangrijker dan de Atlantische overburen. De provincialistische navelstaarderij van de Nederlandse politieke lakeien zal 'rigoreuze correctie' nodig hebben wil Nederland niet volledig aan de voeten moeten liggen van de nieuwe Duitse 'keizers'. Het spijt me te moeten constateren, maar het Duitse nationalisme belooft weinig goeds voor Nederland dat zich zo graag als 'Pro-Europa' afficheert. Een versnelde orientatie op de 'Aziatische tijgers' kan een uitweg bieden voor een handelseconomie die nog teveel afhankelijk is van onze Oosterburen.

En de kunst? Die zal daarin meemoeten. Het schrappen van subsidies dwingt tot het zoeken naar nieuwe financiele bronnen en dat wordt een interessante uitdaging voor de kunstsector voor de komende jaren. De 'subsidie-generatie' (vanaf een jaar of 35+) zal zijn strategie volledig moeten bijstellen, de vraag lijkt gerechtvaardigd of zij dit kan. Ik verwacht eerlijk gezegd een vervanging van de huidige gesubsidieerde kunst-tsaren door een nieuwe generatie die aansluiting weet te vinden naar het 'internationale kunstkapitaal', oftewel de verzamelaars en kunstkopers op internationaal niveau. Diegene die die groep weet te bereiken zal tot de nieuwe kunstleague van de toekomst gaan behoren. Ook de doodsstrijd binnen de kunstwereld wordt zeker smullen in Nederland de komende jaren, wordt interessant!

Wordt vervolgd...

KUNST: Linda Weiss, Sander Veenhof, Tiny Domingos, Unnoted Sessions en de 49 andere kunstenaars van de Salon Kuiperdomingos.
FOTOGRAFIE: Gert-Jan Vergeer, Hans Kuiper, Tiny Domingos
Design Banner: 1405.eu

The unsubsidized artist and the Berlin economy revisited: some plans for 2012

2012-01-01T19:48:00.006+01:00

In a former blog entry I wrote on the chances and challenges for unsubsidized artists in Berlin. After roaming around a little bit longer in the German capital near the Polish border, it's time for a little update for my dear readers, based on more experience and visions.

As mentioned in the former blog, the Berlin economy is uncomparable with the more flourishing bigger cities in the West of Germany, that seem to contribute most to Germany's national income. European analysts are and were rather lyrical on the state of the German economy, but are rather quiet on the deplorable state of the Berlin economy in particular.

Mass unemployment and no minimum wages, it is the ideal situation for companies and organisations that like these factors for enlarging their profits and, connected with this, their exploitation of labour. Looking around and talking with many people the last couple of years, it's amazing which companies function in Berlin, which foreign ones come to Berlin and what kind of jobs they offer. Roughly there are three categories. First, the high end consultancies that aspire to advice German, mostly governmental, institutions, they are the ideal organisations for people that like to describe themselves as 'expats', mostly highly educated and experienced professionals. International accountancy firms, lawyer offices, PR agencies and so on, all strive to get a piece of the (German) cake, a cake with a specific taste, I have to say, but let's talk about that later.

The second group of companies consists of companies coming to Berlin especially for hiring 'low end' employees. These are companies that have mostly a hard time surviving in countries with better minimum wage laws and are mostly totally focused on cutting costs to maximize their profits, especially labour costs, while at the same time looking for employees with a certain amount of education, who master their languages and who are rather savvy in their use of new media. As there are many foreigners in Berlin with these characteristics, the mentioned companies succeed in attracting employees for low salaries, although these employees don't tend to stay long.

The third and last group are the local German companies and non profit organisations. Here I have to make some critical remarks on the local Berlin mentality. I know it is rather tricky to talk in general remarks on this, but let me talk then out of my own experience and of feedback that i got from other foreigners or 'outsiders' trying to make a living in Berlin.

Maybe it is something typically 'local', independent of country, but more symptomatic to an attitude which excludes 'strangers' or 'foreigners', a phenomenon that tends to occur everywhere where people are not yet tuned in into 'the global mind set'. No matter how talented you are, what education you have, my impression is 'The Germans' prefer to hire a German if he or she complies with the minimum demands for the job instead ofa foreigner. For me, this was a complete new experience and I think I have more respect now for all foreigners that live and work abroad, also in 'my home country', The Netherlands.

Let's get back to the Berlin economy and the the challengens for the unsubsidized artist. In the company I worked, there are many artists trying to make money to be able to get along. Berlin, though there are many galleries and art spaces, is, to my opinion, only limited equipped for offering opportunities for making money with art. Together with Tiny Domingos I started Kuiperdomingos Projects in 2011 and only during the last event we succeeded in selling works, a rather exceptional event. Maybe it is connected with building up a name, but still fomr myna sides I get information that there are only around 10 (commercial) galleries making money with art.

So, the local and foreign artists have to find other ways to pay their bills and to be able to buy their materials and partcipate in shows. As mentioned in the previous blog entry above, the Berlin economy didn't really recover from the war (yes, that's almost 70 years ago) and the 'cold war' era. That results in an economy with a waterhead, or better some waterheads: sectors that flourish are 'tourism' (restaurants, city tours, hotels etc.), government (although the Berlin city government is completely bankrupt and dependent on the Federal funds), 'new media' (mostly little film and advertising companies), 'old media' (the mostly regionally and nationally subsidized TV and Radio channels) and retail (supermarkets, most 'low end', little retail, mostly run by foreigners). There is no heavy industry, except some energy companies, not a big technology sector (the car industries, the fast moving consumer goods etc, are mostly outside Berlin, in the former 'West').

The population consists for a big part of a fusion of the young and hip and 'old', former Eastern Germans, Turks, Eastern Europeans (Poles and Russians seem to be the biggest groups). There is an influx of 'foreign' capital mainly in real estate, so house prices are rapidly rising (the last 3 years), because 'western' Germans and foreigners take their chances on the relatively low priced real estate market. The 'normal Berlin population' mostly doesn't have money for buying real estate, because of the relative low wages and high unemployment.

So, this is, in short, the context in which the foreign, young, wannabe, trendy, artist must survive. So, even with a good education, there are not enough well paid jobs for foreigners, and they are forced to compromise. The German politicians and businesses have analysed this situation well. Nationwide they can sustain their industries because of the surplus labour and the lack of minimum wages. In Berlin the situation is worse, the low wages are the main reason why companies like Paypal, Expedia, Vistaprint, Booking.com, Ipsos etc. come to Berlin. They all benefit from the lack of jobs in Berlin and know how to exploit this, it's like going back to the 'Gründerzeit', the founding years of capitalism, but then of the 'new economy' companies, who are not new at all in their exploitation of labour.

The young artist can manage for a while and Berlin has a lot of compensating power to keep them for a while. But, if you look critically, most foreigners don't stay long, among Dutch 'expats' you are considered a 'stayer' when you live longer than a year in Berlin. I am not talking about the subsidized artists (mainly from Holland, sometimes also other countries sent 'their' artists to 'swinging Berlin'), that's a separate group, not needing to relate, economically, too much to Berlin. No, I am talking about artists needing to work and compromise to be able to survive in Berlin. These artists are in the long run better off, elsewhere, if you talk to them, most of them hope to find a gallerist and doing as many as shows as possible. But the question is, isn't that the wrong approach? Berlin is sexy, you can meet people and learn, but isn't 'reality' that to be a succesful artist, that you need to think not in a 'geographical way' but more in a 'project way'?

I have to say, I love Berlin, i love to have been able to do shows here and start an art Space. But I have to look further and cannot wait for that specific art buyer or collector to pass by. I have to be actively looking for them and grab them to show what I am doing and how talented and determined I am and why they should invest in me and my projects. My Berlin experience makes me draw this conclusion: Berlin is good and opened up many new ways, but I have to move on and think internationally and projectwise and that's what I will do in 2012. Kuiperdomingos projects will probably do shows in Berlin and abroad, but I will also open up new ways to present my installations and the invented 'Neo Schlagers'. You will be able to see a video in a next entry.

Art: Tiny Domingos, Hans Kuiper, Christoph Both-Asmus, Janine Tielen, and the other 48 artists participating in the Salon Kuiperdomingos.
Photographie: Hans Kuiper, Gert-Jan Vergeer.
Design: http://www.1405.eu

Salon Kuiperdomingos Finissage 17/12 8pm

2011-12-13T07:18:00.005+01:00

Saturday December 17th Kuiperdomingosprojects organises the Finissge of the Salon Kuiperdomingos in Berlin (Wedding). There will be a performance of Inga Cholmogorova at 9pm sharp.

Participants:

Anne Amelang
Arjan van Amsterdam
Athina Antoniadou
Cristina Artola
Tanya von Barnau Sythoff
Arite Beier
Jana Becková
Marisa Benjamim
Pedro Boese
Christoph Both-Asmus
Anna Brinkmann
Anna Bromley
Patricia Bucher
Giovanni Casu
Tiny Domingos
Émilie Delugeau
Barbara Eitel
Frederik Foert
Florian Förster
Bernd Fuchs
Achim Horn
Henrik Jacob
Hubi W. Jäger
Pierre Juillerat
Noustha Koeckhoven
Till Köhler
Hans Kuiper
Katrin von Lehmann
Viola Lopes
Jorge Lopes
Tom Lukaszewicz
Monika Lukowska
Christian de Lutz
Barbara Masschaele
Matthias Mayer
Gonçalo Pena
Luciano Pinna
Mariel Poppe
Benjamin Renter
Svenja Schüffler
Fabian Seyd
Johanna Smiatek
Chika Takabayashi
Cameron Tauschke
Janine Tielen
Sander Veenhof
Gert-Jan Vergeer
Nuno Vicente
Gerald Vincenz
Veronica van der Vorst
Linda Weiss
Kai Weller

Design: 1405

Performance Inga Cholmogorova at Salon Kuiperdomingos Finissage 17/12

2011-12-07T09:14:00.000+01:00

I am proud to announce that as a finissage of the Salon Kuiperdomingos Inga Cholmogorova will do a performance Saturday December 17th at 9pm in the current Art Space at the Wriezener Strasse 12 in Berlin.

Inga sent me the following description of her work:

"Inga Cholmogorova (LT/NL,1975) is am Amsterdam based visual artist, performer and choreographer, working in situ around Europe. The work originates from the site and/or the context and she chooses the best medium in the given circumstances to extract something what is already there by making it experienceable for the audience. The work usually results as installation and/or performance, where artist improvises with everything what is there: the space, context, materials at hand and people. As a conceptual artist she uses variety of media, recently also including Butoh. Her practice foregrounds and problematizes the presence of artists and spectators and interrogates the mutually challenging, playful and unpredictable relationship between all who are present."

I know Inga from the Amsterdam art scene, we both studied at the Gerrit Rietveld art academy. I remember seeing her end exam work where she made an installation with a ladder over one of the many fences separating the art academy from the international school next door. She did several performances using the ladder and was during the exhibition permanently in a ground floor corner room with big modernistic windows which offered a view at the ladder outside. So, the installation was to be seen from inside and outside of the art institution and of the private school where children daily ran around in their blue coloured blasers.

Well, writing about a performance is always difficult, if you try to describe site specific installations and performances it means that stories but also photos only show one or a few of the dimensions of the real event. The performances are unique in a sense that the context influences the signs and decoding processes of the viewers and visitors.

In the Oude Kerk exhibition in Amsterdam in January 2008, i did my own performative project interviewing many particpating artists on their view of how you can make a work in an overwhelming space like a 13th century church. Is it possible to make an art work without making it site specific?

Inga made little copper parts fitting exactly in the cut away parts of the stoned floor, cut away during the centuries of walking and working in the church. These pieces were scattered all over the church floor. Can you imagine little 'golden' pieces of metal looking material all around the church floor? It transforms the space and forces the visitor to decode the space in a different way. For me the experience with these two works are a reason to invite Inga to come to Kuiperdomingos Projects in Berlin.

The 'gallery' we use at the moment is a former 3 room-shop or office space, looking like a 'white cube' and in that way enclosing the works and events taking place in it. The architecture influences the perceptions and experience of the visitors. The current Salon exhibition, full of 2 dimensional paintings and drawings, inspired by the 'classicist' Salon concept will be transformed, as I do expect, by the performance artist Inga Cholmogorova.

You are cordially invited to visit the performance Of Inga Cholmogorova at the Finissage of Salon Kuiperdomingos at the Wriezener Strasse 12, 13359 in Berlin.

The performance will take place Saturday December 17th 2011, at 9pm sharp.

Photos opening Salon Kuiperdomingos 25/11 2011

2011-11-26T21:53:00.004+01:00

Here some first photos of the opening of Salon Kuiperdomingos with the participation of 52 artists. Many people visited the opening and I have to say, we had a splendid time. Starting with our direct network, we asked artists to particpate and to invite another artist, so even for us, the result of the exhibition in the end was a surprise. We would like to thank Anne Ameling and Bernd Fuchs fror their help in building the show, Professor Dictabeat for his mixes, Jaecki and her son for running the bar and of course http://1405.eu for their design of flyers, web and more.

The show is visitable wed-friday between 2-5pm, Sa.-Sun 3-6pm in The Wriezener Strasse 12, 13359 Berlin.

The Photos below here are taken by Gert-Jan Vergeer:

The website can be visited here:

Kuiperdomingos Projects

Salon Kuiperdomingos: A Prospective Get-Together: Opening 25 November 2011

2011-11-13T18:04:00.001+01:00

You are kindly invited to visit the opening at November 25th at 7p.m., as part of the art space tour of Kolonie Wedding in Berlin. The show will be open from wednesday to sunday till December 18th between 3 - 6 p.m. and by appointment.

The show “Salon Kuiperdomingos / A prospective get-together” is inspired by the French Salon of the 18th & 19th century, a meeting place of a network of 'connoisseurs' and artists, where the art...ists were showing their latest works and where discussions took place. Inspired by this idea we create a Salon filled with 2 dimensional works covering the walls of the art space.

A basic idea inspiring the initiators of Kuiperdomingos Projects, is the idea of the 'network'. We invited artists and curators from our direct network to participate and let each of them invite another artist. With this idea in mind we create a visual tree of works of an artistic community currently roaming around creative Berlin and those that are part of our extended network.

Each artist has 1 m2 at his/her disposal and is free to show any bidimensional work. The Salon is the inspiration and ideas coming into our mind are 'the medium of painting, portraiture, nude paintings, woman with mirror, woman in the bathroom, still life, landscape, interior and exterior spaces, ornament and geometry'.

Participating artists: Arjan van Amsterdam, Christina Artola, Jana Bečková;, Christoph Both-Asmus, Arite Beier, Tiny Domingos, Hans Kuiper, Tom Lukaszewicz, Barbara Masschaele, Luciano Pinna, Svenja Schüffler, Chika Takabayashi, Janine Tielen, Sander Veenhof, Gert-Jan Vergeer, Veronica van der Vorst and others.

DJ: Armando Ruiz Martinez

All works are for sale. For more information please contact Hans Kuiper and Tiny Domingos

Opening hours: Wednesday – Sunday, 3-6 p.m. and on appointment.

Managing curators of the show: Hans Kuiper and Tiny Domingos
Contact: kuiperdomingosprojects@googlemail.com
Tel.: (0171) 83 59 147
Kuiperdomingosprojects Website Blog

Like the blended Middle Ages: some thoughts while visiting 'Let the Rhythm, hit'em' in Kunstraum Kreuzberg

2011-11-06T16:29:00.003+01:00

This weekend i visited again some openings of shows in Berlin, something that I didn't do for some time, being focused on my own projects lately. After having met Stephane Bauer, the artistic director of Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, one of the few subsidized Berlin art spaces, at a birthday drink of the Chinese American artist Michael Cheng, I decided to pay a visit to Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, not a bad choice to get a good insight in what is going on in Berlin at the moment. Also the fact that I know the curator from a visit at our Wedding based art space, did convince me to accept the invitation of Tiny Domingos to visit this show.

I liked one work best and that was a multimedial work, a film with mixed in images of games, performances, animations and with specially written music by Katrin Plavcak/Johanna Kirsch/Rudi Fischerlehner. It's a rich work, fit for our time, with every millisecond a new 'stimulus'. It reminded me of some works of fellow students at the art academy a couple of years ago. The new program 'After Effects' was just available to us and some people got interesting, but still simple, results. Let me tell you, simplicity here is not a negative connotation, it is even a plus. The work of Plavcak c.s. is entertaining and simple at the same time.

The work was shown at the show „Let the Rhythm Hit 'Em“, curated by Matthias Meyer, who runs an art space in Wedding also. I met Matthias during the opening night of our first show in Kolonie Wedding, where i played the 'Anthem of the Artist'. Matthias selected many multimedia works, seeming to attract and entertain many visitors.

In our contemporaray mediatised society we are overthrown with mutiple layers of images and sounds. In that way I think a multilayered work like that of Plazcak c.s. is close to the conscious and unconscious media usage of today. Visually trained, we can process multiple messages at the same time without getting too confused, at least at the first moment. The interesting thing is that in our dreams, with the flooding of time, images tend to become separated from their direct context. How often do we not think about a certain image, but don't know anymore where we saw it or who was the author?

In that way our time looks like the blended Middle Ages, where images were made by 'anonymous artists' who were working for their patrons but who have remained unknown themselves. I think it is an ideal stadium for a work: you can look at this image without 'stamping' it immediately with 'a name' with specific connotations. The middle ages produced images like these and many centuries later we can look at them with 'a filter less', that is the 'name filter' which might mean a block to your perception.

Well, I am sure, that at the end of this week I still might remember some of these images of the show at Bethanien, but in a few months, the organised associations might be lost. At that moment I approach the 'Medieval moment' of an anonymous image passing my mind, saved in my memory, but ridden of its author. Then I can start recreating and adjusting these images and use it as inspiration and food for my creativity.

In the overinformation society we can reach moments of 'free association' where images can be linked and redefined by ourselves and lead to new works. Overviewing art history, this might be the case with all images we once saw, it's a body of images which we can use as a library for creating new ones.

These ideas I got by seeing the overmediatised show at Kunstraum Kreuzberg and the coming weeks I am sure I will be processing more of these images. Have a look at some of the photos I took of the exhibition and create a new page to your own mental library, which you can use the rest of your life!

Another thought I have seeing the works is that the "show shows a lot of similarity with other shows" you might visit at the moment: multimedia works, interactive sound installations, real life sized objects and conceptual schemes. The work above shows similarity with my own theme of 'the network'. Some say, that is not new at all: "look at a website like facebook, it's all about networks". That's close to the truth, I say, but...the visual power of a work is still not guranteed by a contemporary phenomenon...well, in a while this all doesn't matter too much, as all images will merge in our minds the coming period...

Working on a new show in Berlin: 'A Prospective Get-Together'

2011-11-04T14:10:00.001+01:00

'A prospective get-together', will be the coming show at Kuiperdomingos Projects and opens on November 25th 2011 at 7pm. Photos below of former openings.

Our coming show 'A prospective get-together' is inspired by the French Salon of the 18th & 19th century, a meeting place of a network of 'connaisseurs' and artists, where the artists were showing their latest works and where discussions took place under the enjoyment of a good glass of the 'coca cola' avant la lettre, the Absinth. Inspired by this idea we create a Salon, consisting of 2 rooms, filled with 2 dimensional works covering the walls of the Kuiperdomingos Artspace.

A basic idea is the idea inspiring the initiators of Kuiperdomingos Projects, the idea of the 'network'. We invited artists from our direct network to participate and let each of them invite a second artist. With this idea in mind we create a visual tree of works of an artistic community currently roaming around creative Berlin and that are part of our extended network.

Each artist has 1 m2 at his or her disposal and is free to show any work. The Salon is the inspiration and ideas coming into our mind are 'Paintings, naked, Lady with mirror/ in bath, still life, Landscape, inner and outer space (in German) 'malerei, aktmalerei, akt/Frau mit Spiegel/im Bad, Stillleben, Landschaft, Innen- und Aussenräume'.

The artists that affirmed their participation in the show till now are: Barbara Masschaele (photography), Janine Tielen, Gert-Jan Vergeer (Photography), Arite Beier (painting/drawing), Tom Lukaszewicz (Drawing), Arjan van Amsterdam (Fine art, Amsterdam), Sander Veenhof (QR, Amsterdam), Luciano Pinna (conceptual, Amsterdam), Armando Martinez (DJ), Tiny Domingos, Hans Kuiper and others. For the updated list visit our website, later this month: http://www.kuiperdomingosprojects.com

Kuiperdomingos Projects in Berlin

2011-10-22T14:50:00.009+02:00

ENGLISH (Dutch below)

Kuiperdomingos Projects is an initiative of Tiny Domingos and myself. We started with this project in May 2011 and have been doing several exhibitions since. If you want more information on the projects you can visit the websites: Kuiperdomingosprojects or the Blog of Kuiperdomingosprojects.

Our show 'Project Display 2' will finish this weekend. I recommend a show in our space that will open October 28th: NAUGHTY CHILDREN OF ALFRED JARRY, curated by
Katarzyna Szydłowska & Konrad Schiller.

On Kuiperdomingos Projects:
We started with an exhibition of Christoph Both-Asmus in May, followed by a show of Janine Tielen in July. Tiny and I decided not to develop merely as gallerists but really position Kuiperdomingos Projects as an artist run space. In September and October we did two shows or our own Project Display 1 and Project Display 2. Here you can see some photos of these shows.

Of course we develop our vision by doing. Our backgrounds are rather different, but it is great to be able to work on projects in this 'incubator construction'. It's a continuous process of developing and learning. Organising and developing work yourself.

It is very stimulating that our initiative attracts so much creative talent. People out of our direct surroundings wanted to do shows or contribute in another way. It's really showing that when you take initiative, you become a well of energy which can inspire other people to tune in and take action themselves.

In the coming period we will work more intensive with Jan-Eric Stephan and Iris Holtkamp of 1405 on developing our house style based on our perceived identity. It's funny, I used to work professionally in brand consultancy and now i see how difficult it is to develop a good presentation of your vision, especially when this vision is still developing. What is Kuiperdomingos Projects? Are we an artist duo, gallerists, an art initiative, a communication agency, event organisers, musicians or a combination of this all? I think the last aplies most, but how to communicate this in a proper way?

The coming weeks we will be involved in sessions with the designers of 1405.eu to develop the visual or better communication policy of Kuiperdomingos Projects. What we know is that we don't want to be tied to a specific location. Working in Kolonie Wedding has been very fruitful till now, although it offered us less visitors than expected and we only have contact with a limited amount of other art space initiators in the neighbourhood, like Adam Nankervis of Another Vacant Space and Pablo Hermann of OKK/Raum 29.

It is good to see the Kolonie Wedding Art spaces in Berlin are so vivid and really a source of inspiration. Although the level of exhibitions differ, in general the shows are mostly really interesting and of an international level. Kolonie Wedding has the advantage that the initiators are for a big part of an international background, which means often works are shown from artists from art scenes abroad.

Other interesting spaces in 'the Soldiner Kiez' in Wedding are Art Laboratory Berlin and Prima Center Berlin. Christian de Lutz from Art Laboratory for example lives already for a long time in Berlin, but has, together with his partner Regine Rapp, a strong sensor for developments in the USA (his home country) and other parts of the world where he used to work as a journalist and artist. The initiators of Prima Center have shown works from Balkan based artists. Another Vacant Space, which is run by the Australian Adam Nankervis, currently shows work of David Medalla, who resides everywhere and nowhere, so he confided me, but presents himself as the director from the 'London Biennale'.

This week we had the last week of the installation of 'Project Display 2' in Kuiperdomingos Projects in Berlin. The installation of Tiny Domingos and myself was the result of a first exploration of our mutual work. The space is a 'white cube' filled with sculptures and a residu of the performances I gave during the opening week.

We will make a start with emptying the space and prepare it for the coming show which will arrive from London. The curatorial team of that show will present it the last weekend of October and in November. As they are working in the space continuously, it will be visitable and watchable from the outside in the Wriezener Strasse 12 in Berlin.

(Dutch) Update voor luisteraars van VPRO `De Avonden`!

Welkom op de blog van Hans Kuiper. Ik ben sinds 2009 actief in de Berlijnse kunst- en radiowereld en heb samen met de Portugese kunstenaar en galerist Tiny Domingos Kuiperdomingos Projects geopend in de de wijk Wedding in Berlijn. Kuiperdomingos Projects is een `Kunstraum` of kunstenaarsinitiatief, wij tonen werk van onszelf en van kunstenaars die wij goed vinden. Meer informatie vindt u via de website van Kuiperdomingos Projects en de bijbehorende blog.

Hieronder een filmpje van de meest recente opening in Kuiperdomingos Projects met het kunstenaarsvolkslied (`The Anthem of the Artist` in het Duits en Nederlands)

Via youtube
Link Opening `Project Display 2`

Rechts op deze pagina vindt u een mediaplayer waar u recente radioprogramma´s of geluidsinstallaties kunt beluisteren, het archief gaat terug tot projecten die ik in Nederland gedaan heb. Bijvoorbeeld dit project met het Collectief Mei 2007.

Verder kunt u onderaan de pagina andere bijdragen lezen, de meeste zijn overigens in het Engels geschreven.

Analysis of a society with a problem: the Occupy Movements

2011-10-19T22:27:00.004+02:00

In Berlin around 5000 people protested near the Brandenburger Tor on October 15th 2011 and protesters are meeting everyday since at the fields near the Reichstag. There, while October is getting colder and colder, new actions are discussed and people are just showing up to let the world know, it's time for a fundamental and intelligent change.

Photo: occupyberlin.tumblr.com

Change? But how? Below some considerations, starting with the 'creative class', that I see as the main actor of the 'Occupy Movement'.

All other photos by Hans Kuiper

A big and peaceful demonstration near the Reichstag in Berlin to protest against the saving of banks, the corruption, the so called 'financial crisis', the occupation of Libya by Nato troops, the cuts on social and cultural budgets while the armies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya etc. keep on being financed etc. etc.

October 15th 2011 shows that people all over the world are protesting against current policies in the Western world and that there is a growing consciousness for a change on a global scale.

I think the creative class (that's consisting of people working professionally in creative sectors: Media specialists, university professors, artists, IT specialists, cooks etc. for more information read here), has to come up with a new life style model as an alternative to current multinational control mechanisms. That means trying to define new ways of living without losing the perspective of the whole. In our global society, economic, environmental and political relationships tend be interconnected. An easy solution might not be available. But a first step needs to be the concentration and determination to really change things, for us as western kids, starting in the so called 'developed world'. If we don't act, our societies will face huge internal and international conflicts based on lacking resources, accelerating migration processes and a ridiculous unequal division of wealth.

Governments as lackies

Current 'governments' tend to be the lackies or even puppets of these multinational organised interests, whether they are economical, political or military or a combination of these. Our democracies are not functioning, they are kidnapped by the 'party model', parties that are controlled by big business interests on a global scale. In the U.S.A. you have 2 (!), very similar, parties changing the seats now and then, but changing nothing fundamental, in Europe you have a more parties, but only 2 or 3 govern alternately. Also there that doesn't make much of a difference. The party system is one part of democracy though, new initiatives really taking more care of equal division of power and chances should pop up to prevent it to loose its credibility more and more.

"I prefer to regulate banks instead of passengers"

Political parties fail to articulate people's interests

So, as the so called instruments of democracy, parties don't seem to function properly, now that problems grow. The parties are subjected to an internal and external big struggle which mostly ends up in visionless compromises between dominant interests in society. The 'financial crisis' seems to accelerate deeper lying structural problems in our societies: unequal division of power, initiative, chances etc. combined with exploitation of labour on a growing scale by a handful of financial and multinational mastodonts. But resistance is growing and it seems it is not suppressable anymore by traditional ways of mass media manipulation and state force, as we have entered the digitalised world. The demonstrations, worldwide and on a scale probably only precedented by the anti Iraq war demos, show water is running over the side of the tub while the tap is still running.

The agendas of the multinational corporations

Let's look a bit deeper to the current multinational oil company dominated world. Their interest are protected by governmental armies (like NATO), paid for by tax payers money in the 'rich countries'. Eisenhower already called the intertwining of interests of multinationals with political and military establishments 'the greatest danger to democracy': the Miltary Industrial Complex.

Cutting budgets by governments in all other sectors not enhancing their interests and directing it to their own interests seems their primary goal. Getting huge tax cuts (and choosing the lowest corporation taxes offering countries as their headquarters) and as much as tax payers money to protect their interests in each individual country is their political goal in the developed nations. Getting access to the natural resources is their goal in the world but especially in 'the underdeveloped nations', for which they try to install puppet regimes that maintain their interests and their preferred social order.

Whether you like it or not, they are lobbying like crazy and are trying to force their agendas on the people. They want you to consume more in any way. The best for them is you work as 7 days a week, buy high end consumer goods and drive your car(s), because, don't forget, the car is not only a symbol, but a real connection to the interests of the current (oil) multinational wannebe bosses.

Grass Roots organisations initiated by the creative class have to gain political power

On an individual level you can already see, thinking people try to live an as peaceful and as healthy as possible life. Objects like for example cars don't belong in that philosophy. I don't even mention the aggregational development that the earth oil resources seem to run out in 30 years (although this gets postponed a bit with the finding of new fields) and that the wars for oil get more and more violent and maskless. Is it only greed or aren't we capable anymore to see 'we', the end consumers and designers of the future, are able to change this path to the abyss?

We have to take action now, organise ourselves and develop a vision. The momentum is there, but is there yet a vision which leaps beyound the old ideological divisions of capitalism, communism etc.? These models both have had their prison camps, their gulags, their Guantanamos, their Afghanistan invasions combined with a huge mass media effort to control the minds of the people not to question these horrible scenarios. Their ideal world is protecting multinational interests, full of prison camps for dissenters or real opponents willing to fight, because the system doesn't offer them a way to really particpate, and a mass of consumers who don't take political or artistic action. The 'Occupy Wall Street' movement that inspires the world now is a new chapter in a growing revolt against this international dehumanising and exploitative system.

The alternative 'offers' of the multinational corporations.

Of course the multinational industries and the governments will ignore this in essence and come with 'alternatives'. Advised by a whole army of PR agencies, they only tend to communicate messages first tested in focus groups and other methods of opinion research. That means communicating a message that will make the masses cool down in the end, without comprimising too much. For our energy resources, as the oil prices will rise because of smaller resources and growing global conflicts, we can think about some scenario's in the the short time that lays ahead. Now that we are facing financial bankruptcy, also the oil industries and the related car industries will have to face the consequences.

Let's look at some scenarios.

There might be, as an intermezzo, a Stadium 2, in which a socalled 'elite' will appear, after more and more people are forced to leave expensive consumer goods like cars behind. I take the car as an example of a luxury consumer good. The 'haves' who like to see themselves as an elite, will be able to pay the more and more expensive 'luxury life style' of which cars are a part (although 'leasing' tends to postpone this situation, offering cheaper alternatives to the poorer car driving fellows, as you don't need to own a car anymore yourself, but 'buy by the hour') and push the poor or environmental conscious souls into the metro and other means of transport. The numbers of the poorer and environmental more conscious classes tend to grow by the day and will lead to a crying out more and more for a healthy surrounding, with healthy food, air and drinking water and...public transport systems. The oil industries will oppose any substantial investments in public transport as it is undermining their strategies, although it's in the interest of a healthy (city) life.

In the meantime, many cars keep on moving, as they did 20 years ago. More and more cars are stumbling on each other in the urban areas in the world, leading to more and more traffic jams. Even this phenomenon works against cars more and more as there is no more space and people get nervous breakdowns in traffic jams, no to talk about the traumatic 'by effects' of killing somebody while driving a car. Also this might lead to stadium 2, where a smaller 'wannabe-elite' is still able to drive cars and try to create private highways (Stadium 3), with further threats to the health of metropolis people.

At another level, another consequence of the wars for oil and other resources will lead to evergrowing 'streams of immigrants' trying to get their share and at least to get away from the slum life and conflicts in the non-Western areas. Their numbers force the 'developed nations' to think out strategies to keep them away or use them as cheap surplus labour forces. After militarily controlling these areas full of oil and other wells for the sustaining of the 'wealth of developed nations', Stadium 4 might be the financing and building of infrastructural projects in these formerly underdeveloped areas first to keep on the seemingly perpetual growth of multinational owned and managed productions, and, second, as a very nice by-product, to keep the masses out of the wealthy areas of the world, combined with a strong border police forces. This stadium we are approaching fastly.

Stadium 5 is an intensivation of an already ongoing process of mass media brain washing in the developed nations with strategies like creating 'non events' like' celebrity lifes' and the connection of fashion, life style products and, yes, cars (so, the 'celebretization' of images, of which cars tend to form a part); 'war victories' and 'terrorist enemies' to gain access to natural resources like oil wells (partly to be sold by car usage promotion) and , of course, an ongoing and intensified continuous stream of car commercials (on- and offline, print etc.), among others. The problem of these 'manufacturers of consent' (the privatized PR agencies and TV companies) is that with the fragmentation of media usage, especially among the creative classes, their 'mind reach' is getting less and less in this kakophonie, resulting in the creative and other classes living in a kind of ideological and partly (car) consumerist vacuum.

But, and then we would reach Stadium 6, the creative classes, become the inventors and managers of new technologies, media and centrally uncontrollable informations systems and streams, developing similarly to neuro-network developmental models. This stadium is yet to come, but probably close at hand. We see the results already on a global scale, as the creative classes tend to be dispersed over urban areas all over the world. That doesn't mean these classes have clearly defined political and economical goals, yet. At Stadium 7, there will be initiatives to bundle alternative technological, economical and political developments out of reach of centralised datamining and political control (like the internet still is, monitorable by the Googles and their state companions of this day). This will create a void of ideological and information space, as the reach, the size and educational level of creative classes tend to imcrement exponentially through the globalized communities with access to these new technologies.

The car era and its economic and political model will be seen more and more as belonging to the old industrial era as it is already even cheaper to produce new urbanistic fomrs of public transport to make people move from A to B and back again. It might even be the case, which i think very probable, that the future societies don't supply a fixed living spot, but make it flexible. Of course we need a lot of (genetical?) modification for this, modification of the human mind to be able to live in an ever changing habitat and to grow over from territorial instincts that seems still to belong to the stone age. These instincts make our epoch so dangerous as these tend to be still uncontrolled and are only limited manipulable by simple mass media message controlling and outdated legal systems and (hierarchical) decision making social models.

The signs seem to be clearer and clearer: everywhere the masses rise and political systems without a real poeple's support, of which dictatorial regimes but also 'democratic mask systems' are an example, are tumbling more and more. The information age is not yet there for everyone, most people still live in an overinformation age, partly because of an unsteered advertising world and even partly manufactured by a conscious political and economical strategy. But people tend to get more and more tech savvy, though, even in areas not tuned into latest technological developments, the creative classes at first. We talk here about something in which technology is more than just a nice toy but growing to being a means to an end: we talk about social technology by trained and just gifted social engineers that will think of alternative models to organize work, living and travelling, models of which I think the creative class will be challenged to develop first in contrast to the more static economic models in urban societies.

Welcome to the era of the future and say goodbye to that of the past, it is going to be structural and it's going to be exciting, but not one without philosophical and technological battles. The creative classes will, especially when they get more politically active and try to win over other still political passive groups of people, so as they get politically and economically more organized, gain more influence in these developments, developments towards a more sustainable and clean urban life, a life with a 'happier' humanity. It's not too late to change the 'race to the bottom'...

Hans Kuiper 2011, Creative Commons license

16.10.11 Photos Occupy demonstration in Berlin

2011-10-17T19:06:00.005+02:00

Here are photos and a reportage of the second day of the demonstrations in Berlin on the global financial & democracy crisis, the demo day of October 16th 2011, inspired by the 'Occupy Wall Street' movement.

If October 15th 2011 showed that people all over the world are protesting against current policies in the Western world and that there is a growing consciousness for a change on a global scale, October 16th showed people are determined to come day by day to the Reichstag field to protest.

A big group people showed up to start discussing strategies and was gathering at the field in front of the Reichstag in Berlin to protest against the saving of banks, the corruption, the so called 'financial crisis', the occupation of Libya by Nato troops, the cuts on social and cultural budgets while the armies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya etc. keep on being financed etc. etc.

It looks like a lesson in basic democracy. New ways of political discussions are tried on the field in front of the building, 'der Reichstag'. When to meet, what to do, how to involve.

Of course the Reichstag is a symbolic place, but that's also the reason this discussion and the protest meetings take place there. I saw many different people, with different backgrounds, working, not working, old, young, etc. but that's only the outside. Most people were there because of being convinced it is the right thing to do and to start something that contributes to a world wide protest againts current governmental policies in the 'developed world'.

It was for me very impressive to see how people tried to discuss and showed discipline to listen to each other. There were many nationalities, but most people spoke German. There were also people from Spain, who are involved in the protest movement there and who had some clever suggestions how to organise discussions and practical demonstrating.

The discussions were carefully watched at a distance by the police, who tried to convince the participants to leave the field, based on a law, that claims to forbid a gathering on a field also on the claimed fact that the meeting was not announced beforehand.

By discussions the group decided to stay on the place and the police backed off. There were some slight tensions, but the participants of the meeting decided to send a representative who negotiated with the police and things cooled down.

Using a constitutional right to protest also means not being forced to 'ask permission' to organise it. More to be followed later on.

15.10.11 Photos demonstration in Berlin

2011-10-15T17:56:00.019+02:00

Here some first photos of the demonstrations in Berlin on the global financial & democracy crisis, a demo day at October 15th 2011, inspired by the 'Occupy Wall Street ' movement.

ANALYSIS SEE BELOW.

"I prefer to regulate banks instead of passengers"

"Money or life"

"We are the 99%"

"Redistribution of world resources is the only way out of the crisis"

"Take your hands out of the pot, now we are cooking!"

"System failure, do a restart"

"Do you still believe in politics or are you thinking for yourself?"

October 15th 2011 shows that people all over the world are protesting against current policies in the Western world and that there is a growing consciousness for a change on a global scale.

In Berlin around 5000 people protested near the Brandenburger Tor and marched towards the fields in front of the Reichstag. There, under a nice autumn sun, new forms of yelling slogans were tried, funny ways of demonstrating and just showing up to let the world know, it's time for a fundamental and intelligent change.

Change? But how? Below some considerations, starting with the 'creative class', that I see as the main actor of the 'Occupy Movement'.

ANALYSIS of a SOCIETY WITH a problem

The creative class

I think the creative class (that's consisting of people working professionally in creative sectors: Media specialists, university professors, artists, IT specialists, cooks etc. for more information read here), has to come up with a new life style model as an alternative to current multinational control mechanisms. That means trying to define new ways of living without losing the perspective of the whole. In our global society, economic, environmental and political relationships tend be interconnected. An easy solution might not be available. But a first step needs to be the concentration and determination to really change things, for us as western kids, starting in the so called 'developed world'. If we don't act, our societies will face huge internal and international conflicts based on lacking resources, accelerating migration processes and a ridiculous unequal division of wealth.

Governments as lackies

Current 'governments' tend to be the lackies or even puppets of these multinational organised interests, whether they are economical, political or military or a combination of these. Our democracies are not functioning, they are kidnapped by the 'party model', parties that are controlled by big business interests on a global scale. In the U.S.A. you have 2 (!), very similar, parties changing the seats now and then, but changing nothing fundamental, in Europe you have a more parties, but only 2 or 3 govern alternately. Also there that doesn't make much of a difference. The party system is one part of democracy though, new initiatives really taking more care of equal division of power and chances should pop up to prevent it to loose its credibility more and more.

Political parties fail to articulate people's interests

So, as the so called instruments of democracy, parties don't seem to function properly, now that problems grow. The parties are subjected to one internal and external big struggle which end up in visionless compromises between dominant interests in society. The 'financial crisis' seems to accelerate deeper lying structural problems in our societies: unequal division of power, initiative, chances etc. combined with exploitation of labour on a growing scale by a handful of financial and multinational mastodonts. But resistance is growing and it seems it is not suppressable anymore by traditonal ways of mass media manipulation and state force, as we have entered the digitalised world. The demonstrations, worldwide and on a scale only precedented by the anti Iraq war demos, show water is running over the side of the tub while the tap is still running.

The agendas of the multinational corporations

Let's look a bit deeper to the current multinational oil company dominated world. Their interest are protected by governmental armies (like NATO) paid by tax payers money in the 'rich countries'. Eisenhower already called the intertwining of interests of multinationals with political and military establishments thegreates danger to democracy: the Miltary Industrial Complex.

Cutting budgets by governments in all other sectors not enhancing their interests and directing it to their own interests seems their primary goal. Getting huge tax cuts (and choosing the lowest corporation taxes offering countries as their headquarters) and as much as tax payers money to protect their interests in each individual country is their political goal in the developed nations. Getting access to the natural resources is their goal in the world but especially in 'the underdeveloped nations', for which they try to install puppet regimes that maintain their interests and their preferred social order.

Whether you like it or not, they are lobbying like crazy and are trying to force their agendas on the people. They want you to consume more in any way. The best for them is you work as 7 days a week, buy high end consumer goods and drive your car(s), because, don't forget, the car is not only a symbol, but a real connection to the interests of the current (oil) multinational wannebe bosses.

Grass Roots organisations initiated by the creative class have to gain political power

On an individual level you can already see, thinking people try to live an as peaceful and as healthy as possible life. Objects like for example cars don't belong in that philosophy. I don't even mention the aggregational development that the earth oil resources seem to run out in 30 years (although this gets postponed a bit with the finding of new fields) and that the wars for oil get more and more violent and maskless. Is it only greed or aren't we capable anymore to see 'we', the end consumers and designers of the future, are able to change this path to the abyss?

We have to take action now, organise ourselves and develop a vision. The momentum is there, but is there yet a vision which leaps beyound the old ideological divisions of capitalism, communism etc.? These models both have had their prison camps, their gulags, their Guantanamos, their Afghanistan invasions combined with a huge mass media effort to control the minds of the people not to question these horrible scenarios. Their ideal world is protecting multinational interests, full of prison camps for dissenters or real opponents willing to fight, because the system doesn't offer them a way to really particpate, and a mass of consumers who don't take political or artistic action. The 'Occupy Wall Street' movement that inspires the world now is a new chapter in a growing revolt against this international dehumanising and exploitative system.

Let's look at some scenarios.

Let's call the current situation Stadium 1: financial disorder with bankruptcy for individuals and the weakest companies in the sector, cuts in budgets by governments for education, social projects that still can take care of cohesion to set financial resources free for financial and other multinational institutions, mass unemployment etc. in the 'developed nations', growing exploitation approaching slavery in 'third world countries' who produce almost all our luxury consumer goods that we are supposed to buy. It's very double, we need our phones and laptops to communicate but are contributing to the international exploitation by our own consumer patterns. We can change this, if we give the poor people in the world their share. Not invade a country for their oil, for example, but pay them by working for ourself. The focus needs to be on production to create wealth not on military invasions to 'create' wealth for yourself. The USA for example can be considered almost as a permanent war economy nowadays. In the 'developed countries', income distribution should be fairer, we can still use state power to get the money where it is and control the militaristic 'freeriders' but we have to focus on developing new technologies and ways of production which are sustainable (see E.F. Schumacher for example), like solar technology. ( For example: Laptops and phones running on solar technology will appear in the near future).

There might be, as an intermezzo, a Stadium 2, in which a socalled 'elite' will appear, after more and more people are forced to leave expensive consumer goods like cars behind. I take the car as an example of a luxury consumer good. The 'haves' who like to see themselves as an elite, will be able to pay the more and more expensive 'luxury life style' of which cars are a part (although 'leasing' tends to postpone this situation, offering cheaper alternatives to the poorer car driving fellows, as you don't need to own a car anymore yourself, but 'buy by the hour') and push the poor or environmental conscious souls into the metro and other means of transport. The numbers of the poorer and environmental more conscious classes tend to grow by the day and will lead to a crying out more and more for a healthy surrounding, with healthy food, air and drinking water and...public transport systems. The oil industries will oppose any substantial investments in public transport as it is undermining their strategies, although it's in the interest of a healthy (city) life.

In the meantime, many cars keep on moving, as they did 20 years ago. More and more cars are stumbling on each other in the urban areas in the world, leading to more and more traffic jams. Even this phenomenon works against cars more and more as there is no more space and people get nervous breakdowns in traffic jams, no to talk about the traumatic 'by effects' of killing somebody while driving a car. Also this might lead to stadium 2, where a smaller 'wannabe-elite' is still able to drive cars and try to create private highways (Stadium 3), with further threats to the health of metropolis people.

At another level, another consequence of the wars for oil and other resources will lead to evergrowing 'streams of immigrants' trying to get their share and at least to get away from the slum life and conflicts in the non-Western areas. Their numbers force the 'developed nations' to think out strategies to keep them away or use them as cheap surplus labour forces. After militarily controlling these areas full of oil and other wells for the sustaining of the 'wealth of developed nations', Stadium 4 might be the financing and building of infrastructural projects in these formerly underdeveloped areas first to keep on the seemingly perpetual growth of multinational owned and managed productions, and, second, as a very nice by-product, to keep the masses out of the wealthy areas of the world, combined with a strong border police forces. This stadium we are approaching fastly.

Stadium 5 is an intensivation of an already ongoing process of mass media brain washing in the developed nations with strategies like creating 'non events' like' celebrity lifes' and the connection of fashion, life style products and, yes, cars (so, the 'celebretization' of images, of which cars tend to form a part); 'war victories' and 'terrorist enemies' to gain access to natural resources like oil wells (partly to be sold by car usage promotion) and , of course, an ongoing and intensified continuous stream of car commercials (on- and offline, print etc.), among others. The problem of these 'manufacturers of consent' (the privatized PR agencies and TV companies) is that with the fragmentation of media usage, especially among the creative classes, their 'mind reach' is getting less and less in this kakophonie, resulting in the creative and other classes living in a kind of ideological and partly (car) consumerist vacuum.

But, and then we would reach Stadium 6, the creative classes, become the inventors and managers of new technologies, media and centrally uncontrollable informations systems and streams, developing similarly to neuro-network developmental models. This stadium is yet to come, but probably close at hand. We see the results already on a global scale, as the creative classes tend to be dispersed over urban areas all over the world. That doesn't mean these classes have clearly defined political and economical goals, yet. At Stadium 7, there will be initiatives to bundle alternative technological, economical and political developments out of reach of centralised datamining and political control (like the internet still is, monitorable by the Googles and their state companions of this day). This will create a void of ideological and information space, as the reach, the size and educational level of creative classes tend to imcrement exponentially through the globalized communities with access to these new technologies.

The car era and its economic and political model will be seen more and more as belonging to the old industrial era as it is already even cheaper to produce new urbanistic fomrs of public transport to make people move from A to B and back again. It might even be the case, which i think very probable, that the future societies don't supply a fixed living spot, but make it flexible. Of course we need a lot of (genetical?) modification for this, modification of the human mind to be able to live in an ever changing habitat and to grow over from territorial instincts that seems still to belong to the stone age. These instincts make our epoch so dangerous as these tend to be still uncontrolled and are only limited manipulable by simple mass media message controlling and outdated legal systems and (hierarchical) decision making social models.

The signs seem to be clearer and clearer: everywhere the masses rise and political systems without a real poeple's support, of which dictatorial regimes but also 'democratic mask systems' are an example, are tumbling more and more. The information age is not yet there for everyone, most people still live in an overinformation age, partly because of an unsteered advertising world and even partly manufactured by a conscious political and economical strategy. But people tend to get more and more tech savvy, though, even in areas not tuned into latest technological developments, the creative classes at first. We talk here about something in which technology is more than just a nice toy but growing to being a means to an end: we talk about social technology by trained and just gifted social engineers that will think of alternative models to organize work, living and travelling, models of which I think the creative class will be challenged to develop first in contrast to the more static economic models in urban societies.

Welcome to the era of the future and say goodbye to that of the past, it is going to be structural and it's going to be exciting, but not one without philosophical and technological battles. The creative classes will, especially when they get more politically active and try to win over other still political passive groups of people, so as they get politically and economically more organized, gain more influence in these developments, developments towards a more sustainable and clean urban life, a life with a 'happier' humanity. It's not too late to change the 'race to the bottom'...

Hans Kuiper 2011, Creative Commons license

They are all on their way to the Venice Biennale

2011-10-15T10:23:00.002+02:00

Democratic masks and the artistic mind

2011-10-14T13:36:00.008+02:00

Photos of the Artist Anthem Dance developed by Hans Kuiper for the exhibition 'Project Space, Display 2' in Kuiperdomingos Projects, to be seen till October 20th, 2011 in Berlin

Life runs fast, although basic changes tend to come in shocks...in intervals. Big decisions are sometimes taken impulsively after long breeding in a back room. You got things going, but keep on looking for the next step to take.

How much we loose on the way, how many good friends, people who cared, who had something to offer, by being blind, full of ourselves.

Life forces itself on you, but life needs some definition then. Adorno cum suis called an individual life developing by being exposed to the developments in capitalist society, your position in the battle for the means of production. Read, read!

Money or no money, is that the only question? Sometimes you can feel freer as a poor bastard but with lots of time than a rich bastard with no time, but lots of compensation money. Making a career for somebody else is no career! Making more money in an basic unfree situation only allowes you to become a bigger consumer. You switch from 'Zeeman' to Prada, if you know Zeeman or companies like Zeeman, you know what I mean.

Walking through the aisles of the cotton smelling shops in some shopping area in a cheap neighbourhood, that's Zeeman. Here in Berlin you have the Netto, the Plus, the Penny as supermarkets, and Zeeman starts to pop up here also. Capitalising on the poor bastards, just managing to survive contemporary state steered capitalism: production of wealth by the many, privatisation of wealth by the few. If the whole system sucks, any initiative towards an alternative model smells like subversion.

'Subversion', the ideal word for totalitarian regimes, 'Los subversivos' in Argentina during the military dictatorship for example. But dictatorships always loose in the end, the question is at what costs. A better functioning model of suppression is the socalled contemporary 'democracy', which we can call the 'democratic mask', masking the unequal power and ownership of means of production, of real estate, companies, land, opportunities for education, access to networks.

Aldous Huxley wrote in his foreword of 'Brave new World' in 1946, that what totalitarianism still lacks is a knowledge of human differences, 'square cubes in round holes tend to have dangerous thoughts about the social system' and that's why we get oppositional movements all the time, because incompetent people can't rule competent people sitting on wrong places, that's what is leading to lots of dramas of the world, which would already have a lot dramas anyway if the incompetent were put in their place.

Incompetent people need propaganda and violence to keep their postions. If we don't control the military and make them feel responsible for not only their own families and friends but also for humanity, for the survival of humanity, we can make a start for demilitarising the world, a bit. I have come to a point that humanity means drama through its whole history. Ideals like communism have led to Gulags and horrible crimes because the psychological model was not well developed to halt the choice of incompetent leaders and cultural commissars.

Capitalism is as hellish, as it closes out 90% of humanity. If you read Nietzsche, you start to think that according to him this is the consequence of the 'Wille zur Macht', the will to power which means that an elite of humanity needs a huge army of slaves to rule the world. Slavery you have in all forms and shapes nowadays. An addicted consumer of high end products is a slave of modern capitalism as is the mercenary soldier fighting for access to the diamond mines in the Congo for his capitalist masters.

Interdependency is a word used by sociologist Norbert Elias for describing power relationships. Power will always be there, the puppets may change, the networks move slower. Social networks are also to be found in the art world. These networks tend to be dynamic but when you envision them three dimensionally, there are also networks that are more stable and controlling funds and access to museum space for example. As soon as you see it's not about quality of work but about gaining access to networks that you start to understand how the art world is moving.

This also counts for other kind of networks, of course. That's why there is so much bad art in the world, because produced by artists with access to networks but with a lack of talent or sensitivity. You see this in any network. I met people in business who occupied positions that they didn't deserve, but only got because of one small talent that could be used by people higher in hierarchy. And that is not one bad functioning organisation on its way down the gutter, but you can see it in any organisation. Probably only the starting organisation is free of extra bureaucracy and doesn't attract the 'flies' going for fast money and fame.

Nowadays we don't live in a capitalism as descibed by people like Ayn Rand. We live in a smelling love affair between government and multinational business and they are willing to do anything to save their control. You can see it in the 'saving the banks because of the crisis' from 2008 on, till the sending of armies to gain control over oil wells in Libya, because the former dictator doesn't comply anymore to your rules. We need a lot of brain power to come with a better model than current capitalism, socialism or communism leading to a more even division of wealth, not only out of ideological reasons, but also because we have no choice: we still live in a nuclear age and we have to find ways of solving conflicts without destroying each other and humanity in the end.

What can an artist do without only being an entertainer or giving you an esthetic experience? Steering up thoughts, thinking and especially getting into action. The artistic mind can be a social innovator and still be an artist. That's why i feel a similarity with people striving for social change and the artist who is not producing for the market in the first place but is projecting his or her vision. Social and artistic visionaries share a need to express and to change a situation that some visionary before tried to define as 'reality', as we understand 'reality' is a matter of perspective and perspectives change.

Tief in der Nacht: Neo Schlager 80's version

2011-10-11T09:24:00.001+02:00

Below a registration of a live concert during the Project Space, Display 2 exhibition in Kuiperdomingos Projects. I sing here one of my 6 versions of 'Tief in der Nacht', a song based on a personal experience but transformed to a Neo Schlager.

More to be followed soon!

The NEO SCHLAGER in Kuiperdomingos Projects: the beginning of a new era in artist songs

2011-10-09T09:45:00.021+02:00

Here some more Photos of our Project Space, Display 2, taken by Katharina Stillich. Soon I will upload some more registrations of the songs i have played and that were filmed during the Grand Opening.

Photos of Katharina Stillich
The Design of the t-shirt and banner are by Jan-Eric Stephan and Iris Holtkamp of 1405, a talented designer duo currently based in Berlin.

I wrote 6 song versions on 1 Text and a separate 'Artist Anthem', which you can hear here.

The Anthem is a song written for artists all over the world, but specified for the artists currently working or visiting Kolonie Wedding, in the Soldiner Kiez, an area with the highest crime rates in Berlin, as we had to discover also, when they stole all our high tech media the night after our first opening, but, we forgave them for that, as we know they keep an eye on us and will start to love us one day (especially when we do another high tech show and leave the equipment there another night)...

The song texts of the Artist Anthem i wrote can be translated by:

'We know the galleries and Museums
from New York to Berlin
doesn't make a difference 'cause
it's happening, it'happening in Wedding'

The other text was based on the Schlager (which literally means 'hit') theme, a song style that might have originated from the 'Heimatlieder', songs on your home country or land, that are rather old in Germany. I consider pop songs as contemporary versions of Heimat Lieder, especially the Schlager. Tiny Domingos invented a great name for my songs: The NEO SCHLAGER.

'Tief in der Nacht, fühle ich deine Macht
Hab' keine Angst, aber hätte nie gedacht
Was hab'ich bloß, jeder fragt 'Was ist los?'
Kann nur was lächeln, lächeln, Genoß

War wie ein Sturm, Sturm auf dem Land
wohin ich sehne, wo ich einst verschwand
Ich gehe jetzt weg
Auf dem Weg zum Nichts
Habe keine Wünsche mehr
ausser dem des Lichts

Bin jetzt allein
Soll es nochmals sein,
dass ich verrecke, verrecke von der Pein
der Pein um dich
mitten in meinem Leib
komm ganz besoffen
besoffen aus dem Kneipe

Was auch passiert
wenn ein Mensch verliert
bin ganz allein
und auch ganz frustriert
Ich gehe jetzt weg
auf den Weg zum Nichts
Habe keine Wünsche mehr ausser dem des Lichts'

(Text and song by Hans Kuiper, Text corrections: Svenja Schüttler)

Neo Schlager are influenced by the Heimatlieder, European pop ballads/Schlager from the 60's and 70's sung by singers like Udo Jürgens, Charles Aznavour, Gilbert Becaud, but also Jacques Brel (le Chanson), 80's pop ballads and other influences. I already made a whole cd when i was around 26 with own written ballads', but i think I get more into it again now and because of my greater experience i know now to write songs that harbour several styles: musical influences come from the 'Gospel song', the 'Chanson', the 'Pop ballad' (I sung one that i wrote when i was 16, when my heart was broken from my first 'girl friend') and of course the German songs of the 20's and 30's (Bertold Brecht and others).

The Artist Anthem is more funky though, as its style is a bit ´retro' and 'low tech', I think, at the moment the most influential upcoming underground cultural style in 'Information societies' in design and pop culture. I see this style as underground and contrary to the 'tech(no) styles' that currently dominate mainstream culture, but already outlived their mother style: in music: House music, which came up in the late 80's in the US and (especially in the 90's) in Europe.

For the coming period i foresee a broader counter movement with a preference for the NEO SCHLAGER culture and drifting away from current tech idolatry as seen in the use of phone technologies and its concurrent mind set (impulsive, short memory, short attention span), internet hypes and the like (as the internet being more and more 'monitored' by 'totalitarians'), as people will rediscover their need for 'personal contact' and 'real emotion'. I perceive more and more disinterest towards people who are constantly checking their phone but are missing the surroundings around them, an Anti #AR moment:

Up to the NEO SCHLAGER MOVEMENT!

Grand Opening of Project Space, Display 2 at Kuiperdomingos Projects Berlin

2011-10-01T14:34:00.010+02:00

Here is a short movie and some first photo's of the opening of Project Space, Display 2 in Kuiperdomingos Projects in Berlin. The show will be visitable till October 20th in the Wriezener Strasse 12 , 13359 Berlin.

Here above an impression of the Anthem of the artist that i wrote for this exhibition, also the German version:

"Wir kennen Galerien und Museen

von New York bis Berlin

macht gar nicht aus, es passiert jetzt

es passiert jetzt in Wedding"

later followed by two Dutch versions:

"Ik ken de galeries en musea

van New York tot Berlijn

maakt oook niets uit

het gebeurt nu, gebeurt nu in Weddeing"

"Ik ken de galeries en musea

van Groningen tot Maastricht, is daar een show

doe soms mee ja, doe soms mee ja

het maakt me licht"

The Artist Anthem Dance

The opening was planned at the monthly Kolonie Wedding Gallery weekend, so we had a continuous coming and going from visitors. The visitors who did a guided tour asked much more questions on the exhibition. I consider Tiny Domingos and myself as artists fascinated by networks and although our installations are rather different, that can be considered as a theme, although we didn't work with a theme other than to transforming space by installations, sound and performance.

I wrote a Anthem of the artist, which will be hearable on this website soon. The Text you can see, in German, on the banner, is designed by Jan-Eric Stephan and Iris Holtkamp from 1405. This is the German version of 'The Anthem of the Artist', a song like a national hymn but than for the international community of artists:

This version can be translated like:

'We know the galleries and Museums
from New York to Berlin
doesn't make a difference
because it's happening, it's happening in Wedding'

The Anthem is changeable und usable under creative commons by all te artists in the world. The music will be online soon, aslo the scores, the chords. It's great that people react so positively and are eager to sing, that was also our intention: to bring in a performance element in the spatial installation designed by Tiny Domingos and myself.

Tiny worked on drawings and transformed them with design software. A few images were printed and are for sale in the gallery from now on. All the silk prints and photo's that are made exclusively for exhibitions in Kuiperdomingos Projects will be available for sale soon also via our website. We think it's important that we create a new interface bringing potential buyers and artist works together using alternative ways to selling them on art fairs. Although we plan to visit our first artfair in February next year, Kuiper and Domingos, next to being 'culture carriers in persona' both have experience in sales and marketing, and that means nowadays also developing online concepts of selling art objects.

Having witnessed many artfairs the last years, from the Armoury in New York to Frieze London and Basel Miami as commercial artfairs but also exhibitions like Documenta Kassel, the Venice Biennale and smaller fairs like Arco Madrid and Preview Berlin etc. We think the basis of art is still the artist initiative. The artist initiative, we think, is closest to the creative practice of the contemporary artist. The commercial galleries don't seem to be able to sell more conceptual and hybrid forms of art than actual material objects. We can do that too, but we see these objects more as the residu of the creative act per se.

Network (2010)

Our challenge is to tune in with the international market of collectors and institutional buyers and to convince them of our vision on art, which means that the actual performative act is non repeatable and an object can not be seen separated from its context without creating a new work. Selling works at art fairs and the like ignores this essential part of the contemporary art practice. You can take an object, for example a sculpture of Tiny Domingos and sell it at an artfair, but the context of its creation, which is in our art space, you will not be able to communicate, unless you show for example video's of its original installation and creation.

Talking about the Video, on this page you can see a registration of a live performance of 'The Anthem of the Artist' or, in German, 'Das Künstlervolkslied'. The text was printed on a banner on top, so all the visitors could sing the song and read the text easily. Next to that I played several pop versions with only one text: 'Tief in der Nacht'.

It's great to be able to create events like this. The economical and cultural context of Berlin produces a surrounding where this is still possible, payable spaces for artists and a network of art spaces which generate a monthly amount of visitors to Kuiperdomingos Projects.

Cities like Amsterdam (where i lived for a long time) and Paris or Lisboa (where Tiny lived for a long time) lack one of both: or they are too expensive (Paris) or they lack a vivid network which creates an inspiring international surrounding for artists (Lisboa). For artists, Paris is a lost case and if you watch properly, you don't hear much from Paris considering contemporary art. Of couse there are many commercial galleries, but, to our opinion and observation, most of them are not able to tune in, into the last developments of art, mainly because the are lacking a healthy influx of local talent bred in artist initiatives. Of course there are initiatives in Paris too, some of them even promising, but who can afford renting an exhibition space within the 'Periferie'?

I think a city like Lisboa might have more potential, being reasonably cheap and offering great spaces and quality of life. But it really needs an influx of interntational creative talent to be able to become an international center of culture. Berlin currently is 'the place to be', because there is a structural context that produces an infrastructure which enables artists and artist initiatives to flourish, very important because I am convinced artists have a natural need for independence and will keep on looking for ideal circumstances to live and create, so their basic costs must be minimalised as much as possible. Kuiperdomingos Projects is a good example of this, I think. We are able to rent a space for reasonable costs and finance it with our earnings elsewhere, we are not just working to survive, but are able to enjoy a certain quality of life. Or course Berlin doesn't have the climate and food like mediterrenean cities do, still it's a place where artists can find a working place and places to exhibit and have time to create, although because of the relatively low paid job culture, it might be hard to find the ideal situation here too. About this more in a future blog entry.

Come and pass by! Our current show lasts till October 20th in Berlin Wedding.

Preparing the show: Project Space Display 2 at Kuiperdomingosprojects Berlin

2011-09-30T12:51:00.008+02:00

Busy with the last preparations for the show that opens tonight at 7pm in Kuiperdomingos Projects in Berlin. I will sing 'Schlager' and show some drawings, the Text of the Artist Anthem, a T shirt and more. Tiny Domnigos is working hard on his installation.

We were supported again by the talented designers of 1405, they designed all the print material, the digiflyer and the website.

The songs will soon be published on this and other sites, so, the artists around the world can sing their Artist Anthem, which has the following refrain:

(German):

Wir kennen Galerien und Museen
von New York bis Berlin
macht gar nichts aus
es passiert jetzt, es passiert jetzt in Wedding

(English):

We know the galleries and museums
from New York to Berlin
not that important because
it's happening, happening in Wedding

The last lines can be changed and adapted to any place where you are. The music is quite funky and will be played LIVE tonight for the first time for an audience of Art Aficionados (with capitals!) in Berlin Wedding.

There is also a Dutch version, or better there are already two:

Ik ken de galeries en musea
van Groningen tot Maastricht
is er een show, doe soms mee, ja
het is eenvoudig, het maakt me licht.

The other version:

Ik ken de galeries en musea van New York to Berlijn,
is er een show, doe soms mee, ja, het is eenvoudig, ik vind het fijn.

We are working hard on versions in other languages, there's whispering going on Tiny Domingos is writing the Portuguese text right now, at this moment, in the back of a cab in Berlin, while pickung up a green screen for the show....

If you are around, pass by!

Wriezener strasse 12, 13359 Berlin

Back to the old hospital 2: meeting Mengelito.

2011-09-25T14:41:00.012+02:00

(Read part 1 HERE)

The river was extremely cold, even in this time of the year. The stream was quite strong, I wondered where i would end up at the other side. I remember the physics classes I had at the gymnasium, where the bearded teacher tried to explain the concept of 'force' (with F as a symbol). He did this with the river example. It's incredible which thoughts stream through your mind while you are in a tensious situation. Images of my high school came up while drifting on the surface of a river which could mean freedom or not. I also saw flashes of my old friend telling stories on the war and where he had to hide and how he was helped by farmers, near a river.

Next to the sound of the river i still heard no human or animal sounds and concluded they still hadn't taken action. It's funny, if you make people get used to you, just by showing up regularly at the same places, you build up a kind of relation which generates a certain mutual respect, even if you have different roles or are dependent on them or they on you. If this period is long enough, a certain sharpness tends to wither away and you can start to think about how to use the situation. Especially in a situation which is not pleasing you or even degrading.

The distance between the two sides was bigger than I expected, it looked like I never came across a certain point. My clothes were heavy, luckily I didn't wear shoes, only some soft slippers they allowed you in the hospital. I lost one during the swimming and kicked out the second. The river could have been 80 yards or even broader. I tried to swim faster, but had to spare my power.

Suddenly i heard barking, barking of a dog. I looked around and saw 50 yards back on the hospital side two guards appearing with German shepherd dogs. They didn't seem to see me at first. I decided to try to dive down. Although the water was cold, I was lucky it was May. The river was rather deep in the middle. There were no houses to be seen at the other side, yet, there were a lot of bushes. I had seen, at some distance in the water, there was a little island in the river with some plants growing on it. I decided trying to get there, it was very important the guards didn't see me, the dogs were chanceless as long as the guards didn't see me and could direct the dogs to my direction.

I remembered my swimming leasons when i was a kid. I had all the diplomas, even rescuing diplomas. There I had learned how to breathe and swim 30 yards underwater. Of course my condition had worsened since my stay in the hospital, but since not taking the pills anymore, my mind had sharpened back into the old state and I had started to do exercises at night again. This saved me now, I guess, because I was not that tired as i had expected.

I had to focus, I swam to the surface, breathed in and tried to dive down again. It costed me an enormous amount of power, but I knew to get away I had to succeed now. My clothes seemed to soak with even more and more water, my body getting heavier and heavier. I didn't feel my fingers anymore, stiff as they were from the wetness. I came up again and saw the little island now very close. I had to swim around it not to be noticed by these robotic people. I guess they were from a different mutation, with brains without the will to independence.

Now, thinking back, to that experience and sitting on the porch again, with all that plants and flowers, it was so unreal. I never found out what happened to Carl, I guess he died in some experiment, I am sure he didn't get away like me. Before he collapsed he had walked around in circles around the hospital for months. The doctors held him as a toy. The world is still full of small, little Mengeles, misusing their knowledge and with no message to the oath of Hippokratos. These Mengelitos rule in their little world with the power of a pill. Of course there are nice Mengelitos and of course there are real psychiatric cases not to be treated otherwise than with medicine. But why did I have to meet a Mengelito?

Mengelito was short, hairy and was wearing big spectacles with a brownish frame. Even his hands where covered with hair, on the top of his fingers dark and bushy. His eyebrows in one line from the left to the right eye, that were very blue, dark blue. The sisters were horrible, but this guy had a kind of refined, diplomatic way of killing you softly with elaborately chosen words which were showing his literacy, sometimes even citing Shakespeare mixed up with his professional jargon. His alert eyes showed his cleverness, like little beads, that all people tend to have who have this kind of nerdy intelligence. The problem is that if you give nerds too much power, they tend to cross borders, any borders, just out of curiosity and not taking any human feelings of the people around them into account, because they miss, what I would call, the 'taking the role of the other' chromosome.

That was also what made Mengelito dangerous. Being a nerd with a doctorate, it made him extremely dangerous. In any contemporary organisation you can find these people, mostly at the IT departments and there they are rather harmless. But still, without any consideration they fulfill the wish of management to come up with all kinds of sophisticated control mechanisms of 'fellow' employees, even calculating the total amount of time at the toilet of anybody. Mengelito didn't need this, his control was total as soon as you crossed the border of his territory. Isn't it awkward that this animalistic instinct of creating and fighting for a territory is transformed into the mind of a man with an education into control by specialist knowledge on which he can base and build a kind of sublimated territory?

When political and especially military power relationships change this also has an effect for the Mengelito's. Here I was sitting on the porch of his former dominion. Mengelito already had gone for a long time, maybe sitting in some prison or camp himself or even being tortured by another Mengelito or, in 'the classical way', by some former inmate. I knew guys like Carl were capable of doing this, as soon as they would come out of their prisons they would not stop till they got their former persecutors. Revenge, according to some thinkers an attribute of power, you must be capable of exerting it, not everybody has the refinedness of mind and the planning talents to come up with a master plan. I thought I would be able to. I had come back to develop my plan and to make some of them pay.

This is part 2 of 'Back to the old hospital' of which parts will be published online on this website

Back to the old hospital

2011-09-22T18:51:00.002+02:00

It was some time ago, indeed already many years ago, that i visited the place the last time. It took me quite a trip to get there at all, lots of things having changed, trains left on different times, tickets had different prices, ticket controllers had different suits and the station platform had been renovated with a concrete layer which was painted white.

White like the nurses' uniforms (they would later start a rock band called 'The sick sisters'), in the state i was in i didn't even really notice their naked calves. The needles and the branches of the pine trees were slowly moving in the soft may wind. I was laying under a thick white quilt covered with a blanket with a Scottish tarten. The man was groaning next to me, white saliva running out of the corners of his mouth.

'Have you taken the pills?' I looked up and nodded. 'Have you taken them all this time?' I nodded again. She was stern with firy blue eyes. Her blond-grey hair in an updo. What i hated that woman. Outside a small bus was coming around the corner. It stopped and the side door opened. Young men jumped out with their black boots making a dim sound. I tried to sit up but I couldn't, my legs seemed like being tied to the long chair, in fact they were tied to the long chair.

Carl looked at me. His pale face full of lines, his greyish hair oily, hanging on both sides of his head. 'Carl'? I tried to call him, but he closed his eyes. I knew the guy was suffering, he didn't have the energy to answer or even move his head. I looked back at the car. From the front door an older man stepped out, he looked like a wolf, be it a wolf in a military uniform. His eyes were staring up, but i was almost sure he couldn't see me. The sister had gone in again, now was the time to make my move.

I had been in the chair for hours, pretending not being able to move and playing dumb. I had succeeded in untying the ropes with my right hand, which i got free after hours of trying. My bald head felt raw and sweaty. I knew one thing, i was not going to be treated by that guy and had to move out fast now.

Carl laid with eyes closed, i touched his face, softly. He opened his eyes with a fearful look, but stayed quiet. It was all mimicry now, I nodded my head to the right, clenched my fist, brought it to my heart and rubbed over my breast. Carl understood. Then i softly stepped off the long porch and went to the door, which was open. I was sure nobody but Carl had seen the move. My ears were screening the void. I heard nothing. Slowly moved my head through the door and fastly walked to the stairways.

I knew the sisters were drinking tea around this time for at least ten minutes. That was the time I had to get out of the building and get into the woods and cross the fence. From the fence I had to run to get to the road, cross it and run to the river. If I would reach the river, I would be safe. It would take them another five minutes to get the guards with the dogs. There was no sound coming from the stairs. I swiftly went down and looked around. Not a living being, my calculations proved to be right for the moment. But you know people, especially the neurotic ones, these kind of places are full of them. They tend to be unpredictable, so i had to be sharp, sharp like a knife.

I went down and came to the door. How stupid and self indulgent they were. Thinking we were so dumb they didn't need to take any precautions. Of course, they didn't know my trick of not taking the medicine. My huge actor's talents were paying off now, it looked like it would really save me this time. Saving my life and liberty.

10 minutes, that was all I had, that was all I needed. I was gone. The woods smelled nice, but the ground was wet. Probably it would take me an extra minute and a half to get to the river now. I decided to take the wooden hallway outside in the forest. What lousy architect had ever come up with the idea to construct this? And why? I blessed him, because i knew they wouldn't see me from the hospital now. Those bastards, so many conformists at one spot, what an insult to all the brave.

I ran and tried to run without sound. I jumped into the forest and went crisscrossing the trees, on my way out. Still no sound of barking dogs or shouting female voices. Why was it so easy to get out? Why nobody did this before, at least as far as I knew? Far on the right I saw the other building, the building where they experimented. Thoughts went through my brain, even while running. They wanted us just to be like rabbits in a cage, not afraid or reacting to the hands that take them out to be tested upon. Not this rabbit, that turned out to be a fox in the end. I kept on running and my concentration grew. Fuck, I heard some barking dogs far away.

I had no choice then to keep on running. There was the road, no car to be heard, they thought they were in total control, but they were wrong this time. What a shame on humanity. Life is a gift and see what they make out of it, prisons and psychiatric hospitals everywhere. Whether they call it offices, schools, universities, it's all on creating conformist behaviour, but I am strong, stonger than them. I crossed the road and moved into the forest on the other side. Maybe another three hundred yards, three hundred and fifty. Then I would be swimming and be free.

Read part 2 HERE.

Save the date: Sept. 30th, 7pm: Hans Kuiper & Tiny Domingos with Project Space Display 2 in Berlin

2011-09-20T07:32:00.000+02:00

Project space. Display 2

Tiny Domingos / Hans Kuiper

Eröffnung/Opening:  Freitag 30.09.2011 um 19.00 Uhr

Öffnungszeiten:  Samstag 01.10: 15 – 18 Uhr

und nach Vereinbarung  / open by appointment

von 1.08.2011 - bis 20.10.2011

Kuiperdomingos Projects, Wriezener Straße 12, 13359 Berlin

Tel.: +49 (0) 171 83 59 147

kuiperdomingosprojects@gmail.com

English version below

Gleichheit von Gerade und Fläche, von Fläche und Volumen. Das heißt,

daß die Berücksichtigung des Raums der Aus- bzw. Erschöpfung einen

neuen Sinn und einen neuen Gegenstand liefert: die Potentialitäten

eines beliebigen Raums ausschöpfen. (Gilles Deleuze, "Erschöpft")

Project space, display 2 ist eine gemeinsame Ausstellung von Tiny Domingos und Hans Kuiper. Sie markiert den Beginn eines Annäherungsprozesses und der Zusammenarbeit zweier Künstler mit unterschiedlichen Lebensläufen und Entwicklungen: Tiny Domingos (Lissabon/Berlin) und Hans Kuiper (Amsterdam/Berlin).

Ausgangspunkt und zugleich Titel der Ausstellung, deren zweiter Teil für September vorgesehen ist, ist der Begriff des „project space“. Unsere Absicht ist es, sich auf die denotative Bedeutung dieser beiden Worte zu konzentrieren, wobei die Idee des „experimentellen von Künstlern organisierten Ausstellungsraums“ außer Acht gelassen wird. Der Begriff „Projekt“ wird hier als „architektonisches Projekt“, „Entwurf“, „work in progress“ sowie Projektion einer Vision oder eines Films verstanden. Wir wollen daher mittels einer Rauminstallation, welche – wie das Rückenmark – als Basis für unsere entropischen Betrachtungen dienen wird, den Ausstellungsraum idealisieren und transformieren.

-------

"There is equality between the straight line and the plane and between

the plane and the volume: the consideration of space gives a new meaning

and a new object to exhaustion—exhausting the potentialities of an any-space-whatever."

Gilles Deleuze, “The Exhausted”, Essays Critical and Clinical

Project Space, Display 2 is a joint exhibition by Tiny Domingos and Hans Kuiper. It marks the beginning of a process of rapprochement and cooperation between two artists with different life cycles and trends; Tiny Domingos (Lisbon / Berlin) and Hans Kuiper (Amsterdam / Berlin).

Starting point and also the title of the exhibition—the second part is scheduled for September—is the concept of "project space". Our intention is to focus on the denotative meaning of these two words. The idea of 'experimental exhibition space organized by artists' will be left aside. The term "project" is understood here as an 'architectural project', 'draft', 'work in progress' and 'projecting a vision or a movie'. We therefore want to install by a space which, like the spinal cord, will serve as the basis for our entropic considerations, idealize and transform the exhibition space.

kuiperdomingosprojects.com

kuiperdomingosprojects.blogspot.com

twitter: #projectedspace

The creative class and the end of the car era: on networks of the future

2011-09-13T23:56:00.038+02:00

The last remnants of summer pop up alternately with the soft autumn September light. Traumatized as i was during my first winter in Berlin, i was staying in a cold atelier at minus 14 degrees Celsius, I expect coldness already in September, but luckily even in Eastern Germany autumn gets a chance to show its splendour.

Ok, enough autumn romanticism, Berlin is also the city of a huge amount of cars producing an endless stream of air pollution, so you really have to find a car free route to be able to taste some autumn anyhow. But it is the curse of temporary city life: the car. I will write extensively on this subject a next time as I think future societies will laugh about this time and call our society the pollution society. We talk about the child labour and other horrors of the beginning industrial society, but this time is as bad. Not many pressure groups start to fight the car yet on a level that the industry perceives it as a threat, but what a price we pay. Hundreds of thousands deaths a year in the short term, lung cancers and other horrible deceases on the long term. No space for children to play and a total disruption of the public space and health by this develish invention.

Some urbanists have seen this before, of course. They came with concepts of the garden city or a separation of traffic and living space by Le Corbusier, for example. His and other visionaries' ideas have been used in 20th century, luckily, we have to praise these people for this, although it was a compromise with making city life livable and not making the car and oil industries their opponents. No, on the contrary, Le Corbusier loved to make photo's of his houses with 'fast cars' in front of it, as to show the house as a 'living machine' and his designs fit for 'the age of speed'.

Well, our generations know the other side of these machines, i am not even talking about war machines in whatever form, no, i confine myself to the car as a moving machine, to go from point A to point B. Well, this from A to B and back again, but then as a physical movement, can be considered as a basic urbanistic problem or better 'event'. Separating 'living' from 'working' has huge consequences for society and the traffic models and realities we will see.
The current dominant city model is still living in place A, an appartment, and working in place B, be it an office, a school or a factory. How do we get from A to B? By using a bike, walking, a train, a metro, a car or even an airplane or helicopter (like in a city as Sao Paulo in Brazil, for the management classes).

I think it's time to proclaim here 'the end of the car era'. I repeat it again: 'the end of the car era'. Although the industry is still happily producing model after model and is also employing thousands of people, the coming years we will slowly see the end of the car era as an era where the car means the connection between the oil industry and the dominant 'traffic model', the separation of working and living.

It's not for nothing, that i stress the separation of working and living, because I think there is one decisive factor which determines this shifting paradigm and that is 'the digitalisation of work'. Although many online visionaries already envisioned a total change of work and living by the introduction of the personal computer and internet, it is still confined to relative small sectors of society where people work wherever they want, just by 'tuning in', online and with phone, to produce what they are paid for, a website, a commercial, a business plan, a musical composition and so on. We talk here in short about a 'new' class, the 'creative class'. There has always been a creative class, of course, but it looks like some fundamental change is going to happen, where the influence of this class grows exponentially.

The members of this creative class are the forerunners of change to a society to come. The influence of this class has been described and analysed by people like the economist Richard Florida already some years ago. This class creates new products and new ideas with big economic potential and is more or less independent of an exact location to live and work. Of course they possess body entities and need a place to live, but their location of choice is dependent an other factors than a salary, a specific company and so on, Florida tries to prove that the members of this class choose a location to live because of other important factors like cultural factors and exciting free time opportunities (biking, nature, art scene, music scene, schooling opportunities etc.).

This creative class might be the forerunners of a new era, being a class open to argument, new ideas, new technologies etc. and, important, have the time and money to be able to develop a preference on these fields. The people in this class don't like to work 5 days a week on one fixed spot, in one company, on a location that doesn't offer them enough opportunities to develop as a human being and as a professional.

My theory is that that this class is tech savvy, very well informed and not viable for government and multinational propaganda, but on the contrary informing itself on variable ways. One of the other longer trends connected with this class, discernable to anybody with open eyes, is a trend towards healthy life, food, exercise (sports) etc. This trend is contrary to a life amidst car gases, traffic jams and aggressive porsche drivers with a lack of self confidence.

A healthy life for yourself, the ones you love and share your life with and, if you have them, of course, your children. Who wants their children to grow up in an unhealthy surrounding with processed food, air pollution, violence and lack of educational opportunities? Noone. And still, many people on earth live these lifes and seem to have no other choice than to leave those places. The people from the poorer countries try to get away out of the slums and the favela pollution in all ways possible. With their lack of education and money they can only start at the bottom of rich societies and hope one day they or their children get a legal status and a future.

Still most wealth, not only in the 'rich' nations, is spent on socalled 'defense' (war industry), oil refinery and its derivative products. Any environmental engineer can sketch you in a few hours an alternative model of energy supply, based on other natural resources and with another spending behavior. Our societies are like blind horses running in circles try to catch their own tail. They don't see the they just encircle the grass in the midfield.

In the meantime, the creative class decides, to keep in shape, to use the mountainbike and the metro and electric train to get where they want. Very probably currently, the electric train uses energy of gas and oil installations, but it still doesn't kill people like cars or has such a direct effect on our respirational systems. Why don't we hear the medical sector? Are they just afraid to publish their longitudinal health studies and become a part of a movement for international change? There have been studies conducted in London but also Pan European for example that show a statistically significant relationship between chance on cancer and the amount of cars on the streets that you roam most of your life. But also other studies are alarming.

In the other meantime, the advertising industry boys and girls also want to have their share of the cake and keep on producing commercial after commercial for the car industry. It's like the biblical monster with the seven heads, if you cut off one, three grow on its place. Similar like the cigarette industry: you ban them them in the USA and Europe (after decades of destruction), they pop up twice as fast in 'third world' countries in Asia, Africa and South America.

Ok, back to the cars. I think the creative class has to come up with a new model and on an individual level you already see, they try to live a peaceful and as healthy as possible life. Cars don't belong in that philosophy. I don't even mention the aggregational development that the earth oil resources seem to run out in 30 years (but this gets postponed with the finding of new fields) and that the wars for oil get more and more violent and maskless. Is it only greed or aren't we capable anymore to see 'we', the end consumers and designers of the future, are able to change this path to the abyss?

Of course the industries will ignore this and come with 'alternatives'. As the oil prices will rise because of smaller resources and growing global conflicts, we can think about some scenario's in the the short time that lays ahead.

There might be, as an intermezzo, a stadium 2, in which a socalled 'elite' will appear, after more and more people are forced to leave cars behind or out of choice. This elite will be able to pay the more and more expensive 'car life style' (although 'leasing' tends to postpone this situation, offering cheaper alternatives to the poorer car driving fellows, as you don't need to own a car anymore yourself, but 'buy by the hour') and push he poor souls into the metro and other means of transport. Only the numbers of the poorer and environmental more conscious classes tend to grow by the day and will lead to a crying out more and more of a healthy surrounding, with healthy food, air and drinking water and...public transport systems. The industries will oppose any substantial investments in public transport as it is undermining their strategies, although it's in the interest of a healthy (city) life.

In the meantime, many cars keep on moving, as they did 20 years ago. More and more cars are stumbling on each other in the urban areas in the world, leading to more and more traffic jams. Even this phenomenon works against cars more and more as there is no more space and people get nervous breakdowns in traffic jams, no to talk about the traumatic 'by effects' of killing somebody while driving a car. Also this might lead to stadium 2, where a smaller 'wannabe-elite' is still able to drive cars and try to create private highways (stadium 3), with less direct (but still indirect) threats to the health of metropolis people.

At another level, another consequence of the wars for oil and other resources will lead to evergrowing 'streams of immigrants' trying to get their share and at least to get away from the slum life and conflicts in the non-Western areas. Their numbers force the 'developed nations' to think out strategies to keep them away. After militarily controlling these areas full of oil and other wells for the sustaining of the 'wealth of developed nations', Stadium 4 is the financing and building of infrastructural projects in these formerly underdeveloped areas first to keep on the seemingly perpetual growth of multinational owned and managed productions, second, as avery nice by-product, to keep the masses out of the wealthy areas of the world, combined with a strong border police forces. This stadium we are approaching fastly.

Stadium 5 is an intensivation of an already ongoing process of mass media brain washing in the developed nations with strategies like creating 'non events' like' celebrity lifes' and the connection of fashion, life style products and, yes, cars (so, the 'celebretization' of images, of which cars tend to form a part); 'war victories' and 'terrorist enemies' to gain access to natural resources like oil wells (partly to be sold by car usage promotion) and , of course, an ongoing and intensified continuous stream of car commercials (on- and offline, print etc.), among others. The problem of these 'manufacturers of consent' (the privatized PR agencies and TV companies) is that with the fragmentation of media usage, especially among the creative classes, their 'mind reach' is getting less and less in this kakophonie, resulting in the creative and other classes living in a kind of ideological and partly (car) consumerist vacuum.

But, and then we reach stadium 6, the creative classes, become the inventors and managers of new media and centrally uncontrollable informations systems and streams, developing similarly to neuro-network developmental models. This stadium is yet to come, but probably close at hand. We see the results already on a global scale, as the creative classes tend to be dispersed over urban areas all over the world. That doesn't mean these classes have clearly defined political and economical goals, yet. At stadium 7, there will be initiatives to bundle alternative technological, economical and political developments out of reach of centralised datamining and political control (like the internet still is, monitorable by the Googles and their state companions of this day). This will create a void of ideological and information space, as the size and educational level of creative classes tend to imcrement exponentially through the globalized communities with access to these new technologies.

The car era will be seen more and more as belonging to the old industrial era and it will become even cheaper to produce new urbanistic traffic technologies and systems to make people move from A to B and back again. It might even be the case, which i think very probable, that the future societies don't supply a fixed living spot, but make it flexible. Of course we need a lot of genetical modification for this, modification of the human mind to be able to live in an ever changing habitat and to get free from territorial instincts still belonging to the stone age. These instincts make our epoch so dangerous as these tend to be still uncontrolled and only still manipulable by simple mass media message controlling and outdated legal (the concept of copy right) and hierarchical decision making social models.

The signs seem to be clearer and clearer: everywhere the masses rise and feudal models, of which dictatorial regimes are an example, are tumbling by the week. The information age is not yet there for everyone, most people still live in an overinformation age, partly manufactured by a conscious political strategy. But people tend to get more and more tech savvy, though, even in areas not tuned into latest technological developments, the creative classes at first. We talk here about something in which technology is more than just a nice toy but growing to being a means to an end: we talk about social technology by trained and just gifted social engineers that will think of alternative models to organize work, living and travelling, models of which I think the creative class is forced to develop first in contrast to the more static parts of urban societies.

Welcome to the era of the future and say goodbye to that of the past, it is going to be structural and it's going to be exciting, but not one without philosophical and technological battles. The creative classes will, also as they get politically and economically more organized, gain more influence in these developments, developments towards a more sustainable and clean urban life, a life with a 'happier' humanity. It's not too late to change the 'race to the bottom'...

Coming Show in Kuiperdomingos Projects Berlin: Project Display 2, Opening Sept. 30th, 7pm

2011-09-11T15:23:00.005+02:00

Project space. Display 2
Tiny Domingos / Hans Kuiper

Eröffnung/Opening: _Freitag 30.09.2011 um 19.00 Uhr
Öffnungszeiten: _Samstag 01.10: 15 – 18 Uhr
und nach Vereinbarung_ / open by appointment
von 1.08.2011 - bis 20.10.2011

Kuiperdomingos Projects, Wriezener Straße 12, 13359 Berlin
Tel.: +49 (0) 171 83 59 147
kuiperdomingosprojects@gmail.com

English version below

Gleichheit von Gerade und Fläche, von Fläche und Volumen. Das heißt,
daß die Berücksichtigung des Raums der Aus- bzw. Erschöpfung einen
neuen Sinn und einen neuen Gegenstand liefert: die Potentialitäten
eines beliebigen Raums ausschöpfen. (Gilles Deleuze, "Erschöpft")

Project space, display 2 ist eine gemeinsame Ausstellung von Tiny Domingos und Hans Kuiper. Sie markiert den Beginn eines Annäherungsprozesses und der Zusammenarbeit zweier Künstler mit unterschiedlichen Lebensläufen und Entwicklungen: Tiny Domingos (Lissabon/Berlin) und Hans Kuiper (Amsterdam/Berlin).
Ausgangspunkt und zugleich Titel der Ausstellung, deren zweiter Teil für September vorgesehen ist, ist der Begriff des „project space“. Unsere Absicht ist es, sich auf die denotative Bedeutung dieser beiden Worte zu konzentrieren, wobei die Idee des „experimentellen von Künstlern organisierten Ausstellungsraums“ außer Acht gelassen wird. Der Begriff „Projekt“ wird hier als „architektonisches Projekt“, „Entwurf“, „work in progress“ sowie Projektion einer Vision oder eines Films verstanden. Wir wollen daher mittels einer Rauminstallation, welche – wie das Rückenmark – als Basis für unsere entropischen Betrachtungen dienen wird, den Ausstellungsraum idealisieren und transformieren.

kuiperdomingosprojects.com
kuiperdomingosprojects.blogspot.com
twitter: #projectedspace

"There is equality between the straight line and the plane and between
the plane and the volume: the consideration of space gives a new meaning
and a new object to exhaustion—exhausting the potentialities of an any-space-whatever."
Gilles Deleuze, “The Exhausted”, Essays Critical and Clinical

Project Space, Display 2 is the a joint exhibition by Tiny Domingos and Hans Kuiper. It marks the beginning of a process of rapprochement and cooperation between two artists with different life cycles and trends; Tiny Domingos (Lisbon / Berlin) and Hans Kuiper (Amsterdam / London).
Starting point and also the title of the exhibition—the second part is scheduled for September—is the concept of "project space". Our intention is to focus on the denotative meaning of these two words, with the idea of 'experimental exhibition space organized by artists' will be left aside. The term "project" is understood here as an 'architectural project', 'draft', 'work in progress' and 'projecting a vision or a movie'. We therefore want to install by a space which, like the spinal cord, will serve as the basis for our entropic considerations, idealize and transform the exhibition space.

kuiperdomingosprojects.com
kuiperdomingosprojects.blogspot.com
twitter: #projectedspace

Rem Koolhaas and theatrical architecture: preparing an exhibition

2011-09-04T14:36:00.015+02:00

Photos by Hans Kuiper, taken at Szczecin (Poland)

The coming period I will write more stories on 'networking' in a broad sense of the word, as it is the theme i am working on, also for the show in Kuiperdomingos Projects, which will have its first presentation on September 30th 2011.

I was thinking about living in Berlin and how how many compromises you have to make to be able to run an art space here, without being subsidized. Of course you can think about alternative ways of financing your shows, working with sponsors or showing work and selling books, silk prints or even running a bar. A simpler way, though it leaves you less time for your art, is finding a job, preferably a 3- or 4 day/week job and earn enough to be able to pay the costs of rent and of investing in your installation, combined with freelance commissions or sales to build up your own practice.

Tiny Domingos, with whom I do this show, is running his own translation agency (French-German-Portuguese) and has been able to invest some money of his own to be able to buy all the necessary material he needs for the installation he has in mind. I think it is courageous of him to pick up 'old work' and use it as a starting situation for creating a new installation. One of the drawings he made in the beginning of the 90s's, is a starting point. Additionally, he shot photo's of a beautiful black woman, being impressed by the colour combination she was wearing. He incorporated these colours in the adjustments of his old drawings and started off.

The drawings are, to me, a bit Escher like, although Escher was more referring to 'reality'. Tiny is almost like a designer, a designer exploring space. His drawings inspired him to make a first spatial installation in the entrance room of the Kuiperdomingos art space. His work reminds me of 'modernist art', let's say 20th century pre-war art and design, starting with movements like constructivism, inspired by artists involved at the Bauhaus school and its influences on architectural movements of the later period.

Tiny sent me links with many, mainly architectural 'installations' that inspired him. While looking at the Photos i had to remember an influential book i read in my twenties of Siegfried Giedion in his 'Space, Time & Architecture: the growth of a new tradition, (1941)'. Giedion suggested many interesting cross over theories on 'Das neue Bauen' (A new way of building), a description of a movement coming into blossoming in the 1920's. He linked for example cubism and its radical approach towards perspectives on a flat surface to a new approach to space and perspective in architecture and urbanism.

The book of Giedion can still be an eye opener to anybody only exposed to mass media and not being a student of architectural history, the links he makes, the artistic movements he treats are still very impressive and give a good overview of a very influential movement in Western architecture. Although the modernist movement was very influential, also in its realisations of urbanistic projects (for example Oscar Niemeyer and his designs for Brasilia), since the late 70's, there is a contrary movement discernable in neo-conservative capitalism, who's class members are in the end the 'owners' and 'commissioners' of architects, that seems to have changed the direction that architecture took. It produced another type of architect, the 'star architect'. Typical examples might be Richard Meyer, Renzo Piano, Rem Koolhaas and others. What binds them together is their lack of far reaching visions and neglect for (necessary?) far reaching structural changes in society and consequently urbanism and more focusing on the individual 'project', which mostly has a 'stunning façade', almost showing the footmark of the architect. In functionalist architecture the 'form followed function', that means that the façade was the consequence of the functional demands of the building: for who was the building, what are they doing there, what movements are to be reckoned with etc.

The star architects on the contrary are, to my opinion, focused on other things than a building being functional. Living in Berlin, I meet people, among them people who work at the Dutch embassy, designed by Rem Koolhaas, and they all (diplomatically) complain about the design mistakes the OMA of Koolhaas made. A simple example: winter time in Berlin is tough with minus 15 degrees Celsius. It cannot be that if you open the door, you get a cold wind in the building each time, because Koolhaas decided not to make a hall to contain the cold and let the employees not be disturbed by the cold wind. There also seems to be no proper meeting hall where the ambassador can receive representatives of other countries, be they minsters, ambassadors or even presidents. This I got as feedback from some people working there day-by-day. See there the consequence of architecture more involved in egomania than in offering a solution for a 'list of demands' of the client.

Although Koolhaas for example has reached a cult status and gets away with these design mistakes, not only because of his many realised projects but also because of his talented PR employees, he also doesn't seem to be able or willing to develop far reaching visions of the level of Le Corbusier for a coming society with a radical other vision on urbanistic processes, on the basic living-working-travelling-triangle. Aren't we still longing for a society without cars for example (with their gasses, many casualties a year, the consequent wars for oil etc.) and needing electrified public transport in such a way that we can 'reclaim the streets' for the people? The star architects are pragmatic in a different way and try to realise 'theatrical architecture', without bothering too much about its social context. A good example of this is the Guggenheim Museum, designed by starchitect Frank Gehry, in Bilbao: it has strong contrasting sculptural qualities with its direct surroundings, the old industrial town of Bilbao, not a city where I would like to live. There is no relation between Bilbao and the museum, it could have been built at any metropolitan location. This kind of architecture is more used for political purposes of ruling classes, so it seems, then for addressing the basic needs of contemporary city life (for the Bilbao inhabitants in this case).

Well, so you see, how far the inspiration and imagination can go, while working on an exhibition. Siegried Giedion claims the modernist movements started on simultaneous places and times, where there was an important role of the (visual) artist. I think, observing the lack of urbanistic solutions the star architects offer us, it's time again for artists and a new generation of thinkers on architecture, urbanism and design, to come up with new ideas and visions on the time that lays ahead, in short, we need new visionaries!

Copycats: thinking about the withering away of networks

2011-08-31T22:09:00.014+02:00

Titel: Project space. Display 1
Artists: Hans Kuiper (Sound/Performance) and Tiny Domingos (Installation)
To be seen at Kuiperdomingos Projects, Berlin
Open on apointment until September 20.
SAVE THE DATE! Next opening: September 30, 7 pm. Wriezener Str. 12, 13359 Berlin
Photo credits: Kuiperdomingos Projects

Yes, yes, ja, ja, sim, sim: the working period in KDP has started again. We start with our autumn project period. It's an explorative project in which Tiny and I are mutually exploring each other's artistic visions, media and get into a simultaneous exchange of visions and views. Also for Tiny, a new period starts, in which he wants to focus more on his own artistic process in stead of organising and managing that of others, as he did in the former years at his Rosalux Artspace.

I always love starting autumn in northern Europe and in Berlin you can feel the forebodings of the leaf falling period breaking in. But still summer tries to give us some last hot days, here and there. In a few weeks, maybe even 2 weeks, summer will be disappearing abruptly, as it often happens in Berlin. Time for me to get my things together and start working on a new period.

It's great to be able to create your own space and to be able to work on your own project, even when the 2 former projects of Christoph Both-Asmus and Janine Tielen, have been exciting. The nice feeling is that we don't have a strict deadline, or it must be the end of October, when a curatorial team from London will be flown in and start a project with artists from the current London art scene.

Before that, we will be able to think and build and draw. I restarted to work on my network project which I layed out last weekend, walked around it a few hours and got new ideas. In 2010 I made some drawings I which I sketched my network of that time, a network I built up in almost a year. Looking at it now, i found out, only particular parts of it were still active and started to put torn paper pieces around these parts. I became aware how by feeding and not feeding the social networks we function in are growing and slowly are dying off.

Sometimes you function in networks and suddenly realise that it's just a temporary thing. It's really funny to see how relatively fast we can build up networks and start new lifes, to be more explicit, it's really amazing. But also, the other way around, sometimes one big decision can make you leave certain networks, because you don't follow the codes or simply are not showing up anymore. A dynamic network should be fed from 'both' sides. I mean it can not only be, that you are the one who is putting energy or showing up at someone else's event, but the other party doesn't care about what you are doing. Such a network is not reciprocal.

Maybe reciprocity is the right word for a dynamic network, that's fed from multiple sides by (socially) creative people. You don't need to be an artist to have an interesting discussion with. On the contrary, the last years i start to find the art world 'small', 'boring' and 'egomaniac'. I am not waiting to waste my time visiting shows of people who think they are great and anybody else only forms a function in their strategy of creating a buzz. A big part of the commercial art world seems to function like that, but they mostly turn out to be copycats.

You might know, dear reader, these scenes of the 'arty farthy'. People that, predictably, show up at certain places and, especially, parties, mostly in companion of the same people, maybe because they are afraid to explore on their own. Well, if we talk about creating a buzz, sometimes you have to create a vibe, but i can assure you, if some people show up at your show or place, it's time to move on.

So, the withering away of networks can be your conscious decision, as I am convinced you have to actively start up 'your own thing', and 'kill your darlings' or better the followers who gave up seeking for themselves. You better surround yourself with seeking, passionate, determined, sometimes suffering, but still 'elastic' people, to be actively using a network in the best way. I leave the smooth, the trendy and 'promising', 'pretty' and 'coming up' artists (who ever that may be, you can come up and go down several times a day) aside and let them wither...away.

#artist-run space #wedding #kolonie Wedding
#Berlin #contemporary art #projectedspace
#kuiperdomingos projects #hans kuiper #tiny domingos
#project space #space #labyrinth #maze #labirinto
#espace #espaço #installation #network
#sound #performance #architecture
#art #drawing #structure #content
#frame #collaboration #lisboa #amsterdam