“Das Graue Wunder”, 2013 Das Graue Wunder is a two parts satirical intervention based on the controversial construction of the Waldschlösschen bridge, a highway bridge through the Elbe Valley which brought as a consequence in 2009 the unregistration of this site from UNESCO World Heritage List in which it was included since 2004. The first part of the intervention is a wallpaper pasted into a photo booth installed in Rosmaringasse, Altstadt in Dresden city center, just near the UNESCO billboard announcing the reasons why Elbe Valley was removed from the World Heritage List. The poster shows a vertical image of the bridge and designed in a way that UNESCO logo and text « Das Graue Wunder » appears as a background of each portrait picture taken with this photo booth. The second part of the intervention is a banner with UNESCO logo and text « Das Graue Wunder » installed at one corner of the Waldschlösschen bridge, mimetic to the six ones from Sächsische Bau GMBH company which were installed on the bridge since its building was completed at the end august 2013. « Das Graue Wunder » is the ironic nickname given to the bridge by the citizens of Dresden who were protesting against the construction. This nickname is an echo to « Das Blaues Wunder », the Loschwitzer bridge built in 1893 upstream and nicknamed in that way according an urban legend which claims that the Loschwitzer bridge was originally painted green, but that the weather turned it blue. In addition, the name is a pun, since the meaning of the phrase ein blaues Wunder erleben is « to experience an unpleasant surprise » (Wikipedia). Das Graue Wunder intervention is playing with viral communication in the field of territorial marketing to highlight the disagreement of citizens within a situation where functionality overrides on cultural heritage.
“Erbe“, 2013, Innere Neustadt, Elbe river bank, Dresden (Germany). “Erbe is a complex graffiti intervention creating a link between antique writing and name writing. First, “ERBE” a four letter word – meaning in German “heritage” or “legacy” – is carved with rusty nails, chisel and hammer on a ancient pavement path, parallel to the Elberadweg along Elbe river bank. Then, the engraved graffiti is transferred on a sheet of paper by frottage technique. The obtained letters are cutted with a kraft knife in order the imprint becomes a stencil. Finally, the graffiti is spray painted in black at the junction of Antonstraße and Albertplatz in the city center over a electric meter decorated with a fake wall with stone reminding the one from the ancient pavement path in a trompe-l’œil style which might have been spray painted by local writers. Erbe action is a kind of reenactment of the evolution of graffiti writing through ages; from the anthropologic gesture – the word could be read as two pairs of initials – to the contemporary one – the word could be used as a nickname.”
“Break Free”, 2013. Break Free is a hacking intervention where a sticker of a cage is added on the window of a bus stop where is already sticked birdsaver window decal figuring the silhouette of a bird flying in order to give the impression the bird is breaking free.
Am 17. Oktober bis 1. November 2013 fand meine Ausstellung “Public Jokes” mit Vladimír Turner & Mathieu Tremblin im Dresdner Kunstraum C. Rockefeller Center For The Contemporary Arts statt. Die beiden Künstler haben dazu drei Arbeiten im Außenraum realisiert, “Das Graue Wunder”, “Erbe” und “Break Free”, und im Innenraum wurden Kommentare aus dem Netz zu den Arbeiten der Künstler an einer Wand tapeziert, darauf lief eine Projektion mit Bildern und Videos der jeweiligen Arbeiten – und zur Vernissage fand die Performance “Art Therapy Group” statt, bei der ich (der Kurator) als Therapeut gemeinsam mit den Künstlern und dem Publikum über die Probleme des Begriffs “Street-Art” diskutiere, über die Probleme Street-Art in einem Innenraum auszustellen und über die Probleme mit Kunst im Allgemeinen, und zur Auflockerung gab es dann immer wieder “Psychospiele”. Am Ende wurde aus dieser Sitzung ein Fanzine produziert mit den besten Elementen aus der Diskussion und an jeden Besucher kostenlos verteilt. Kurzum: Wir hatten extrem viel Spaß! Danke an Andreas & sein Rockefeller-Team für die Unterstützung! Und in den Worten der Künstler:
“We have to talk about your problem with “street”, “art” and “gallery”
Regarding to the fact that our work is done directly in everyday life in the city and diffused directly through the Internet, most people can access to our art content before coming to any hypothetic show (that’s mostly what people do when they ask themselves if they are going to visit a show where they don’t know the artist). So Alain Bieber, which is actually one of our first interlocutor/diffusor invited us to think together on how we could find a way to invest a space dedicated to art in a different way that the one we are using World Wide Web as somehow a Whole White Wall regarding to this production of documentation of actions in urban space. We thought that it could be interesting to put in balance the way people are appropriating our work through reblogging and commenting which is actually something a bit more difficult to do in reality where the only feedbacks you could get are the one from the passer-byes when you’re doing your intervention and eventually the ones from police or media. As in gallery/museum spaces your artworks – as objects – are moving slowly sometime (because they get stuck in art space or attic for a long period of time) and critic comments are mostly rare beside local press because of time lag publication because of physical impossibility to all critics to happen without physical experience of show due to the distance. We chosed to focus on this idea of reception, as comments are giving a meta reading of our pieces and dialoging with the idea of acting in the city or history of art mainly opening it to a general feedback related to mass media topics and society inputs (depending of the content of the work itself). Because our works are also featured on the WWW before eventually appearing in WWW, it sounded obvious that those rumoral comments took place in the chain of understandement of art critic ones.
The first envy of Public Jokes came out within the misterstooding related to our three nationality. Our missuse of english through which we expressed our feeling brought us in a lot of lost in translation situations due to our different cultural background. After a lot of email and changing plans, we actually realized that we wanted the same show but we were not saying it in the same way (a Trophee Hall where artifacts and leftover are acting metonymically to tell the story behind an action). And due to communication matters we were stucked with this public jokes topic where we agreed about the fact that story itself should be the material of the show at least replacing the traditional caption under the work – eventually told like a story something like « this is the story of a guy ». We were planning to do some prepared actions in the field of the show, but as usual when you arrived to a new city where you are welcomed by an inhabitant (actually the marvelous artist-art manager Andreas Ullrich) you get quick into city history power in presence in faction/balance, and mostly you feel the need and the freedom to implement other dynamics as some out of the field commentator. City implemented its agenda and we came out with 3 duo works.
When Alain arrived at the end of the third day, we had a talk about all the difficulty to understand each other coming from 3 different country not talking directly only by emails in different rhythm of life. Alain felt the need to propose a variation of the first feedback we were planning to do about site specific actions we did, and regarding of the mistakes and questions behind this specific relation we each had about art theory and history, intervention and documentation, outdoor and indoor, he came up with this two collective session of 30 minutes of Art Theraphy Group where the curator is playing the role of art psychoanalyst and implementing exercises and questions to go deeper in the relationship with art and artworks. In front of the wall, were installed around a vintage carpet, a big sofa and a dozen of chairs in circle ; with on the corner, between a small video projector and a lamp, one confortable chair for the therapist and a small stool for his assistant Uli. To the public: « So what ’s your problem with art? » ; to the two artists: « So what’s your problem with Street art and gallery ? ». Bieber invited us to do one exercise to start (presenting yourself with your name associated to one word) one in the middle of the session (gathering and catching each others hands to make big hands knot then trying to collectively unknot without releasing the hands you were holding) then finally a speed collective he learned from Florian Rivière (consisting in running in a small space focusing on not touching the other runners ; then running by focusing on empty spaces – which is more successful because things move better when you focus on solutions than on problems). After we presented our reactive non-post-produced works (generating confusion about our intentions on the audience also related to the fact that Alain introduced us to annoy us as Street artists which we are not), we had strong talks with the group compound by art critic, art teacher, art designers, art students, art amateurs and one lyrical singer. Therapist assistant Uli took notes of the talks and each one was invited at the end to give a one sentence feedback about the performance. Alain Bieber then spent two hours editing a 20 sheets in 30 exemplars precious DIY fanzine, which the participants could bring with them.