22 August–27 September 2014
Participants
Brigitte Felderer, Freee, Ellie Harrison, Brandon LaBelle, Tricia Middleton, Cecilie Ullerup Schmidt, Heinz Schütz, transparadiso
Project group
Claudia Burbaum, Angus Cameron, Berit Fischer, Folke Köbberling, Pia Lanzinger, Olivia Plender
Being ‘part of the game’ demands participation in a delimited, rule-bound space. Games are simplified representations of society within which particular relationships and practices are repeatedly and competitively rehearsed. Some games are just that: games and nothing more. But other games – those played with politics, money, power, space – affect us whether we are part of the game or not. Taking the city itself as the board on which to play.
Six artistic positions will interrogate the meaning of the game itself, will enact the gamification of current issues, will ask about the possibility of not playing along, and will explore the various ways in which the city is always already a playground – a site for multiple, contrasting and conflicting games.
You are cordially invited to join us at various sites throughout the city:
Come out and play!
Events:
Friday, 22 August 2014, 16-22h,
transparadiso: On the Slim Probability
Racetrack Karlshorst, Treskowallee 129
(16-19h: Acceptance of bets, 20h: Proclamation of winning bets)
Saturday, 23 August, 14-16h: realization of the winning bets
location to be announced
Betting is usually a manifestation of the desperate search for fortune. The more precarious the living conditions are, the more people tend to bet. Horseracing betting on the contrary often carries the patina of bygone glory, where poor and rich mingle. Gambling and the lack of calculability of the horses tend to juxtapose despair and short-term fortune – until the next bet. An entirely different free of charge bet is now on offer at the Karlshorst racetrack: a bet on the realization of a small situation as a break from the monotony of daily routine.
Thursday, 26 August 2014, 19.30h,
LECTURE Cecilie Ullerup Schmidt: Nothing Left to Play
event space nGbK
Friday, 29 August 2014, 16h,
Ellie Harrison: The Global Race
sports field, In den Ministergärten 2, Berlin-Mitte
The Global Race is an absurd vision of the Olympic Games of the future, in which the brilliance of human ›innovation‹ means we no longer need to break a sweat! Staged at a local sports arena, participants will be invited to compete in a series of races on Segway devices. These popular, but profoundly annoying, machines symbolise the stupidity of our species – gratuitously wasting money and resources, whilst simultaneously preventing access to the gentle exercise that all bodies need to stay healthy.
Tuesday, 02 September 2014, 19.30h,
LECTURE Heinz Schütz: Politdesign
event space nGbK
Saturday, 06 September 2014, 19h,
Brandon LaBelle: Monument (to the Wild Imagination)
Rotes Rathaus, 3. Floor, Room 337 (Louise-Schroeder-Saal), Berlin-Mitte
Artist talk and performance including guest speaker Janet Merkel
4-7 September: nightly projections performed throughout the city
The work investigates the politics of creativity in today’s urban environment. This includes questioning how artists perform as part of the creative city, contributing to Berlin’s cultural image, as well as processes of gentrification, precarious living, and the »westernization« of the former east. The work searches for
escape routes and exits, employing group choreographies and guerrilla projections to creatively address and occupy the city.
In collaboration with: Janine Eisenächer, Hana Lee Erdman, Omar Nicolas, Steffi Weismann
Saturday, 13 September 2014, 15h,
Freee: Taking Sides
Volkspark Hasenheide, meeting point at entrance Graefestraße, Berlin-Kreuzberg
The Freee art collective football tournament recodes football as a platform for opinion formation and disagreement by placing slogans where footballers’ names and sponsors’ logos go. Teams are not selected by managers or peer pressure but by individuals choosing a slogan to wear. Fans who support a particular team, having no geographical name to shout, will chant the slogan together rivalled by the supporters of another team. The winning team of the tournament will bring honour to its slogan.
Saturday, 13 September 2014, 14h,
LECTURE Angus Cameron: Fooling about in public
Volkspark Hasenheide, meeting point at entrance Graefestraße, Berlin-Kreuzberg
From Sebastian Brant to Jón Gnarr, the Fool is both a scathing metaphor of and direct challenge to political power. The Fool works because he or she embodies paradox: playfully serious, powerlessly effective, stupidly clever, accidentally cunning. The Fool is both the essence and denial of ‘real’ power. Folly is not power, but it is always about power. And paradoxically, that is what makes him or her so enduring. The powerful may come and go, but: stultorum numerus infinitus est.
Saturday, 20 September 2014, 15h,
Folke Köbberling & Tricia Middleton: Non-negotiation
construction site of the Schlossplatz-Baustelle/ Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler, Schloßplatz 7, 10178 Berlin
Start and opening
21-24 September, 12-17h
sculptural performance
A one-week play about the peak of style, of the history writing and originality. A process of mutual destruction rooted in opposites is embedded in the art work, where modernist architectural elements will be coated with rotting baroque ornaments and vice-versa. An unpredictable process that manifests during the performance beginning on September 24th and that carries a foreboding of the onset of a new style. (until 27 September)
Tuesday, 23 September 2014, 19.30h,
LECTURE Brigitte Felderer: The City at Play. Vienna’s Playgrounds of the Postwar Period
event space nGbK
The lecture will be followed by the première of The Global Race - a six minute film by Noam Gorbat documenting Ellie Harrison’s performance for Part of the Game, which took place on 29 August 2014 at the sports ground near Potsdamer Platz.
Saturday, 27 September 2014, 15h,
Pia Lanzinger: Rolling Dice for Berlin
Kottbusser Tor, Berlin-Kreuzberg, in front of the ›Protest-Gecekondu
with the support of Kotti & Co.
Further dates / locations of
Rolling Dice for Berlin. The Gentrification Game:
Thursday, 4 September, 15h
Cecilienplatz, Berlin- Hellersdorf
Friday, 12 September, 15h
Mathilde-Jacob-Platz, vor dem Rathaus, Berlin-Moabit
Thursday, 18 September, 15h
Alfred-Scholz-Platz, Berlin-Neukölln
While the state is busy with saving the banks, the Berlin real estate market is transforming into an allegedly profitable industry: formerly reasonable and affordable rental flats are now objects of speculation and in short supply. »Rolling Dice for Berlin« transmits this logic into a huge board game to be played in the public sphere. The implications of the situation and the different trials to reclaim the right to the city are reconstructed as part of a global game with local particularities. This permits a different view on the rules of the game and on the spell dominating the events.