Urban Travellogue

Drawing as Desiring Machine - Summeracademy Salzburg 2011

2011-09-07T02:37:00.000-07:00

Here are some images from the final show of this years Summer-Academy Class "Drawing as Desiring-Machine".  Actually, I am quite proud about the fantastic, sometimes explosive, results. A Desiring Machine indeed. Keep up the spirits and the good work, everybody. Many more pictures from th Academy are on Sigrid's flickr page. Check it out!

Course: Christoph Schäfer, Assistance: Tanja Boukal

Hannahlisa Kunyik

Fotografiert von / Photographed by Susanne Mariacher

Hannahlisa Kunyik
Fotografiert von / Photographed by Susanne Mariacher

Hannahlisa Kunyik
Fotografiert von / Photographed by Susanne Mariacher

Hannahlisa Kunyik
Fotografiert von / Photographed by Susanne Mariacher

Sommerakademie - Tag der offenen Tür, 2011

* * *
Khai Ken Tai
De-Constructing Salzburg
Khai Ken Tai
De-Constructing Salzburg

Khai Ken Tai
De-Constructing Salzburg

Khai Ken Tai
De-Constructing Salzburg

* * *

Susanne Mariacher
ohne Titel/ Untitled

Susanne Mariacher
ohne Titel/ Untitled (detail)

Susanne Mariacher
ohne Titel/ Untitled (detail)

* * *

Brigitte Dannhäuser
Die Städter und die Ratten
Brigitte Dannhäuser
Die Städter und die Ratten

Brigitte Dannhäuser
Die Städter und die Ratten

Brigitte Dannhäuser
Die Städter und die Ratten

Brigitte Dannhäuser
Die Städter und die Ratten

* * *

Jenn Murray
Upmerge Series 2011

Jenn Murray
Upmerge Series 2011 (detail, slightly out of focus, sorry)

Jenn Murray
Upmerge Series 2011 (detail, slightly out of focus, sorry)

Jenn Murray
Upmerge Series 2011 (detail, slightly out of focus, sorry)

* * *

Tina Hainschwang
o.T./untitled

Tina Hainschwang
o.T./untitled

Tina Hainschwang
o.T./untitled
Foto: Sigrid Ehemann

Sigrid's flickr page

* * *

Giovanni Alberti
Gravity

Giovanni Alberti
Gravity

Giovanni Alberti
Gravity

Giovanni Alberti
Gravity

Giovanni Alberti
Gravity

Giovanni Alberti
Gravity

* * *

Vladimir Miladinovic
Golden age

Vladimir Miladinovic
Golden age

Vladimir Miladinovic
Golden age

Vladimir Miladinovic
Golden age

Vladimir Miladinovic
Golden age

* * *

Ida Duswald
Stadt als Wunschmaschine

Ida Duswald
Stadt als Wunschmaschine

Ida Duswald
Stadt als Wunschmaschine

Ida Duswald
Stadt als Wunschmaschine

* * *

Sigrid Ehemann
salzburg I the invisible cities (detail)
Sigrid's "Invisble Cities" Series looks much better as a slideshow

Sigrid Ehemann
salzburg I the invisible cities (detail)

Sigrid Ehemann
salzburg I the invisible cities (detail)
Sigrid's "Invisble Cities" Series looks much better as a slideshow

Sigrid Ehemann
salzburg I the invisible cities
Sigrid's "Invisble Cities" Series looks much better as a slideshow

* * *

Nina Gusenbauer
Titel? Ich überleg noch

Nina Gusenbauer
Titel? Ich überleg noch

Nina Gusenbauer
Titel? Ich überleg noch

Nina Gusenbauer
Titel? Ich überleg noch

* * *

Works not shown in the class but installed in Public Space:

locker-coding
Nicole Weniger

locker-coding
Nicole Weniger

* * *

Drawing as Desiring Machine Class (uncomplete)

Drawing as Desiring Machine Class (nearly complete)
Foto: Brigitte Dannhäuser

Ida and Tanja during production

Hannahlisa and Susanne with iconoclastic (thanks Hemma) work

Sigrid, Ida and Nina hanging out at 32 degrees Celsius
Drawing as Desiring Machine Class (detail), Salzburg 2011

 I got fantastic responses from different people who saw the variety, depth, decision, honesty and artistic precision of this fine group of young and old artists participating. There were no fakes, no attempts to make something hollow "look-like-art" - but a lot of originality, style, talent, unconventional turns, big individual steps and moves on thin ice. Many people realized and appreciated the extreme individuality of our exhibition. Thanks for the nice work!

And, by the way, we had so much fun, with your spirited art and temperaments, what a pity, it's over.

Christoph Schäfer in front of Salzburg Panorama (Foto: Jenn Murray)

From the course program: "Individual conversations to investigate students' ideas and to develop their personal artistic language are at the centre of the course. The drawing may be seen as an end product or as a step towards an installation, painting, screenplay or utopian urban design. The main thing is that drawing should be used as a "desiring-machine" for constructing worlds of one's own.

The course is intended as a platform for the exchange of subjective approaches to work, with drawing taken as the means of urban exploration. We will develop drawing tools for the analysis and representation of urban structures. You will go on expeditions into unfamiliar or forgotten areas of the town. Small-scale adventures in the town and escape routes from everyday urban life will be sought out, and their textures decoded.

Excursions, shared reading of poetic and theoretical texts, exercises in getting lost, and an intensive exchange organised in experimental set-ups are designed for the mutual reinforcement of the two aspects of the course, enabling the students to achieve new ways of looking at things, as well as imaginatively to cross their own boundaries and try out new techniques and practices.

Drawing will be the primary medium, but during the course the medium will repeatedly be changed to narrated or written text. Photography and other visual techniques may also be used."

Die Zumutungen der Welt mit majestätischer Geste parieren - Nachruf auf Annette Wehrmann

2011-04-02T03:25:00.000-07:00

Die Hamburger Künstlerin Annette Wehrmann ist gestorben. Freunde fanden sie am Donnerstag, den 20. Mai 2010, in ihrer Wohnung im Karolinenviertel.

Annette war eine kompromisslose Künstlerin von existenzieller Tiefe und Radikalität, und eine inspirierende Freundin.

Mit ephemeren und billigen Materialien stellte sie Objekte her, die ein Spannungsverhältnis zu gesellschaftspolitischen, erkenntnistheoretischen und künstlerischen Großfragen produzieren. Sie bearbeitete das Geld, die Religion, Gehirne, das Denken, die Stadt, den Staat, das Fernsehen, die Sprache. Von Beginn an legte sich Ihr Werk mit der Welt an.

Ich traf Annette erstmals Mitte der Achtzigerjahre auf den Stufen der Hamburger Hochschule für bildende Künste. Eben hatte ich meine Bewerbungsmappe abgegeben, da kam sie mir mit ihrem Exemplar entgegen - und das ist riesig, wahrscheinlich die größte Mappe, die je an der HfbK abgegeben wurde. Ein selbstgezimmerten Monstrum, das man unmöglich allein bewegen kann, mit dem Annette gleich mehrere Dinge auf einmal klar macht: sie hatte nicht vor, sich in ihrer künstlerischen Arbeit an institutionelle Vorgaben zu halten. Darüber hinaus war Kunst für sie eine Wunschmaschine, die den engen Rahmen der Kunst sprengt und die Regeln der Naturgesetze, die Schwerkraft zum Beispiel, ignoriert oder ausser Kraft setzt.

Zusammen brachten wir die Mappe ins Bewerbungsbüro - und trafen uns ein paar Monate später in der Grundklasse wieder. Umgehend entwickelte Annette eine ganz eigene Bildsprache: Aus Hobelspänen formte sie ein gigantisches Gehirn, das auf den ersten Blick aussah wie ein zusammengefegter Haufen, in dem sich beim näheren Hinsehen armdicke Gehirnwindungen vor der Instrumentalisierung der Intelligenz verbergen. Über ein halbes Jahr bearbeitete und durchbohrte sie ein große Holzscheibe, versah sie dann mit einer Stickerei aus tausend feinen Nähfäden.

Was sich in dieser Gebetsmühle aus brutalst maltretiertem Brett mit zarter Stickerei ankündigte, war eine Dialektik aus trickreichem Mechanikeinsatz und Wundererzeugung, die sich durch viele ihrer Arbeiten zieht. Ein paar Jahre später verspottete sie die Schwerkraft mit einer wassergefüllten, stecknadelbespickten Einkaufstüte - ihr erstes, wie sie selbst sagt, "gültges Werk". Aus dem märchenhafterweise kein Tropfen drang.

Sie baute utopische Architekturen - "UFOs" - aus Klebeband, Plastik, Holzstückchen, Science Fiction Romanen (shedhalle und Kunstverein Wolfsburg); sie mauerte Backsteine zu rollenden Kugeln und spielte damit Fußball; sie schaffte ihre eigene Währung "DSB-Seifenbeton" und ging damit einkaufen; sie organisierte eine Ausstellung (u.a. mit Alice Creischer, Andreas Siekmann und Linda Bilda) in Pavillions in Hamburgs Wallanlagen - der dadurch, zu der Zeit in weiten Teilen gesperrt, zu einer temporären fürstlichen Anlage Annettes wird; eine Siebzigerjahreskulptur auf Hamburgs erstem privatisierten Platz, dem Fleetmarkt, direkt im Fluchtpunkt der von Albert Speer gezogenen Achse zur Alster platziert, umbaute sie mit einem Bretterverschlag - und richtete darin eine Flohmarktverwaltung ein; für die Bundesgartenschau 2001 in Potsdam transformierte sie einen sowjetischen Militärwachturm in einen barocken Spiegelpavillon.

Im Rahmen der Skulpturprojekte in Münster sperrte sie 2007 das bei Spaziergängern und Radlern beliebte Ufer, um dort eine anspielungsreiche Baustelle einzurichten, das "Aaspa". Auf selten verstandene Weise verwob sie hier die Privatisierung des öffentlichen Raums (und des Glücks) mit einer Geschichte der utopischen Architektur und der Earth-Art: Richard Long wurde in einem Erdkreis fast wörtlich zitiert. Während die aufgeklärten Besucher_innen die negative Geste der Sperrung des Ufers noch zu lesen wußten, stießen die handgemalten Baustellenschilder der Künstlerin in fortschrittlichen Kunstkreisen auf Unverständnis: Man erwartete die unverfängliche Bildsprache des Fakes - und so entging vielen eine andere , tiefere Ebene dieser Arbeit, die von den Bedingungen des Glücks spricht.

Denn die Malerei auf dem "Baustellenschild" zitierte (neben deutlichen Referenzen an Mario Merz und utopische Architektur) den "Jungbrunnen" von Lucas Cranach, und, ganz deutlich, den abgefahrenen "Garten der Lüste" von Hieronymus Bosch - und sprach damit von den strukturellen Bedingungen und tiefen Sehnsüchten der "wellness", vom langen Weg des Glücksversprechens durch eine befreite Lust, zur Heruntergekommenheit der marktgeregelten Regulierung der Lüste. Das Versprechen eines kollektiven Ortes des leiblichen Glücks, Baustelle eines besseren Lebens - hinter Bauzäunen eingesperrt. Damit sprach Aaspa etwas Exstenzelles an, auf berührende Weise, und zeigte es trotzdem als etwas gesellschaftlich Produziertes.

Im Rückblick denkt man natürlich, das Aaspa auch von ihrer persönlichen Situation sprach: In den letzten Jahren ging es ihr gesundheitlich immer schlechter, Annette war zerrissen von Krankheiten, die einhergingen mit Zwängen, Regelmäßigkeiten und Erschöpfungszuständen. Es wurde ihr immer schwerer, den Zumutungen des Alltags mit der von ihr als angemessen empfundenen souveränen Rigorosität zu begegnen, sich - mit schroffem Esprit und listigem Humor - aus der Kunst heraus neu zu erfinden.

Wir verlieren eine Gesprächspartnerin, die Erkenntnisse gleichermaßen aus Philosophie wie aus Schundlektüre ziehen konnte. Zahlreiche Kollegen und Kolleginnen wurden von Annettes Arbeiten inspiriert und beeinflusst, manche haben bei ihr geklaut. Sie schrieb Texte auf Luftschlangen, auf Smarties, machte Performances - eine dauerte zwei Wochen am Stück.

Die Blumenrabatten, mit denen die bürgerliche Gesellschaft die Fallen tarnt, zu denen ihre Städte geworden sind, sprengte sie kurzerhand in die Luft. Die Fotos davon hängen heute im Ludwig Forum in Aachen, gegenüber einer der besten Serien von Martin Kippenberger, dessen Arbeit sie mochte. "Nieder mit dem Idealismus" heisst die Serie, und Annette Wehrmanns Blumensprengungen halten mühelos stand. Eine Dialektik aus Zärtlichkeit und Brutalität, aus Poesie und Banalität, aus feiner Intelligenz und provozierender Dummheit, aus billigsten Materialien und majestätischer Geste durchzieht ihre Arbeit und ihr Leben.

Annette wurde mitten aus den Vorbereitungen für eine Ausstellung des Essener Folkwangmuseums gerissen. Sie war erst 48 Jahre alt. Was für ein Verlust. Annette war - wie eine ihrer Serien hieß - auf der Suche nach den "Orten des Gegen". Ob sie diesen Ort für sich je gefunden hat, wissen wir nicht. Aber sie hat einen solchen Ort für andere denkbar gemacht.

Christoph Schäfer, Hamburg, 1. Juni 2010, veröffentlicht in: Springerin, Heft 3, 2010

Moscow Diary (2010)

2010-12-23T16:43:00.000-08:00

Strolling through Moscow in November, I came across the biggest billboard I have ever seen.The giant timeline is hanging right next to the Kremlin.A panorama of architectures is displayed on it.
Neoliberal urban planning mimics stalinist baroque architecture, I learn, and the real estate developers emulate soviet progressivism as well.However, in the Moscow of 2010, the sky of the future is painted red.

Aggressive Cosiness - The Forever Young Pensioners, Ballykinlar, Northern Ireland

2010-12-20T08:37:00.001-08:00

Embedded artists vs. interventionist residents

Christoph Schäfer, 2010; Published in: Trans-Local-Act, Cultural Practices within and Accross; Edited by Doina Petrescu, Constantin Petcou, Nishat Awan, more info and free download at www.rhyzom.net

It was in the early nineties that I discussed the term "interventionist" for the first time. Curator Sabine B. Vogel had used the term to describe the work of artists she had invited to a group show in the Vienna Secession, Oppositionen & Schwesternfelder. Dan Peterman, Joe Scanlan and the minimal club were part of the exhibition, as was I. The Wochenklausur was working next door on their very first project. In contrast to them, we, the artists in the group show, were strongly opposed to the term "intervention", and pointed at the history of the word in futurist circles, who distinguished the anti-war futurists from the pro-war futurists - the interventionists.

Later, with the war in Yugoslavia building up, the term became part of the green new-speak, rhetorically camouflaging the NATO bombings. At the same time it made a career in the lingo of NGOs, along with a banalized handbook breed of systems theory, to adapt social work to the neoliberal reality of decreasing financial support. "Crisis intervention" is the word favorized in this millieu, and I believe it is not by chance, that the languages of the military, of politicians, NGOs, artists and management-consultants become alike.

Now we, a group of artists and architects connected to the EU-funded Rhyzom project, are driving through a military camp in Balinkynlar, a small village near Belfast, and home of the British Army regiment "2 Rifles". Here, in Northern Ireland, cities and communities are still divided in the year 2010. In Belfast so called "peace walls", 4 to 6 meters high, separate Loyalist from Catholic areas.

Feeling hundred years of history

With us in the minibus is artist Anne Marie Dillon, who lives and works in Balinkynlar - and was never before allowed to enter the army base. But today we are treated in a different manner, as our group of international artists is operating under the identity of EU culture.

A 2-Rifles-Regiment officer with communicative skills welcomes us with tea, biscuits and an introduction, emphasizing the changed role soldiers have today. The troops just returned from operations in Afghanistan. In a few weeks they will go for training in Kenya.

The officer has prepared a slide show for us EU culture guys, stressing the cultural competences of his troops. A slide entitled "What did we do?" informed us about the extended concept of a soldier’s task - "Soldier First" it said, "but also: Spokesman, Policeman, Humanitarian, Diplomat, Mayor". While slides of kneeling Soldiers discussing with Afghans were shown, the officer explained: "It is something you normally don't think about doing as a soldier. Discuss questions like: where the school should be, where local care should be delivered - within a local community.... When you go to a place where there isn't a structure in place - although you are not making the decisions - you are the one corralling this together. To say: Where are we? How are we going to do this? Getting them to make the decisions. But actually providing that forum, and the ressource, to make these things happen."

Picture of soldier speaking with Afghan children

Apparently, the Rifles had been transformed into a regiment of armed social workers, a kind of Wochenklausur in uniform - equipped with soft skills to make the locals participate. "Cultural Training is really important. And it's something we put an awful lot of effort into, to understand the local culture, to understand the way you are percieved, and that everything you do influences other people. It is being able to be in a completely different culture, and being able to understand, what you are doing. And also - not all of this culture is the same - people have different viewpoints locally. We're calling it The Human Terrain, in lack of a better phrase. When you arrive in a new area, in Afghanistan - and the same is true in Iraq - trying to get a feel for hundreds of years of history. Different bits - why so-and-so isn't talking to so-and-so, and never put these two people into one room together... - all of that - we're asking an awful lot of our people, to get that right. It's a key thing of what we do - because one wrong meeting, one wrong thing that you say can put you back a long way." Feeling, cultural sensitivity, accepting difference, self-reflexivity - not much longer and the officer and us would have gotten deeper into an open exchange about tools and methods between interventionist practitioners...

And this is not by chance: There is an instrumentalising spirit going through a certain breed of public art projects. After shaking off the restrictions of the white cube exhibition space, there seems to be an irresistable urge to re-oedipalize oneself by emulating the style, perspective and scale of values of a social service provider, or, even more problematic, that of a provider of economic solutions. "Art in context", "mediation", "target groups", "empowerment", "success control", a clean separation between us and them, the normal people, the locals - this is the terminology used in the proposal prose of NGOs and New Genre Public artists alike. I hate all this. I think, these words represent a totally corrupt attitude to the world. So when I wrote my first flyer for Park Fiction, back in 1995, I used the word "Interventionist Residents", to describe the activities of our group. And an interventionist resident group is, who we met in Balinkynlar.

Join the Caravan of Love (Stand up! Stand up! Stand up!)

I refuse to think about Anne Marie Dillon and The Forever Young Pensioner's work in "effective" terms. Yes, they have created a tool, a weapon, a machine. Yes, they are a group explicitly integrating Catholics and Protestants. Yes, their work does escape given categories of artwork. And yet, that is nothing less than the classic task of art since the Renaissance - to redefine, with each work, what the boundaries of art are. To test the limits and go over the border, when the need arises. Exactly that is what the work manages to achieve.

A.M. Dillon and the Forever Young Pensioners demand a community center for Balinkynlar. Instead of complaining about the lack of building, they just started the community center - in a used caravan. They park it in different places in town, place chairs around it when the weather is fine, make tea. And discuss. Maybe this began for practical or propagandistic reasons. But it has gone far beyond this - the Forever Young Pensioner's caravan speaks a symbolic language that tackles the big social and political issues and the deep cultural frictions at stake. The caravan is decorated with an exuberant collection of ornaments: sculpted flowers and birds, porcelain animals and angels. Inside, the seats are padded in rose pattern, and the roses have also found their way to the outside of the caravan. The sweet ornaments and heavy bouquets don't just stay snug in the secure privacy of the interior - they're winding vinelike to the outside, they cover and decorate the hub cap, the coachwork. Groups of delicate ceramic birds congregate on the rooftop, peep around corners. The flowery CI covers chairs and tables placed outside the caravan. Yes, this work is much more a rhizome - than a "work".

All this would be remarkable, even in a different, less politically contested context, as a work of art in its own right, transgressing the border between the private and public (a quality, which, in the humble view of the author, is a sign of greatness in an artwork, be it David's "Marat", Gordon Matta Clarke's "Bingo" House). The Balinkynlar Community Center Caravan, thus, turns the intimate, the feminine, outside. The ornament - which, according to Adolf Loos' modernist patriarchal doctrine - is a crime.

But the meaning of the caravan goes even deeper. What do you do in a country, where the classical routes of political self-organization and militant collectivity have gone so far, for such a long time, that they have lost their integrity, their emancipatory potential?

A.M. Dillon and the Forever Young Pensioners suggest new ways, how to voice dissent, without trodding down the same old beaten track. They constitute a parallel space of exchange, a center on the move.

The Pensioner's style of "aggressive cosiness" renders unspoiled forms of collectivity - the private tea party - accessible - as a source of political action. A winding rose - that has thorns.

Portrait of Ulyanovsk - A workshop on public art and urban platforms

2010-11-18T16:18:00.000-08:00

NOVEMBER 8: I arrive from Moscow in a Saab airplane filled with 25 men and 2 women. While our luggage is packed on a military lorry, I feel like I finally arrived in Russia.

Ulyanovsk Airport, Foto: Christoph Schäfer, November 2010

Even more so, when a young man in ironed black trousers picks me up with a black Wolga (with driver). The soviet associations fade as we enter the car and the sound of russian plastic pop filles the air. The road leading from the airport to Ulyanovsk is 60 meters wide. At first. Then we cross the bridge, the famous Ulyanovsk bridge, which finally, I am told, was finished - last year, after 20 years of planning. It is the second longest bridge in Europe, and quite an impressive sight, where Wolga looks as big as the sea.

I'm dropped off at the Hotel, a 22 floor modernist skyskraper from the Breshnew era. Still breathing the air and charme of that time, I have a room with a splendid view on the Lenin memorial and the Wolga. I take a little walk and come across the first social sculpture in the public space of Ulyanovsk: a bridge in front of the Hotel, filled with loads of locks, symbolising, I guess, the love of couples. Ulyanovskians are passionate people who display their feelings in public space, and happiness, to some extent, is not seen as only a private affair...

Ulyanovsk-bridge of traffic

Ulyanovsk bridge of love

I take off to the local shopping mall. On the way I come across a - somehow to be expected - comrade Lenin, leaning at a wall of a backyard hut, and a few steps further, next to the mall, I encounter a - somewhat unexpected - lifesize comrade Mao standing in all his smiling pride next to a lion in front of a chinese restaurant.

Comrade Lenin in the backyard

Comrade Mao in front of a Coke-ad

In the shopping center there are two different play corners - one in the toyshop, another called Smiland, a small version of Ikeas Smalland. Ulyanovsk likes children, I think, and provides shopper's kids with large chaotic play areas in the cold half of the year.

Smiland, play area in the shopping mall

Play area in toy shop, Ulyanovsk

I buy some toys - two realistic Neanderthalers (because I like didactic toys), and a knight riding a horse decorated with Hammer and Sikle. I rush back to the Hotel, where I'm picked up by Anna, who works for the governor - the person to watch my actions, I think at the beginning. However, she turns out to be my ally, as she is the lady with the connection to the governor, with an interest in art, in German films by Fassbinder, and in extending the strict academic frame of thinking in the art school and the city. Again the beautiful old Wolga limousine. We pick up the elegant Elena, the translator, who works at the University. She's wearing a Gil Bret coat, a subtle combination of grey high tech materials and wool cloth. We look at the streets with beautiful old russian houses that survive the soviet union and capitalism because baby Lenin had lived in several of these. We have a look at Lenin memorial, at a sculpture of Lenin's father, at the splendid view over the Wolga, at the main shopping street of Ulyanovsk, and go to buy some materials for the workshop. Although it is November, there is no snow, the temperature is spring like. We finish the first day with a meal in a cellar restaurant, where I have my first borscht soup. The owners of the restaurant switch the music from the usual russian pop to german electronically enhanced volksmusik, maybe an (unwanted) gesture of courtesy to my German language, maybe for exotic reasons. We roughly discuss my plans for the next day and the talk I am going to give. Anna turns out to be a person with loads of ideas, and very much in support of the idea of culture as a transformative power.

After the day I feel like I need to see the nightlife of Ulyanovsk. In the centre of the central shoppingmall there is an atrium cafe that plays very loud technomusic from a PC. Sushi and Italian coffee specialties are sold at relatively outrageous prices. I look around: at the table left of me a couple well into their fourties (maybe older) has a meeting or date. Most other people are younger than me. In front of me, a beautifully made up girl with an impressive long neck and straight black hair is working away on her computer. From time to time, shy looking boys come to say hello to her. She is clearly the most glamorous guest and the atrium café is her stage. As the shops around the central cafe close at 10, the cafe in the atrium gets crowded and more lively. The lights are dimmed down, the music turned up even louder. A different advantage of bringing a laptop to the cafe became now visible: the well made up girl's face now gets the most beautiful light from the screen on her fantastic white skin. She walks to the bar to place an order, checking the effect that the body under her tight pullover has on the other guests. Going back to her seat, she is wearing a big felt hat, that makes her small head look even more cute.

Generally the place is used as a stage, where russian women can effectfully peel themselves out of their coats and sport their new clothes. Somehow for me this sense of women celebrating life and dominating the public sphere was not at all what I had expected to find in Russia, in November, 1000 kilometers east of Moscow, but the joyful atmosphere becomes the starting point for my workshop program.

Fury Television transferring the image of Ulyanovsk High Street
to a remote cellar bar

NOVEMBER 9 - Art as Platform:

The next day I meet Olga Tatosyan for the first time - and the students. I give a talk on art in public spaces and the viewer as the (co-)producer of artworks, starting with Constructivism and Productivism, starting with a quote of Varvara Stepanova, with El Lissitzkys demonstration room and Rodchenkos workers club, going to the idea of a wall painting working-as-a-machine by Mexican artist Alfaro Siqueiros, to the resonance that the Productivist / early soviet art had in the work of the Situationists, of Gordon Matta Clark, Alice Aycock and Dan Graham, and ending on examples of collaborative artistic practices from the last 10 years, like PTTLs collaboration between unemployed and artists in Bruxelles, the project Ecobox by Atelier d'Architecture Autogeree (AAA) from Paris, and the Park Fiction project in Hamburg, it's planning tools and the Documenta11 Installation (that strongly quotes Rodchenkos Workers Club).
All these examples, even the early soviet classics, are quite new to most students, whose training is, as I learned later, extremely academic. I also underestimate how young they actually are, dominantly between 17 and 18.

Workshop participants working, at Ulyanovsk University

Then we discuss what to do in the workshop. Some students are ready to develop an independent project. With others I want to develop a mixture from "reading" the city and think about potential interventions.

Everybody has as a homework the task to describe a place in the city, and already the next day some results are already extremely nice: Daria and Izmira, seventeen to eighteen year old students, have taken the chance to make an expedition into lesser known parts of the city and come back with a lovely description of their adventure at the periphery, with an unusual choice of photos of things they saw on the way, the shops and the grey market, the places specialised on youth culture outfits, combined with associations, subjective thoughts and a youthful playful attitude of having fun in the city.

Others have looked at a space where youngsters hang out, and develope an idea for seats to be adjusted there.

Some kids found the central square between Lenin Memorial and Hotel Venez suitable for which culture project ever, as it was central... Some participants did not like the idea of starting an expedition into everyday life, and wanted BIG ideas, Art with a big capital A. However, this course is a modest endeavor to find the North-West-Passage of imagination in the walls of the city of everyday life.

I develop a questionaire , a ten page interactive drawning book, a tool to decode the city, with very concrete tasks, combined with provocations - and, as I hope, questions that would trigger imagination.

NOVEMBER 10 - Decoding the City:

The questionaire is a hit. Kids and grownups use it as an excuse to have a little adventure in their own city, to decode the "Language of the City", to explore spaces they otherwise would have avoided. Everybody gets a tiny budget to spend in the cafés or restaurants, and off they go. As a provocation I tell them, that they are my spies into the everyday life of Ulyanovsk.

Is the place warm or cold, feminine or masculine?
Draw everything that you can reach with your hands.
Draw the customers outfits (male, female).
Draw all shoes you can see.
Do the waiters wear uniforms, if yes: do they alter them?
Draw an item, that symbollically represents the place.
What do you see? How does the space organise the views?
How does the place communicate with the street, the city?
To which outside does the place relate - why are people here?
Does the place work as a platform?
Is the place speaking about faraway, exotic places, about the past?
Which past, and how is this done?
Listen to what people talk about in the restaurant.
Write down a dialogue, as precisely as possible. (...)

NOVEMBER 11 - The Spy who loved the City:

Everybody brings back really nice reports. We spend the whole day, hours and hours, reading and presenting the results. Two Ladies, I think teachers at the art school or at school, who at the beginning had not much fun with the workshop, come back with a comparative report about the German Restaurant and brewery "Karl Marx Strasse" and a wild Usbekistan Restaurant. They even produce a video.

Larissa 's Video Portrait of Ulyanovsk

Masha had loads of fun spying on other peoples dialogues, and brought back absurd dialogues picked up in a restaurant. Then we search for a wall for the final presentations. Not an easy task: I want a white wall, where we can work, stick stuff, put nails in etc. - we are offered fantastic Museum spaces with golden walls, vitrines and those horrible gallery-rails to hang up frames.

Workshop desperately searching the white cube

Finally we are promised a wall in the art school - and, after the very hard and long day, went out eating pizza together.

NOVEMBER 12 - Testing the cultural codes

We meet in the University and distribute / discuss the ideas, tasks and concepts for every participant. The idea is now to draw a multifaceted image of Ulyanovsk. MY idea is, that everybody would get one specific task - like: spying on dialogues, take fotos of everything red, take pictures of images of houses, take pictures of sculptures, of hands, write down the text of poosters etc. - to drive to two or three places as a group, to swarm out and come together after the job again and go to the next space. The students however all want to work individually. I have doubts about the quality of the upcoming results. My pessimism, however, would be disappointed...

I join Daria on her trip to an international suburban market, where fake brands are sold by people from all over the world - Vietnam, Kasachstan, Usbekistan.

Suburban market, Ulyanovsk

Smokers bench, suburban market, Ulyanovsk

Suburban wallinstallation, Ulyanovsk

NOVEMBER 13 - Building Tatlin from School Chairs

On the final day my plan is to definitely produce a - in which way ever - good looking installation of the products by the workshop. We look at everybody's designs and decide, what would be printed and in which size. Sounds easy, but took another few hours, and then we wait ages for the prints. We construct a kind of hanging that works like a diagram, like a "Proun-Raum", where different views of the city correspond with each other. When a TV team visits us, I give the two Alexeijs the job to construct a Tatlin tower from the schools chairs. A very young girl called Dasha has made beautiful little sculpture/city from staples and taken pictures of these - which we have enlarged to giant format as the central image. The two boys have made an interesting and ambitioned series of photos of the cities floor, feet testing the surface, and the accomopanying heads. Daria has taken pictures of people in the streets in the suburbs - and in the city center, where everybody was willing to pose for her. Gala has shot a systematic series of construction fences, a series related to a work that combined digital thinking and remnants of industrial architectures. Varvara and Helena have made fantastic foto of light colors in grey or beige surroundings, as well as the broken images of traffic lights. Sasha has made a beautiful and dark series of fotos of mirrors in the city - I pick two that grasp the feeling of work and pressure in the tram, and another one that mirrors the precarious place for young people to hang out in front of an office building in the city. Her friend Alexandra, who has given a fabulous talk the day before, has brought pictures of the somewhat official Ulyanovsk.

The Installation at Ulyanovsk University

Thanks to Goethe, Petra Reichensperger, Olga Tatosyan, Anna and Helena from Ulyanovsk, for this great experience.

Some Feedback:
http://bordersoff.ru/publ/30-1-0-368 Christoph Schäfer gab eine Meisterklasse in Uljanowsk - in kryptischem Deutsch.

http://bordersoff.ru/publ/30-1-0-367 Lustige Fotos.

http://bordersoff.ru/publ/32-1-0-364 Lustige Fotos.

http://www.ulpravda.ru/paper/article/9089.html

http://vestnik.ulsu.ru/40-1029-19-noyabrya-2010/takzhe-chitayte/urbanistika-v-iskusstve

http://www.ulzapovednik.ru/news/news_konkr.php?ID=10748&CURRENT_PHOTO=1

Dakar, November 2008.

2008-11-25T08:02:00.000-08:00

Old BMWs roam the streets of the Senegalese capital. It appears to me, as if the roads of Dakar are filled with Europe's recent past, the city lending a second life to cars from Germany or France. Family limousines, disused years before, are transformed into Senegalese taxis, working their way through the dusty and sandy streets of the southern metropolis, painted, lucky symbols above each wheel, windows shattered, taped together - or missing completely.

On our walks through the city, we pass a street corner, an empty lot near Boulevard Canal IV, where old BMWs are being repaired. I want to know more about this used-car-economy in the city. And I wonder, how the production of knowledge works - how is it possible to repair a complicated, computer-driven vehicle on this dusty plot, without even a car-lift? As we don't speak Wolof, we ask actress Lisa Dior to join in and translate for us. I had a lot of questions prepared, but the interview takes a different path, full of surprising turns, orchestrated dramatically by the mechanic and owner of the BMW repair workshop.

CS: How did you start to work with BMW? Why not a different brand?
(Mechanic: starts to talk)
Translator: He said that he started in 1983, and he started with some auto-brands. Everyone was doing the same thing, and there was not a lot of people interested in BMW. Then he thought, if he start with BMW, he might have enough money, and get many orders.
(Mechanic: continues)
Translator: He says, that he had learned for 4 years, and he learned by - ...avion... how do i say it... - by learning to be an airplane mechanic. I don't know if you understand... He learned being a mechanic - but for plane! Not by car.
Margit: That's funny!
Translator: He said that there is a lot of connection, because whenever you have something on a BMW, you have it on a checkboard by plane. There is a lot of similitude.
CS: Ok! Wow!
Translator: He said that his teacher was a ... he had to travel, cause he was going in Ivory Coast, and one of the biggest house of BMW called him and they wanted to work with him, but he had to repair one car before. It was the test. I don't know if you understand? That was the test. And he succeeded. And there was one car that had been sitting there for one... year - and no one could repair it. And he was the one who came and repaired it. And that's how he get the job.
Margit: So funny! It's funny!
Translator: Yeah!
(Mechanic get's a call on the mobile)

Margit (to translator): Super!
Translator: Are you sure?
Margit: Yes. It's so interesting. No one will believe it in Germany. It's so special! It's good! And you do it good! You translate really good. Such a nice woman and these boys, it's also a nice picture...
Translator: Haha!
Margit: If you have a beautiful woman in your film, it's always... important.
Translator: He's talking about his job right now...
(Mechanic finishes talking on the mobile and continues)
Translator: He said that, when they asked him what had happened to the car, he told them to change a lot of pieces, parts, and then he made the bill, and that was around three million... and they bring the parts from Germany... and the car was for an arab, who was making some "formule A" - I think - cause that was a sport car. And they said: we won't take you right now, you can not start the job right now, because it's unbelievable! We got to call the arab, to come and test the car with you. If everything is alright with it - you can start right now. And the arab guy take the plane, they test the car for two hours, and everything was cool - and that's how he started to work.
Margit: Haha! Interesting! Unbelievable! Wahnsinn!
Translator: And after that there was a seminar. That was supposed to happen in Ivory Coast. There was a lot of people from a lot of countries in Africa, and they had two teachers - a German one and an Australian one. He said the name but I forget...
CS: A Seminar?
T: Yes. And at the end of that, they had a test, and he was the second at the end of this time. And there were a lot of countries - 16?
Mechanic: 60.
T: Sixty persons, from every country in Africa.
Mechanic (speaking German): Urkunde!
Margit: Ah! Urkunde!
T: He always went to Ivory Coast, to learn something, and 1994, they were bankrupt. And they were obliged to close. That's how he lost his job.
CS: O.K.
T: He's talking about Motocycles. They were coming in parts. And he was the one who was making it perfect.
T: In 1992, there was a big conference here by the islamic countries, and the government asked them to prepare 15 BMW 7 Series. But later on, the government did not respect the engagement, the contract, because some islamic country gave them some cars. So they didn't pay them, that's why the company closed. So they had a lot of Motos, and a lot of cars here, and they didn't know how to use it, because only big structures, big companies or the government can afford such a car at the time. Like the governement or some big institutes. And, by the way, they didn't have the money to pay their employees, to pay their personals, to pay their bills, that's the - how do you call it, bankrupcy.
Margit: Unbelievable.
T: He says, that because of that, he took all the money he had and he opened here. That was in 1994.
T: And he say, in 2000 a big company that repairs BMWs opened here. And they asked him to come and work with them. But they are not thinking the same way, with the same mind, the same philosophy, they didn't see the same by the same, and that's why he said "no". He says, he prefers to stay here, working for himself, make the young one's a chance, cause they didn't have the chance to learn at school. So he works here to give them chance to learn something, and can have a family, too.
Christoph: So young people they learn by starting to work here?
T: He is helping them, so they learn by starting by touching and seeing what he's doing. And he says, the chance he had - he never went to school - not to french school, to arabic school - but right now, he can read french notice... instruction sheets from BMW, he can read his newspaper, he can read whatever he wants - but he didn't learn it, he learned it by: someone said "this is this, this is that", and that way he learned it. And he says, this chance he'd got, there are many people in this country who ain't got it. And that's why he wants to help that young one's, to do something.
Margit: Super!
Christoph: Ja.
Margit: Das ist Super. Very interesting.

T: He said, that time when he was working for that guys, he had the chance to go to Austria, to Vienna. But the problem was - his boss, he didn't want to let him go. Because he said - the boss said at that time: If he let him go, he'll lose him. Cause he will see them, and make some other business. And he said, maybe that's what god wanted, cause here whenever we say something, we say: that's what god wants. And he says that, what god wwanted is for him to stay here and maybe help the others and give them a chance.
Christoph: Yes.
T: He says that, maybe you get the money and you get the chance to see what happened, where is the problem with the computer and all that, but he we aint got that possibility, but he said that god give us mind, to think, and try to know what's happened and all that.
M: Das ist gut. Please tell him: I also learned all by doing, not in school. So I understand that.
Mechanic: Voilá! (continues in Wolof)
T: he says that he's very glad to meet you, because here nobody cares about them. And he's very glad you cam and see what he's doing, and he is very happy to explain you how it goes, all that stuff.
M: Thank you! Merci beaucoup, Monsieur. Tres interessant!
T: he say you are always welcome. Whenever you want something, or you want an interview, you can come.

Questions: Christoph Schäfer, Live Translation: Lisa Dior; Category: Texts that didn't make it into "The City is our Factory"

Paris | Dakar

2008-10-18T04:00:00.000-07:00

Paris, 18. Oktober 2008, 16 Uhr

Den Abflug aus dem neu designten Terminal E des Flughafens Paris Charles de Gaulle hatte ich mir anders vorgestellt. Während die regulären Passagiere des Flugs Air France 718 nach Senegal direkt aus der eleganten Halle vorne ins Flugzeug steigen, sind am Heck des Fliegers Vorkehrungen getroffen worden, um einen unfreiwilligen Gast an Bord zu befördern: Eine extra Gangway steht auf dem Flugfeld, der Zugang eng umstellt von drei Polizeifahrzeugen. Beim
Betreten der Kabine kommen mir protestierende Passagiere auf dem Weg zum Cockpit entgegen, tumultartiges Getöse dringt aus dem hinteren Teil des Flugzeugs nach vorne. Ich drängle mich durch zu meinem Platz im hinteren Teil des Flugzeugs – mindestens sechs Polizisten drücken einen gefesselten, jungen Afrikaner auf die Sitzflächen der letzten Bankreihe.
Eine Polizistin mit Lederhandschuhen macht sich am Kopf des Abschiebehäftlings zu schaffen oder hält ihm den Mund zu. Trotzdem gelangen immer wieder Klagen und Schreie des unfreiwilligen Passagiers an unsere Ohren. Abgeschirmt wird die Szene von etwa drei Zivilbeamten, im Hintergrund Richtung Ausgang stehen zusätzliche uniformierte
Polizisten, die groteske Szene umringt von unterschiedlichsten Passagieren, die protestieren, auf Polizei und Crew einreden, argumentieren, ihrer Fassungslosigkeit über die Vorgänge in der Kabine Ausdruck verleihen. Ein Gutteil der Fluggäste ist in eine Art Stehstreik getreten – das Flugzeug ist voll, man weigert sich, unter diesen Umständen loszufliegen. Ein Passagier bringt die Polizeiaktion mit der Kolonialgeschichte in Verbindung, ein älteres Paar hält Crew und Polizei lautstark die Passagierrechte vor. In unterschiedlichsten Sprachen wird gefragt, warum Air France solche Vorgänge an Bord zulässt, Forderungen, der Kapitän solle die groteske Szene beenden, werden laut. Der taucht auch auf, doch obwohl die Situation langsam tumultartigen Charakter bekommt, bricht er die Sache offenbar nicht ab, verzieht sich unverrichteter Dinge in die Pilotenkanzel.

Die Situation eskaliert, als CRS Spezialeinheiten, martialisch ausgestattet mit Helmen, Schildern und Gummiknüppeln, in der Kabine auftauchen: Passagiere werden eingeschüchtert, Leute die Fotos machen oder filmen, werden bedroht, Rentner werden angeherrscht, die Stimmung im Flieger wird dadurch erst richtig aufgeheizt. Plötzlich stürmt das 6 bis 10 köpfige Rollkommando durch das halbe Flugzeug, knüppelt wahllos auf Passagiere ein, greift sich schließlich einen großen afrikanischen Mann. Andere Fluggäste gehen empört dazwischen, ein Frau versucht den Passagier festzuhalten, andere stellen sich in den Weg, das Rollkommando
prügelt sich seinen Weg zurück zur Gangway und zerrt den Passagier aus dem Flieger. Eine alte Dame steht wegen der Aktion unter Schock und bricht fast zusammen, Sanitäter rufen den Flughafenarzt herbei. Kurz darauf bricht die Polizei die Abschiebeaktion ab, die Zivilpolizisten
packen ihre Sachen zusammen. Es dauert ewig, bis der junge Afrikaner von seinen Fesseln befreit ist. Endlich verlässt die gesamte Kompanie unter Applaus der Zuschauer das Flugzeug. Ein Amerikanischer Fluggast vergleicht die Aktion mit Nazi-Germany.

Fazit: Sanitäter und Ärzte sind noch eine halbe Stunde mit der Ohnmächtigen beschäftigt, das Flugzeug startet mit einer Stunde Verspätung, ein kritischer Passagier wird zunächst provoziert, dann verhaftet, und am Mitflug gehindert.

Christoph Schäfer, Dakar, 19.10.2008