our future belongs to past
“You can’t stop the future
You can’t rewind the past
The only way to learn the secret
… is to press play.”
Anonymous ART of Revolution
RikschaFahrt
RikschaFahrt by artist in residence Carla Mercedes Hihn from the Berlin residency program in Istanbul. Video by Dirk Holzberg, Musik Riuchi Sakamoto und Alva Noto.
Urban structures, urbanity, nature and landscapes are issues of Carla Mercedes Hihn installations and drawings. She is developing a new space, interacting with the architecture and creating a multi-dimensional situations.
Rosa in the City of Stones
Rosa Luxemburg was a founding member of the German Communist Party. Parts of the so called “Freekorps”- units killed her and her Comrade Karl Liebknecht on the 15th of January 1919. They held them responsible for prior riots following a general strike in Berlin.
Liebknecht and Luxemburg were part of a minority of people critisising the massacre of Armenians durnig the first world war and pleeding for international socialism and standards of human rights.
The Freekorps units were mainly consisting of retired soldiers and people with antirepublican political views.
- A Group of Communist workers at the Landwehr Kanal 1920
- The older one explains what happened on 15th of January 1919
- Rosa Luxemburg's body had been thrown into the water after she had been assasinated by rightist with a shot in her head
Jason Lutes Graphic Novel Triology about Berlin before WW II. describes in a fictional story the clashes between Communists and the rising Nazi-movement. In the first book “Berlin city of Stones” the depression and anger in the workers movement after the murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht is one main topic.
Most Germans beleived in the propaganda against the communist movement. Until today the older generation isn’t aware of the fact, that the song “There is a corps swimming in the Landwehrkanal” isn’t a nice folksong, but an awful blasphemy on Rosa Luxemburg’s death.
David Bowie’s Berlin
David Bowies first single after a ten years break is a hommage to Berlin, where he lived from 1976 to 1978.
With black and white pics from Schöneberg, the wall, the ruins of the Reichstag….. I love it, because I adore his albums “Heroes” and “Low”, that where produced in the Hansa-Tonstudios just beside the wall in those days.
It is a clever advertisement trick to market the single over I-Tunes by making it a requirement to buy the whole album in advance for getting this song for free though! Well, the album appears in March and it probably won’t disappoint either
Anyway Musicians like David Bowie, Iggy Pop and later on Nick Cave gave lots of Inputs to trigger Berlin’s trashy charme for getting a hotspot for creatives worldwide.
Where are we now?
Had to get the train
From Potzdamer platz
You never knew that
That I could do that
Just walking the dead
Sitting in the Dschungel
On Nurnberger strasse
A man lost in time near KaDeWe
Just walking the dead
Where are we now?
Where are we now?
The moment you know
You know, you know
Twenty thousand people
Cross Bose Brucke
Fingers are crossed
Just in case
Walking the dead
Where are we now?
Where are we now?
The moment you know
You know, you know
As long as there’s sun
As long as there’s sun
As long as there’s rain
As long as there’s rain
As long as there’s fire
As long as there’s fire
As long as there’s me
As long as there’s you
(David Bowie)
Hassan Khan in Istanbul
- Lust (2008)
- Smartphone pics
- moments of people
- and objects
- base new narrations
- reset in various contexts
Hassan Khan was presented in a complex magnificant show at the Museum Salt Istiklal (21.09.12-06.01.13). The Egyptian artist participated in a serial of events, several talks, a filmscreening and the final Music-performance “Superstructure II.” at the music club Ghetto.
Listen to Sperstructure II and watch the other visuals beside!
Khan likes to compare Istanbul and Cairo. For him both metropoles have similaritis. They are chaotic melting pots with a buzzing scene of upcoming artists and other creatives gaining space in the central city spaces. But it is important to realize the distortion of daily life in this rapidly changing environments. This fact is beautifully picked as a central theme in the Videoinstallation below. A working couple using its freetime after work to walk through Cairo and to fight the whole time 🙂
Hassan Khan from InEnArt on Vimeo.
Remembering Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin
Hüseyin B. Alptekin from InEnArt on Vimeo.
Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin left us five years ago and that is the only action we’ll never forgive him.
By remembering Hüseyin as a friend and artist there are thousands of valuable moments coming to my mind.
I loved his work for the Istanbul Biennial 2005. He had convinced the Monsignore of the St. Marco Cathedral in Venice to send Replicas of the Quadriga to Istanbul. They had been stolen by the Venetians during the Forth Crusade (1202-1204).
They were part of the Hippodrom in the old part of the city of Konstantinopolis and are probably of Roman origin. The robbery was part of one of the bloodiest invasions of a Capital with no mercy for the Christian population or their toppled head of state.
Hüseyin produced tiles with Horse motives for the show and was searching for a sponsor out of the the circle of the Turkish tile-industry. I am not sure if he was successful with this. His biggest problem was the lack of interest of collectors for his art during his lifetime.
It is fanatstic, that the MoMa made the work “H-Fact: Hospitality/Hostility” part of its collection last year. The evaluation of Hüseyins work he really deserved so much. Salt Istanbul did a wonderful retrospective in 2009 with the title: “I am not a studio artist”. No Hüseyin really wasn’t.
R.i.P. Love and sunshine for his wife Camilla und his son Marino.