until 26.03. | #1054ARTatBerlin | Laura Mars Gallery shows from 11th February 2017 the exhibition “Fruit Solutions” by the artists Chris Dreier and Gary Farrelly. The Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence presents „Fruit Solutions“ In 2015 Chris Dreier and Gary Farrelly founded an internationally operating organisation, “The Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence”, OJAI for short. There each of both founding members has accepted an office: Chris Dreier has the seat of the „Director for Financial Research and Systemic Risk“ and operates from Berlin, whereas Gary Farrelly holds the post of the „Director for Administrative Heritage“ at the EU‐metropolis of Brussels where he supervises the „Self Inventory Desk“. By this very special method of self‐instutionalisation and with the aim of the bureaucratisation of human experience both artists have jointly created a modular system in which they are allowed to incorporate all their activities and obsessions like documents are being clipped into a filing cabinet. The main focus of the artistic alliance, which is very serious and full of humour at the same time, is on a jointly cultivated euphoria for modernism. Wether it be in the area of architecture, of infrastructure, in the sector of financial concerns or in the field of information processing – progress and rationality are the core elements of their work. The office as an art installation: OJAI at Laura Mars Gallery As there are so many links and interferences between the ideas of Chris Dreier and Gary Farrelly, it is more than self‐evident that they aim for nothing less than a Gesamtkunstwerk. In regular intervals both artists meet for meticulously planned summit conferences in Brussels and in Berlin. In this context they go on excursions and they also decide on their further activities. Finally they publish the time schedules and the results of each summit on the official homepage of the OJAI. Dexia Defunct Last year a representative proportion of the world population was asked by OJAI about their attitudes towards politics, finance, romanticism and towards material issues. The results of this survey are going to be presented not only in the form of diagrams and graphs, they also constitute the basis of a sound performance that is going to be presented by the artists. With their noise‐band named Dexia Defunct they run a musical spin‐off of the OJAI‐project, supported by Frank Lohmeyer, a musician who is specialized in electronic sounds. He has created an electronic database which makes it possible to relate every single answer given in the survey to a very special sound. (concert at the opening) Gary Farrelly: Director for Administrative Heritage and Self Inventory Desk Gary Farrelly, who was born in Dublin, has already been practising the art of self‐institutionalisation for a number of years. Power, control and the question of how to preserve your autonomy as an individual are some of the themes he deals with in his work. He sees his own body as a kind of state, including a strictly controlled infrastucture, for which he periodically designs a 2 Year Development Plan. Therefore Gary Farrelly’s life can be regarded as an admistrative non‐stop performance. The documentation and the results of this kind of selfgovernment flow into his artistic work while he uses a range of different media like e.g. the collage. The system that combines all the different elements and which sets them in motion is the so‐called „mail art”. […]
read moreuntil 20.02. | #1053ARTatBerlin | Kunstverein am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz presents from 09th February 2017 the exhibition “Ghosttrap” by the artist Nadia Lichtig. The German word “unheimlich” is considered untranslatable; the rough English equivalent, “uncanny”, is itself difficult to define. According to Freud’s description, the uncanny “derives its terror not from something externally alien or unknown but – on the […]
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