Club Art Diary Berlin
about

XML-RSS Feed Berlin artists' journal: low-tech, high-minded & self-serving. Narcissisms in word, image, animation. Themes: Journeys into subcultures; making & presenting art; club culture & electronica. New: Now with lots of useless time consuming extras!


Hans
december 22, friday
presenting art at the "no historical backspin" benefit


Right now, in Holland, such strange bedfellows as hooligans, queers, neo-cons and feminists are teaming up to fight religious fascism that developed during a long period of ideological (leftist) multicultural politics... 

In Eastgermany's Saxonia however, events seems to be less confusing: Victim and aggressor still know their place and don't morph or fluctuate in such a politically confusing manner as they do in the Netherlands: Here, fascists are white Germans, and their victims are blameless foreigners, preferably of colour.

(But as those are hard to find in Eastern Germany, xenophobia already plays a part in the attitude towards people from the next town..)

In places like Pirna -the famous baroque town near Dresden- a straightforward hatred of anything different rules, nostalgically simplistic in comparison to the ideologically paradox dutch situation.

Dj's and musicians Monika Kruse & friends have set up a political party/concert event series called No Historical Backspin, that aims to show their young fans -for whom electronica artists are major examples- that racism is not cool. They might just as well add homophobia and misogyny to the not cool list, because in the East of Germany, girls are trained to be unbelievably timid and the hippest negative word in teen conversation is "schwul" (gay).


one of our animated slides had an acid smiley defeating a swastika

The Backspin party & concert was set up as a two day fundraiser for the Amadeu Antonio Stiftung in the Plastix club in Pirna, a town next to Dresden that's just as scary as it is picturesque. Imagine the famous Canaletto painting of the baroque Pirna market square, touch it up with nice splashes of colour, like from several swastika banner dangling from the baroque houses, then labour over the life-like depiction of the broken windows at the turkish snack bar, and finally, add a sense of dynamics to the composition by inserting a gentle sprinkling of drunken skinhead shapes, decoratively puking and beating up "foreigners". My, some of the playful rascals even seem to be groping each other, oh dear..
Welcome to beautiful & ethnically cleansed Pirna!
Many well known dj's performed, like Vela and Monika Kruse herself. The first night with Mijk van Dijk live was well-visited, but the second, breakbeat-oriented night proved too avant garde for this region. Still, all in all more than 1000 Euros could be gathered for the Amadeo Antonio Foundation to help them enlighten Eastgerman youth.

We had prepared a special set of paintings and kinetic slides.

It was hard to create good images for slides & paintings for this event, while doing research I learned alot about religious/political symbols. Also I noticed how most anti-fascist imagery (old or new) turns out looking pretty fascist itself..

The most popular moving slide animation proved to be the one of my classic "piss boy" (Maenneken Piss), pissing on a nazi banner, -turns out Pirna is well known for their own version of the Brussels sculpture.
piss on this
Still the same religious symbol it always was in Asia, the swastika image is absolutely forbidden in Germany,
custom workers still regularly physically destroying confiscated material that somehow
features it,
even modern art, sometimes.

The power of symbols...
The organizers and audience liked the club installation well enough and we will hopefully do it all again -only even better- at the next Backspin which will take place in Berlin.



read fresh..
fresher 		or older entries:
 or older entries.

browse the archives by subject sissy art / art as energy / no historical backspin / ceramixed plates / branded / art forum / essay / live poster / submit to art / recognition / portraits / painted diaries / obey arnie / f*cking good art / henry darger / toilet graffiti / queer planes / blackout / exactitudes & mc de waal / chantal's house of shame / durchzug / kunstsupermarkt / subway art / rembrandts 'r us / kinzo / kinetica / sticker / glamour to kill / sick art / salomé / mumbleboy / art essenz / kunstherbst '03 / magistrale / iraq-war art / make art, not war / berlin tapete / robodisko / monitor. automatique / burqua-art / p. v. dyk / art funding / dr. motte &  d.a.f.

 picture links to the more visual back entries
Oh!
Wauw! Iek!
Oef!
Mmm?


syndicate rss / blogroll me! / add to yahoo / add to kinja / subscribe to bloglines

directories