Last November we facilitated two parallel Complaints Choirs in our two German “home towns” Berlin and Dresden as part of the Nordwind festival. It was a long time dream to host one in Dresden, our aunt Gabi had asked already many years why we never organize one in Dresden. After completing the process in Germany we thought that Berlin and Dresden will be the last stations of our long journey with CC, but we were approached by an interesting new foundation based in Switzerland called Artasfoundation. Their mission is to bring artists into conflict areas to organise projects there: see their mission statement here. They asked us to organize a Complaints Choir for their pilot project in Georgia in Camps for Internally Displaced People. In March 2014 we will be in Georgia to facilitate the process in two camps near Gori.
image: A village built for IDPs from the South Ossetia war zone, photo by Gorod – SKY
The complaints choirs of Berlin and Dresden received surprisingly much attention of German media. They even made it into the main evening news (ZDF heute). Culture channel Arte portrait the Dresden choir and Spiegel Online the Berlin choir.
ZDF heute (look after 13:00)
SPIEGEL online
ARTE tv
BRAND Eins, an economic newspaper in Germany that I read from time to time, made an extended interview with us. The interviewer was Bernhard Bartsch from weltreporter.de; he later joined the Berlin Complaints Choir.
BRAND EINS – Lamento, ergo sum
There was as well an article in the last remaining newspaper of Gelsenkirchen, the WAZ, about investmentzone.
Speech Karaoke Action Group will host a workshop and club event at Rotterdam film festival 2014! The workshop takes place on Sunday January 26th and the Karaoke Club on Wednesday January 29th at 8pm. Welcome!
EVENT
Speech Karaoke works similar to a traditional karaoke. In a relaxed bar atmosphere one can choose a speech from a karaoke booklet that contains a wide range of speeches: from the obvious classics to legendary movie speeches to the most obscure Finnish wedding speech. Our real karaoke host from Finland Mr. Julius Valve welcomes anyone to step on the speakers desk and deliver the speech of their choice.
image: a visitor of the Ghent speechkaraoke club performs Coach Flowers locker room speech; perhaps the most brutal locker room speech recorded.
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Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma hosts an exhibition introducing works of the 5 artists / artist duos who are shortlisted for Ars Fennica Prize.
Kuva: Kansallisgalleria/Pirje Mykkänen. Kuvassa vasemmalta lukien taiteilijapari Tellervo Kalleinen ja Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen, Riitta Ikonen, Leena Nio, Pauliina Turakka Purhonen ja taiteilijapari IC -98, eli Patrik Söderlund ja Visa Suonpää.
We are very excited to announce that “Investment Zone“ – our new project in Gelsenkirchen, Germany – was confirmed to have a partner from Bangalore, India. The local art organization Jaaga jumped on board to facilitate the project locally parallel to the one in Gelsenkirchen. As the game starts in April 2014, both processes can be followed from the project web site.
Investment Zone is a game and an experiment. We are looking for 10 people in Gelsenkirchen and Bangalore to sign up to a 6 month game in which an empty piece of land in the city is put in use according to the participants ideas. Small grants are given in bi-monthly meetings, where decisions about the next investment moves are made. The participants can team up and combine their grants or aim to realize just their own ideas.
game rules at www.investmentzone.info
The project is originally commissioned by KunstRepublik. It is produced by Urbane Künste Ruhr, a division of Kultur Ruhr GmbH
