Words by Nancy Li

“How can such dark color come from only light colours?”
This question stays with me. It leads to somewhere deeper, in regardless of it is of chemical nature or philosophical one.

I wouldn’t necessarily associate Berlin with blue, but the history has proven me wrong. When Kirsten mentioned this term at our first meeting casually, light flooded out of my eyes. It is simply romantic to name a color after a city or country. Thinking of China red along with the easiest associations with the Forbidden City and the red envelop that is supposed to bring you fortune both metaphorically and realistically. However, long before the romanticist movement came along, a “new” shade of blue was already accidentally created by H. Joh. Jacob Diesbach (1670 – 1748) and Pietist Johann Conrad Dippel (1673 – 1734) in Berlin in 1706. Since then, world was not the same. From art to medicine, from food to alchemy, the influence of Berlin blue has gone wider than our perception of colors and trades. Before we acknowledged this significant experiment later being repeated countless times, the trademark of Berlin Blue (also called Prussian blue) has long been part of who we are as much as the city ever is.

In 2021, the artist Kirsten Stoll with her sculpture and ceramics background and Prof. Dr. Britta Lange from Humboldt University of Berlin chose a conventional laboratory setting and tried to reenact this ancient experiment with curiosity and contemporary perspective. Instead of using the test tube as old-school chemist did, they used capillary paper to register the ever-changing patterns of this unique, bright, deep blue, born from the yellow-orange tone given by iron sulphate and the transparent tint from blood salt. Many questions started to emerge in time of shades changing, thoughts forming, research in progress. Is chemistry a (natural) art? Where is place of originality in the imitation of process? Over the past three hundred years, Berlin Blue has been copied, renamed, put into use by countless industries, benefiting thousands and millions of people, then forgotten at some point, at least the origin of it. Gazing into the blue bacteria-like molecules changing faces from one page to another, it is not so hard to have the urge to remember part of the history that has shaped how we see blue today. Britta and Kirsten, devoting years of research and work to a singular passion, they simply observe and let the blue take their breathe away. New phenomena is constantly evolving, shifting, making its own voices being heard and hopefully understood by many others, leading us to the ever dazzling galaxy of unknown. Up until today, those liquids are still somewhere undergoing a reaction which none of us know where it will take us.

At the end of our meeting, knowing I am Chinese. Kirsten shared with me her enthusiasm about Chinese tea and ceramic making which she used as an experimental practice before applying paint on her larger-scaled sculptures. By transforming minute waste into meaningful objects with mindfulness and reflection, it unveils a way of thinking I find particularly refreshing in a landfill stormed with consumer-oriented arts and images numbing our senses today. It comes from an yearning for depth, and a sensation that is bound to survive hundred years of unpredictability and human flaws.

Aufsaugen – verbreiten – vermischen – übertragen. Berliner Blau und das Kapillarische (Absorb – spread – mix – transfer. Berlin Blue and capillarity) by Dr. Britta Lange and Kirsten Stoll, written in German, translated to English by Matthew Gyngell

Every cover can be transformed into a poster to be hung at your home or anywhere else

Available at Motto Beriln and Online

Живая
Юля Андриянова

Tаван Cершывам
Виктория Салтар

Жар-птица
Лилиан Рубцова

Старое весло
cybermedusa

Cамоубитые роскомнадзором
Максим Евстропов

НЕСКОЛЬКО ПРОСТЫХ ПРАВИЛ ДЛЯ ПРИЕЗЖИХ ИНОПЛАНЕТЯН
Регина

Картофель фри
Таро Муратов

Камень
Арсений Агеев
(См. ШИРЕ)
Вероника

Непозма
Мария фокусия

Кавабанга
Анна Бородина

Табличка
Лиза Петрова

Rodina – самиздат свободной литературы. Мы хотим использовать свободу слова как инструмент под- держки благотворительных инициатив. Через актуальную ху- дожественную литературу мы осмысляем контекст Войны и рос- сийской цензуры, исследуем этические вопросы сложившейся реальности. Мы верим, что нам поможет деятельное знание. Rodina издается в Берлине и является независимой, част- ной инициативой, не принадлежащей никакому политическому течению или общественному объединению. Мы не преследуем коммерческие цели, все вырученные средства распределяются между благотворительными фондами. В первом выпуске мы собрали двенадцать текстов, затраги- вающих тему войны, прав человека, ЛГБТК+, феминизма, свобо- ды слова. Мы публикуем тексты в авторской редакции. Издание выходит в трёх обложках. Спасибо всем авторам, фотографам, друзьям и читателям за участие и поддержку. Rodina – наша мечта о родине без насилия.

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Pictures of the moon, the ultimate topos in photography, have been given a new twist in Erik Steinbrecher’s MONDFOTOGRAFIE. The Swiss artist collects pictures of the moon and rephotographs

The project THE SOUND OF NORMALISATION is a collection of audio recordings that documents the sound culture of the Ultras group BRESCIA 1911 in relation to modern football and the wave of repressive measures targeted at organized supporters groups. The recordings were taken over a period of 15 years and cover: 1) creation, uses and meanings of the chants 2) group principles and collective identity 3) audience participation and the process of social exclusion from the stadium 4) police repression and the political implications of the chants 5) the evolution of the drumming in relation to the drums ban-order of 2007. Each recording comes with a short introductory text and is presented as a video with subtitles. The work has been published in 2018 by SARU, Oxford Brookes University.

Since early 2000 Tidoni has been researching football supporter subculture, audience participation and crowd regulation. The overall research concerns the nexus of public space, social performance and surveillance in contemporary Italian football.

The aim of the research is to trace mechanisms of social interaction and aesthetic creation in football supporters’ subculture via an examination of the sound practices shared by the group Brescia 1911. Relations between sound production and space construction are investigated especially in the light of dynamics of social control adopted in football grounds in the last years.

The research contributes to a better understanding of sound’s function in group formation and collective identity as well as how sound performance and social repertoire evolve in relation to public security measures and space control.

In 2015, a first concrete materialization of the project has been exhibited at ARGOS, centre for art and media, Brussels. In 2018, the final version of the project has been presented at GET SOME CHALK ON YOUR BOOTS! an exhibition and conference organized by SARU at Oxford Brookes University.

Author: Davide Tidoni

Publisher: SARU and VIAINDUSTRIAE SUONO

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“Books not only describe their own contents but also the eras in which they were created.
Conceived as a color inventory, this publication gathers a selection of titles that I have dealt with, exhibited, and produced since the early 2000s. Many of these books came to me; I did not seek them out, but provided them a home. For me, books are an archive of ideas and their materialization, a mapping of my engagement with the material world.
I appreciate objects that can be held, traded, and hidden. They allow me to contemplate, negotiate, and share art without the need to seek out the fetish of the original.
The collection does not showcase the most beautiful or best books of their time. It consists art books on themes, colors, and production techniques, all of which have piqued my interest in one way or another.
The objects in this book were collected, exhibited, and re-contextualized in various forms within my long-term project Salon für Kunstbuch.
I have read some of them, while others served as models for new works. I have traced them, catalogued them, woven tapestries from their covers, and marked their ownership status.
Books are objects that lead their own unique lives.”

Author: Bernhard Cella

Publisher: Salon Für Kunstbuch

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My Great Arab Melancholy is a beautiful, tragic and award-winning book from Lebanese writer and illustrator Lamia Ziadé. Blending the author’s years of research, personal memoir and more than 300 illustrations, this compelling history of the modern Arab world explores the major thinkers, struggles and turning points that have shaped the Middle East as we know it today.

Ziadé begins in South Lebanon, ‘land of martyrs, ruins and passion’, before taking the reader further afield, to Beirut, Jerusalem, Cairo and Baghdad. The book moves from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day, tracing the Arab world’s tragedies and the derailing of dreams and possibilities caused in large part by Western imperialism and the conquest of Palestine.

Within these pages there are the blasts of explosions, blood, tears and tragedy, cemeteries, wreaths and ribbons, martyrs and paradise. Ziadé unearths the buried memory of resistance fighters and their lost ideals. In haunting prose and unforgettable images she celebrates the progressive, bold, revolutionary moments and figures of the Arab world’s recent past.

Lamia Ziadé is a Lebanese author, illustrator and visual artist. Born in Beirut in 1968 and raised during the Lebanese Civil War, she moved to Paris at 18 to study graphic arts. She then worked as a designer for Jean-Paul Gaultier, exhibited her art in numerous galleries internationally, and went on to publish several illustrated books, including My Port of Beirut, Ma très grande mélancolie arabe which won the Prix France-Liban, Ô nuit, ô mes yeux and Bye bye Babylone.

Emma Ramadan is an educator and literary translator from French. She is the recipient of the PEN Translation Prize, the Albertine Prize, two NEA Fellowships, and a Fulbright. Her translations include A Country for Dying by Abdellah Taïa, Zabor, or the Psalms by Kamel Daoud, Panics by Barbara Molinard, and The Easy Life by Marguerite Duras.

Award-winning illustrated chronicle of the modern Arab world, combining travelogue, memoir, history and gorgeous full-colour art

Author: Lamia Ziadé

Publisher: Pluto Press

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“Screening Exercises” is a cycle of screenings, meetings and seminars that looks at film projection as the focus of the research of some contemporary artists and as its specific and structural element, revealing the performative aspect of cinema. The first edition happened in Venice between October and December 2022.

“Screening Exercises – Quaderni (I-IV)” collects the proceedings of the meetings with the artists and essays on theoretical insights. The protagonists of the first four exercises are the artists Helga Fanderl, Sílvia Das Fadas, Jan Kulka and the scholar Rinaldo Censi.

“Screening Exercises” and their “Quaderni” are curated by Flavia Mazzarino and Filippo Perfetti.

“Screening Exercises” è un ciclo di proiezioni, incontri e seminari che guarda alla proiezione cinematografica come fulcro della ricerca di alcuni artisti contemporanei e come suo elemento specifico e strutturale, mostrando l’aspetto performativo del cinema. La prima edizione si è svolta a Venezia tra ottobre e dicembre 2022.

“Screening Exercises – Quaderni (I-IV)” raccoglie gli atti degli incontri con gli artisti e saggi di approfondimento teorico. I protagonisti dei primi quattro esercizi sono gli artisti Helga Fanderl, Sílvia Das Fadas, Jan Kulka e il ricercatore Rinaldo Censi.

“Screening Exercises” e i relativi “Quaderni” sono curati da Flavia Mazzarino e Filippo Perfetti.

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Auditing Intimacy catalogues the last five years of O.J.A.I.’s postcard correspondence. In addition to over 80 images, the publication contains a specially commissioned essay by curator Alicja Melzacka dealing with self-institutionalization – the performing of the self as an institution – as an approach to artistic research and performance. There is a lexicon disambiguating the invented bureaucratic jargon O.J.A.I. produces and circulates around their practice.

Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence is the collaborative practice of artists Chris Dreier (DE) and Gary Farrelly (IRE/BE) since 2015. The work is fueled by a recurring obsession with architecture, infrastructure, finance, conspiracy theory, institutional power and magic. O.J.A.I. pursues a strategy of self-institutionalization where tools and codified rules of engagement are appropriated from economic and political infrastructures. The work meets the public as performance, sound art, installation, cartography, publications, and a radio show (transmitted on Dublin Digital Radio and Cashmere Radio, Berlin). O.J.A.I. has performed and exhibited work at AAIR Antwerpen, Damien and the Love Guru, ISELP (Brussels), Laura Mars Gallery (Berlin), Grölle Pass Projects, Gold and Beton, University of Texas, Marres Center for Contemporary Culture (Maastricht) and Horst Festival (Villevord).

Author: Gary Farrelly, Chris Dreier

Publisher: Zero Desk

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This text is an attempt to explain the importance of comfort regulation, through sensory stimulation. Whether that be from fidgeting, through masturbation to cuddling and other activities. This thesis is about self-regulation and the objects which visualise that need. From the Freudian psychoanalysis idea of child development through transitional objects introduced by Donald Winnicot to Dakimakura phenomena in otaku culture in a Japanese society that seeks closeness to cute pastelle vibrators which are overflowing the sex toys market. The attempt to answer this question: “Why do hoodie strings taste so good?” seeks to answer the overarching need for constant adjustment to the environment we live in.

I’m intrigued by the need for biting, sucking, and tapping random objects. The fidgeting era is here! We are overwhelmed by all kinds of spinners, popping toys, anti-stress devices, dopamine booster, etc. What is it all about and why have fidget spinners became such a hype in the recent years? Have you ever considered why your hoodie strings taste so good? Have you caught yourself while compulsively sucking them in the metro or at the bus stop? This thesis will endeavour to answer these questions. The answer might be much easier and more pragmatic than we think. In contradiction to my deep analysis in the following sections, one of the reddit users wrote in response to the above question: Why do hoodie strings taste so good?

“Just don’t do it! After sucking them a few times, they become bacteria factories/colonies, so taste (and probably smell) evolves over time. Don’t suck and chew them!! They do, however, work as good, reachable things to practise finger dexterity – to tie knots into and practice rope binding”.

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Fruit de longues recherches dans les archives des artistes, l’ouvrage sera doté d’une riche documentation et offrira une relecture inédite de la production artistique italienne entre 1960 et 1975. Apparu dans les années 1960 en Italie, l’Arte Povera est une démarche artistique ; davantage une attitude qu’un mouvement. Théorisé par Germano Celant en 1966, l’Arte Povera s’inscrit dans une volonté de défiance à l’égard des industries culturelles, portée par une nouvelle génération d’artistes incarnant des manières inédites d’appréhender l’art et la création.
S’opposant à la consommation de masse et réhabilitant la place de l’homme et de la nature dans l’art, l’Arte Povera en renouvelle les thématiques (l’homme, la nature, le corps, le temps), les matériaux (naturels, de récupération, périssables), les techniques (artisanales), les gestes et l’intention. Il s’agit de repenser les critères d’esthétisme, de se défaire des artifices, de revenir à l’immédiateté des émotions et des sensations.
A travers la production de livres, d’affiches, de projections et d’impressions sur toile, les artistes italiens de cette époque se sont appropriés le pouvoir narratif de l’image photographique et filmique afin d’explorer de nouveaux possibles de l’art. Transdisciplinaires, mêlant photographies, films, vidéos, affiches, livres, objets, sculptures et peintures, l’ouvrage, qui l’accompagnera l’exposition, présentera plus de 300 oeuvres de figures majeures de l’Arte Povera, parmi lesquelles Giovanni Anselmo, Alighiero Boetti, Luigi Ghirri, Jannis Kounellis, Piero Manzoni, Mario Merz, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto…
Conçu comme un livre d’art et non comme un catalogue d’exposition, il donnera à voir l’extraordinaire richesse d’une période où les artistes italiens ont compté parmi les plus importants interprètes de la transformation des langages visuels. Ce nouveau regard sur une démarche artistique majeure des avant-gardes du XXe siècle proposera également une immersion visuelle dans le contexte politique et culturel de l’époque avec des portfolios dédiés au cinéma, théâtre, soirées littéraires, extraits de presse présentant les grands enjeux socioculturels d’alors.

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in medias res is an ongoing selective collection of seemingly random online images as well as self-taken screenshots and photography. Featuring a selection of over 1200 pictures out of the personal archive, it deals with patterns of recognition, appropriation and contextualization of (popular) cultures. By reproduction through means of hard copy a shift of attention shall be provoked (in favor of THE IMAGE).

Following musical techniques of plunderphonics, the mode of situating and framing finds manifestation from 15th century renaissance art (emblem) through to present operating principles of the social media online platform instagram (hashtags). 
Focusing on reciprocal influence and interference between text and image, the project aims to intentionally subvert cultural codes of visual content and wording by allegory and metaphor. 
Associated figures of thought, socio-political terms, new slang, ambiguous terms of marketing and connotated phrases are addressed to expand (semiotic) nuances and undertones of modern day society (consumer culture, mainstream-noise, fashion-dynamics, politics / environmental issues), thus to challenge ways of perception of cultural sets of phenomena (meme).. 
Of course, a certain sense of humor is a substantial attitude of indifference to ride the jittering stream that shapes contours of global scenes of references and re-production of “meaning” through poor images.

in medias res is a context bundle. 
in medias res is a deep learning process. 
in medias res is highly subjective.

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