Skalitzer. 68
July 21 – August 25 2012
Saturdays only!

Skalitzer. 68 invites artists, editors, performers for a series of lectures, presentations, exhibitions and events which will take over the spaces of Chert, Motto and Silberkuppe each Saturday, between July 21 and August 25

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Saturday, July 21:

Margaret Harrison – talk and screening, starts at 7 pm
Convolution Journal/Petunia Magazine – talk and screening, starts at 8.30 pm

For their joint presentation at Motto Berlin, Convolution, Journal for Critical Experiment and Petunia, developed a talk-screening performance.
The two magazines share a questioning about the status and ways of criticism, experimenting with new ways of communication through their magazines: in Petunia, there are no chapters or sections, but diverse textual forms, from theoretical texts to diary entries to pure fiction or comics, mostly concerning contemporary art.
Convolution journal seeks to promote a proliferation of the forms available for cultural critique, taken in the broadest sense. It ventures to publish short, experimental work that challenges prevailing divisions between creative writing and criticism, poetry and prose, image and text. Convolution brings together a shifting collectivity of scholars, artists, poets, musicians and critics to explore the fragmentary, the interdisciplinary, the visual, the unpublishable, and the miscellaneous.
Conversation about critical form will include readings by Convolution contributors Michael Baers and Christian Hawkey.
Their presentation ends with the screening of “Born in Flames” – starting at 10.00 pm
A 1983 documentary-style feminist science-fiction film by Lizzie Borden that explores racism, classism, sexism and heterosexism in an alternative United States Socialist Democracy.
Through the life of two different feminist groups of New York City, the film becomes a manifesto for direct activism, showing different points of view and discussions about it, culminating in the message that the action should inevitably come from the oppressed. 80 minutes, English.

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July 28:
YEAR magazine + Karl Larsson

7pm – Presentation of the magazine with:
Ismaël Bennani
Sonia Dermience
David Evrard
Alberto García del Castillo
Orfée Grandhomme

8pm – Performance by Karl Larsson

This second YEAR is still an almanac, a choral book revealing behind the stage. Seasons are information. Hey, look at what has been done, should be, will be or never be. This issue is like talking with images. You can connect one page to another. Text can be spare, descriptive or exhaustingly disruptive. What have you done means what it will be. We asked people about what’s in their mind from the past or for the future and that creates an all present. Last time, we talked about no future, now we are no present. YEAR is still a chain reaction, organizing its content in the form of sequences. YEAR is still an experimental constellation.
The time of manifestos and propaganda is back! From the everyday or larger issues of sociability and historicity. It takes the shape of a collage of disparate sources in time and place. Advertisement, propaganda and manifestos are the ultimate forms for abstraction and engrained subjectivity like space from outer space. Porn and insults, unreal kind of novellas, advertisement as public space, again, opposed to archives, distinction opposed to evaluation, again, narrative to order, cool to distance, taste to energy, again, beauty to sense, sense to idea, idea to experience, experience to life and life to style and style to knowledge and knowledge to power and power to all perversive shit. Still.
As an author use your imagination to be radical, literal and obscene!
As a reader use your intellect and senses to be radical, metaphorical and obscene!

August 4:

Camera Austria – Magazine presentation, drinks and BBQ
Natalie Czech – Book launch, presentation and Q&A
Starts at 7.00 pm.

The theme of Camera Austria’s new issue (#118) is “Photography_Text”, which ensues from the observation that contemporary photographic artists are increasingly associating text and image mediums; a practice at the base of German artist Natalie Czech.
At “Skalitzer. 68” the magazine and the artist will plan a joint presentation, following the intense collaboration they had in the creation of this issue, where author Jens Asthoff discovers how Natalie Czech, through her photographs, investigates language as a space of contingency, probes boundaries of meaning, experiments with word-image relations, and encourages stratifications of intertextuality to intersect with and permeate one another. In his literary contribution, Barry Schwabsky poses exploratory questions about Czech’s work: “Is it possible to see her work as one enormous love letter: a billet-doux to poetry?” and notes that the last thing lovers want to give up is the possibility of gazing at the beloved: “Photographing poetry means gazing at it.”
In the same occasion, Natalie Czech’s recently published monography “Je n’ai rien à dire. Seulement à montrer. / Ich habe nichts zu sagen. Nur zu zeigen. / I have nothing to say. Only to show” (Spector Books, 2012) will be officially presented and open to discussion with the artist.

August 11:

PULL THE STOPS OUT, COME ON! THE BERLIN LAUNCH OF MATERIAL ISSUE 3, starts at 7.00 pm.

MATERIAL is a journal of writing by visual artists, a platform for divergent opinions, uses, and appropriations of language. Published in Los Angeles, and co-edited by artists Kim Schoen and Ginny Cook, Issue 3 features artists Farrah Karapetian, Paul Zelevansky, Renee Petropolous, Nate Harrison, James Welling, Natalie Häusler, Harold Abramowitz, Shana Lutker, Stephanie Taylor, Alice Könitz, Frank Chang, and Emily Mast’s English translation of Édouard Levé’s Œuvres. At the Motto launch, Stephanie Taylor and Alice Könitz will give a live, costumed performance of their piece from Issue 3: A Leash for Fritz and Kale for Stray Bunny. The evening will also feature a special guest performance by artist David Raymond Conroy. Natalie Häusler will present the new installation For Ann (rising) in the showcases, which will remain on display for the occasion.

Material mini site

August 18:

Judith Raum + Paul Haworth

Judith Raum, “Disponible Teile” – Lecture performance in English language, 45 min. Starts at 7.00 pm

In a lecture performance harmless entrepreneurs (2011), Judith Raum will put up an installation Disponible Teile based on German efforts in Ottoman agriculture and infrastructure at the beginning of the 20th century.
Through images, texts and sculptural actions, Raum’s intervention at Chert reflects moments of improvisation and makeshift solutions within the construction of the Baghdad Railway, a continental route of transport, which was financed by Deutsche Bank during the early 20th century and was supposed to make the resources and markets of Anatolia accessible for a variety of German businesses.
The provisional structures and archival material put up during the performance will remain installed at gallery Chert until August 24th.

The evening begins with Paul Haworth’s “Mr Harris / Had a stick”

August 25:

Jérémie Gindre, “Ric Rac & Sandwichsm” – an illustraded reading of two publications by the artist, starts at 7.00 pm

Jérémie Gindre presents an illustrated reading of two of his last publications: “Ric Rac” – a comic book adaptation of artworks about floods, landslides and swamps – and “Sandwichsm”, an encyclopedic road trip that follows the tracks of whale watching, minimalism drawing, rock moving and lobster eating.
Multi-lingual compatible! (The reading will be in French with German and English subtitles, plus many illustrations.)

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Few more events might be added on the way, stay tuned.