Dear friends,
We are pleased to invite you to

Book presentation

1 December 2021
from 7pm

Van Gogh TV’s »Piazza Virtuale«
The Invention of Social Media at documenta IX in 1992

@ Motto Berlin

In presence of the members of Van Gogh TV and author Tilman Baumgärtel

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Piazza Virtuale by the group of artists known as Van Gogh TV was not only the biggest art project ever to appear on television, but from a contemporary point of view the project was also a forerunner of today’s social media. The ground-breaking event that took place during the 100 days of documenta IX in 1992 was an early experiment with entirely user-created content. This is the first book-length study of this largely forgotten experiment: It documents the radicality of Piazza Virtuale’s approach, the novel programme ideas and the technical innovations. It also allows, via QR codes, direct access to videos from the show, which until now have been inaccessible.

Order the book here

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Ongoing Exhibition till Sunday 5th of December 2021

VAN GOGH TV PIAZZA VIRTUALE
Kuenstlerhaus Bethanien
Kottbusser Straße 10
10999 Berlin
Free entry
Daily 2 – 7pm
 (Tuesday till Sunday)

Dear friends,

We are pleased to invite you to the book launch of
Pope.L, My Kingdom for a Title in presence of the artist.

7–9 pm Wednesday 3 November 2021

Motto Berlin
Skalitzer Str. 68, im Hinterhof
10997 Berlin
U1 Schlesisches Tor

My Kingdom for a Title is a collection of writing by Chicago–based artist Pope.L documenting his use of language as a mode of visual, narrative, and performative story telling.

The act of writing has been integral to how Pope.L works and is arguably the most consistent element in his practice. These works take various forms: scripts, short stories, scribbled notes, large scale installation, and painting—many never before released. Assembled here for the first time, My Kingdom for a Title allows the breadth of the artist’s engagement with language to be fully assessed. Within the book, Pope.L’s work is supplemented with extensive endnotes sourced by artist Kandis Williams.

Pope.L is a visual artist and edu­cator whose multidisciplinary practice uses binaries, contraries, and preconceived notions embedded within contemporary culture to create artworks in various formats including writing, painting, performance, installation, video, and sculpture. Building upon his long history of enacting arduous, provocative, absurdist performances and interventions in public spaces, Pope.L applies some of the same social, formal, and performative strategies to his interests in language, system, gender, race, and community. The goals for his work are several: joy, money, and uncertainty—not necessarily in that order.

Edited by Courtney Willis Blair
Endnotes by Kandis Williams
Published by New Documents in collaboration with Mitchell-Innes & Nash
First Edition (2021)

Order the book here

Dear friends,

We are excited to invite you to the finissage of Kristin Loschert „Subject to“

Screening of „ein Riemenschneiderfilm“, a collaboration between Kristin Loschert and Heinz Peter Knes during the evening.

désirer, ne pas voir

Joachim Perez

Performance with Morphena

19.08.2021

6-8pm

@ Motto Berlin

désirer, ne pas voir

PM016 (2020 Remaster) (LP), Mads Emil Nielsen
Framework 3 (10” vinyl + CD), Mads Emil Nielsen + Katja Gretzinger + Nicola Ratti
Framework 2 (2 x 10” vinyl), Mads Emil Nielsen + V.A. / Andrea Neumann, Jan Jelinek, Hideki Umezawa

Browse the full catalog here

Criminal Garden

Hiroshi Takizawa at Motto Berlin

Criminal Garden

Project01: “Assumption”
Criminal profiling is used as an investigation technique to hypothesize on a suspect figure. An assumed portrait is inferred and emerges from what is left of a particular setting or crime scene. I am intrigued by the development of such assumed figures, as well as the fact that these profiles are fictional and nonexistent unless replaced by an asserted criminal.

“Assumption” consists of scanned images of objects found in ordinary surroundings. Instead of shooting or scanning a flat surface, I chose to scan objects with uneven surfaces as a method to emphasize the distortion of the outcome. As a result, the images are highly detailed, yet far from the objects’ original shapes and forms. The method also allows me to illustrate that the process of reproduction can result in a fictitious representation of an object. To me, there is a similarity in the process of profiling and scanning in the sense that both processes creates a fictional and imaginary image. In this work, I aim create an image of a fictitious profile, although there may not be any criminal context to it. What interests me is that the scanned objects gain a fictional character that reveals the possibility of an additional dimension to its existence, and furthermore, a suggestion that the fictional existence is in fact closer to reality.

Find more of Hiroshi Takizawa’s works here

This is the first publication on the plays of New York–based experimental theater director and playwright Richard Maxwell (born 1967) and his company New York City Players. His plays have been commissioned by The Wexner Center, Columbus; The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Performance Space 122, The Kitchen and Soho Rep in New York; and The Barbican Centre, London. The book captures the experience of actually watching the plays by way of screen-grabs and captions, and in doing so documents nearly 20 years of work.

Text by Jim Fletcher, Emily Hoffman, Richard Maxwell, Robert Snowden.
Published by Westreich Wagner and Greene Naftali.

€45.00

Buy it here