The Great Exhibition

Wanting to see Paul Chan's show in the Serpentine, I bumped into friends on the way and joined them to see "a graduate show in a tent" instead (I had seen Paul Chan in Boston already) It turned out to be a afternoon of exitement, arousal and inspiration. The RCA has coined this year's presentation of its students "The Great Exhibition" in hommage to the original in 1851 - and as far as I can say I have discovered some revolutionary and thought provoking concepts and ideas.

Let's start with The Race by Michael Burton, a series of interventions tackling the issue of antibiotics - human mankind cannot live without it yet bacteria are developing faster than R&D labs can spin out drugs. He suggests that "with the end of the antibiotic era we have no other choice but to symbiotically evolve to meet the pressures of hostile new diseases. The photo above is called bacteria harbourer, and another piece on display (as well as video) is a fist-size fabric cage that is woven into a women's hair in order to hosts a praying mantis. Yes, it may sound absurd, but when you see it it kind of makes sense, for future generations though.


My favourite is EXTREME GREEN GUERRILLA, a project by Michiko Nitta, that responds to global warming and other threats to contemporary civilisation. Among other radical solutions, he proposes an Animal Messaging Service, in which humans send digital messages from e.g. London to New York - not through the existing infrastructure of glassfibre cables but - by using biological transmitters: whales, birds, rats and other species. The 'interface' to carry the information is stored on RFID tags that are implanted into the animals, as demonstrated below with a Mackerel.

Surely, this isn't exactly the most efficient way to communicate, but that would miss the point. Screaming of with and humour on the one hand (species are clustered into fast and slow, or low and high risk; think predator and prey...the Mackerel belongs to the latter) this project also gives amazing impulses to think about carbon footprint and other hot topics.

To Andreas Molgaard, the most pressing issues is mankind's survival in the 21st century. Focussing on the big picture of global change, he comes up with 11 ways to survive, ranging from the funny, wouldn't it be nice, to extreme thoughts of erasing one continent completely or limiting life to 33 years (like Jesus). Like it or not, this is somebody with the vision (and guts - since this is pretty controvertial stuff) to list some of the options, viable or not, the history of the future will tell...

These days however, a big imminent problem in cities like London is social unrest, in form of gangs hanging out on the streets, women getting harressed, juveniles drinking on playgrounds and so on. Nothing new so far. But did you know that the police can declare an area - ranging from a phone box to the entire borough - a so-called "dispersal zone" legally prompting suspects to leave the declared zone and keep them at bay with a 3 months prison threat if violating this order? I didn't! And I am very glad that Tamsin Fulton is pointing this out in her project www.thedispersalzone.org.uk Using the API of Google Maps she publicises all DZs in London with Tags when it was declared for what duration and what the reason was. The fact that she uses readily available yet hardly known information (to the local residents) makes this project very Mark Lombardi-ish (he re-shaped newspaper clips into intricate graphic webs of state corruption across the world) More on her blog http://tamsdesigninteractions.blogspot.com


From the Mean Streets of London to the Great Oceans of our Planet: Daniel Sjoholm thinks that current abundance in Yacht design suffers a misguided focus on marble, gold and other Oligarch toys. He sees a need for an update in Yacht design, and promotes a new luxury in the form of glass bottom "speed lounges" that look like spaceships cruising lagoons and reefs. Can he also somehow reconcile his vision with the manifesto of the EXTREME GREEN GUERRILLA folks?

Other highlights of bionic design included Il Hoon's aluminum table, that could both be interieur of Sjoholm's yachts and vanguard of a new wave of organism-inspired architecture and furniture design. Bauhaus is dead. Long live Colani.

Emphasising round forms as well are Henny van Nistelrooy's old-magazines-turned-artworks. Starting from the outside, he works his way through these magazines carving out holes of different sizes and angles to create a paper-based sculpture. When you then flick through the pages, these meticulously crafted holes appear like wormholes trying to link the (often shallow and meaningless) world of fashion and advertising with your own imagination of how you might fill these voids with your personal stories. Having always admired paper cuts (Matisse, Felix Droese to name two) I felt inclined to get one for £20, which rounded-up this fantastic endeavour on a Sunday afternoon.

Until 28 June at Kensington Gardens

Movie: Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo

De Niro may have coined the term "method acting". But his achievement seem to be dwarfed in light of Werner Herzog's endeavour - or torture - when doing Fitzcarraldo, the story of a Western rubber Baron in 19th century Peru, who's childlike dream is to produce an entire Opera in the Amazonian jungle.

This vision includes a 50 ton steamboat that has to be lifted over a mountain in order to access a far-flung arm of the river - and here comes Herzog's heroic accomplishment: all the props are real, so is the (at times) life-threatening river as well as the indians, and they lift that monster of a ship over that mountain for real - think method shooting! No studio, no stuntmen, no frills. Instead, real danger, tropical weather, malaria mosquitos - and above all - the world-famous tantrums of notorious Klaus Kinski, who threatened to kill Herzog in another iconoclatic movie: Aguirre - Wrath of God. Before embarking on the 5 movie lasting partnership with Herzog (Grizzly) Kinski role modeled as THE German Villain in noir movies of the sixties.

Granted, the story is simple, but you should see this movie - in my opinion one of the top 10 most important movies ever - for the sheer fascination of Kinskis outburst which are surely for real and often didn't stop after the cut, and of course you have to see it to believe it: everything is really real, no fake, it all really happened that way, back in that year in the 70s.

Film History!

On 10, 16, 22 and 30 June at the ICA

Art Show: Anthony Gormley

Event Horizon - that title reminds me of a pretty scary movie from the late 90s exploring concepts of dents in space and memory journeys back and forth into your darkest past and greyest future. Event Horizon is Antony Gormley's latest environmental installation, scattered across the Southbank of London.

30 odd casts of his own body stand on roof tops of predominantly 60s grey concrete monsters. It is an exiting journey for your eyes to wander around and discover their location and juxtapositions with the surrounding urban landscape.


Whilst not really empathising with some by-passers' concern passed on to the police that "somebody is intending to jump off the IBM building" as reported in the press, I did have an eerie moment this morning that reminded me to these people's experience: when driving on the M4 westbound just before crossing the M25 at 5:30 am on a sunny Saturday morning, I saw somebody sitting on the edge of a pedestrian bridge gazing at the approaching traffic. He seemed to contemplate whether to jump or not (Of course I called 999 and they said they were aware of the incident and sent somebody - I hope it all ended positive...) In my mind I connected this scene with Gormley's installation that reminds us of the fragility of the human body, and the anonymity of urban life.


Inside the Hayward Gallery you find typical sculptures from various periods, all good and all thought provoking. The horrenduous and cold interieur of the gallery provides a menacing platform for Gormleys messages.

The attention grabbing bit though is the cloud-filled room that I suppose gives this fabulous exhibition the title Blind Light. Once inside the cube, you are really distressed and disoriented and do what everyone else seems to be doing: meanering around the glass walls from edge to edge until you reach the exit again, but when two opposing traffic streams hit each other you might loose track and sight of the secure pathfinder and off you go back into blindness. A very physical and psychological experience.

Until 19 August at the Haywards Gallery

Photography: Edward Burtynsky

On my way to Photo London I popped by Flower Central in Cork Street to admire some well known and some new work of one of my favourite artists: Ed Burtynsky. His prints of man-made landscapes and, more recently, the visually probing insight into contemporary China, are epic and monumental: large scale images of quarries, rubber piles, shipbreaking businesses in Bangladesh and 10.000 people assembly lines like your eyes have never seen it before. His style makes you almost smell all the toxic waste, and it is the details in the pictures that makes you grasp the scale of the sites inspected, like the house-size caterpillar trucks appearing like ants in the gigantic landscape of a quarry.


There are not a lot of photographers that combine "need-for-change" ethos a la Gore and Moore with immaculately crafted high-end aesthetics. And as far as I know, Ed doesn't digitally post-produce like Gursky does.

Until 2 June at Flowers Central, West End

Photo London

Being a very visual person, I have always, and will always love photography. Doing a bit of photo stuff myself for now 4 years, I also had an additional hat on this time. Whilst I won't and don't want to be an artist in the first place, it becomes more and more exiting to locate my own portfolio inbetween the different positions. It feels a bit similar to the tribute acknowledgements on music albums or quotations in scientific publications, that I have certain photographers that I deeply admire, and wonder to what degree these sources of influence impact on my own stuff or not.


Anyhow, some of my favourites are present in the Old Billingsgate Market, starting with Stephen Gill. The museums guard above is a typical representation of conceptual series by Stephen Gill, who captures people getting lost in central London, pictures bill boards from behind, or photographs the silent guards in museums. He often boarderlines between conceptual sequence and documentary style. My favourite cycle is called Hackney Wick in which he saves current socio-cultural netherworlds for future generations, who will only know this area as Olympic grounds (that will have pushed these East London urbanspheres away.

The picture at the top is Susan Derges, who specialises on photograms. These prints are direct results from light hitting photo-sensitive metal plates - there is no camera involved - and the sensation is that the prints are 1:1 in scale, meaning if you see a 2-3 meter print of water splash, that is the size of the metal plate this artist is driving and carrying to Oceans, lakes and rivers, often exposing them at nightime. This process results in the sharpest and most detailed photoworks around.

Another favourite of mine, Massimo Vitali, who has a knack for aperture almost blending out texture and colour of water and sans, thus, focussing on masses of tourists in bikinis and swimshorts. His work really shines through when seen in large scale.

Therefore, go until 3 June at Old Billingsgate Market