journal

Day 24-25 – September 24-25 2024 – Berlin: Hamburger Bahnhof, Phase Shifting Index; Contemporary Art; Sisyphos – ‘Stamboul to KL

Above, Joseph Beuys taught B’s father. Below, Mark Bradford,

A host of theatrical attractions at the Hamburger,

Maurizio Nannucci’s Idea, 1997 and Time, 1997, (a book cover for Bergson, Deleuze & Cinema?)

Bruce Nauman’s Room With My Soul Left Out, Room That Does Not Care, 1984/2010 (part of the Unendliche Ausstellung [Endless Exhibition]) plus interpellation,

the most theatrical of them all, Jeremy Shaw’s Phase Shifting Index, 2020,

Jeremy Shaw creates films that explore the body as vehicle
for transformative experiences. Phase Shifting Index is a
seven-screen looped video installation showing fictional
subcultures engaged in ritualistic dance-like
movements, which eventually sync into a collective
ecstatic experience.

By using a variety of older media formats, such as
16mm film, Hi8 video tape, and VHS technology, Shaw
presents us with what at first glance appears to be
found historical footage.

The work blurs the line between documentary and fiction,
as well as our awareness of time and place.

As in Shaw's installation,
where individuals are presented in an altered
state-museums can be spaces that alter
the awareness
of their visitors.

[from the description of Phase Shifting Index, 2020]

The work is activated by dancers, Alexandra Pirici’s Attune; activation amounting to exercises in attunement to the space and work like those used by Minus Theatre which belonged to the invisible work, as exercises, here visibly unspectacular (although the dancers are commended and the organisers are to be commended for employing them to turn up and do the dance, for hours),

An unbearably smelly work,

in the big glass below what was called a macchiato,

To Museuminsel, snap snap,

A reminder of Eskişehir,

Martin introduces the reconstruction (2013-2020) of the Berlin Palace, replacing the People’s Palace (the parliament of East Germany 1976-1990). Costing €670,000,000.

The imperial past is preferable to the communist past.

That it is, puts me in mind of a reassuring theme I have kept in mind since returning to NZ, space is a social construct.