Spent a couple of hours on Friday dashing round assorted gallery openings. Less motivated by the art, to be honest, than by having excuse to walk round Mitte — and so, being in the wrong frame of mind, didn’t see much worth mentioning. Best of the bunch was No portrait. No pornography by Lar Theuerkauff, an exhibition devoted entirely to flesh-tones, adding some pink to the walls of the Cain Schulte, a Schöneberg apartment converted without great gusto into a gallery.

More intriguing as a space is the Salon Populaire, defining iself as “a meeting point for conversations on art and neighboring topics, and for the convergence of different ideas, positions and contexts.”

We want to experiment with formats which both intend to break the hierarchical forms of traditional presentations, podium discussions and seminars on the one hand, and the increasingly popular category of the event on the other, and which exceed the private talk at home, at a café or a at dinner with friends in a restaurant. A prerequisite is: the currently ruling situation in the art context of ‘one talks, the others listen’, is to be suspended, and the audience as a mere witness of the production of cultural surplus value should be abolished. In contrast to this, we understand the SALON POLULAIRE as an invitation for joint debate.

Granted, organizations which successfully break away from dull and hierarchical presentaitons are far outnumbered by those which try and fail. Still, a worthy attempt.

I’m intrigued by “Berlin Festee“, a festival of independent art and music which is taking place this Sunday at RAW-Tempel. Including music lined up under the heading of “The queens and the rebels” — describing itself as a “playful, somewhat awkward thing” that “wants to take over berlin’s nighhtlife and then to spit it back into the pavement”.

And…all free :)

Last-minute plug for some English-language poetry tonight:

Berlin-based British poet Catherine Hales launches her stunning new
poetry collection, Hazard or Fall, in the first of Dialogue Berlin’s
poetry events at Café Hilde in Prenzlauer Berg. Published by Shearsman
Books, Harzard and Fall is Catherine Hale’s first full-length
collection.

[I assume there is some kind of a reading as part of this; the event announcement is oddly non-specific on that point]

Wednesday 14th April, 7.30 pm – 9.30 pm, Café Hilde, Metzer Straße 22, 10405 Berlin, FREE ENTRY

Some of Catherine’s work is already available online here, here, here, and here, if you’d like an idea of what to expect.

The Chaos Communications Congress starts up just after Christmas. Although it’s nominally a computer security conference, many of the talks range more broadly into politics, art and society. It brings to Berlin hundreds of geeks, generally smart, idealistic and anti-authoritarian, and brimming with innovative projects.

Talks that caught my eye:

• Hacker Spaces: “places for people, tools, and Club-Mate”. Berlin already has an impressive assortment of communal work-spaces, play-spaces and living-spaces. There’s always room for more ideas, though, and for inspiration from the dozens of ‘hacker spaces’ in other cities
• Wikileaks is one of the most stunningly successful projects around – in the last year, the whistleblowers’ website has, among other things, “publicly revealed more sensitive military documents than the entire world’s press combined”. They’re doing an incredible job of breaking open government secrecy, and I’d love to hear more about how they’ve pulled it off
• Of the purely technical talks, Dan Kaminsky’s is likely to be one of the most interesting. Dan has built up quite a reputation for finding security holes in the infrastructure of the internet. He’ll be talking about the major vulnerability in the DNS system, which he found earlier in the year

If the €80 price-tag is too much, at least pop into the after-parties at C-Base, the nerd refuge built in the wreckage of a ‘crashed space-station’ by Jannowitzbrücke.

An exhibition, 5th – 19th December 2008 @ Xenado Galerie, opening this Friday at 6 PM.

Artists: Claudia Rey & Dr Walker

Xenado Galerie
Chorinerstraße 79
10119 Berlin

When:
18th/19th October, 2008

Where:
Deutsche Telekom AG
Hauptstadtrepräsentanz
Französische Straße 33a-c
10117 Berlin
Deutschland

More infos!

If you’re in the city in August or early September, make sure to check out Urban Affairs.

+++ ATM likes to invite you to URBAN AFFAIRS – probably the biggest streetart groupshows this year in Germany with about 45 different artists from all over the world! ATM is proud to be a partner of this event and likes to show you new works of participating ATM Artists BIMER, EMESS and BONK!

URBAN AFFAIRS , Brauerei Friedrichshöhe, Landsberger Alle 54, Berlin-Friedrichshain 05.07.08 – 05.09.08, Di-Do 14:00-20:00, Fr-So 15:00-23:00, www.urbanaffairs.de +++

I just dropped of some friends at Hauptbahnhof and noticed that Berlin is pretty much dead during the Euro 2008 football games – except for those places who own a TV, of any size. And that’s what public viewing is all about.

To native English speakers the name itself, “public viewing”, may sound strange. In short, it’s about watching events in public places. Most of those places have giant flat screens, but not all of them. Berlin itself offers lots of opportunities to go outside and watch a game. Plenty of bars, in the parks, restaurants and so on.

Interesting also that football is not just a guys thing anymore. Lots of girls on the streets wearing shirts and flags. So this is not gonna be so boring after all. Woo. ;-)

Currently, the Linuxtag is in Berlin (near Funkturm, Deutschland Hallen, right next to it). We managed to go yesterday for a bit, went around the booths for a bit and then tried to go for one of the free lectures.

Trying to find the lecture turned out to be a bit of a hassle. The people at the site didn’t know where anything is at and the signs were screwed up (“running in a circle”). Finally found it, but then sitting there and looking at a tiny projector screen without wifi made it seem like the economy version of the lectures. Let’s hope that the people who paid 600 EUR per day had more fun. (Note: sarcasm)

Linuxtag runs until Saturday, check this link for tomorrow’s schedule:
http://www.linuxtag.org/2008/en/conf/events/vp-samstag.html