08/08/2016

Project Space Festival 2016 Week 1

Th3rd edition of the Project Spaced Festival, 31 days of organised ramble into the city to discover whatever you want to discover. Actually my approach is very naive when it is matter of art, at least as a first encounter I claim this approach for the pleasure to be surprised. I usually read the description of the event without too many expectation, wait and see. But after of course I like to get the feedback from connoisseurs in case I miss something.

day1
It's started at the ebullient space apartment project. Project space that I visited three years ago to interview Selda together with a friend Natalia. At this time Natalia had the idea to follow the festival program and to conduct interviews of each people behind the project spaces involved into the program, the result was pretty cool, all articles are here. Three years later the artists in residence at apartment-project have changed and the place is still full of energy.

day2
Sadly I couldn't join.

day3
This Wednesday it's the turn for insitu to be the art stage of the day. There is a tiny Tour de France spirit in this festival continuously traveling in the city. The event started at and in front of insitu and the people attending the event were shuttling between the space and the späti on the other side of the street. At some point the crowd slightly moved a few street numbers away to attend and be part of a group meditation. The weather was clement enough to not rain during the outdoor performance...



day4
In the program this year they are galleries, spaces from and outside Berlin. Tonight it's Köln and the people behind bruch und dallas. Having no physical place in town, their participation was the take over of a kind of no man's land located nearby the Gemäldergalerie.

The work presented reminds me signs left by aliens on the ground when they come to visit us, as many people I guess I almost walk onto the piece... The weather was so shitty that you couldn't distinguish really between the grey sky and the dark ground or the other way around.



day5
Arriving a bit in advance I used my time to get lost in the streets around the today's place Display. I usually don't stop around Yorckstrasse, just cross the area on my bike, now I know I should stop more often. That's also the pleasure for me with that festival, rediscovering Berlin by the mean of detours.

I enter the space, video installation in the first room and music instrument on the floor announcing later performance. People are slowly arriving. During the time I'm watching the video I can see people going to the back of the space, thinking they go to the bar, I also observe they are not coming back, so I went.

If the front room is full of natural light and toward the street the back is the complete opposite. One room with open door and people queuing to get in. A narrow room, lighted with candles, a bathtub and two women naked conversing while taking a bath and eating cheese, there is a big cheese wooden deck between them.

The spectators are watching the performance, there is something special with performances, it's not theatre, something between 3D cinema and live voyeurism and pure augmented reality or PAR not be confused with AR or VR... A down to the rabbit hole feeling, a visit into a parallel world for a short time, a strong contrast of atmosphere between the two rooms. Pretty cool.



day6
the shortest event ever. It started at 20:00 and finished at 20:05. I was one minute too late, could not get in but could see the people rushing to get in and out.

day7
a big part of my day was spent on my sofa reading. At some point I used the event of the day to leave early before meeting friends for a late Sunday drink in Kreuzberg. On the program a new place to visit for me called labor neunzehn. A slight touch of N.K. for the building and location of this project space, also music and before video projection. I only stayed for the video, pretty interesting even so almost nothing happen on screen, trucks working, glimpse of a people conversation, what I understood as a Californian environment judging the colors, like sitting on bench and watching, another PAR experience, qui a dit que le réel pouvait être ennuyeux?