Conversation

27 April 2010

Artists Beyond

On Tuesday 27 April, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst hosts an artist talk with Mark Boulos. The talk takes place within the framework of Artists Beyond, the prelude to the 6th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (11.6.–8.8.2010). The various events in the Artists Beyond program offer insights into artistic research and work and enable engagement with the creative process as well as an exchange between audience and artists at the sites of their production. On this occasion, Cosmin Costinaş, curator of BAK talks to Mark Boulos—who is exhibiting in the 6th Berlin Biennale—about his methodologies and principles of working and about the artist’s position in the complex contexts he chooses to address.

Mark Boulos is currently working on a multi-screen documentary video installation about the persistence of Communism beyond its oft-heralded death, and about the relationship between love, idealism, and rebellion. Boulos has just returned from the Philippines, where he filmed the guerrillas of the New People’s Army. The Maoist insurgency has been fighting there since 1969, but since 2001 has been labeled a “terrorist” group by the European Union and United States.

Mark Boulos, born 1975, lives and works in Amsterdam and London. He was an artist-in-residence at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam in 2007. Boulos’s documentaries represent belief so devout that it becomes real; his films often focus on political militancy and religious ecstasy. Recent works include: All That is Solid Melts into Air , 2008; The Word Was God , 2006; andThe Gates of Damascus , 2005. His films have been shown at (selection): Morality, Witte de With, Rotterdam, 2010; This Land Is Your Land, Center for Contemporary Art, Glasgow, 2009; Praxis, Biennale of Thessaloniki, 2009; Docking Station: Mark Boulos – All That Is Solid Melts into Air , Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 2008; 16th Biennale of Sydney, Sydney 2008; Narrowcast, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles, 2008; and If: people and places in recent film and video, Bloomberg Space, London, 2008.

This year the Berlin Biennale, organized by KW Institute for Contemporary Art and supported by the Federal Cultural Foundation since 2004, takes place for the sixth time at numerous locations in Berlin. Between 11 June and 8 August 2010, the Berlin Biennale presents a wide range of artistic practices that pose questions about “the contemporary” and the relation that art holds to this very notion. Amongst other places, the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, the Alte Nationalgalerie, and the buildings at Oranienplatz 17 and Mehringdamm 28 function as exhibition venues. In addition, on the invitation of Kathrin Rhomberg, Biennale curator, art historian and art critic Michael Fried curates an exhibition presenting works of Adolph Menzel. Further information can be found at: www.berlinbiennale.de.

The Berlin Biennale is organized by KW Institute for Contemporary Art and funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation. Artists Beyond has been funded with support from the European Commission.

Suggestions from the archive

Learning

10 May, 12.00–12 May, 18.00 2023

Complaint Making: Setting Up Conflict-Positive Spaces for Community Building Praxis

Vishnu would like to share feminist governance tools (FGT) focused on three of many tiers in community building praxis. FGT is based on the values of equity with an emphasis on creating psychologically safe environments, drawing on the use of consent. Decision-making processes, setting up conflict-positive spaces, and complaint-making as diversity work will form the body of this three-day training. Rooted in Vishnu’s autho-ethnographic practice, this work will explore the power dynamics that impact decision-making processes.

Performative

10 May, 12.00–12 May, 18.00 2023

The Diamond Mind II

In this dance training, the people will use a one-minute film of their own movement as material for a booklet—a sixteen page signature—that distributes their presence, their gesture, as an act of EQ. 

Learning

3 May, 12.00–4 May, 18.00 2023

Too Late To Say Sorry? 

A bad apology can ruin a friendship, destroy a community, or end a career. In this workshop, we will investigate the impact of apologies on our relationships and our worlds. Why and how do we make apologies? What can giving and receiving apologies teach us about values and integrity? Should you apologize for something you don’t really feel sorry for? We will explore conflict and how we like to be in conflict with others. We will dive into our own boundaries. We will seek to understand how honoring limits becomes an act of building (or freeing) better worlds capable of holding so many, many more of us.

Learning

28 April, 12.00–29 April, 18.00 2023

Huisje, Boompje, Beestje (D.A.F.O.N.T.)

In this rare masterclass, retired teacher and artist Glenda Martinus teaches participants a thing or two about painting with Microsoft Word. Martinus shares tips, tricks, and secrets on how to use this software to its unexpected potential as a drawing tool. Participants learn how to draw three basic objects—a house, a tree, and an animal—in a seemingly innocent exercise that perhaps contains more layered social commentary. Drawing the worlds we desire does not require expensive tools or education, simply a curiosity to understand how the monster’s tools can topple the house of the master.