CARE TAKING
In the summer months 2020, The Watch will welcome Melanie Jame Wolf, Max Brück and Malin Arnell/Mar Fjell for residencies.
MELANIE JAME WOLF
Sometime in the small hours of the night, on 17 October 2019, exactly a month after giving birth to my child, I wrote the following words:
Standing sentinel
over the banal tyranny
of your arrival.
A faithful servant
to your reluctant faith
in me,
or anyone.
You.
The sceptic.
A survivalist.
A stranger
that I made
out of my own interests:
gristly curiosity
and blazing gestures of devotion.
I propose a residency at The Watch that continues this narrative exploration of being The Sentinel, the one who watches over, who takes care through acts of laborious stillness and attention. One who scratches out poems on their handy at 3am on October 17, 2019 so as not to disturb the precarious, hard won peace by moving their body too much, or at all. Practices of modulating detection. Observing what it is now to endeavor to take care of my child whilst equally taking care of my artistic practice. And by being there, continuing what I have been working on across this first winter as a parent, gently dissolving the monolithic myth of the impossibility of practicing 'motherhood' and 'art' simultaneously. Thickening this proposal, I would like to invoke a particular duty of care that I believe I have to my child. This duty speaks to the specific site of the watchtower – a site for sentinels of the former east side of the Mauer. While at The Watch, I would like to think through practices that attend to my child's history and future as a native Berliner who has one parent that belongs to the large international artist diaspora which has arguably contributed to the now steamrolling gentrification of Berlin, and another parent who is from the former DDR. How can I take care of the confluence of these concerns through writing, thinking, tiny choreographies of body and light, small video making practices with my Handy, and other improvised actions and processes across the 6 weeks that I am in residence in a spirit that in turn takes care of the watchtower, its symbols, resonances, and needs?
Melanie Jame Wolf is an Australian born artist currently based in Berlin. She works solo and with friends, making interdisciplinary pieces about flows of immaterial capital: social, cultural, and affective. She examines these economies and entanglements through projects for theater, gallery, and screen spaces.
Coming from a 10 year background in contemporary performance, Melanie Jame now works mainly with text, sound, video, choreography, & installation. Concerning herself with the poetics and problematics of ghosts, class, pop, sensuality, gender, narratology, and the body as a political riddle, Wolf pursues an ongoing interest in analysing the idea of performance-as-labour in artistic, popular entertainment, and everyday contexts. Her work often produces taxonomies of performance techniques, for example: of impersonation, melodrama, or stand up. She does this in order to understand performance as a potential technology for survival and as an engine for fluidity of subjectivity from a queer-feminist perspective.
https://www.savage-amusement.com/
Coming from a 10 year background in contemporary performance, Melanie Jame now works mainly with text, sound, video, choreography, & installation. Concerning herself with the poetics and problematics of ghosts, class, pop, sensuality, gender, narratology, and the body as a political riddle, Wolf pursues an ongoing interest in analysing the idea of performance-as-labour in artistic, popular entertainment, and everyday contexts. Her work often produces taxonomies of performance techniques, for example: of impersonation, melodrama, or stand up. She does this in order to understand performance as a potential technology for survival and as an engine for fluidity of subjectivity from a queer-feminist perspective.
https://www.savage-amusement.com/
MAX BRÜCK
Der einst zum Schutz der DDR Grenze errichtete Wachturm
wird heute selbst zum Beschützten Objekt. Als Care-Taking
versteht ich dabei nicht seine bauliche Instandhaltung, sondern viel mehr seine Kulturelle Besetzung. Die Herausforderung besteht heute darin, Dinge und Ort wie den Wachtutm
zu pflegen aber auch zu schützen. Grenzen, Menschen die
diese Einfordern, Nationalismen und rechte Bewegungen
sind an der Tagesordnung. Auch Kulturelle Orte sind davon
betroffen und müssen ihre Daseinsberechtigung einmal mehr
verteidigen.
Im Zuge meines Aufenthalts möchte ich das Care-Taking als ein gesellschaftliches Thema verstehen. Im konkreten Bezug auf den Wachturm und eine Materialität stelle ich Fragen an Verpackung. Eine Verpackung schützt ihren Inhalt, verschönt, kann zur Verblendung werden, gibt Informationen. Reizvoll ist daher für mich, die Hülle des Wachturms, seine Erscheinung und deren Verfremdung. Verpackung kann auch auch Grenze sein. Gitter verpacken Höfe, eine Verbretterung verhindert den Zugang zum leerstehenden Gebäude.
Im Zeitraum der Residenz möchte ich eine ortspezifische Installation für den Außen- und Innenbereich entwickeln.
Im Zuge meines Aufenthalts möchte ich das Care-Taking als ein gesellschaftliches Thema verstehen. Im konkreten Bezug auf den Wachturm und eine Materialität stelle ich Fragen an Verpackung. Eine Verpackung schützt ihren Inhalt, verschönt, kann zur Verblendung werden, gibt Informationen. Reizvoll ist daher für mich, die Hülle des Wachturms, seine Erscheinung und deren Verfremdung. Verpackung kann auch auch Grenze sein. Gitter verpacken Höfe, eine Verbretterung verhindert den Zugang zum leerstehenden Gebäude.
Im Zeitraum der Residenz möchte ich eine ortspezifische Installation für den Außen- und Innenbereich entwickeln.
Ich beschäftige mich mit persönlicher und kollektiver Erinnerung. Zentral dabei ist der Umgang mit Objekten und
Räumen, denen Erinnerungen anhaften. Die Gegenstände
sind dabei ganz und gar nicht ortsgebunden. Dies zeigt die
Arbeit Blechgarage, bei der eine 20qm große Wellblechhütte demontiert, transportiert und an anderer Stelle in umgestülpter Gestalt wieder aufgebaut wurde. Bei der Verortung,
Freistellung und Archivierung von ortsbezogenen Objekten
werden territoriale Grenzen in Frage gestellt. Der Umgang
mit Vergangenem entspringt einer persönlichen Relation,
nimmt aber erst in seiner kollektiven Relevanz eine Gestalt
an. So stehen immer wieder aktuelle gesellschaftspolitische
Themen im Fokus und die Stellungnahme zu deutscher, sowie
europäischer Geschichte ist unausweichlich.
2019 veröffentlichte ich eine 40 seitiges Essay zur Untersuchung der gesellschaftlichen Rolle vom politischen Selbstbau in der DDR unter dem Einfluss von Mangel. Die praktische Arbeit „Heizkraftwerk“(siehe Portfolio) nimmt unmittelbaren Bezug auf diese Forschungsergebnisse.
Räume interessieren mich nicht nur aus ihrer Geschichte heraus, sondern bilden rein in ihrer Funktion die nahezu wich tigste Grundlage zum unabhängigen Arbeiten. Die Residenz im Wachturm stellt für mich eine geschützte Werkstatt dar.
http://maxbrueck.de/
2019 veröffentlichte ich eine 40 seitiges Essay zur Untersuchung der gesellschaftlichen Rolle vom politischen Selbstbau in der DDR unter dem Einfluss von Mangel. Die praktische Arbeit „Heizkraftwerk“(siehe Portfolio) nimmt unmittelbaren Bezug auf diese Forschungsergebnisse.
Räume interessieren mich nicht nur aus ihrer Geschichte heraus, sondern bilden rein in ihrer Funktion die nahezu wich tigste Grundlage zum unabhängigen Arbeiten. Die Residenz im Wachturm stellt für mich eine geschützte Werkstatt dar.
http://maxbrueck.de/
MALIN ARNELL / MAR FJELL
We,
artists and researchers Malin Arnell and Mar Fjell aim to bring together, and further develop
some of the experiences, methods an formats we have developed during
our ongoing collaboration within “In Each Other’s Company”. We feel a
strong need for self-other-care. To tell a specific story. To take a
stand. Therefore we need to come
together. To be together. To spend timespacematter together – in each other’s company. To build strength. To find the movements, words and materials that can hold and unfold this story. Make it live, to keep
us alive. We will engage in and invite other queer critters to collectively vibrate – to create affirmative actions, empowering experiences and healing potentials in and around the Watch Tower.
We will organise gatherings and participatory actions during our sta at The Watch, engaging through questions such as: How can the making of care and collectivity, through artistic practice, have a healin effect on queer, non binary and trans persons? How can we use specific frequencies (created by sound waves) to make imprints upon matter, which change energies and emotional states? What is needed to develo inter-dependent trust and courage? How do we mediate care and vulnerability through a temporary and performative practice?
Mar and Malin’s residency will be postponed to the summer 2021.
together. To be together. To spend timespacematter together – in each other’s company. To build strength. To find the movements, words and materials that can hold and unfold this story. Make it live, to keep
us alive. We will engage in and invite other queer critters to collectively vibrate – to create affirmative actions, empowering experiences and healing potentials in and around the Watch Tower.
We will organise gatherings and participatory actions during our sta at The Watch, engaging through questions such as: How can the making of care and collectivity, through artistic practice, have a healin effect on queer, non binary and trans persons? How can we use specific frequencies (created by sound waves) to make imprints upon matter, which change energies and emotional states? What is needed to develo inter-dependent trust and courage? How do we mediate care and vulnerability through a temporary and performative practice?
Mar and Malin’s residency will be postponed to the summer 2021.
When
Malin Arnell, PhD and Mar Fjell, MFA, come together, they becom an interdisciplinary art worker,
collaborator, researcher, educator,
and musician, within socially engaged and performative practices. Since 2017, they have shared breaths through Los Angeles, New York,
Amsterdam, Stockholm, Treignac, Turku, Skomvaer, Bolzano, among other places. Now inhaling Berlin.
They explicitly do affectivity within a queer eco-erotic ethics of polymorphous perversity and care making. They explore conditions fo participatory practices in territorial environments by emphasising the sticky shivers of (self-)touching through vibrating togetherness.
Masturbatory cooperation, and a dis-location of those frictions, open up an unending dynamism of entanglements aka everything in the name of all things queer.
With the support of The Swedish Arts Grants Committee and Kone Foundation’s Saari Residency in Finland, they are now working towards
establishing sustainable collaborative long-term queer engagements under the name “In Each Other’s Company”. Between January-June 202 Mar is hosting the project ”A Call for Care and Connection” in their studio, during their residency at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, as a part of the development of ”In Each Other’s Company”.
www.malinarnell.org, http://dissertationthroughaction.space/
https://marfjell.wordpress.com/
image: Malin Arnell, I am not quite sure. This is an arduous terrain (again), 2016, (videostill).
and musician, within socially engaged and performative practices. Since 2017, they have shared breaths through Los Angeles, New York,
Amsterdam, Stockholm, Treignac, Turku, Skomvaer, Bolzano, among other places. Now inhaling Berlin.
They explicitly do affectivity within a queer eco-erotic ethics of polymorphous perversity and care making. They explore conditions fo participatory practices in territorial environments by emphasising the sticky shivers of (self-)touching through vibrating togetherness.
Masturbatory cooperation, and a dis-location of those frictions, open up an unending dynamism of entanglements aka everything in the name of all things queer.
With the support of The Swedish Arts Grants Committee and Kone Foundation’s Saari Residency in Finland, they are now working towards
establishing sustainable collaborative long-term queer engagements under the name “In Each Other’s Company”. Between January-June 202 Mar is hosting the project ”A Call for Care and Connection” in their studio, during their residency at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, as a part of the development of ”In Each Other’s Company”.
www.malinarnell.org, http://dissertationthroughaction.space/
https://marfjell.wordpress.com/
image: Malin Arnell, I am not quite sure. This is an arduous terrain (again), 2016, (videostill).