Tag Archives: Berlin

Camover: Anti-Surveillance Real Life Gaming

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camover_large_verge_medium_landscape

Ger­man dis­si­dents are tak­ing gam­i­fi­ca­tion and apply­ing it to activism in order to protest the rise of sur­veil­lance tech­nol­ogy in the coun­try. Camover 2013 is a com­pe­ti­tion unfold­ing across the coun­try, in which teams attempt to destroy as many CCTV cam­eras as pos­si­ble. Bonus scores are given to the teams that dis­play the most cre­ativ­ity in destruc­tion. In the video invi­ta­tion below you can see ski-masked “play­ers”  tear­ing the cam­eras down with ropes, smash­ing them out with ham­mers, and black­ing them out with bil­low­ing clouds of spray paint. Teams are encour­aged to upload their con­quests to the Camover web­site.

Tthe Ger­man debate about the use of sur­veil­lance in pub­lic spaces has come to the fore in recent years. While CCTV cam­eras have been in use in the coun­try since the mid–1960s, last year’s Bonn bomb scare and a pub­lic mid­day mur­der in bustling Alexan­der­platz lead the country’s Inte­rior Min­is­ter to call for bring­ing the cam­eras out of the train sta­tions and onto the street. The Min­istry claims they have been shown to reduce crime by as much as 20 per­cent, although not all reports on the cam­eras’ effec­tive­ness as a deter­rent have been favorable.

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The moral and legal con­cerns asso­ci­ated with the will­ful destruc­tion of prop­erty in the real-world make this much more than a “game,” and the cre­ators admit that it’s a seri­ous mat­ter. Camover’s anony­mous founder: “although we call it a game, we are quite seri­ous about it: our aim is to destroy as many cam­eras as pos­si­ble and to have an influ­ence on video sur­veil­lance in our cities.”

Camover ends on Feb­ru­ary 16th, three days before the start of the Euro­pean Police Con­gress.


Tonight: Controversial ‘Golgota Picnic’ in Berlin

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The most con­tro­ver­sial the­ater piece of last year, “Gol­gota Pic­nic” will be shown in Berlin as part of the For­eign Affairs Fes­ti­val.

Paris’s most pres­ti­gious the­atre was being pro­tected by riot police and guard-dog patrols on Thurs­day after it became the lat­est tar­get in a wave of Catholic protests across France against so-called “blas­phe­mous” play.

Two men reported to have links to fun­da­men­tal­ist Catholic groups were arrested at the week­end while attempt­ing to dis­able the theatre’s secu­rity system.

The­atre­go­ers have been advised to arrive an hour early to get through the airport-style secu­rity before reach­ing their seats.

Jean-Michel Ribes, head of the Théâtre de Rond-Point, appealed for calm. He said: “The Théâtre du Rond-Point isn’t an anti-Christian, anti-Muslim or anti-Jewish place.” But he said the role of artists was to fight against “suf­fo­cat­ing dogma”.

That was the reac­tion when the play was shown in Paris last year.

In Gól­gota Pic­nic, Argen­tin­ian direc­tor Rodrigo Gar­cía makes a furi­ous indict­ment of west­ern soci­ety. He aims at muse­ums as modern-day tem­ples in which Chris­t­ian iconog­ra­phy rep­re­sent­ing tor­ture – crowns of thorns, cas­ti­ga­tion and cru­ci­fix­ion – is pre­sented even to chil­dren. Blood and beauty go together, for exam­ple in pas­sages of Bach’s St. Matthew Pas­sion, which tells of suf­fer­ing and death while meat is churned through a min­cer on the big screen and worms crawl bury into ground flesh. Gar­cía presents a macabre pic­nic, using con­sumerism as a stage, and pro­vokes a seri­ous, con­tro­ver­sial debate on Christ’s promise of heal­ing that founders due to human self-empowerment. Finally, there is extreme chaos, made up of silence, iso­la­tion, and decel­er­a­tion – beauty that has to be endured. And with­out redemption.

The play will be in Span­ish with Ger­man sub­ti­tles and will be fol­lowed by an artist talk.


YOU ARE HERE AKA THE MAZE in Berlin

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YOU ARE HERE AKA THE MAZE is a two week festival-installation at the West­ger­many arts space in Kreuzberg. A life-sized labyrinth is installed in the space in which per­for­mances, live music and exhi­bi­tions take place. Every day at the MAZE are being hosted/curated by dif­fer­ent peo­ple of Berlins art/music scene.

As an active instal­la­tion the MAZE influences/alters the per­for­mances by break­ing up and divert­ing the rela­tion­ship between per­former and audience.

The MAZE was invented by New York based artist group TROUBLE who host the event bi-anually in NYC and will bring it to Berlin in col­lab­o­ra­tion with a group of local artists and promoters.

Pro­gram up-date in here.


Michael Haneke in Berlin!

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‘Amour’ the new film by the Aus­trian direc­tor Michael Haneke, is the story of an octo­ge­nar­ian hus­band and wife fac­ing their mor­tal­ity — beau­ti­fully played by the French actors Jean-Louis Trintig­nant and Emmanuelle Riva — liv­ing audi­ences stunned with its artistry and depth of feeling.

Some view­ers were sur­prised by the human­ity of the film, com­ing from a mas­ter of tightly con­trolled cin­ema whose movies often con­tain sud­den bursts of vio­lence. Haneke said he made the film because “I expe­ri­enced some­thing in my fam­ily that touched me.”

The direc­tor said his rep­u­ta­tion for deliv­er­ing shocks was unjust. “Jour­nal­ists always try to stick a label on direc­tors,” he said. “For a long time I’ve been the expert in violence.”

But he said the style of a film should suit its sub­ject, and “this film is about love.” ‘Amour’ won, after The White Rib­bon, the sec­ond Palme d’Or for Haneke.

The film will be shown (French with Ger­man sub­ti­tles) on Wednes­day 12.09. in the Akademie der Kün­ste with Haneke him­self talk­ing after the film.

Mi, 12.09.12 / 19:00 Uhr,
Akademie der Kün­ste
Hanseat­en­weg 10
10557 Berlin

Fuck GEMA!

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If you live in Ger­many, prob­a­bly you hate GEMA as much as the next John in his right mind. For those who don’t know, GEMA (Gesellschaft für musikalis­che Auf­führungs– und mech­a­nis­che Vervielfäl­ti­gungsrechte. Eng­lish: Soci­ety for musi­cal per­form­ing and mechan­i­cal repro­duc­tion rights) is a per­for­mance rights orga­ni­za­tion from Germany.

Its pur­pose is to col­lect roy­alty fees from the organ­is­ers of pub­lic events where music pro­tected by GEMA is played as well as media man­u­fac­tur­ers and pub­lish­ers and broad­cast­ing stations.

GEMA are also the fuck­ers respon­si­ble for block­ing the videos in youtube, as Wiki says:

Music videos for major label artists on YouTube, as well as many videos con­tain­ing back­ground music, have been unavail­able in Ger­many since the end of March 2009 as GEMA sought to raise its fee charged to YouTube to 12 euro cents per streamed video., a fee a YouTube spokesman described as “pro­hib­i­tive”. The issue is set to be taken up by a Cal­i­for­nia court.

GEMA is also from next year increas­ing in grants, nine times more, the roy­al­ties they col­lect from clubs and bars all over Berlin. Which will end up in many venues hav­ing to close down.

FAIR Play is orginiz­ing a mas­sive Demo out­side Frannz Club (this Mon­day, 25.06. 18:00–22:00) where GEMA are hav­ing a member’s meeting.

Check also the On-line Peti­tion.


On the Edge of Reason.The Picture Series in the Age of the Enlightenment

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The cre­ative and fan­tas­ti­cal visual world of the capric­cio which thrived all the way through the 18th cen­tury, exist­ing beyond the intel­lec­tual, socially crit­i­cal and eman­ci­pa­tory endeav­ours of the Enlight­en­ment. The pic­tures on dis­play on this exhi­bi­tion depict the dark, irra­tional sides of nature, archi­tec­ture and humankind.

The strange­ness of these images often leaves the viewer con­fused, as in the case of the sin­is­ter, brood­ing archi­tec­tural fan­tasies of Gio­vanni Bat­tista Piranesi’s Carceri or Goya’s Caprichos.The most famous sheet from the Capri­chos, The Sleep of Rea­son Pro­duces Mon­sters (El sueño de la razón pro­duce mon­struos) has become an emblem of this dark under­belly of the enlight­ened, illu­mi­nated world of rea­son and the Enlightenment.

This exhi­bi­tion sees trea­sures from the Kupfer­stichk­abi­nett’s rich hold­ings of works in this genre go on dis­play together for the first time, giv­ing vis­i­tors the chance to appre­ci­ate the out­stand­ing aes­thetic value of these works on paper. The exhi­bi­tion invites the pub­lic to dis­cover the artis­tic rich­ness of a visual world that hov­ered on the edge of rea­son in an epoch that hov­ered on the thresh­old of modernity.

Kupfer­stichk­abi­nett, Kul­tur­fo­rum, Berlin
until 29 July 2012


Diane Arbus in Martin-Gropius-Bau

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Diane Arbus’ (New York, 1923–1971) bold sub­ject mat­ter and pho­to­graphic approach pro­duced a body of work that is often shock­ing in its purity. Her con­tem­po­rary anthropology—portraits of cou­ples, chil­dren, car­ni­val per­form­ers, nud­ists, middle-class fam­i­lies, trans­ves­tites, zealots, eccentrics, and celebrities—also stands as an alle­gory of the human expe­ri­ence, an explo­ration of the rela­tion­ship between appear­ance and iden­tity, illu­sion and belief, the­atre and reality.

The Martin-Gropius-Bau presents a selec­tion of two hun­dred pho­tographs that afford an oppor­tu­nity to explore the ori­gins and aspi­ra­tions in the pho­tog­ra­phy of Diane Arbus. The exhi­bi­tion shows all of the artist’s iconic pho­tographs as well as many that have never before been pub­licly exhibited.

22 June to 23 Sep­tem­ber 2012