Lithuanian artist Arturas Raila has now been carrying out his project in progress entitled "The Power of the Earth" for two years, in collaboration with the geo-energy experts Vaclovas Mikailionis and Villius Gibavicius. The artist and the scientists come from rural areas of Lithuania, where they are leading representatives of a folklorist understanding of nature. This involves the matter-of-fact practice of traditional customs, e.g. the integration of the divining rod into contemporary contexts. Mikailionis and Gibavicius possess the special – as many see it almost supernatural – gift of being able to trace and map out the energy sources in their environment. Repeatedly, Arturas Raila has captured the diviners' work in photographs, whereby he always adopts the neutral position of the ethnographic observer with regard to this process, which meets with some scientific scepticism.

Starting out from the assumption that every place on earth displays unique geo-energetic forces, Arturas Raila has now investigated the geo-energy currents in Berlin’s inner city with the aid of the two experts, and has produced an "Energy Map" showing the course of geo-energetic currents in the form of lines – so-called "ley lines" or "force lines". On a large-format map, Raila presents visitors to Studio 3 with the smallest grid-network of "ley lines" in the centre of Berlin, which extends roughly from the Victory Column and Nikolaikirche/Unter den Linden to Kreuzberg/Victoria Monument.



Kraft der Erde, Studio 3,
November 10th – November 26th 2006,
Opening: Thursday, 09. November 2006, 19 h

Nothing seems to be as peaceful as a still-life, and yet this genre is no less than a provocation. The glossily brilliant Dutch paintings - in which shop window displays, fruit and vegetables resemble a demonstration of the power of painting skills – actually convey deeper moral messages, bluntly reminding the suitably educated observer of his transience. But today's art historians cannot agree on quite how much literary sermon is concealed in this kind of painting, and to what extent they were simply a bigoted excuse to go on producing glossy painted surfaces with impunity.

The work of Luzia Simons is located precisely at this interface between the obvious and the cultural code, naked reproduction and metaphor.
Using modern scanning techniques, the artist produces images of flowers. In this way, her images not only come to include the ideal forms of blossoming beauty, but also faults, malfunctions and the start of irrevocable decay. Simons' art, however, is not primarily concerned with the warning of vanitas - the reminder of the transience of all being in the old paintings -, but with the rather rambling tale of a cultural symbol. The tulip thus becomes a metaphor of mobility, globalisation and intercultural identity. Once the much sought-after flower was worth its weight in gold, and developed into a cultural symbol in both the Occident and Orient. Originating from the Orient, it was brought to Europe and altered by cultivation in Holland; finally, it returned to its ancient origins in new varieties – thus becoming an example of cultural migration, a symbol of exchange and of insidious changes in aesthetic significance.



Stockage, Studio 2,
November 10th – November 26th 2006,
Opening: Thursday, 09. November 2006, 19 h

If there are any who still doubt that left-wing politics can go hand in hand with a reactionary resentment to culture, they have been able to find an involuntary exhibition to prove it showing in the Bethanien building on Mariannenplatz for several months now. In the south wing of the building, a handful of squatters have been residing with no recognisable success, without even a vaguely discernible artistic concept, and to no political effect. Although they lack any direct democratic legitimacy, they claim to be the champions of the local, district culture.

Astonishingly, after enough signatures had been collected to warrant a public petition for referendum concerning the use of this valuable property on Mariannenplatz, the referendum did not actually take place. Instead, step by step, the local authorities are granting the squatters a more comprehensive right of use. To the detriment of the successful project Bethanien with its qualitatively outstanding participants, a minority with no valid qualification is thus being given the enhanced status of cultural provider. Robin Hood becomes the Sheriff. Each to his own livelihood. And the squatters themselves have still not grasped properly their role as the foot soldiers of a "folklorified" cultural concept. Populism is conservative, even when it proudly exhibits stereotype gestures of rebellion as if showing off brand labels.