On the occasion of the New Year, we will continue our Open Studios tradition, offering our visitors an insight into artistic production and current projects of Künstlerhaus Bethanien's artists in residence. The following studios will be open to visit on the evening of January 15:

Jungju An (ROK), Cynthia Girard (CA), Romeo Gongora (CA),
Ane Graff (N), Sara Hughes (NZ), Jost Kirsten (NA),
Thomasz Kowalski (PL), Anouk Kruithof (NL), Pia Lindman (FIN), Ives Maes (B), Christian Niccoli (I), Christodoulos Panayiotou (CY), Björn Perborg (S), Sarah Ryan (AUS), Patrick Tuttofuoco (I),
André Sousa (P).

Thursday, 15th January 2009, 7 – 10 pm, 1st + 2nd floor

ALEKSANDRA POLISIEWICZ – "WARTOPIA"
2009 marks the 70th anniversary of the start of the Second World War and the German invasion of Poland. In remembrance, Künstlerhaus Bethanien is showing the project “Wartopia” by the Polish artist Aleksandra Polisiewicz (curator: Bozena Czubak).
In “Wartopia” the artist essays a virtual recreation of the city of Warsaw according to unrealised National Socialist plans dating from the first years of the Second World War. In architectonic urban panoramas displayed as coloured prints, animations and design models, her visual reproductions reveal an equivocal view of history.
The starting point for the urban visions of Wartopia, which were generated using 3D-technology, was the National Socialists’ urban developmental concepts: they proposed the complete demolition of Warsaw in order to build “the new German city of Warsaw”, which would have housed less than a hundred thousand inhabitants. The city model realised virtually by Polisiewicz manifests the ambiguous historical dimension and also disturbs the viewer with its visual attractiveness: the aesthetics of the ensemble are based on elements of a monumental, modernistic classicism that presents itself as an icon of stereotype totalitarian architecture. Polisiewicz’s concept of the totalitarian city can be regarded as a critical mediatising of collective memory.
We are showing “Wartopia” in collaboration with the Polish Institute Berlin, where the exhibition can be viewed subsequently (4th – 28th February 2009, http://www.polnischekultur.de).

URBAN ART – "GLOBALPIX"
Marek Pisarsky and Anne Peschken have been working together as “Urban Art” since 1985. Peschken and Pisarsky practise interventions into public space belonging to the field of Concept Art, making use of a wide range of artistic media. The exhibition Globalpix in Studio 1 shows a selection of large-format “pixel images” as well as a video which has been produced in the style of a documentary soap. In order to create the pixel images, the artists collect painted-on canvases discarded by other artists and cut them into strips so that only slight traces of the original painting remain visible. After this, the strips are interwoven with one another on stretcher frames so that they generate basic structures for new images. These grid-shaped, square fields each represent one pixel when the images are painted later. The resulting images have a very coarse definition that can only be discerned properly from a distance. In search of up-to-date aesthetic and painterly forms of expression, parts of the images are painted over to produce a new composition, but fragments of the old painting are retained along with the memory of/an interlock with earlier art production. Pisarsky’s and Peschken’s depictions of historical themes thus correspond to the double-perspective viewing suitable for pixel-images, for it seems we can perceive “history” more clearly from a greater (temporal) distance than we can when we are at the heart of (temporally close) events.

"Wartopia" and "Globalpix" are being realised with generous support from the Governing Mayor of Berlin, Senate Office – Cultural Affairs.

16th January – 1st February 2009, Studio 1
Opening: Thursday, 15th January 2009, from 7 pm

In his photographic works, IVES MAES creates controversial portraits of specific historical epochs by combining characters and elements from well-known science fiction films with the venues and architectural remains of past world exhibitions. In the process, he contrasts the faith in technical progress and the optimistic projections of the future propagated by those exhibitions with the darker visions conveyed by science fiction. The latter examine the epochs in question critically, from the perspective of the future, and therefore investigate negative factors such as racism, the nuclear arms race, or Orwell’s state of surveillance as well. Ives Maes brings such contradictions together in his staged photos and so develops bizarre narratives full of irony, which question recent history in a perceptive way.
In Studio 2, Ives Maes is showing a space-consuming installation including photographic works in the form of light-boxes, and also collages and drawings referring to the International Building Exhibition in Berlin, 1957; Maes plans to present the cult German science fiction series "Raumschiff Orion" as a foil to the IBA site. Visitors can already imagine from the studies shown just what it will be like when the famous spaceship sails in over Berlin’s Hansa District, which will then face inspection by "space patrol Orion".
Ives Maes holds a fellowship from the government of Flanders, Brussels, and is a guest at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in the context of our International Studio Programme.

Ives Maes – "Die Stadt von morgen"
16th January – 1st February 2009, Studio 2
Opening: Thursday, 15th January 2009, from 7 pm

JUNGJU AN sheds light on a range of issues that concern people in different places across the world, giving universal expression to such themes in his video works by employing a particular composition of images and sound. He demonstrates a preference for the rhythms and sounds of everyday life and their onomatopoeic linguistic descriptions, which he combines to create individualistic symphonies: the wind in the trees, footsteps on asphalt, or the diffuse murmur of voices in a crowd. Working like a DJ, Jungju An creates digital assemblages from different linguistic elements that imitate sounds and so creates veritable sound scores, which he uses later to accompany his own recorded video sequences of everyday situations.
For his latest project, Jungju An filmed in six famous historical settings in Spain, France, Belgium, Italy, Austria and Germany and asked native speakers of these countries to lend him their voices for his microphone and subsequently used these ingredients to mix the soundtrack for his video films. In all six cities, Jungju An filmed places with historical gates – meeting points for tourists, and as such also places providing symbolic access to the culture typical of the specific locality or country. In Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Jungju An will first present his onomatopoetic video sequence of the Brandenburg Gate.
Jungju An holds a grant from the Arts Council Korea in the context of our International Studio Programme.

Jungju An – "Harmony_Lip-Sync Project II"
16th January – 1st February 2009, Studio 3
Opening: Thursday, 15th January 2009, from 7 pm