Now: Berlin
June 17th - 21st, 2015
Galerie Subsuelo, Berlin, Germany // Averill Park , NY , United States
Over a five day period in June 2015 Space and Time between Averill Park and Berlin was collapsed in a series of Now´s: Co-constructed events taking place simultaneously at the Mill and in Galerie Subsuelo in Berlin, while being live-streamed here on our website.
Berlin NOW can be seen as a prologue to the Galapagos Project; an educational project in collaboration with institutions and individuals world-wide to foster active proximity and interaction among diverse cultures, disciplines and living systems. The mission and meaning of this framework is to encourage, facilitate and advocate for a greater diversity of agents to interact, which in turn enables individuals to build connections between their multiple diverse ways of living and knowing.
Tuning in
As the first gesture the simple hanging of a screen became an invitation to a conversation, establishing a twilight window in which reflections from one Now merged with and became part of the Now happening behind it. Through double live projection the silent act of sweeping a floor became a present tense communicative exchange, interwoven Nows, flickering, fleeting in the two-dimensional plane.
Night Drawing
On the second evening the conversation consisted of paper and paint. Marks made in one location were responded to in another. Repeated, reversed, Bodies searching for bodies, finding them selves. Leaving traces. Capturing shadows. The field of the canvas expanded between here and there, collapsing the Now into a shared spatial condition allowing yellow paint spilled on the floor in Berlin to be picked up by brushes in the Mill
Double Screening
Two bodies in search of each other, emerging from openings in the past, openings in walls and openings in spaces of New York projected onto white walls of a gallery in Berlin. Two bodies merging together, yet wandering alone. Finding each other, if only for a second, recognising each other, in the endlessly rehearsed and since forgotten movements of moments long gone. Echoes still sounding across time and space, emphasised in the now. Expanding by collapsing, being present while absent, disappearing and reappearing again and again without ever being lost. Now within nows.
Opening Dinner
One single figure, putting on a wedding dress, to the tones of a lonely violin.
Two long tables, one here one there, one marked by food floating in air, one marked by bodies moving in familiar space, tied together by the shifting light and darkness of a dinner at the very first table, build in the shop, that very first year. The sharing of food with strangers, the sharing of food with friends, the sharing of food across the seas, the sharing of stories in endless space.
Folding out
Stepped-on paper folded over steps, resting for days, absorbing, then carefully lifted up by applying tension to strings. Now hovering white paper stairs, still, but not still, flickering slightly, adjusting to avoid collapse. Saved by the tones of the lonely violin, slowly lowered to allow the yielder of the violin to step out into the world. He lingers for a while, then walks away, wandering down a sidewalk covered with drawings drawn at night, filled with the mark of floating food and the faint traces of a black void that once consumed a Now.
