art

Art Projects

Most of my personal works and project collaborations are rooted in the acoustic sphere, sound tracks or installations as well as radio works. It mostly revolves around the creative challenge to present something invisible like sound in space or how to imagine the wireless space of radio and how it can presented on stage or how it engages within an urban context. Coming from a media art background I always have understood that to organise one’s own project and media networks would be a part of the artistic practise. The same rings true for the curating of festivals and other social events. As it all started off with the enthusiasm for own, self-created and -organised projects and platforms as well as an intriguing opportunity to meet face-to-face with the collaborators, who one has been remotely working with, as well as other interesting and inspiring people.

Tags: art, projects

Crash! Boom! Bau!

“Scenography Now!” presents the contemporary scenography festival: Crash! Boom! Bau!

.Jan Hendrik Brueggemeier curated together with Janek Mueller the Crash! Boom! Bau! Festival from May 1st – 17th 2009 at Theaterhaus Jena.

During the course of the festival we showcased 101 artists in a diverse range of formats from theatre productions, installations in public space, interactive games, panel discussions and music performance (see the programme).

Check out the video showcase of 7 selected festival productions.

New! New! New! Crash! Boom! Bau!
At the Bauhaus, »New« was the word of the hour. One wanted to change the world to the better, with all perfection: new cities, new tea pots, new man, and certainly also: a new theatre!

The stage workshop at the Bauhaus was an unique laboratory of the performative. With great complexity, Bauhaus-master László Moholy-Nagy described, what it was all about: »The sensible demand for today is: a true organization of form and motion that is deemed equally important and on the same plane with the acoustic and optic (electric) phenomena we can currently produce, not one abusing motion as a medium for literary and emotional events.«

Quite complicated, but: new!

One experimented with space, with apparatuses, with machines, and mechanisms. Walter Gropius: »Every art wants to shape space!« Oskar Schlemmer presented a »Figural Cabinet«, Kurt Schmidt a »Mechanic Ballet«, and Moholy-Nagy a »Light-Space-Modulator« – for the first time in 1923 as a »Mechanic Cabaret« at the theatre in Jena.

The Crash! Boom! Bau! Festival celebrates 90 years of the Bauhaus with a new and up-to-date theatre, guest performances and own productions, with artistic installations and workshops. All projects focus on the a special way of dealing with space, with the stage, with the relation between action and perception, and with interdisciplinary approaches between stage design, media art, and architecture. The festival as a laboratory!

And: we expand! In collaboration with the Architectural Association London, a temporary structure is created on the public square in front of the theatre building – a new place for play and encounter, to expand our theater. This addendum calls: come on in, here is something new!

New! New! New! Crash! Boom! Bau!
The festival Crash!Boom!Bau! is funded in context of the project “Scenography Now!” by the German Cultural Foundation and in the context of the project “bauhaus lab” by the EU culture program.

For more information please on the festival and the participating artists and programming follow this link (archived website).

Tags: architecture, art, Bauhaus, city, collaborations, communication, contemporary, conversation, crash, networks, new media, performance, performer, scenography, temporary, theatre

Construction Site Utopia

In 2005 Jan Brueggemeier was the curator of the “Utopiebaustelle”.

The “Utopiebaustelle” utopia construction site, a temporary building on the Theaterplatz in Weimar, acted as a contemporary art and theory platform for the Cops&Robbers festival from 09.05.2005 to 11.06.2006.

200 years after the death of the poet Friedrich Schiller, the Cops & Robbers festival aimed to find a contemporary approach to his classical works in a dialogue between young artists and theoreticians.

“Cops&Robbers” is the name of the childhood game which represents the situation in the adult world and also contains a reference to three decisive works by Schiller: the infamous “Die Räuber” (The Robbers) (1779/80), the famous “Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen” (On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a series of Letters) (1793/94) and the widely unknown fragment of a drama “Die Polizey” (The Police) (ca. 1799-1804).

Two excerpts from the programming:

.# 01 Utopia Reversed

Disappointed by the French Revolution, Friedrich Schiller turned to the aesthetic, hoping to find a better world through aesthetic education. Matteo Pasquinelli, a media theoretician from Bologna, will transport the question of utopia and how it can be approached into the 21st century. Under the title of “Neurospace”, he described where art, critical reflection and responsible behaviour start. Serpica Naro, for example, will report from her medial activist coup at the Milan Fashion Show this year. André Gattolin from the “Liberation” French daily paper will present a French collective called “AntiPub”, which looks into the dominance of advertising in public spaces. Andrea Natella and Sara Massaccesi from Rome will offer an introduction to the modus operandi of “guerilla marketing”. Paolo Pedercini, a computer game developer from Milan, will present his work “molleindustra” which has already been described as a “political computer game” by the BBC.

Thursday, May 26, 20-22h
Introduction and presentations with Matteo Pasquinelli, Bologna/London: An Assault on Neurospace: New forms of art and activism hitting the global mind; Paolo Pedercini, Milan: Molle Industria: Gaming as a new radical language; André Gattolin & Robert Johnson, Paris: The Antipub movement: From underground to “no ground”

Friday, May 27, 20-22h
Presentations and final debate with: Alex Foti, Milan: San Precario: The Italian icon of flexible revolt; Zoe Romano, Milan: Serpica Naro: Subvertising the fashion industry; Alex Foti + Zoe Romano: May Day 005: Euroradicals fighting precarization across Neuropa: Sara Massaccesi, Rome: Guerriglia Marketing: brand economy encounters social conflict

# 02 Blaulicht by Cornelia Erdmann / inauguration Construction Site Utopia

Cornelia Erdmann’s “Blaulicht” installation created an unmissable publicity action, attention grabber and landmark for the opening and all other police festival events. The container castle was transformed into a real utopia construction site scenario: covered with hundreds of blue lamps, the festival head-quarters pulsed in a flickering blue glow like Las Vegas. The rotating lights in police style can be found on every construction site.

website: www.schillerfestival.com (offline)

The Utopia Construction Site was financed by the government appointed representative for culture and media.

Tags: art, city, collaborations, media activism, scenography, utopia, utopia reversed

Liturgy for Radio

black clouds

In this installation at the Kuenstlerhaus Schloß Wiepersdorf designed Jan Hendrik Brueggemeier two ‘black clouds’ out of 420 small loudspeaker to display 6 discrete audio channels.

As a topic, clouds trigger manifold associations and are a largely known cultural phenomenon. ‘As-Sahab’, the name of the alleged media production unit of Al-Qaeda means “The Cloud” in Arabic. In the old testament it is reported, that god liked to hide his appearance behind a cloud when calling Moses on the seventh day of the creation of the earth. The cloud also serves as an analogy for radio and the more recent phenomenon of wifi and wireless culture. It describes how the reception area is spread out. As well, it leads to the first days of the radio, when people experienced radio as a god-like appearance – a disembodied voice addressed to them directly.

Radio, today, is on one hand a synonym for popular culture and mass distribution. On the other hand, it can be tagged with politics of territory and strategic warfare. It may be surprising, but to a certain degree radio is culturally and technologically rooted in war and military invention – similar to the Internet.

Along with this installation, a series of soundtracks shall follow: Love is in the Air is the initiation and first issue of the series of soundtracks dedicated to the Black Clouds installation.

Love is in the Air is composed of bits and fragments of recordings of the Lebanese radio dial during my stay in Beirut, and an audio collage of sound bits of popular love songs, that wildly and at certain points desperately spin between the right and the left channel of the audio-signal.

Love is in the Air – soundtrack:

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photo credit: Elina Julin

Tags: aesthetic, art, buffering, contemporary, love is in the air, music, play, sound love, soundscape, voice, waves

Raste_02 – “Distributed by… – how do I get to the music and how does the music get to me?”

In 2004 Jan Brueggemeier was one of the core organisers and curator of Raste_02.

Raste_02 is a festival of new electronic music and audio art which opened in Weimar for the second time that year. It dealt with this question.

For the three days from 12th to 14th June 2004 in Weimar and Frankfurt am Main, Raste_02 combines readings and discussions with the experience of live, new, electronic music and audio art.

Raste_02 creates a forum for budding and established musicians and artists to present music concepts using an electronic sound space and its audio-visual implementation.

Raste_02 aims to be a communicative platform which discusses changes in the relationship between artist, market and audience resulting from digital media.

website: www.raste.org

“Distributed by… – how do I get to the music and how does the music get to me?”

How do I get to the music – and how does the music get to me?
How can you find the music you really like?
Does technology always change music?
Is there any music which is not influenced by the fact that it can be recorded and copied?
Does music live through its continuous reproduction?
How can the value concept of music as a product be developed in a digital musical system?
Are physical storage media being increasingly marginalised?
Is there a digital pendant to a 500 series vinyl record?
Is the only thing of value something that cannot be copied?
Who founds a label and why?
Do labels act as a compass in the overgrown data jungle?
How does the label landscape change?
Are small labels more adventurous, more entertaining and more patient?
Does financial success spell creative disaster?
Can musicians cope with the new economic model of making music?
Is music driven out of its own studio so quickly that no file-sharing client can keep up?
Can music be sold in such attractive packaging that the purchase is easier than copying it?
Will self-publishing of music by the artist become the best form of publicity because an increasing number of people will go to concerts of those musicians, who keep their music in circulation?
Will live presentation of music become more popular?
Are there too many laptop artists?
Can electronics arbitrate between experts, hobbyists and independents?
How will the relationship between creative and interpretive art develop?
Will pure music agents with their networks and talent scouts become more and more important as the real artists of distribution?
What does the future look like for musicians?
What does a musician live from?

You can be sure the presentations, discussions and moderations during Raste_02 will reveal more questions. But maybe some answers can also be found without carrying on the powerful discourse bubble in the context of electronic music.

Saturday, June 12th 2004, Weimar
20.15 Uhr Senking (Cologne)
22.00 Uhr Robert Lippok (Berlin)
DJing Ushi Hupe (Berlin)
DJing Kazi Lenker (Berlin)

Sunday, June 13th 2004, Weimar
17.00 Uhr Reading: Thomas Meinecke (Munich)
18.00 Uhr Panel
20.00 Uhr pingfm (Weimar)
21.00 Uhr L.O.S.D. (Amsterdam)
22.00 Uhr Frank Bretschneider (Berlin)
DJing Peter D. (Amsterdam)

Monday, June14th 2004, Frankfurt
20.00 Uhr Frank Bretschneider (Berlin)
21.00 Uhr L.O.S.D. (Amsterdam)
22.00 Uhr pingfm (Weimar)
23.00 Uhr Robert Lippok (Berlin)
24.00 Uhr Senking (Köln)

Raste_02 made possible by

Tags: art, audio, digital, internet, listening, music, new media

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