Floating Utopias

Participating artists: Ant Farm, Artúr van Balen, Theo Botschuijver, Eventstructure Research Group, Anna Hoetjes, Franco Mazzucchelli, Ahmet Öǧüt, Marco Barotti and Plastique Fantastique, Tomás Saraceno, Anika Schwarzlose, Graham Stevens, The Yes Men, Tools for Action, Huw Wal, UFO

Ever since the first hot-air balloon ascended in 1783, inflatable objects have inspired the imagination of alternative worlds. In the 19th century, aerial towns colonized the skies and floating labs surveyed the world. Flying cameras popularized the view from above. Starting in the 1930s, gigantic floats set the stage for socialist and capitalist mass parades. Along with the ideals of the generation of 1968, inflatable spaces and performances entered into architecture and tested new forms of coexistence.

Floating Utopias presents the diversity of pneumatic media in an exhibition and accompanying interventions in urban space. The project juxtaposes historical and contemporary works and raises questions as to their potential for artistic and activist practices. Inflatable objects still serve as tools for aesthetic and political interventions today: artists and activists situate their works between surreality and functionality, fiction and fact. Inflatables entice us into play and disobedience, they forge communities and prompt participation, generate attention and agency.

On the day of the opening (times see top of the page):
During the day the artist Ahmet Öǧüt will stage a participatory performance: the stationary installation The Castle of Vooruit which was on view for the first time in Gent in 2012, floats over the Oranienplatz in Berlin-Kreuzberg. Starting at 5pm, Öǧüt’s performance Speakers Corner invites guests and random passers-by to talk about the theme of utopias in the shadow of the inflatable object.

At the opening in the evening, the Dutch artist Theo Botschuijver, a former member of the Eventstructure Research Group (ERG), will realize a new version of the Pneu Show that took place for the first time in Bern in 1968. ERG’s inflatable film installations and participatory, and at times deliberately disturbing, happenings in urban space theorized the “event” as an open, experimental situation.

Further supporting events
April 27, 2018, 4pm, Osthafen, Zobelstraße, Berlin
Intervention in public space A. to A. (Elica) by Franco Mazzucchelli

May 4, 2018, nGbK (EN), 7pm
Lecture: Google Balloons and other Histories of Unmanned Ballooning by Dr. des. Hannah Zindel (Lüneburg)
8:30pm
Artist talk with Tomás Saraceno (Berlin) and Graham Stevens (London)

May 19, 2018, nGbK (EN), 3–8pm
Symposium: Floating Ideologies – Material Disobedience
The interdisciplinary symposium brings together choreographers, artists, media scholars and philosophers to investigate the potentials of inflatable technologies. Artistic and activist positions are presented and questioned as to their ethical dimensions.

Lectures:
–Tom Ullrich: Fying Barricades
–Artúr van Balen: Tools for Action
–Anika Schwarzlose: Disguise and Deception - inflatables and their use for military operations
–Moritz Frischkorn: Choreography of Things, from 1968 until now
–Shailoh Phillips: Floating Ideologies: Ethical Dilemmas for the Politics of Direct Action

8pm
Film screening & discussion Action Space (1968-1978) by Huw Wahl

nGbK project group: Artúr van Balen, Fabiola Bierhoff, Alexander Dunst, Anna Hoetjes, Jantien Roozenburg, Hannah Zindel

Parallel on show at nGbK’s project space in Berlin-Hellersdorf—presented by “initiative urbane kulturen”

May 6–June 23, 2018
Kreise Ziehen (Going Out of Circles)
Housing estates and the production of images of themselves
Part 1
Venue: station urbaner kulturen, Auerbacher Ring 41, 12619 Berlin