BE Magazine #24
Künstlerhaus Bethanien
Kohlfurter Strasse 41–43
10999 Berlin
Germany
Be Magazine #24 presents 32 international artists who have recently stayed at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin as part of its internationally acclaimed residency program. The Künstlerhaus Bethanien provides a platform for debate and exchange to artists from Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Japan, Canada, Korea, Norway, Singapore, the USA, Cyprus, Portugal, and many more countries, who get a chance to develop and exhibit their practice working in one of Europe’s most exciting and stimulating artistic environments.
On issue #24
In his essay on Elizabeth Hoak-Doering (Cyprus), Taco Hidde Bakker explains how the artist combines scientific and documentary techniques with intuitive drawing practices to chart the relationships between writing and images in historical and contemporary graffiti. The critic characterizes her work as a “rhapsodic reanimation of micro-historical facts,” which derives knowledge directly from aesthetics. In a similar vein, Anna Sabrina Schmid describes the installations and performances of Åsa Cederqvist (Sweden) as “an exploration of everyday magic,” through which the artist looks at “essential aspects of our lives,” focusing on “the permanent transformations, the stages of transition and the speculative.” Rainer Unruh‘s essay explores the artistic practice of Shubigi Rao (Singapore) and her complex curatorial and journalistic projects, which often operate at the boundaries of fiction. This approach is epitomized by her current book series Pulp: A Short Biography of the Banished Book, which is “set out for ten years and can be characterized as an artistic investigation into the way knowledge is classified and stored, but also destroyed,” writes Unruh, who points out that “the history of the written word is also a history of obliteration.”
Further contributions
Jens Asthoff on Stijn Ank (Belgium) and Yang Che-Yi (R.O.C. Taiwan); Taco Hidde Bakker on Emilija Škarnulytė (Norway) and Kasper Akhøj (Denmark); Federica Bueti on Julie Favreau (Quebec, Canada), Anahita Razmi (Iran) and Julia Barbosa Landois (USA); Annette Hans on Esther Hovers (Netherlands); Wolf Jahn on Han Seok Hyun (South Korea) and Song Sungjin (Busan, South Korea); Christiane Opitz on Lyndal Walker (Australia) and Anne Wallace (USA); Andreas Prinzing on Kama Sokolnicka (Poland), Hajo Schiff on Matheus Rocha Pitta (Brazil) and Orawan Arunrak (Thailand); Karin Schulze on Oscar Enberg (New Zealand) and Jennifer Ling Datchuk (USA); Valeria Schulte-Fischedick on Heba Y. Amin (Egypt); Chloe Stead on Carl Johan Högberg (Netherlands); Christoph Tannert on Céline Burnand (Switzerland), Rainer Unruh on Igor Jesus (Portugal) and Akiko Utsumi (Japan).
Photo spreads
Laura Letinsky (Canada), Patricia Castillo-Patutus (Dominican Republic), Tomoko Kawai (Japan), Irina Birger (Netherlands), Wu Chuan-Lun (R.O.C. Taiwan), Esther Tielemans (Netherlands) and Benjamin Santiago (USA).
Be Magazine #24 also documents the video project Phantom Horizons curated by Robert Seidel, with artists Sebastian Buerkner (UK), Simon Hegenberg (Germany), Rosa Menkman (Netherlands), Klara Ravat (Spain) and Theodore J Tagholm (UK).
Be Magazine is bilingual (German & English) and available internationally for 8 EUR (plus shipping).
Orders via www.bethanien.de or by e-mail to werner [at] bethanien.de
Künstlerhaus Bethanien thanks all its sponsors and partners: Arts Council Korea, Seoul; Australia Council for the Arts, Sydney; Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum, Texas; Busan Cultural Foundation, Republic of Korea; Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and Ministère des Relations Internationales et de la Francophonie; KfW Foundation Frankfurt a. M., Mondriaan Fund, Amsterdam; Office for Contemporary Art Norway, Oslo; Senate Department for Culture and Europe – Department of Culture as well as Davidoff Art Initiative, Basel; National Arts Council Singapore; Outset Contemporary Art Fund, Outset Germany; Canada Council for the Arts, Ottawa, and Embassy of Canada, Berlin; Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon; IASPIS, Stockholm; UNDO Contemporary Arts and Culture Department of the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Cyprus; Ministry of Culture, New Taipei City and Taipei Representative Office in the Federal Republic of Germany, Berlin; Danish Arts Council, Copenhagen; Pola Art Foundation, Tokyo.
