>> Mar 2013, WooferTen Artivist-in-Residence Programme
WooferTen Artivist-in-Residence Programme (with Elaine W. Ho), Hong Kong
March/April 2013
>> Nov 2012, What needs to be guarded?
collaboration with Raul Walch, Addis Abeba, Ethiopia
A mobile structure was made by Solomon Tsegaye and Raul Walch, mimicking the numerous guard houses that one sees on the streets of Addis Abeba. For “What needs to be guarded?” the structure was carried around the city one afternoon, asking passersby that very question. Answers ranged from ‘life’, ‘water’ and ‘myself’ to ‘information’, ‘democracy’ and ‘the guard’.
Most photos above by Felix Meyer. Special thanks to Leon Eixenberger, Eric Ellingsen, Felix Meyer, Solomon Tsegaye, Christina Werner and the Institut für Raumexperimente.
>> Aug 2012, Wear issue three at the printers
Wear issue three finally made it to the printers! More information here: www.homeshop.org.cn/#wear
>> Jun 2012, Translation Acts
Four weeks of contributions, workshops, interventions, performances in the former ballon hall on the grounds of the former Tempelhof airport organized by the Institut für Raumexperimente for The World Is Not Fair – Die Große Weltausstellung 2012, a project initiated by raumlaborberlin in cooperation with Hebbel am Ufer.
Cultivated by: Eric Ellingsen, Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga, Yves Mettler, Christina Werner
More info: www.raumexperimente.net/single/translation-acts
The publication Translation Acts (Universität der Künste Berlin, 2013) documents programming events spanning the full, four-week duration of this project. It was edited by Eric Ellingsen, Christina Werner, and Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga and designed by strobe Matthias Friederich Julian von Klier.
>> Nov 2011, You Are Here, Tokyo
In Dialogue: Tokyo-Berlin Art Talks, Nov 5, 2011
You Are Here: In Dialogue is an afternoon of talks and conversations in which we will discuss ideas and experiences of “collaboration” and “exchange” from the vantage points of cultural producers working in two cities with vastly different cultural contexts and collective traditions, Tokyo and Berlin, in order to probe the implications of these oft-used terms and continue seeking the best ways to work together.
Talk participants: Adrian Favell, Hanayo, Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga, Haruka Ito, Anna Mikkola, Jeffrey Rosen, Daniel Seiple
Organizers: Nine Yamamoto Masson, Ayaka Okutsu, Antonin Gaultier, Hiroshi Ega, Agatha Wara
YOU ARE HERE is a mobile platform designed to bridge creative hubs by initiating art projects, events, residencies, and publications between art capitals. The first installment of YOU ARE HERE took place in November 2011 in Tokyo in collaboration with SEN, (Tokyo-based non-profit art production company), with a focus on Berlin, under the event title YOU ARE HERE: Berlin – Tokyo.
>> Aug 2011, rePLACE publication
rePLACE Berlin and rePLACE Beirut publications are now ready, featuring the projects by all the workshop participants as well as commissioned texts by Daniel Berndt, Fiona Geuß, Ashkan Sepahvand, and Jan van Duppen.
More information: www.re-place.info
>> Jun 2011, rePLACE Berlin workshop
In June 2011, rePLACE organised a workshop at PROGRAM in Berlin to artistically research and investigate the routes submitted by rePLACE BERLIN participants. The online collection of ‘personal tours’ served as the jumping off point to (re)experience the city via the stories and routines of the people living here, creating a series of visual and historical investigations into the modes and interactions between the the city’s inhabitants and the city itself. The workshop was accompanied by a public program including discussions and screenings. For more information please visit the rePLACE BERLIN website.
>> Jun 2011, Taste experiment
An exploration of the five tastes—salty, sweet, bitter, sour, and umami—developed with food systems planner Lynn Peemoeller for the Life is Space event by the Institut für Raumexperimente. In order to take the experiment into the public space, mobile one and two person tables were constructed so the experiment could be performed on the streets.
See more here: www.foodsystemsplanning.com/life-is-space-taste-experiment
>> Apr 2011, Other Possible Worlds
The Public School participates at the Other Possible Worlds exhibition at NGBK in Berlin.
Saturday May 14, 19:00: The Public School and TkH (Walking Theory): Marta Popivoda, presentation and discussion
“No Other Impossible Worlds” text contribution for Other Possible Worlds – Proposals on this Side of Utopia exhibition catalog, based on a transcript of the conversation during the No Other Impossible Worlds class at the Public School.
>> Apr 2011, rePLACE Beirut workshop
Between April 1-10, 2011, rePLACE organised a workshop at 98weeks research/project space in Beirut to artistically research and investigate the routes submitted by rePLACE BEIRUT participants. The online collection of ‘personal tours’ served as the jumping off point to (re)experience the city via the stories and routines of the people living here, creating a series of visual and historical investigations into the modes and interactions between the the city’s inhabitants and the city itself. The workshop was organized by Daniel Berndt, Elaine W. Ho and Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga and was accompanied by a public program including discussions and screenings. For more information please visit the rePLACE BEIRUT website.
>> Dec 2010, HomeShop relocates
In celebration of the big news that HomeShop has relocated to Jiaodaokou Beiertiao, we’d like to invite you to come by and share your big or small news story with us for a one-day newspaper production workshop. As the newcomers on the block, we are just beginning to learn the latest comings and goings of the Beixinqiao crowd, and we’d like you to visit and get to know the neighbours with us. More info here: www.homeshopbeijing.org/blog/?p=1753
>> Aug 2009, Overseas
Cinematography for a summer workshop with local members of the deaf community involving a series of exercises in cooking, narrative building, and visual explorations of gestural intimacy, organized by Elaine W. Ho as part of 里九外七 Overseas, Close by in Beijing.
>> Sep 2008, Sonny Rülze
A conversation between Berlin and Beijing, photographs by Elaine W. Ho (left) and Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga (right), published in Sonny Rülze
>> Dec 2007, off sight
PROGRAM was invited by Bao Atelier (Beijing) to participate at 总站 :: DEAD END during the Second Shenzhen and Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism & Architecture 2007.
Guy Debord once said that “everything directly lived has moved into representation.” What we experience first-hand, we’ve already learned about second-hand. What we know as real, what we feel is authentic is but an after-image, a format of reality mediated by the very world we build around us. So thorough has been our mediation globally that different places across the globe begin to seem oddly similar. At a glance, you’re in Paris, look closer and you’re in Shenzhen, close your eyes and its Cairo. With 30 minutes of Shenzhen, we will bring you through, above, and around the world – what does the world look like from Shenzhen and what does Shenzhen look like from a distance? In the next 30 minutes, your surroundings may seem present, distant, dissolved, surreal, and strangely familiar. Welcome to your window to the world.
The experience
The ideas that we aim to fold together in this pedicab experience are related to our perceived ability to define an urban experience in Shenzhen while situated in Berlin. How does one understand and design an experience for a distant physical location without being there? According to the American historian, Anthony Grafton, “ninety-five per cent of all scholarly inquiries start at Google.”
Google, and its subsidiary, Google Earth, has constructed for us a massive architectural feat – a tunnel linking Shenzhen to Berlin, trafficking information in the form of live and archived sound, images, video and text. Distance is no longer perceived, and through this tunnel, we experience a digitized version of Shenzhen – Shenzhen 2.0, perhaps.
The passenger on the pedicab will be given a cell-phone, and throughout the trip, strangers from around the world will call, offering bits of information that was found while Google-searching “Shenzhen.” Tourist information, financial stat-sheets, blog entries and all other manner or information will be conveyed as stories, rumors and hearsay – providing, in effect, a parallel or live experience of the randomized data that one receives on Google’s searches. The stranger may also engage the rider in conversation: “What do you see now?” “Are you cold?” This conflation of distances and information with a live urban experience will culminate at the surreal gates of Window of the World, a theme park close to the Biennale site that similarly fuse these criteria, illustrating the surreal, dislocating effects of our contemporary world.
Collaborators: Mary Chiu, Liu Xiao
Special thanks to: Joshua Kauffman, Gwendolyn Floyd, Kari Rittenbach, Elaine W. Ho
*all Shenzhen photos from BAO Atelier