Oppelner Strasse and its neighbourhood has its histories that wears on it in layers, vibrating to the contemporary tempo of the city in it and around it. Kreuzberg is based on settling, dynamism and remodelling. The city is ever changing and unique. In 2017, a collaboration between PremArts gallery and artists including Joe Hayes and Kwame Aidoo who found a new home in Berlin through the creative spark of its indegenes, started a conversation which has now become the seed project called Görlitzer Park Arts Festival. We look forward to an interactive, exploratory, educative and impactful festival where we can learn and have fun at the same time and breathe love into the city and inhale the beauty of humanity, interconnectedness and community.
MISSION AND VISION
On the topic of sustainability in global cities like Berlin, while addressing the prospects of change agents, we look at ourselves as artists, community members, children of the metrof the urban dynamics, makers, users of space, consumers, curators, bikers, merchants, food lovers, plastic waste collectors, etc. We focus on our direct and indirect responsibilities and how our body languages affect the things around us which in turn affect our anatomies. As such, the project will shine light on key sustainability issues, inclusion, and introduce us to change agents from a variety of disciplines.
PROPOSED DATES – AUGUST 2018
Kwame Aidoo – Inkfluent (Berlin, Paris, Accra)
Kenneth Balfelt – Kenneth Balfelt Team (Copenhagen)
Joe Hayes – Joe by Joe (New York)
Minnie Griffith, Photographer and PR (Berlin, West UK, Marseilles)
Elle Peril , Femina non Grata
PROJECT SPACE
PremArts Gallery, Oppelner Str 34, 10997 Berlin
Public Space: Oppelner Strasse 34- 15 (between PremArts and Streetfountain
Fountains – Strassenbrunnen Oppelner Str.,
THEME:
BODY LANGUAGE
Body language embodies the embedded reflections and silent choreographies of political agency In today’s reality of mass migration, voluntary and forced, where bodies resettle away from war and poverty to create diasporic public spheres where new identifications take place and new identities have to be negotiated. The governing maps of migration show that for refuge seekers, there are still key arbiters that define
who belong to the political community (e.g. citizens) and who remain outside (e.g. undocumented migrants). The affinities or rejections from nation states and local forces apropos to migrant bodies enforces codes of conduct that the settler has to adapt to, to survive. Bodies navigate a new language by losing the language their bodies already knew, new gestures and rhythms are engulfed on their anatomies which are also nonetheless ‘political sites’ Furthermore, migrant’s bodies are also sites of collective memory on which collective history, including colonialism, is written.
EXHIBITIONS
Exhibitions as part of the Oppelner Strasse –Summer in the City, BERLIN
will be in connection with the theme but based on the artists’ own interpretations and response with respect to their diverse artistic perspectives and productions. Their reflections will be an integral part of the Berlin Kreuzberg streetscape, where free temporary exhibitions will be installed in indoor and outdoor locations in various parts of the area around PremArts and Görlitzer Park: blown-up photographs, paintings, sculptures, sound bars, food baskets, workshops, etc. Galleries in the Kreuzberg area will be asked to join in by availing space to the artists and also, they can include their scheduled creatives to be part of this community-engaging and influential festival.
SOME OF THE FEATURED ARTISTS INCLUDE
JOE “JOE BY JOE” HAYES
Image result for joe hayes hype
Artist and Bronx-native, Joe Hayes, aka “Joe By Joe”, made his international debut at PremArts last year and returns with HYPE II. The journey from the Bronx to Berlin has been a process as Joe partnered with PremArts to participate in a summer residency – turning the gallery into an open working artist studio. He landed in Berlin on June 6th with nothing but his paint brushes, passion and ideas. The same way the Bronx native showed work in his solo show “WHITE” in 2015 at Caelum Gallery, “Untitled” at Rogue Space, and “Don’t Die”. Whether it is his past history with Interscope Records, being brand manager for fashion designer Brian Wood, or his extensive work in the culinary arts, Hayes has his hand in a variety of artistic mediums which fuels his primary focus in the fusion of painting, street art, and cooking. All mediums reveal his deep understanding of love, struggle, pain, intense emotion and human experience. JoebyJoe.com
KWAME ‘WRITE’ AIDOO
Kwame Aidoo (Ghana, 1986) is a Paris and Accra based Ghanaian and Togolese writer, artist, educator and blogger with a background of Biochemistry from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science & Technology, Ghana; International Culture Management from Leuphana University, Germany and Swahili from Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, France. His poetry and performance involve West African oral folk lore in tandem with experimental
contemporary forms to explore sociopolitical contexts and conceptual standards. His installation work explores how the constructs of science can be interrogated with the liberties of art. He is the founder and creative director of Inkfluent; a poetry and art crux movement which organizes a contemporary literary festival called Nkabom festival. Inkfluent co-directs the Tsale Lekema street art festival which was launched in Lome, Togo. He is currently working on a poetry music album, short films and his debut anthology. (http://inkfluent.com)
Collaboration with Betty Stürmer, 2006 Globalstipendium/Ghana, Senat for cultural affairs Berlin. 2016 Globalstipendium Senat for cultural affairs, 08/16 für Chale Wote Street Art Festival
“paper bag” Artsproject with children, with Kwame Write Aidoo, Accra, Ghana.
BETTY STÜRMER : Starting as an art autodidact in painting and sculpture 1985, Betty Stürmer became performer in Audiogruppe/Benoit Maubrey and the guitarmonkeys. 1989 she learned classical drawing and made it to the Berlin art academy formerly known as HdK. After 3 years she left the academy for the meanwhile strongly upcoming club culture movement, where she put a remarkable influence to it, with her huge size Club Art posterpaintings and plush objects shown in the new east berlin improvised locations. She invented the participativ democratic Happening DJ Everybody and became also a DJ.
LUKAS HA
Berlin native Lukas Ha believes in harmony & contrasts in vision. His use of pigments to organize or de-organize agents, to give paper its absorbency and surface character or the opposite, that leaves behind metallic substances (that rust) or organic particles (that form fungus) and brightens. He loves the combination of watercolor and collage. Design is very important in his paintings and he is a firm believer in planning a distinct light or dark pathway. To achieve that pathway, he constantly does design sketches. More details: https://www.redbubble.com/de/people/floripondioo
Support Team:
PREMA STRACK
Artist Performance Visual Arts/Music & Projectspace Leader at PremArts since 2006 in teams.
Prema will guide through the area, and work on soundwalks along the fountains with workshops and presentations
MINNIE GRIFFITH
Minnie Griffith was born in England but grew up in the south of France Nnow living in Berlin working and learning in several projects as part of an European volunteer scheme. After her baccalaureate in 2015 and two years of studies of fine arts & languages. All forms of art have been her passion, she is delighted to be presenting her vision of life. More details: 11mvision.wordpress.com
Minnie will assist all artists in the festival , do online promotion, social media, document the Festival Summer and invite for activities in the Container/Betoninsel.
ANTHONY BAGGETTE
Anthony Baggette is the president of Clear Blue Water e.V and Head Basketball Youth Coach at ISS. He is a poet, theater director and DJ with an activist point of view in search of equality on all fronts and community interactions for education, sports and development.
CALL FOR ARTISTS
Görlitzer Park Arts Festival aims to reveal and promote talented artists who have yet to establish a profile on the contemporary international scene. We look to discover artists, and it is open to any artist, amateur or professional, with no limits on age, nationality or place of residence. The Berlin scene is vibrant, and we look to build with creative minds who are interested in community engagement and teamwork as well as dedication to start the creative process from the humble beginnings to the production and realization points. We aspire to instill sustainability and green energy modules in clear conversation exploring the complex issues around migration and global climes of climate change.
YOGA WITH MEDITATIVE POETRY
Yoga poetry is to explore how our bodies find peace within, so that we can live at peace with others. Meditative poetry will be created during workshops and recorded. The community will be invited to be part of our free yoga session where the meditative poetry will be used as part of a therapy process and a means of societal connection.
PUBLIC SCREENING
There will be a call for short films, features and experimental videos as well as mobile phone artsy videos. With our selection team we will choose the films to be shown. Film screenings are a great way to educate and inspire our communities. We will obtain a screening license and talk to organizers who have locations, auditoriums, media libraries, universities and social clubs in the Görlitzer Park area to make available good quality projection systems for the festival.
KIDS ACTIVITIES
One of our key points for the festival is to implement a design and play space which impacts on education for kids. A space for kids in Oppelner Strasse –
with elements that are educative in terms of mathematics, language, science, agriculture and basic life skills.
The idea is based on the philosophy of Adinkra symbols(http://adinkra.org) from West Africa which artist Kwame Aidoo has been studying for the past years and has been applying in teaching, performance and product design (https://kunstsnakk.com/2016/09/21/norsk-natur-
toril-johannessen-og-tue-greenfort/).
The planning, designing, construction process will be done in conjunction with Prem Arts Gallery-Berlin (premarts.de/), Inkfluent Ghana (http://inkfluent.com) , Kenneth Balfelt Team from Denmark ( https://www.kennethbalfelt.org/folkets-park) and regular users of WRANGELKIEZ as well as interested neighbours or the general public.
WORKSHOPS
Several open workshops will be available for different genres of art including photography, painting, drumming and dancing, multimedia art, design and graphics, poetry, music, beatbox atelier in conjunction with Human Beatbox Team https://www.humanbeatbox.com/articles/legends-of-beatbox-bee-low/
FOOD BASKET
Our food basket is open to people and organizations who want to contribute to the nutritional status of affected people. We can cook together and share together diverse cuisines from diverse cultures. The size and composition of the food basket becomes a reflection of our identities and preferences in a common society.
Vendors are also allowed to set up stands with consent from the district and festival board to sell their palatable dishes, small chops, drinks and other food packages.
SOUNDSTATIONS
Different sound station points will be public exhibition spots of sound works that survey Berlin Kreuzberg’s heartbeat through people who go through it, stay for a while or settle, and their relationship with sound. The project is connected to the development and introduction of sound as archive site for histories of bodies and politics of space.