Crystal Ball Berlin – Gegenwartskunst und Performance

Walk The Village With The Cuckoo Bird – Becky

concert and exhibition opening: 31. März, 19:00

31. März bis 2. April, jeweils 15 bis 19 Uhr

Becky Live: on that evening Becky plays a concert together with Esthy (percussions) at Crystal Ball

A swan looks dirty in a close up. Words lie on the tongue. And the heart is nothing but
a hollow muscle. These are the things Becky sings about.Becky (She/They) is drag persona, performance artist and a puppeteer of herself. Her first Youtube music videos evolved 2022 into charming live gigs with a lot of make up and minimalist drums. Her songs are intimate insights into a queer Berlin of today with a view on the East German province of yesterday, alternating between deep
melancholy and amusing absurdity. With a musical DIY attitude and German as well as English lyrics, sometimes poetic, sometimes painfully direct, she creates tender little worlds that resonate. Becky’s sound combines singer songwriter elements, pop melodies and Alternative Rock sounds. In January her first EP Tossing and Turning was released. https://soundcloud.com/musicbybecky

Walk The Village With The Cuckoo Bird, (08:25) 2 Kanal Video Installation, Mathias Becker, 2022

In Walk The Village With The Cuckoo Bird, the drag persona Becky walks through the place of her childhood, a dreamy East German village, always in search of other queer people. In the process, each step is also an act of reclaiming space.

Sounds and stories buzz around her. According to a local legend, a man was saved from the flood precisely because he imitated the call of the cuckoo and the villagers heard this call for help. The sound collage in the video plays with this legend, the cuckoo call, the sounds from the surroundings, fragmenting and deconstructing them until no orientation is possible anymore.

The work associatively questions the stories of the village, which are concentrated in the baroque castle of the place. The venue of today was a secret file storage facility of the GDR and previously an SA sports school.

“Walk The Village With The Cuckoo Bird” was shown in a first version at the Traumburg 2022 festival (Dornburg Castle on the Elbe River) and can now be seen for the first time in Berlin.

The video installation can be seen on three days: Fri, 3/31, Sat,4/1 & Sun, 4/2, each from 2-7pm.

Mathias Becker is a director, puppeteer, drag performer and co- founder of the theatre collective MANUFAKTOR. In creating process-oriented, interdisciplinary formats and working on the themes of postcolonialism, memory, and queerness, he explores collective work processes, alternative dramaturgies, and the relationship between body and object. Mathias Becker lives in Berlin. He studies art in context at the Berlin University of the Arts and previously studied contemporary puppetry at the HfS Ernst Busch.

The exhibition is open: Fr, 31.3., Sa,1.4. & So, 2.4., jeweils 14 bis 19 h

Apfelmus

Ausstellung/ Installation/ Performances
Eröffnung am Sa. 14. Januar um 19 Uhr
geöffnet Di. von 14 bis 19 Uhr, zu den Veranstaltungen und nach Vereinbarung

Finissage mit Performances am Sa. 25. Februar um 19 Uhr

Apfelmus, Karton/ Klebeband/ Shellack, Manfred Kirschner, Bremerhaven 1996

Lydia Karstadt wanted “Apfelmus” to be a thematic group exhibition for her birthday, because in 2023 the Crystal Ball phenomenon will be 16 years old. Admittedly, there is probably not much left to celebrate at the moment. But “Apfelmus” is intended to convey its positive impact in a reflection on essentials of life. Peace and human reanaturalization. The subordination of human existence to the ecological sphere appears as the inevitable, only way out of the crisis. In Karstadt’s view, art is never an opponent or even a target of attack, but a fellow combatant in the conflict for a future. Numerous foodstuffs have acquired a higher significance in the museum art context as a result of the protest culture in recent months. Thus, Apfelmus can be a performative device, political statement, enigmatic object, poetic sphere, or just a big old cardboard box with “applesauce” written on it. The playful exhibition in Crystal Ball shows artistic positions that imply associations of transience in their work via the subject and its interpretive range. The exhibition salon is accompanied by a program of events. For the opening Manfred Kirschner shows the performance: All You Need Is Lost

Mit Arbeiten von: Françoise Cactus, Evita Emersleben, Brezel Göring, Miriam Jadischke, Manfred Kirschner, Vikenti Komitski, Andreas Kotulla, Mo.Tunn, Gabriele Regiert, Caren Sielaff, Juwelia St. St., Frank Schoppmeier, Silky, Veronika Schumacher, Oliver Voigt, The Wa, und weiteren Künstler*innen

ERDEN. Naturphilosophische Brocken – Book launch

Within Apfelmus/ 16 years of Crystal Ball
Friday, 3th February at 7.30 pm

Erden-Buchcover, (using an image of Elisabeth von Samsonow, Geo Psyche Backup System, Tempera on canvax, 2021)

Extraction regimes, elective affinities, bodily juice analyses, alternative epistemologies of nature: Volume 45 of “Schriften zur Verkehrswissenschaft”, edited by Ivo Gurschler, Andreas Hofbauer, and Alexander Klose, gathers “necessarily fragmentary advances for thinking about nature in times of crisis “

Theory formation turns again to a sphere which, for lack of another term, continues to be called nature. At the same time, nature returns in the form of floods, droughts, and storms in an ever more urgent way, and people increasingly learn to understand themselves as earthlings. Under these circumstances, radical gestures of decentering into terrestrial constellations emerged as new forms of thinking about nature. The volume collects such, in their totality necessarily fragmentary, advances as four – thrown on the earth and into the unknown – nature-philosophical chunks.

Presentations, projections and audience discussion by and with the authors Salome Rodeck, Tom Turnbull and Daniel Tyradellis, the artist Jenny Michel, the composer Konstantin Schimanowski as well as the editors Andreas L. Hofbauer, Alexander Klose and possible surprise guests.

Followed by the Crystal Ball Bar and record music by dj.Catastrophé

Jenny Michel 2017 Museum Wiesbaden/Bernd Fickert

Analogschatten – die Zugvögel

Performance am Sonntag den 11. Dezember um 17 Uhr.

On Sunday, December 11, the “Zugvögel” will make a guest appearance at the Crystal Ball gallery. The performance group around Zoe Tomruk works with the technique of action theater developed by Ruth Sapora in the 70s in the USA. In this technique, all actions are brought forth in the presentness of the moment. On Dec. 16, 2022, the Zugvögel will bring “Analogschatten 2” to the Dramatische Republik at Schudomastrasse 32 at 7 p.m.

Action Theatre is an improvisational performance technique developed by the American performance artist, Ruth Zaporah. Action Theatre is defined by its focus on embodied awareness, the tracking of the present moment through sensory experience, and by a structured training that uses exploration to build the performer’s ‘formal dexterity and the ability to “listen” to oneself and one’s acting partners’. This physical theatre technique is documented in Zaporah’s 1995 book, Action Theatre: The Improvisation of Presence. (Wikipedia)

Symposium: Weltschmerz

Lamenting and complaining in the digital age

November, 24.th and 25.th, 6 pm Uhr

Symposium – Lamenting and Complaining in the Digital Age

In conversation with artists, philosophers, musicians and other people, artist Victor Kégli explores the question of how the traditional art of lamenting and complaining can be transported into the digital modern age.

Limited number of participants, please register in advance. November the 24th or 25.th 2022. Start of each event at 18.00 h.

Idea and organization: Victor Kegli & Kai Lillich

Anmeldung: 0152 04980110

Bang …

… difficult, or the possibility of making an exhibition

Exhibition 22.05.22 – 06.08.22
Vernissage and open salon on May 21 at 7 p.m.
The exhibition is open every Thursday from 2 to 7 p.m. and by appointment

with: Gabi Garland, Miriam Licia Jadischke, Manfred Kirschner, Kai Lillich, Lee Negris, Sigrun Paulsen, Ilze Orinska, Oliver Voigt, Gabriele Regiert and other artists.

Lydia Karstadt doesn’t know what to do either –

and since she sometimes goes away in the summer to demonstrate for peace, to bury “Weltschmerz” at the Müritz or to grow vegetables in the province, she has thought up a self-maintaining exhibition. To do so, she interviewed artists she met on her way to Zickenplatz or recently. To give coincidence a chance, she asked them to participate in something that she herself does not know what it will be. An experimental exhibition, an experimental setup. Pacifistic, ambitious, voluntary, honest, entertaining, versatile, hopeful …

The exhibition salon is open every thursday from 14 to 19 o’clock and gladly by appointment.

as well as in the salon: Café Unst, arbitrary basic research & peaceful screen prints

Javier Lozano – Antibodies

Vernissage on Sat. 12. March at 7 p.m
from 12.3.-10.4. and 25.4.-30.4.2022< from 12.3.-10.4. and 25.4.-30.4.2022
Opening hours: Tuesdays & Fridays, 2-7 p.m and by appointment
Finissageon Fr. 06 May at 7 p.m

Javier Lozano, Unrequeired, 31 x 23 cm, Auqarell auf Karton

Javier Lozano is a talented draftsman and graphic designer. He taught at the IED in Madrid until 2020. In his first exhibition at the Crystal Ball gallery, however, the focus of his work is painting. Lozano, whose extraordinarily reduced style masterfully balances ironic connotation with pleasurable strokes, is showing a selection of new watercolors under the title “Antibodies.” Accurately applied gestural strokes and sensitively applied areas of color characterize these works. Lozano’s luscious art always seems to sound out just how much is needed to create a presence, a being. A few fine strokes, a reddish color surface set off against a darker brown one, and he already creates the cheek, the look of a being. Interacting with others or playing with themselves, they become bodies of his spherical images that shine with an ambivalence equal parts romantic and ironic. Javier Lozano’s works are mysterious, as irritatingly certain in their assertion of reductiveness as they are imbued with lightness. This ambivalence therefore makes them very lively.

ANTIBODIES

Your invisible friends came to the party.
Lucky charms, protective beings.
These paintings, like daydreaming.
They don´t care, they just follow their nature.
Inevitably. Ghostly trace.
Mind your antibodies and everybody else´s.
What are the characters of these paintings doing?
Hard to say, but whatever it is, they do it well.
Free your mind, free your body.
Free your freedom, free your money.

J. Lozano

Siebdruck T-Shirt Labor

Tuesdays from 2 to 4 p.m, ( Or all participants find a weekly day when it fits best!)

from November the 5th, with a maximum of 4 participants. Basic course: aesthetic practice & basic skills for textile screen printing Registration please phone/ call once! (no voice messages) Tel: 0151 55 91 0099 (11 am to 10 pm)

Seviervorschlag, Crystal Ball, 2022 c. Lydia Karstadt

In the basic course with screen printing icon Lydia Karstadt you will learn basic techniques of the screen printing process. From the beginning of the idea, your inspiration over drawing to the development and realization of a motif with serigraphy. You will learn and later be able to coat, dry, expose with your motif, professionally wash out, re-expose & prepare for printing.You will learn more about color selection / color effects and learn independent printing on the screen printing machinewith textile stage and the correct use of the squeegee for good color economy. Material costs one-time 60,- for: screens, coating, colors, T-shirts, Tape and further materials. Participation each: 25,- / Test course possible

Course: (Winter 2022/23) Silk Screen Print Collage Couture

Sigrun Paulsen

Malerei/ Installation, 17.9. bis 21.11.2021

Vernissage am Freitag, 17. September um 19 Uhr

Am Sonntag, 21. November ist die Künstlerin von 15 bis 19 Uhr in der Ausstellung

Sigrun Paulsen, Zweimal Rot, 185 x 140 cm, Berlin 2021

Sigrun Paulsen works in a concentrated way on colour and its effects with the aspects of representationalism. These effects are partly realised in auratically luminous paintings. Paulsen exemplifies how her colour tones and combinations create representationalism in her Colour Reflections series. At first glance, the object pictures of the series of the same name appear like wooden boxes containing neon tubes. Eventually one discovers that there are no tubes, that Paulsen has created this object effect solely through the virtuoso use of colouration. Our perception first creates the impression of matter, as the reflection on a real object would. But by separating the effects from the depiction of the physical, the artist is able to capture the pure glow of the colours. Sigrun Paulsen’s interest is in these invisible areas, the shimmering, energetic sounds of the colour combinations. In her stripe paintings, these effects are masterfully calculated. All her realisations are tested in long colour rehearsals that prepare the right mixture. Like the Impressionists before her, the artist does not use black from a tube but mixes it from the existing highly pigmented colours or creates its effect through coplementary effects. The stripe paintings are often combined with landscape sketches and nature portraits. This combinatory contrast between abstract and representational painting clearly shows her field of investigation, in that physical nature, i.e. representationality, points to the inherent radiance of the colours and their effect.

Schmusen mit Papier-All You Need Is Lost

Das Kunstbuch von Manfred Kirschner erscheint im September 2021

Bestellungen auch über die Galerie Crystal Ball

Schmusen mit Papier – All You Need Is Lost by Manfred Kirschner will be published in September.
A total of 35 handmade photo collages are combined with prose to create an associative reading experience.
Schmusen mit Papier is set in Bremerhaven and links its history with contemporary snapshots of the seaside city. Ytong, the narrator, is supposed to double his friend Harald Baumeister, at an art exhibition in the harbour area of the city. After he has finished setting up the art exhibition, Ytong lets himself drift and, along with many new friends, meets the young, mute “Goethe”, who describes to him in letters a gay love story from 1860 about the emigrant Nicolaus and his lover Matthias.
Schmusen mit Papier deals not only with an absurdly funny description of the art business, exclusion and loss in systemic capitalism, but also with the power of human communication, friendship and solidarity. In the process, the text works with apparent doppelgängers and duplications. In a warm tone, he draws his figures who, connected to each other, make it clear that in personal striving a universal can be recognised which, if we can recognise it in other people, makes us equal and human.

The book is the third part of a collage story for the realisation of which Kirschner received a grant from the Dieckell Foundation and funds from the Bremerhaven Cultural Office. It will be published on 4 September to coincide with the opening of Manfred Kirschner’s exhibition “Goethe was here!” at Galerie Goethe45.