Aaber affected

As some of you might know, from 5th until 7th of July I participated in the Aaber Award Exhibition which was set on the ground of an open-air circus, close to the Leonrodplatz. The tents, the hipsters and the good vibes reminded me of East London which, let's face it, is rather unusual for Munich. I was very happy to meet the impressively young organisers as well as other artists. Quite surprisingly to myself, I've met quite a few people I already knew from my BA course in Arts and Multimedia, and a bunch of people who graduated later than me, or were just about to do so.

by Xenia Fumbarev

While setting everything up in our tent, we worked really hard with Klaus and Steffi as the Knife and Needle collective. Some friends even came by to help us. In the end one part of our exhibition space filled with various obscure communication amplifiers: surreal textile devices combined with paintings and sonic media. And the other part was dedicated to our open lab, where Steffi was inventing and sewing various protheses aimed at solving communication problems of our visitors (e.g. one lady wished for a knee-bra), while I was soldering a sink-radio (which refused to work in the end, I suspect the antenna was causing the problems...) Spontaneously, I constructed a rather simplistic model of an analog data base, which comprised various algorithmic processes from the every-day life, e.g. recipes, morning exercises, hiking routes, knitting patterns, etc.  For me, the whole approach of setting up a lab space turned out to be a very valuable methodology. The audience became actively involved, and thus interested in the development of the artwork. This experimental space offered an appropriate framework for further discussions and exchange of ideas. And I can't express how thankful I am to Steffi and Klaus for this collaboration, they are amazing artists to be working with!

Steffi is wearing Fernweh which according to the dictionary is Wanderlust in English (Sounds like an initial point for an exciting
linguistic analysis of German dark-romanticism vs. a more light and positive term, apparently more appropriate for export)

An analog data base for algorithmic processes

A spying mechanism and a sleep mask for the whole face

A special guest from Graz hired for sweeping.

A knee-bra

Pictures below courtesy of Aaber and Zeitjung

Here are some articles about the Aaber Award on mucbook and Zeitjung,