When a couple of years ago the art world turned its attention towards narration again, romanticism and filigree drawings returned. This focus on the poetical side of art was quickly answered by a sympathetic low-keyed counter movement which introduced a touch of vulgarity and kitsch to balance what was happening. But basically every picture told a story. Well, where to go from here?
Gunter Reski and Marcus Weber, both amazing painters, just gave us an answer. At Jet on the corner of Alexanderplatz, they curated an exhibition which focusses on „Le Capitaine Pamphile“, a novel of Alexandre Dumas from 1839. Their idea was to invite artists and ask them to respond to that mixture of travel adventure and fanciful animal memoir. Weber and Reski prepared a storyboard to create a loose superstructure and used the narrative moments of that very pictorial novel.
The outcome is really worthwhile watching, as a lively crowd recognised yesterday at the opening of „The Pamphile Show“. Awesome for Americans, lovely for the English and supersuper for the Hipsters. So if you are in Berlin before July 18th, go, have a look and enjoy.
[Memhardstr. 1, Thur-Sat 4-7pm]
Als die Urheberrechtsdebatte vor einigen Wochen in den deutschen Zeitungen immer massiver und massiver aufflackerte, dachte ich ja, das hatten wir ja alles schon, das geht gleich wieder weg. Wishfull thinking, war aber nicht so. Irgendwann half nichts mehr, ich musste was schreiben. Um einfach mal grundsätzlich klar zu stellen, dass das Schüren all dieser Angst rund um das Urheberrecht vergebliche Liebesmühe ist. Paid Content im Netz wird für Verlage niemals was anderes als ein Traum sein, dazu hat sich mit der Digitalisierung die Informationskultur zu sehr geändert und genau das mal aufzuschreiben, darum ging es mir. Kurzer Auszug:
In der heutigen Welt werden wir von Informationen überschüttet und damit hat sich der Wert der Information radikal verändert. Es ist gut denkbar, dass man bald Geld dafür bezahlt, Informationen nicht mehr bekommen zu müssen
Mehr hier.
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Here is the thing: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California, proposed in his budget speech a couple of days ago that schoolbooks should be available in digital formats “..to save hundreds of millions of dollars that could be used to hire more teachers and reduce class sizes”. Plan was to transform the serious difficulties California faces with the school budgets to opportunities, he said citing Winston Churchill.
Sounds good. But guess what happened: The press freaked out. While he only launched an initative to see if the state’s 6 million public school students can use more online learning materials they talked about the “Rise of the machines: Arnold Schwarzenegger terminates school book and tells pupils to go digital” [Daily Mail], saw “School textbooks near digital doomsday” [Financial Times], wrote about “California’s ban on printed textbook” [Telegraph] or commented upon the “Rise of the machines: Arnold Schwarzenegger terminates school book”[Daily Mail again]. When I read the printed version of Telegraph or Daily Mail on the plane, editors even wrote down what they still remember from their schoolbooks like people won’t learn anymore in the near future. Oh no, the Internet is threatening us again! Didn’t it kill the music industry and the newspapers before and wounded the movie theatres?
Why is the internet killing logical thinking?
Sometimes I get the feeling that normally intelligent people are disconnected from their brain if you mention to them the word „internet“. Like the internet is a red cloth you wave in front of a bull. Intelligence? Gone. Logic? Vanished. Aggression? Here we go. As soon as you tell people that something might become available in a digitalized version they are unable to understand that it just is transformed to another medium. They believe it will be destroyed. As if the Internet isn’t a medium, but a vacuum cleaner and its dust bag a black whole where everything vanishes never to be seen again.
Hey folks, really. Relax. Because anyway, the end of the Gutenberg Galaxy doesn’t mean that there will be no content anymore. The poems, plays, actually all the knowledge won’t vanish because it is digitalized. On the contrary, this is a great opportunity. Because thanks to the internet we can distribute public knowledge much more easily. Make our cultural history and all our knowlege more accesible and maybe even reach sections of the population we couldn’t reach before. Now we can spread the word. And actually this is very important in a digital society and badly needed.
Because up till no we left the traditional public space – library, market place and hanging out with friends at the bus station- to the business sector, to Ebay, Google and Facebook. So thank you Mr. Schwarzenegger for being such a Bladerunner. Please fight for us. Glad you are back.
Yes, I know I need to post something here.
