i think it is a wonderful discovery you made jorun! the flaneur is a figure charles baudelaire invented over a hundred years ago but i think it is still of great actuality, today's flaneur ( i read that the female version is called "passante") could be the globalized, digitalized human being, strolling through the internet, moving a lot in their lives, travelling in no time through different cultures, in a world that is getting smaller and smaller. They are armed with mobile phones and digital cams.

writers who treat the theme of the flaneur:
walter benjamin, jean baudrillard, david riesman...


*m

summing up!

I think it sounds like a good idea to start working more active instead of only writing on how to start we should may be just do it. But I must say that picking a title first worries me. I think that that could make the works to forced to one direction, and make the pieces a reaction of the title instead of the title being a reaction of the pieces. Is that what we want to do? I think maybe that a theme is a better way to start and then create the title after we have come longer in the process. But I don't know. Maybe it is interesting to go the other way around? But what will that do to the pieces?

I feel that I sound very negative all the time, I am not! I think it could be great. I am just a very slow worker and I feel that every decision should be made carefully. I hope that you understand that is why I am questioning things so much.

I also feel that we should start with something soon. What we have come up with so far is (correct me if I am wrong)

* We want it to be unclear which artist made which piece for the show.
* We want a common theme to work with.
* We want the pieces to interact with eachother is some way (it does not have to be in a direct way, but some correspondece should take place).
* We want to agree with the process and make everyones opinion as valueble.

Have I forgotten something? I just think it is time to sum up before we continue! Please will Lily and Susanne also take part in this decision making!

/Jorun

Hey Ladies! Mel and I had an appointment on Thursday. We were talking about lots of things and to our project as well. For both of us it's not that bad, when we would have the first show in fall, because it would be to early right now. Things have to grow, you know. We had the idea to give a title or something to our project. As a generic them, so to speak. The aim is to bring individual work achieved, but exhibit some common thread. The autonomy to an a generic them should be visible. We already find, that we fit together somehow. But we think it can be another set of interesting and useful thing. I also realized projects like this with other artists,too. It was always very good and it was always very exciting to to see how each can see the world. In addition, it helps, not in got in a huge stress and to work concrete. It's not that we already have a title. But collecting terms might be a start. What do you others think about it? Hug Gabriella

reply

yes I understand that these words written were not supposed to work as themes as they were, but to be further developed. I just wanted to give you my worries before we started to do that. Maybe it is the easiest way to start. But I don't really know yet which ones that interests me the most, I will be back soon with more opinions!

but hey, I really like the activity on the blog right now. I think we are on to something...

hey to all!
oh, these words i picked out of our discussion were not meant to work
as themes! it was just a try to collect what was in the air, so to
say. as a theme, they would be too simple i guess.
and yes jorun, i totally agree with you that we should not produce for
a certain idea, but just let everything grow toghether. but still i
think that a theme or a question could work as a guideline for the
blog. it doesn't have to guide our works though.(or maybe it could
work as this for just some of us?) but to start a real discussion, i
think it would be interesting to find a question that we all find
interesting. something that maybe connects us. so therefore i was
collecting those words...
*m

themes

I really don't mind any of the themes suggested, I also find them all interesting. I just wonder if we might will get stuck in working in the same way as a curator. I mean, first finding a theme and then create things that we can place within that theme not really corresponding with eachother in any other way than just being made for the common theme. How can we avoide that? I think that maybe a theme is the right way to go, but how can we do it in a more interesting way and not making it so ortodox?

Here is a picture of me as a bear in bearlin!

theme suggestions

Of melanie's theme suggestions, i am most interested in these:

*melancholy
*mutation
*landscapes
*gender
*vulnerability


However, all of these are very broad. Maybe we can decide on one to begin working with, and then find a more specific issue within it to focus on.


I WANT TO SEE MORE BEAR BALLET!


-Lily

Dear people

Here a few ideas.


(without titles, interventions and gouache on paper, photo collage, 2009)

What I am interested in meanwhile is today's woman picture, much rather the current ideal of beauty. After and the question go where the individuality stays with it. Is there still one at all? What happens if one steps in exactly here?
The current female ideal isn't only in the advertising, the fashion world and Hollywood topic. Computer games and Manga also use themselves with that. Another aspect still arrives at the Manga: the childlike. Almost spare in a frightening way albeit almost pornographic.

Finding a way, making visibly by suitable interventions of this. Consciously I have destroyed eyes and mouth (the probably most important sense organs and peculiarities of a man, a woman) perhaps also in a terrible way. It is important to me to maintain this over esthetic which seems to convey today's picture to the woman. Beauty and grotesquerie yield a new and simultaneously monogamous view, however without seeming boring.


(Supermarket, installation, in 2009 completed)

I think that the title says enough without me having to explain this installation excellently.
Supermarket mentality which threatens to creep in also in interhuman areas. The woman who should satisfy all criteria in the ideal case at once until the time. How would the man like it, then?


(without titles, wool and gouache on paper, installation, 2009)

This is a doll-like representation of a woman. The pantyhose made of wool knitted and between the legs a proportionally big vagina on this stuck.
Provocation, all the more smally and more sweetishly, however, regarded as it. Diminution on the essential.(?)