INTERFACE

REVIEW

‘New Life Berlin – First Thoughts’

New Life Gallery, Berlin
31 May - 15 June 2008

Reviewed by: mary kate connolly

‘What are the main themes of New Life Berlin?’ questions the wooloo website rhetorically. Answer: ‘Transnational Communities…Artistic Social Responsibility…[and] Participation and Intervention’.

In realising New Life, an online community has gathered in Berlin to form a physical one; a community to explore these themes in real time and real space. Before coming here I confess I found it difficult to envisage how these themes might materialise from the virtual to the now. The website’s sentiments flickering on my laptop seemed worthy certainly but a little lofty too perhaps and I, reading from a detached distance, found it hard to break them down into digestible chunks.

But we have arrived…names that until now have all ended in dot.com have come to life, embodied by real people who trade anecdotes of airport delays and language barriers – the harried glint of jet lag and nervous apprehension just palpable in their eyes. Transnational Communities? Check.

It is six o’ clock at 85 Chloriner Strasse and a crowd has amassed. The windows of the New Life Berlin shop have been removed to reveal a glittering and pockmarked scar streaked across the back wall – the centrepiece of Nathan Peter’s installation. It is gaudy, intriguing and people venture into the shop to peek and ponder.

Artists and writers mingle on the pavement. There is to be a close relationship between us for the duration of the festival – testing of boundaries with no comfortable room for the writer to remain aloof. ‘Incestuous’ was how Rachel Lois Clapham (co-facilitator of Open Dialogues) described this proximity. Conversation among writers has included the finer points of cress growing for the project Caban Unnos and the consumption of an edible Berlin Wall scheduled for the 15^th of June. Disarming certainly, this incestuousness, but there is a freedom to be found in the transparency it affords. Far easier to have rules of engagement laid down clearly rather than the habitual blurring of relationships which can occur in the potentially small and close-knit habitat of the art world.

Participation and intervention? Check.

And so the festivities proceed in the sultry evening air. Hotly contested debate on art rages, cooled only by the inviting fridge of complimentary Tiger beer which has taken up residence under a nearby tree. As dusk melts into night we are amused and seduced by the sleek line of gleaming Skodas which await to ferry the motley throng to the after party venue. I wonder bemusedly if these luxuries come playfully under the theme of Artistic Social Responsibility?!

The buzz of expectation and excitement abounds with just the slightest hint of giddy irreverence. The fact that this festival focuses more on process, participation and fluid outcomes rather than static products means that for now uncertainty and possibility reign.

New Life Berlin? New Life to All.

 

This text was developed as part of the Open Dialogues: New Life Berlin critical writing initiative http://www.wooloo.org/opendialoguesblog/

Writer detail:
Mary Kate Connolly is a freelance writer and movement practitioner based in London

mary11378@yahoo.com |

Venue detail:
New Life Gallery
85 Chloriner Strasse Berlin

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