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STRANGE TEACHING - MONADS WITH WINDOWS

for exhibition scroll to the bottom of the web site and see the preparation and various events

STRANGE TEACHING - MONADS WITH WINDOWS

extra-curriculum in Leipzig - in the illegal shadows of a ruin

May  5 to May 18, 2014

artist /professors participating:
Florian Reither (Gelitin member) , AbK, Vienna;
Manfred Pernice, UdK Berlin
Cristina Gomez Barrio and Wolfgang Mayer (discoteca flaming star), AbK, Stuttgart
Rainer Ganahl, AbK, Stuttgart

a publication:

CONCEPT

From May 5 to May 18 I invite art students from professors-friends of mine teaching at international art academies to participate in some extra-curriculum extravaganza in a gigantic muliti - floor former department store in Leipzig, Germany. It is located in the center of the city and we are given carte blanche, i.e. we can do what we want to do following our own organizing principles.

The title for this project is MONADS WITH WINDOWS which not only reminds us of Leibniz's monadology with windowless monads but also alludes to a city that has been literally perforated physically by the effects of Nazi-ideology, allied bombs during WWII, and the politics of the former communist regime resulting in an economic malaise that followed. Even today, housing prices are very low and many, many artists are moving to Leipzig since Berlin is more and more in a process of becoming a normal European city with regular high real estate prices. 

In Western philosophy, monads are closed last units that are encapsulating everything. Pythagoras and his contemporaries attributed them divinity. Leibniz who was actually born in Leipzig in the 17th century saw in monads some kind of central logic, some creative last resort for being, reason and optimism in what he called "prestabilized harmony". Needless to say, this harmony doesn't exist anymore and creative cells are equipped with with windows and interact. Based on this idea to still hold on to something that cannot be spelled out and yet is at the core of all art beyond the wish to be successful, to make money and to be at the center of attention two way windows are necessary and hybridity has more and more become the norm even outside the creative industries. In fact, the most successful and influential toy maker, LEGO, offering only simple blocks, has become a blue print for the most advanced business models and shows us the way we operate efficiently.

Leibniz opposed the atomistic idea of explaining the world that has become the norm during his life time in the 17th century and believed in some dialectic conception in which space and time where nothing but organizing principles for the material world. Subsequently, progress was for him not something that was fundamentally new but something that developed out of new arrangements and new combinations of things that already existed in one or another form under one or another temporality. 

In that regard, during the two weeks, the former emptied out department store was the organizing principle of what all participants were doing or not doing and time was the organizing principle of all its continued transformations and performances. Unfortunately, for this project we didn’t have much of a pre-stabilized harmony in place – not even the usual funding that fuels such operations. 

The entire project was based on some principle of disturbance (the academic year, the academic class system, and all our budgets), on a Do It Yourself (DIY) and Whatever You Wanna Do (WYWD) basis and is better explained with another more contemporary quasi-Leibniz Weltanschauung (a way to explain the world), called autopoiesis. Like Leibniz, the Chilenian neurobiologist Maturana and Varela diverted from the normative scientific path of their time, the 20th century, and tried to explain living organisms and its organization with the help of so-called system theory with emphasizes self-organization, interaction and total openness of its out come – hence lots of windows from entities that could be called monads.

In that sense, our participating students / ARTISTS organized clusters of organic events, performances, shows and programs that entailed anything the participants wanted to come up with. We had film screenings, discussions and reading circles,, a fashion show, several exhibitions, teaching and learning exchanges, music stuff and of course, clubbing and fun. I have not even yet spoken of cooking and eating together, freezing together and making a life from near scratch in the dirt of this poetic ruin.

I am very thankful to all the participants who mostly came on their own costs - including from New York, Goetheburg and Vienna. The same was the case for all the people who lectured and offered their time and effort to come and speak for free. Special thanks also to the Dominik Krauss who pulled this floating unsave ship on board for us and let us use it  - needless to say, without the knowledge of the authorities since nothing was up to code. The water was undrinkable, one shower only installed with Dominik's newly discovered talent as a DIY plumber and electricity had to be brought with long cables from only three access points in the enitre building. The room temperature of this unheated building was a constant 14c / 55F or so.

Idea and concept Rainer Ganahl

OUR SECRET CREDO:  FORCING STUDENTS INTO THE PROPER FORMAT  ... don't tell anybody !!

... but Alfred Jarry is even worse: ALFRED JARRY STRANGE TEACHING   (more of his work at hte very buttom of this page)

Rainer Ganahl, Strange Teachin, (After Herbert List's Transplantation), 1944/ 2014  -- 

------------------------------------

ALL IMAGES ON THIS BLOG BY RAINER GANAHL

RG - Twitter: @strangeteaching

RG: INSTAGRAM : strangeteaching#

Email: <monadswithwindows@hotmail.com>

MOST IMAGES AND VIDEO CLIBS ARE TO BE SEEN ON INSTAGRAM :

LOCATION : former HELD department store

founded by HELD as a department store before WWII, then expropriated by the NAZI,( supposedly ecompensated later, I was told); later GDR department store, after 1989, a Kaufhof Department store until 1993 or 1994 . since then empty)

Leipzig, Germany, near Lindenauplatz (there is new version of HELD kaufhaus.. that iis in good shape but also empty)

pleaes, e-mail: <monadswithwindows@hotmail.com>

MORE PICTURES AND VIDEO CLIPS TO BE SEEN HERE: INSTAGRAM : strangeteaching#

a publication is planned with publisher: Edition Taube

May 6th, first meeting...

FLORIAN REITHER ADDRESSING THE PARTICIPANTS

May 6 9 pm
“(On a New Uncanny) on Kanye West & Jerry Saltz” - see J. Saltz text here

Simone Häfele, Nehle Bertsch, Valentin Henning, Sabrina Karl, Wolfgang Meier

performance developed in the class of Wolfgang Meier and Cristina Gomez Barrio (Discoteca Flaming Star)

Valentin Hennig, letztes Video, stop-motion, Dicke Nacht, 2014
Elisabeth Roth, Musikvideo (Kuehe), 2014
Lisa Muehleisen, performance. stemoel tshirt
Sebastian Kaminski, interview mit bobby, (video mit schwimmbad), 2014,
Claudia Gienger, o.T. , schwarz-weiss video, 2014
Julia Herbrik, video (Vorhang), 2014
Emma Neufeld, Rapper (video) , 2014
Nehle Bertsch, (wischmob), 2014

May 6th, 7th , Reading Leibniz's Monadology

We: May 7
8pm
"Darbietungsabend" / CABARET by Lilith Becker- and Mirjam Ellenbroek and others

Monika Ehret, Belladonna fly high cocktail

wa lin
vitiko schell guitar, viola, voice
nataly hulikova guitar, viola, voice

discussing art - rainer ganahl

Cafe malaria - filmscreening und bar und musik 22uhr start (natascha muhic/ michaela kisling)

BERLIN - SAT., May 10, 2014 (most peop prefered to stayed in Leipzig)

David Lieske, @ MATTHEW, Berlin, showing us the works of Amy Lien and

Simon Denny @ Daniel Buchholz, speaking about his work

lLena Zimmermann @ Daniel Buchholz, Berlin talking about Lutz Bacher's exhhibiton - running also into Michael Melian who told us she was just nominated for the German Film award.

Dominic Eichler @ Silberkuppe,Berlin, speaking about his/their artists

Tobias Kasar, Janette Laveriere

Fred Lonidier ,

Leidy Churchman @ SILBERKUPPE, Berlin, showing his show entitled "A fruit stare"

SUNDAY -VISITING EXHIBITIONS IN BERLIN

HAMBURGER BAHNHOF - HARUN FARROCKI

STEVEN PIPPIN, DAAD ( we mihgt not make it in time - finsihed yeterdays

Laurence Weiner@ Hamburger Bahnhof,

#Manfred Pernice show --- not found ( we looked in the wrong place)

Aiweiwei --we ran out of time

BACK IN LEIPZIG: SUNDAY 11

ART GOING UP THE WALL

So May 11

SM-party
( sm - SINGING MONADE) (SODA MONADe PARTY)  monade limonade/soda ...monade ohne selbstbewusstsein /monade wihtout self consciesness ...)
suspended mobile party for escaping the class system through the window
Nikolaus Eckhard, Lisa-Maria Ernst, isa Jäger, Pille-Rin Jaik, Johanna Messner, Julia Riederer

Karl Bergström Deflating Martian Monument performance -- 20 min ..

Lisa-Maria Ernst, Kurzhaarpinsel

MORE PICTURES AND VIDEO CLIPS TO BE SEEN HERE: INSTAGRAM : strangeteaching#

TUESDAY -- 14TH

READING LEIBNIZ' MONADOLOGY, see here mikro clips

Work presentations by  PARTICIPATNS / STUDENTS

Kenneth Dow

Karl Bergström

Lilly Randell

Jaeeun Lee

wbng familie goenn dir boxinboy sabrina schray, nataly hulikova, kristina arlekinova, surja goenn dir geb.alu, trudel sprudel, osbourne göndir cox, dede göndir, lena muench, kay woitzik, Karl Bergström, can göndir, jona göndir, thomas z. göndir, jfr moon, kenneth dow
Read more at http://web.stagram.com/n/strangeteaching/#h1crDjzidvLlRjeq.99

and others... more to come

DISCUSSING ART AND POLITICS (Ukraine, Russia, Euroe, Estonia, Sweden, Right Wing politics etc.. )

DISCUSSING GENTRIFICATION (NEW YORK PERSPECTIVE BY FOR NEW YORKER AND BERLIN AND LEIPZIG)

CLIP 1, CLIP 2, CLIP 3,

May 14, 2014

Benjamin Meyer-Krahmer
DIETER ROTH – SELF OBSERVATION, AUTOPOIESIS, HONESTY, SHAME, Strange Teaching, Held, Leipzig

May 15

Markues, Markues

Raimar Stange, Das offene Kunstwerk / The Open Art Work, May 15.

9 pm
Manfred Pernice
Discussing Art

FRIDAY 17 20014

SYMPOSIUM

Björn Kühn / Anna Romanenko, Catalogue of liminal Being, Under water Skype Radio Broadcasting

(SKYPE FROM ESTONIA)

Matt Mullican, Matt Mullican - skype from Berlin

Calarts, Hamburg

Manfred Pernice
Disconnections, Connections - A personal account

Daniel Herleth, Offene Monaden - Jedes Ding eine Gesellschaft

Marco Schmitt, Subobskurantismus oder Die freie ästhetische Kunstmeditation.

Raphael Linsi , On boredom

Ulrike Buck, Strange Gardening, Revisiting Robert Smithson's Hotel Palemque

more interviews wiht participantes

malte bartsch

LEIPZIGER MALE à la maison SCHULE à la Alfred Jarry / Leipziger School for at home painting according to Alfred Jarry

Rainer Ganahl, For Jarry, Henry Rousseau, Various Painters, 1895/2014
Oil or acrylic paint on canvas (40x 50 cm)

This work is an attempt to re-imagine this lost portrait. Needless to say, I feel deeply ashamed of my trade with these wonderful Zurich based artists who portrayed me as Alfred Jarry in the style of Henri Rousseau sticking to the artists own ways of seeing and painting. Each painter gets one of myAlfred Jarry vacations @ Hacienda lecture drawings in exchange of an acryl or oil painting. Ironically enough, this embarrassing unequal exchange is fully in line with Alfred Jarry’s historic psychological, social and economic disposition, meaning his narcissism and scamming.

Thanks to: Vitiko Schell (HGB Leizig, painting) Johanna Schieldke (HGB Leizig, painting), Fabian Drung (ABK Stuttgart)

Rainer Ganahl, For Jarry, Henry Rousseau, Vitiko Schell, 1895/2014
Oil or acrylic paint on canvas

see making

Rainer Ganahl, For Jarry, Henry Rousseau, Fabian Drung, 1895/2014
Oil or acrylic paint on canvas

see making

Rainer Ganahl, For Jarry, Henry Rousseau, Johanna Scielke, 1895/2014
Oil or acrylic paint on canvas

see video

STRANGE TEACHING - FASHION SHOW

Florentina Leitner with Ping Pong Collection

modeling Jan NIcola Angermann, Benjamin Hassmann

Lucienne Emily Luecke, Decadence, 2013/2014

Lucienne Emily Luecke

modeling -- back ground paintings by Fabian Drung

Anna Schwarz, Cap Jacket, 2013/2014 - see video here

Jan NIcolas Angermann, FUVOMA, tops, 2014 - video

back ground images, Stefanie Sprinz, Leipzig Real Estate Opportunities, (photographs, 90x 130 cm 2014

Jan NIcolas Angermann, Made in China, Imperial silk hoodie, 2013 - see video here

Monika Ehret, Made in China, 2013

Jennifer Ojukwu, Made in China, 2013

Anna Schwarz, Ping Pong Racket, 2014 - silicon

modelling RG

Wera Buck, Made in China --bag design modifications by various artists

sören hiob

björn kühn/anna romanenko - remember their work on lynxes

Nothing Left bag by Valentin Leuschel

modelling Lilly Randall, Anna Schwarz

Sabrina Schray, Made in China, 2013

Valentin Leuschel -

Rainer Ganahl, Made in China, Mask Integrated Clothing, tops and heads 2013

head wiht integrated mask

Rainer Ganahl, Strange Teaching, (After Herbert List's photograph Transplantation), 1944/2014

more info on this work here  

modelling Lilly Randeal, Jonna Schielke

(ddin t you ever feel like tihs in school ????? )

Löcher überall - wholes everywhere  !

and  this  depressed, distorted mood anticipated what whas about to come with all THE NEO NAZI SHIT COMING NEXT DAY- THE LAST DAY - that washed out all our energy and remaining time together.A horrible experience but telling..  upon leaving the horror vaccui was staring at us few ... .

Sunday, MAY 18 finale day - the exhibition was not taking place due to NEO NAZI SHIT

the day starts with a big NEO NAZI DEMONSTRATION.- ( it is not fun.. and something that goes against anythin I wanna teach and I wanna stand for - )

STRANGE LIVING & HANGING ...

Cody and Jeeun as well as Lily flew flew in from New York - all costs on theirs; Karl flew in form Goetheborg.

the only shower in the place

RUNDGANG -- THE EXHIBITION

INTERVEIWES OF PARTICIPATNS  - might never come. but go insta ...

MY TEXT :

STRANGE TEACHING – THE ARTIST AS EXCELLENT AND MISERABLE TEACHER

PS: SOME RESULTS - LA VISITE DE L' AMOUR / THE VISIT OF LOVE ..

two new couples were formed and are now deeply in love from what I can tell -- !!!!

I was also able to organize artist/speaker Markues his frist New York solo exhibiton in the gallery I work with on the lower east side - he is already in possession of a flight ticket , a stay for 10 days and has a operation budget of 1000 dollars . opening at kai matsumiya on June 7, 2014.

special thanks also to top organizer DOMINIK KRAUSS who managed the overal structure of HELD AND PROVIDED his amazing 24 / 7 help.

(installed a hot boiler for oru shower and many more things)s