From time to time, I worked in collaboration with a small independent TV producer collective, which consisted of (former) members of Botschaft, and received author’s honorary for political spots. This experience helped later to edit video as a job; within another collaborative art project I was part of. Later, after Botschaft dissolved, I received a post-graduate-grant, based on a law for doctoral studies; and again some years later, I got an artist grant from Berlin Senat, which helped for some time to survive. I won an Art Price in Bremen for “Young Art”; this money supported me while being in New York in 1997/98. In NY, I continued my interest in collaborative work within an artist group called Parasite. Next to other initiatives, we discussed pragmatically different ideas on contracts, supporting artists that work context-related / site-specific, with honoraries and per diem. I heard first time of the famous Seth Siegelaub contract for selling artwork, developed in the 1970s. A very good idea indeed, but I guess nobody but Hans Haacke is using it, also the site specific contracts are not realized very often, I suppose. While in New York, I was asked by Annette Schindler to organize a show at Swiss Institute, “We are Somewhere Else (Already)”, that summed up collaborative efforts in both cities, and along the way paid a honorary. Two years later I returned collaborating with her and Gareth James on a show about Godard’s/Mièville’s TV- and video work in the same Institute. Returning to Berlin, and on the basis of earlier writing experience, I started to publish reviews – that was when one could still get decent honoraries from online-magazines, plus there were some newspapers outside Germany that paid well. Meanwhile, I got a residence-grant for Los Angeles. While being in LA, I got invited to do some talks, including Cal Arts, or the University of Austin / Texas. Later, some project travel support was important to do projects in countries as different as Ukraine, Turkey, and India.
I had started teaching earlier in different workshops, some of them in Denmark, where I learned a lot about teaching in the class of Mur og Rum. Later I returned for the Ground class, and again later as a Guest professor for the Media Dept., organizing there a trip to China and Japan with the students. In Istanbul, where I lived and where I met Oda Projesi, I taught a workshop based on my animation videos in Bilgi University. Since three years, I am professor in a Swedish Art Academy. I chose to teach on a 50% position, to be able to keep up with the practices I describe here.
The practices from Botschaft and from the NY-shows have taught me how important it is to define the projects one is working with. Continuing this work over the years, I developed projects / exhibitions that consequently gave me a kind of organizer’s honorary. Exhibitions like “Poor Man’s Expression”, conceived with Martin Ebner in Berlin and Vienna, came into being. A German cultural project send me to Poland, where as a result I developed with Lukasz Ronduda a show on experimental film, that traveled from Warsaw to Stuttgart and Bilbao. Already before, as a result of the LA residence, I had collaborated for some years within an art/architect/curator group called RAIN on shows in LA, Houston or Vienna: a process culminating in organizing a part of the 8th Biennial in Havana. Important part of all those projects was the publications. I continue with parts of this group, developing shows on art and architecture.
27.03.2010
