»This was an environment built, not for man, but for man’s absence.« ― J.G. Ballard, High-Rise

HIGH-RISE BERLIN is an experimental take on the well-established format of a studio visit. Through the pandemic-proof lens of a drone, we offer an intimate glimpse into the worlds of a few Berlin-based artists. Some of them will present us with their lesser-known artistic skills and tell us about what has recently been inspiring them.
2020 has spawned monstrosities none of us expected, turning most of us into disease-fearing, isolated, often screen-staring beings – locked away J.G. Ballard’s style. With HIGH-RISE BERLIN Schinkel Pavillon reacts to the fractured understanding of community and face-to-face encounters, and continues to be a place of artistic exchange despite our physical limitations.

Concept by Malina Heinemann and Schinkel Pavillon
Curatorial advice by Agnes Gryczkowska
 

Studio Visit #1 – Simon Denny:

Camera by Joseph Kadow for Schinkel Pavillon
Minecraft footage and architecture by Mythical Institution/ Jan Berger

To kick off HIGH-RISE BERLIN we visited Simon Denny in his apartment on the 18th floor high-rise in Berlin-Mitte. Simon Denny’s artistic works include installation, sculpture, print, and video. His elaborate exhibitions endeavor to dismantle the social and political impacts of a ever-expanding techno-industry and entanglements of social media, startup culture, and blockchain. The video captures Simon Denny making his show Mine for K21, Düsseldorf,  during lockdown. The drone footage intersects to a minecraft version of Mine which is now temporarily closed because of Covid-19 regulations.
 

Studio Visit #2 – Ahmet Öğüt:

Featured works: Ahmet Öğüt, Let’s imagine you steal this poster, 2016; Goshka Macuga, Karl Marx, 2016, Skulptur mit Pflanze
Camera by Joseph Kadow
Soundtrack by Ahmet Öğüt & Fino Blendax, Armoured, 2015, 4:04
Postproduction by Ahmet Öğüt and Joseph Kadow

We accompanied Ahmet Öğüt on his journey from the city’s north end to the south – from his home to his storage space. Öğüt works across a variety of media including video, photography, installation, drawing and print. He uses irony and humour to underline the most problematic social and political structures and strategies. His work targets issues of identity, self-determination, and a sense of duty; and reflects on history as a construct, by focusing on forgotten narratives silenced by the dominant voices of historians. For HIGH-RISE BERLIN Öğüt presents us with a few artworks that are significant to him – joining seemingly disparate dimensions and times.
 

Studio Visit #3 – Marianna Simnett:

Camera and postproduction by Joseph Kadow
Sound by Marianna Simnett

We visited artist Marianna Simnett in her new studio where she’s been working since moving to Berlin. Glimpses of Simnett’s vivid universe can be seen in the form of mutant beasts, birds and horses. Playing the uncanny melody of the British TV-series »Animal Hospital« she lures and hypnotises the drone as if it were a cobra. All of a sudden, the artist turns her flute into a weapon against the intruding drone, and chases it into the sky. Simnett works across a variety of media, including film, installation, sculpture, music and drawing to explore the body as a site of transformation. Working with animals, children, organs, and often performing herself, Simnett imagines radical new worlds filled with untamed thoughts, strange tales and desires.
 

Studio Visit #4 – Billy Bultheel:

Camera and postproduction by Joseph Kadow
Sound by Billy Bultheel, Steve Katona and Alexander Iezzi

Our drone is gazing into Billy Bultheel’s studio transfixed by his new haunting composition for The Minutes of Olomouc – a performance which was planned to be premiered in Olomouc, Czech Republic at a festival called PAF. As a result of Covid-19 restrictions Billy Bultheel, Steve Katona and Alexander Iezzi will perform the piece without a physical audience, filling the empty Rococo interiors of the Church of Corpus Christi with their chants and electronic sonic arrangements. Bultheel is a Belgian composer and artist based in Berlin. He perceives his work on the intersection of performance art and music and his practice combines gestures of Renaissance and early Baroque polyphony with heavy electronics.
 

Studio Visit #5 – Malakoff Kowalski:

Camera and postproduction by Joseph Kadow for Schinkel Pavillon
Sound by Malakoff Kowalski

Malakoff Kowalski is a Berlin based Persian-German-American composer and musician who imagines alternative, empty worlds: escape-routes from overstimulating environments towards calm no-spaces in his latest album Onomatopoetika. For HIGH-RISE BERLIN he invites our drone for a walk over the cemetery where he found the silent nothingness that incorporates no more than echoing hint of inspiration.
 

Studio Visit #6 – Asad Raza:

Camera and postproduction by Joseph Kadow for Schinkel Pavillon

 Asad Raza is a Berlin based artist whose work functions much like a laboratory for artistic and collaborative practice. In these elaborate, open processes Raza reveals dynamics of artistic collaborative research. Furthermore, he addresses current socio-political discourses and reveals structures of power. Razas artworks form a chain of interconnected situations in which human and non-human beings as well as objects may interact and explore their being-together in their particular, actual environment. For High-Rise Berlin Alma, his daughter, opens the apartment door for our drone. Here, childish and artistic worlds collide and fuse into a playful reality.
 

Studio Visit #7 – Raphaela Vogel:

Camera and postproduction by Joseph Kadow for Schinkel Pavillon
Sound by Raphaela Vogel and Malina Heinemann

Raphaela Vogel’s large scale installations bring together video, sculptures, paintings, collages and found objects. The artist stages intricate and fantastical worlds where playfulness and tension collide. Her work unpacks issues concerning human – especially female identity. As Vogel states herself: »I set out to greet the world in excessively framed scenes.« – as Rollo, her poodle sneaks into the frame. 

Studio Visit #8 – Jimmy Robert:

Camera and postproduction by Joseph Kadow
Voiceover by Jimmy Robert

Jimmy Robert examines the transformative potential of performative actions through movement, photography, video, drawing and installation. He places his body within mise en scènes that he creates and treats it as a projection surface, questioning what it means to see and be seen. By reusing the principle of performance art – its eroticism and the tension between vulnerability and violence – and mixing it with complex references to literature, art history and music, Robert questions our understanding of blackness and gender identity and reveals their constructedness.
 

Studio Visit #9 – Karl Holmqvist:

Camera and postproduction by Joseph Kadow
Voiceover by Karl Holmqvist

The artist Karl Holmqvist deciphers the particularities of language in installations, printed matter, video and readings as a sculptural and performative material. Through the assembling of generic phrases from popular culture, politics, art and literature and recombining them in other possible meaning. With hypnotic as well as ironic intonations Holmqvist puts language in a monad-like context with what seems like a potential double meaning for every single letter of the alphabet.
 

Studio Visit #10 – Henrike Naumann:

Camera and postproduction by Joseph Kadow
Video excerpts by Henrike Naumann
Voiceover by Henrike Naumann

On the level of interior design and domestic space Henrike Naumann reflects socio-political zones of conflict while exploring antagonistic political beliefs through the ambivalent aesthetics of personal taste. Growing up in Eastern Germany, Naumann experienced extreme-right ideology as a predominant youth culture in the ’90s – today, she raises questions concerning the mechanisms of radicalization and how they are linked to personal experience in her artistic practice.
Born in the moment of ever-postponed exhibitions due to Covid-19 regulations, Naumann transformed a room in her studio into a Showroom whose conceptual outlines generate the gestural freedom the artist needs to continue arranging furniture and home décor into immersive installations. For High-Rise Berlin she invites us to experience her work Evolution Chemnitz (2020) through the wide-range lens of the drone. In Evolution Chemnitz Naumann relates the history of one hundred years of revolutionary movements in and around Chemnitz / Karl-Marx- Stadt.
 

Studio Visit #11 – Julian-Jakob Kneer:

Camera and postproduction by Joseph Kadow
Sound by Julian-Jakob Kneer and Emma Czerny

Julian-Jakob Kneer examines the production and heritage of socio-cultural signs.
Preconscious dualisms such as »right«/»wrong« or »sick«/»healthy« are transformed by
the artist into a multi-layered network beyond the restrictions of the bourgeois or
clinical perspective. Under the auspices of the ambiguity that Kneer unfolds in his
artistic practice, negation and affirmation evoke seemingly antagonistic emotions
such as lust and disgust simultaneously, and allow us to experience the world – and
all its current struggles – as other than binary and more than a rigid.
 

Studio Visit #12 – Lucrecia Dalt:

Camera and postproduction by Joseph Kadow
Voice & Audio recorded and performed by Lucretia Dalt

Lucrecia Dalt’s artistic practice unfolds its transgressive potential beyond conventional disciplines and dwells on interdisciplinary exchanges; such as geology, fiction, poetry, philosophy and electronic music. Inspired by both her academic background as a civil engineer and a sentient embrace of mystical insights on earthly life – by reinterpreting folklore or applying telepathic methods for composition – she produces heartfelt narratives that nourish her recorded albums and live performances.
 

Studio Visit #13 – Isabel Lewis:

Drone footage and postproduction by Joseph Kadow
Voiceover by Isabel Lewis

Isabel Lewis’ artistic practice dwells on the dynamics of continuous experimentation, ever-growing collaborative production and flourishing involvement of her audience during »hosted occasions«, »open spaces«, »occurrences«, »arrangements«, »activations« »expanded viewings«, »sensory parcours« as well as workshops, lecture performances, listening sessions and party nights. Lewis’ gestures unroll  radical sensitivity towards environments, earthly relationships of intimacy and the persistent permeation of theory, sound and motion.