Roses in the Garden

Unfurl thy limbs child

you are to be a flower - bloom.

''...out there things will be stirrin' down below in the dark.''

''Are there ever any Roses?''

''Everything was strange and silent, and she seemed to be hundreds of miles away from anyone, but somehow she did not feel lonely at all.''

''Even if the Roses are dead, there are other things alive.''

''...and she liked still more the feeling that when its beautiful old walls shut her in, no one knew where she was.''

''What happened to the Roses?''

Sixten

''To borrow another person's eyes, to experience the world as your beloved sees and feels it, isn't that what love is?''

Images from Globalsapiens Exhibition.

WHY GLOBALSAPIEN?

As a society, our actions, our expressions, ourreactions, all show signs that we are aware of living in end times. Make no bones about it; no matter how much we talk about getting married, getting a house, settling down, we reek of a dying civilisation.

This exhaustion of everything in our merry-go-round swap between being the exploiter to the exploited has to end. Nobody can predict what ‘end’ we can expect, but we can guess what the prolongation of this current manmade nightmare will lead to. But we can also guess and hope; to hope that “surely this can’t be the end of the human story just yet…!” Grim resignation is dangerous; hope generates possibilities – but hope is sometimes hard for one to maintain.

Globalsapiens are artist’s who are desperately trying to find a way forward into a future worth living in. Our instinct is to express – we may not be the most pragmatic/practical people, but our contribution is a desperate attempt to realise a new way of living for the sake of the human race (sound self righteous? No: all species battle to maintain their existence). The time is right. Artists have no future in this old world, they must end their post idealist malaise/capitulation to the business mentality and join the cause to act now to make a future worth living in.

We felt aligned by a feeling that our artwork seems too driven, and too real merely to be for exhibitions only - which often seem to just castrate it and make it nothing but mere consumer spectacle. This is a pressing concern that is played out within the show: we know that this is all our works may be, but we are still often driven by a powerful dream-boat of blind optimism that refers to the opposite, and seems to be generated by the ideological coding of the very system we are trying to help unwire. We want to help pave a way out of this bleak place our species (and the planet it has dragged down with it) has stumbled into, but we too often get too trapped in our minds to be/or do anything but what the system would happily have us be/doing – what keeps it thriving off human day-dreams and desires.

Nobody is in any place to preach. To resonate with others to generate in others. To alienate is to disintegrate. Let’s take the No Them, Only Us belief seriously again.

Human beings offer fundamentally special qualities to life on planet earth, and wherever else life may flourish. However, we are not better than the rest of life; if we were better we wouldn’t need it; but strip the life away from under our feet and we’d be dead before you could say the words ‘Easter Island’. Nevertheless, this is what out species is currently doing. But to say that we are a species of existential contradictions is to give up without even trying, and to let the idea of perpetual profiteering drag our eyes to the grey floor, where we watch our feet take one step at a time, in a potentially lethal small-world view.

This exhibition wishes to contribute to the voices of reason in this time of collective insanity.

'Globalsapiens: An Introduction' Opening night at CADS, Sheffield

Globalsapiens: an introduction to Parallel Paranoia, Humans In Cages and Silently Chained - the respective alternate names for artistic collective Mikk Murray, John Ledger and Jade Morris. Each artist has, at some point in life, stumbled across these titles and found them poetically fitting descriptions of their own predicament as young adults in the 21st century: tied to lifestyles that they know are destructive to the planet and most often self-destructive; struggling forwards from this, trying to find cracks in a hegemonic social landscape that drags humans toward an ultimate battle with nature that we are certain to lose.
Thus this show cannot be a means to an end for Globalsapiens: it has to be the start not the end; one of many 'atoms for peace', clustering together, always growing never standing still, until their shout is big enough to make one final stand against a world ruled by money. This exhibition aims to resonate with all those who care but feel trapped and helpless to make a change, and possibly then inspire them to believe that they need not feel trapped and helpless.

The garden

Heather, gorse and broom. 

''That's the wind blowing through the bushes.'' Mrs Medlock said.

Small, lost and odd.

''She says she believes they eat th' grass same as th' wild ponies do.''

''an' birds as comes an' eats out of his hand.''

''even a disagreeable little girl may be lonely.''

Kunsthaus Tacheles, Berlin

Filled with art, people and good vibes!!..music, graffiti, a non-profit organization - interested in people, humanity and existence rather than money! The Berlin government have their sights set on shutting the place down, so the people involved in Tacheles are doing everything they can to get more people involved and in trying to save the place.
There's more info here..
http://super.tacheles.de/cms/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tacheles-kunsthaus-Berlin/116848323604?sk=wall

The building was about 3 or 4 stories high and filled with artists studios, craft markets and there was also a sculpture workshop/studio outside. An artists called Alexander Rodin has a studio there.. http://www.bellabelarus.com/en/component/option,com_jsgallery/mode,by_artist/artist_id,23/Itemid,49/
his work and studio was mind blowing! It was like stepping into a time machine somewhere into the not so far away future. Paintings covered the walls and there were little sculptural experiments scattered on the floor..bike wheels, empty glasses/bottles, lamps, paint, lights; it reminded me of the strange creature lady from The Dark Crystal..Aughra!

The creativity and inspiration in this place is immense! It's a real connected, creative community welcoming anyone and everyone. This is what art is - life! Existence! It's living..and especially for the Now!

I also met an artist there called Barbara Frogagna, she had an exhibition on there.. http://www.barbarafragogna.blogspot.com/
Her work was really beautiful..paintings, sculptures, drawings and personal thoughts on scraps of paper (which were all contained in a glass box). There was also music playing throughout, a Spanish or Italian woman singing along with a guitar, which added to the mood of the work in the exhibition.

It was a very intimate exhibition; a delicate insight into perceptions and experiences with love, anguish, sex and despair..I loved it.

x

Berlin 02.07.2011

Grey, rainy day.
Hungover.
Saw beautiful photographs in a beautiful building..

The exhibition included photographs by Sibylle Bergemann, Gregory Crewdson and Timotheus Tomicek/Kathrin Schonegg.. http://www.co-berlin.info/

The building was amazing and so were the photographs, each room was something different but they all had a sinister yet seductive vibe to them. The first room with the photos by Sibylle Bergemann took me back to childhood; distorted visions of nature and dolls, each tainted with touch. The photographs were tiny polaroids, there must have been about a hundred; concealed in delicate frames.

The next room was like a modern Victorian age, with photographs by Tomicek/Schonegg, slightly moving as you stared at them, at first I thought it was me..still slightly pissed..but they were moving but only just, it was like a floaty feather dream; women in dresses reaching out towards you/something and a man's eye; attracting/disturbing.

The toilets were just as amazing as the exhibition. I stayed in there for about half and hour, mesmerized, it was like an insane asylum; cold grey walls and tiles, huge sinks and doors, rusty, creaky pipes.

As I made my way to the third room there were some photographs that lured me in just on a wall that led to the room, they were like shots from a crime scene or a film set; grey, stark locations with no sign of life only maybe one or two people. In the room the photographs were huge! Lonely people staring into a distance, in one of them an old woman stands naked in a bleak bathroom, with blood dripping from between her legs. In another, a group of people walk amongst what looks like a destroyed wasteland, covered in scratches and dirt.

I wandered round the building for a good couple of hours, I've never had that feeling in an art gallery before - one that actually provoked emotion and feeling rather than being concerned with who you'll meet or what 'important person' will spot you there. I was totally inspired and touched. Even though the mood wasn't an ecstatically happy one, it was a mood..a feeling..and one that put me in touch with a part of me where there are no words for. 

I felt like a ghost that day, but one with presence.