♦ MPA-B PROGRAMME: May 10th ♦

Make yourself comfortable and read on, as today’s programme overview has LOTS to tell you.

A “workout” is not just about flexing muscles and exercising in the hope of shedding the few extra pounds. It’s also a strenuous test of ability and endurance, and a way of working-out things such as……performance art Manifestos. In fact, a MANIFESTO WORK-OUT session is what Joel Verwimp and Florian Feigl, initiators of the MPA-B 2013 Curatorial Collaboration Initiative (CCI), will bring to the intellectual training ground at Archive Kabinett in Kreuzberg. After holding day-side conversations with the CCI participants, they will extract statements from these exchanges and re-assemble them together with the public during a re-writing performance session from 20:00-22:00. The aim is to construct a final collaborative “Curating Performance Art Manifesto.”
More info:
http://www.mpa-b.org/florian-feigl—joel-verwimp.html
https://www.facebook.com/notes/month-of-performance-art-berlin/letter-to-a-curator-by-joel-verwimp/436671586391760
https://www.facebook.com/events/247949542011878/?fref=ts
https://sites.google.com/site/mpabtextroll/home

Take note of today, as it marks the beginning of (CON)TEMPORARY SPACE-TIME curated by Lan Hungh, Yun-Ting Hung & I-Chen Tsou, which brings for the first time to Berlin a unique overview of independent and contemporary Taiwanese performance art practices. This weeks-long curated project which “shows how Taiwanese performance/action artists grow a unique performance/act art contextual brook, within an historical torrent,” will not only feature performances and talks, but also an extensive exhibition spreading over three gallery spaces. Today is the GRAND OPENING starting at 19:00 at Stattberlin, with performances by 吳逸中 Effie Wu and 葉育君 Ye Yu-Jun and an exhibition by 姚瑞中 Yao Jui-Chung, 崔廣宇 Tsui Kuang-Yu and 陳界仁 Chen Chieh-Jen.
More info:
http://www.mpa-b.org/lan-hungh-yun-ting-hung—i-chen-tsou.html
https://www.facebook.com/events/455090114584438/?fref=ts

From Taiwan we move to the US of A, and more specifically to Brooklyn, which in recent year has seen the birth of many new performance art spaces, initiatives, networks and festivals, such as the upcoming Brooklyn Performance Art Festival (BIPAF) due in July 2013. The BIPAF’s initiators and MPA-B 2013 Associate Curators, Panoply Lab and Anya Liftig, are now in Berlin, to bring us some new “flavours” from across the Atlantic. Starting today and extending continuously until May 13th, YOU’RE A BIG BOY NOW (OR RAUSCHENBERG IST TÖDLICH) will see Ivy Castellanos, Valerie Kuehne, Anya Liftig, Brian McCorkle, Esther Neff, Adam Overton and Hector Canonge operating a “diner” without respite at Grüntaler9 in Wedding, dishing up edible and inedible options as visitors receive a menu from which they can order food, objects, and time-­‐based items.
More info:
http://www.mpa-b.org/anya-liftig.html
https://www.facebook.com/events/385927731525323/

CROSSING CONTEXT, NEUKÖLLN continues to present more innovative performance art from our Danish counterparts. Tonight is Ellen Vestergaard Friis turn, who will present SIX SAINTS: TYCHO BRAHE and SIX SAINTS: H.C.ØRSTED, an artistic analysis of six well-known Danish scientists whose work deal with light, energy and time. The performance starts at 19:30 at kunstraum t27.
http://www.mpa-b.org/camilla-graff-junior.html
https://www.facebook.com/events/508408709223708/?fref=ts

Two more projects begin today: SILENCE and ON OFF MOMENTS.

SILENCE, brainchild of Aleks Slota, is a performative installation exploring the potential power we have over each other. For seven days, eight hours each day, Aleks will be installed in the gallery window and negotiate power between himself and the audience through only his gaze (at ReTramp from 14:00 until 22:00, daily until May 17th).

ON OFF MOMENTS is a new exhibition hosted at Grimmuseum, curated by Amelie Wedel, and presenting the work of David Horvitz, Daniel Kötter, Mikka Wellner, Murat Adash, Laura McLardy, Gretta Louw and David Kroell. The exhibition displays works outside the realm of performance art by young artists that reveal a moment of absence in different ways, thereby disclosing paradoxes of presence / absence, visibility / invisibility, and self-referentiality / external-referentiality.
More info about SILENCE and ON OFF MOMENTS here:
http://www.mpa-b.org/may101.html

And finally this project needs no introduction, but here is one anyway.

MPA OPEN, the epic 48hr performance art bonanza of the year, is back to bring you once again the most daring, experimental, inspiring and just plain wacky showcase of performances by artists from Berlin and the world over. Hosted for a second year in a row at ACUD Kunstverein in Mitte, MPA OPEN will see 64 performance art projects avalanching one after the other every 45 minutes, in a performative roller coaster you simply can not miss. So make your way to ACUD today at 18:00 and join this very unique experiential marathon until Sunday 12th at 18:00. Alternatively drop by as you wish (tickets are 5€ and re-entry is possible) while enjoying also the rest of the MPA-B’s weekend programme.
Full MPA OPEN line up and further info here:
http://www.mpa-b.org/may101.html
https://www.facebook.com/events/375310395920595