Kunst-Stoffe is a cultural organisation committed to exploring issues of value and waste. We pursue this mission in three areas of activity: Kunst-Stoffe maintains an ongoing and changing exhibition of discarded materials and makes them available for creative practitioners. We carry out and present projects investigating aesthetics and strategies of reuse. We offer workshops and facilities to provide a practice ground for creative exploration of the ideas of sufficiency and subsistence.
PARTNER
The Artist-in-Residence Programm of Kunst-Stoffe is supported by Kunst- und Kulturamt Lichtenberg (www.berlin.de/ba-lichtenberg/verwaltung/kultur). The Galerie im Ratskeller, a body of Kunst- und Kulturamtes, provides a room for the presentation of the finished project. The Housing Company GESOBAU AG (www.gesobau.de) represents a contribution for costs of materials available.
ARTISTS 2010
1st May - 9 July: Alina Kopytsya, Boyarka / Ukraine
Alina holds a degree as a specialist from the National Technical University of Ukraine “Kyiv Polytechnic Institute”, department of graphic arts. She has exhibited widely in Eastern Europe, e.g. at Artistic Arsenal Gallery in Kyiv, at House of Mykola Gallery in Kyiv and at the Centre of Contemporary Art of the National University of Kyiv. With her interactive performance work she took part in festivals as well. In 2008, she was finalist of the EIDOS Arts Development Foundation. In her work, she focuses ecological problem and social activity.
At Kunst-Stoffe, Alina will be looking into adopting European experiences with utilization garbage. She plans to develop practical and cheap products, made from waste materials available at Kunst-Stoffe. She aims to design refined things which look expensive, but in fact are cheap. Meanwhile, any person without professional skills should be able to re-create those designs, that will be based on simple forms, with possibilities to decorate them according to individual tastes. At the end of her stay, results will be presented in a gallery show. Back in Ukraine, Alina plans to organize a community of people interested in working on products made from waste materials, drawing on those proto-types.
10th July - 22 August: Telly Woo, Hong Kong / China
Telly Woo is engaged in recycled design as part of the Hong Kong based ATB collective. Addressing the over-consumption of contemporary society, the art / design group aims to produce both appreciative and functional products and furniture out of waste. Telly also held the exhibition "Who Reclaim Who?" in 2008, in cooperation with a Drug Treatment and Rehabilitation Centre. In this project, ten former young drug addicts were guided to design furniture with waste materials. In 2009, she was part of a research project exploring the possibility of setting up a waste collection system and "material bank" in Hong Kong for artistic and design creativity.
During her residency, Telly plans to research garbage and recycling practice at Kunst-Stoffe and in Berlin, in order to understand both system and methodology of collecting, arranging and processing waste materials. Part of her interest is to explore differences in materials between Hong Kong and Berlin that are based on different cultures and live styles. Drawing on her design work in Hong Kong she will be making furniture with Berlin garbage. Towards the end of her residency, she will put on an exhibition presenting those furniture along with pictures of works made with waste materials from Hong Kong. In addition, she will show results of her exploration of issues of garbage and recycling in the context of different places and cultures.
23rd August - 30 September: Silje Figenschou Thoresen, Kirkenes / Norwegen
Silje grew up in Kirkenes / Kirkkoniemi / Girkonjarga, a town between Finland and Russia, with a populatin mix of Finnish / Norwegian / Sami. She works with solutions that emerge where conventions are weak, with self-made designs found in places that are between clear identities: mixes between public/private spheres, home/work, inside/outside, wilderness/cultivated area, She is interested in temporary solutions that have become permanent and in the potential of the primitive.
During her residency, Silje is going to look into the grammar of aesthetics that comes into life when responsibility for an area is unclear; like in public spaces, back yards, streets, hallways, shared spaces and areas. She is going to explore the «prettiness in things as they are», e.g. parts of objects, sticks, wood, either before they are processed, or when they are put together with no obvious thought of aesthetics. Working at Kunst-Stoffe, she will aim to enhance the awareness of this «prettiness», in her own physical work, with the materials at hand or from the facility.
ARTISTS 2009
16th August - 30 September: Radmila Stanković & Miljena Vuckovic, Serbia
Radmila & Miljena both study Contemporary Architecture and Town Planning at the Faculty of Technical Sciences, Novi Sad, Serbia. Their artistic observations are focused on scenic/dramatic interaction and constant dialog between people and space, people amongst each other, as well as influences between spaces. Their work stands on a framework of constant change of recycling spaces, influenced by various unexpected materials usage as an inspiration, as well as peoples’ possibilities to influence cityscapes everyday.
During their residency at Kunst-Stoffe, they are going to create a mobile Summer Pavilion. The space will provide an exhibition space as well as a space that generates communication amongst users and visitors of the premises. The making of the pavilion will take place in interaction with other artists working on the premises. It will be designed to meet specific demands of artists’, functioning as a performance stage, cinema or exhibition venue. In addition, the two artists will work out architectural interventions on the facades of buildings, providing place for painting and creativity of other participants while defining different specific activities taking place inside the buildings.
For further information:
1rst July - 15 August:
Domnic Anthony, Indien
Domnic Anthony is a self taught artist wihth profound experience in creative design and product developement as well as film making and set design. He likes to use materials that are of zero purchase value. The ones that people look at to be uninteresting - he wants to take 'ugly scrap' and turn it into a beautiful artistic masterpiece and present it to the world. "I believe that once consumerism stops in all source, especially in electronics, it will be the most beneficial part to help stop pollution on earth."
During his stay at Kunst-Stoffe Domnic is going to create a sculpture that can be installed in public places and that carries the message of recycling. Part of his work process will be locating dump sites and other places where scrap metal can be procured as well as collecting thrown away metal objects on the streets of Berlin. At the end of his residency the artistic process and the resulting work will be presented in Projektraum Ratskeller Lichtenberg.
For further information:
 May 1 to June 30: Emily Hunt, Australia
Emily Hunt is best known in Sydney, Australia as the co-founder and co-editor of a thrift fashion/artist magazine called DUKE. She studied at the Sydney College of the Arts, graduating with honours in 2003. Since that time she has exhibited widely throughout Australia in galleries such as Gertrude Contemporary Art Space, First Draft Gallery, Black & Blue Gallery, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery and Davenport Regional Gallery. Emily is fascinated by medieval history. She is interested in the grotesque side of human appearance and by describing the surface she tries to express an ambivalence she feels towards what is inside: the cruel, the bizarre and the theatrical in human character.
During her residency at Kunst-Stoffe Emily is going to work on a project called The Master of New Holland that will bring together a menagerie of appropriated woodcut and engraving styles, transporting the practice of 15th century German woodcut masters back to life, in full colour and in 3Dsculptural works.
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