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4/6/2004

Dave Beech

Sparwasser HQ, Berlin

Pledge

including projects by Tim Brennan and Paul McDevitt

A map of Berlin grows on one of the walls. It is made up of little pieces of text that follow the lines of Berlin's streets. Some areas are left completely blank, while others are represented densely with the short texts overlapping and cutting across each other. This is an alternative map of Berlin because the texts refer to what Berliners are thinking about each day along their routine walks.
Dave Beech, a British artist based in Manchester, has invited the population of Berlin to pledge part of their daily routine to reflect on an historical political slogan that means most to them. It is these pledges come together on the wall of Sparwasser HQ to form an alternative map of Berlin.
Beech is interested in the transformative power of words. Pledge uses words as the trigger of events that activate the city. Pledge begins as a written invitation placed in the pages of Zitty. The invitation then leads to a sequence of word-based activities. Reflecting on your favourite slogan from history while you walk to the shops or walk to work gives your routine a new character, linking your daily activity to all those protesters and marchers who have fought for changes in society that we now often take for granted. Their slogans are words that changed the world. Pledging your slogan, by emailing the gallery on mail@sparwasserhq.de with your slogan and your route, will activate the gallery, resulting in a map of pledges. Your words will have immediate effects.

In the window of the gallery, to be viewed from the street, is a double-screened video of a performance by Beech and Tim Brennan. They are on opposite sides of the street, talking to each other using paper and marker pens. They are talking about the future. Their words are an attempt to think about the way that words - thinking, theorising, understanding, planning, pledging, invitation, instruction - can bring about futures that would not be possible otherwise. And we see, between the screens, how the actions of one of the performers are modified by the words of the other. In this instantaneous reaction we see not only that words change things, but also that the future is already here.

In another room, Paul McDevitt has been invited to occupy the space at regular times to produce little drawings. This is picture making as event. Occupying the room becomes an activity of making sense rather than filling space. The drawings will accumulate over the period of the exhibition, adding up, like the growing map in another room, to a visual record of the occupation of space.

From the cellar you can hear Beech's unprofessional singing voice. He has recorded twenty songs based on simple invitation. He asked friends to write song lyrics that he promised to sing from the heart regardless of his own preferences. He sings the lyrics of others to no musical accompaniment except for the tunes in his head, taken from the songs he sings along to when he's alone at home. The tunes and the words are bridges between people; they acknowledge the links between us that remain even while we are alone.
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June 5 - July 3 Dave Beech public space intervention and exhibition
July 10 days of The International Necronautical Society (INS)
July 23-28 Collage Party Paul Buttler
August Annika Lundgren, Andrea Creutz, Lise Skou.
September Curating Degree Zero
October Thinking Archives. Archiving Thoughts Danger Museum, in residence
November Platform Garanti (Vasif Kortun, Istanbul) in Sparwasser HQ

Opening Saturday June 5. from 7pm to 11pm

Sparwasser HQ,
Torstrasse 161,
10115 Berlin Mitte
Open hours: Wed-Fri 4 -7 PM, Sat 2 - 6 PM

stampa

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