CCB Magazine

"lieber laut" (rather loud) is the theme of this year's Ortstermin art festival in Moabit. On the weekend of August 26-28, artists and cultural institutions will open their doors to anyone interested and present their art. What can be expected? Here are three impressions of projects in the words of their makers.

Beatrix Pahl (Text installation "We refuse to be enemies")

To be resistant, to refuse, does not mean to endure silently and unaffectedly what is happening. It's the counterpart of submission and acceptance. It means to become active - to become loud against injustice. Resistance does not have to be violent and destructive. Loud can also be different. Loud can also be non-violent. "We refuse to be enemies" is a motto of nonviolent resistance. Because there are alternative ways to enmity and violence. The text installation, which will be shown at the Ortstermin Festival, wants to make these ways and voices LOUD and thus contribute to de-escalation. You can expect texts and graphics of different people, who position themselves, raise questions and become concrete: Loud. Resistant. Nonviolent.

Beatrix Pahl at the beach. Photo: Jakub Jabłoński

Adam Lupton

My obsessions and compulsions work hand in hand with our modern fears; they are not separable. I'm a product of my time. The stream of constant information, constant choices, constant options leads to a paradox of choice, an overwhelming sense that you can have anything, while also being alienated from each other and ourselves via technology and capitalism. The struggle for clarity is part of OCD: there is a lot of doubt around the obsession, and the actions or ruminating thoughts are an attempt to find clarity to dissolve that doubt. But it's a cyclical process that doesn't finish, because the doubt always comes back. It's not something you're necessarily rid of, but come to accept and are able to turn the volume down. The connection to the theme "Rather Loud" comes from this tension between the internal noise and external noise: the deafening chatter of the brain and its intrusive thoughts, and the quietness of the paintings.

Adam Lupton in front of one of his paintings. Photo: Ralph Bergel

Marina Sorbello, curator (Exhibition: "Practices of Attention")

We live in a society where it is increasingly difficult to be attentive and present. Our attention span has drastically diminished, thought processes are increasingly disrupted, we are unfocused and permanently distracted: as essayist Johann Hari writes in his book Stolen Focus, this has to do with the way we live nowadays, with the illusion of multitasking and with the various screens we look at daily, continuously, compulsively, which literally steal our focus.

How can we regain the focus we have lost? From art. For example, from the contributions of the five artists in the exhibition Practices of Attention. From them come impulses on how we can consciously cultivate our power of perception. Attention, focus, presence are prerequisites for creativity and for artistic creation; ultimately, they are basic prerequisites for a good life, no matter in which field one is active, whether one is young or old.

The group exhibition Practices of Attention includes works by five artists - Yvonne Andreini, Christine Bachmann, Alessandra Eramo, Diana Legel, Alexandra Wolfram - who explore themes such as attention, concentration, flow states of artistic practices, rituals and the interpretation of reality in different ways and using different techniques.

Artist group. Photo: Ralph Bergel

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