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What does ChatGPT say?

Explain why public art is so important in this time of transformation.

January 2023

Public art has the ability to create a sense of community and belonging, as well as to inspire dialogue and reflection. It can also serve as a way to promote cultural understanding and diversity. Furthermore, public art can help to revitalize and beautify public spaces, making them more inviting and enjoyable for everyone. In times of transformation, such as the current period of rapid social, economic, and technological change, public art can play an important role in helping to shape our shared identity and sense of place.

March 2023

Public art has the power to make a profound impact on how people experience their city, neighborhood, or community. It can bring people together, spark dialogue, and create a sense of pride and identity. In this time of transformation, public art is a powerful way to bring positive change to our cities and neighborhoods by creating a visual representation of our hopes, dreams, and aspirations. Public art can help to create a sense of shared history and can serve as a reminder of our shared values. It can also serve as a reminder of our collective resilience and help to uplift and inspire us as we strive for progress. As we look to the future, public art can help to shape the way we think about our communities and how we can work together to build a brighter future.

March 2023 (repetition)

Public art is important in this time of transformation because it can provide a tangible representation of a community’s values and beliefs. Public art can serve to inspire and motivate individuals to think differently about their environment, to create an atmosphere of creativity and growth, and to help foster a sense of connection and belonging. Additionally, public art can be a powerful tool for civic engagement, providing a platform for people to express their opinions, ideas, and perspectives in a meaningful way. Finally, public art can help to create a more vibrant, diverse, and equitable public space, allowing people of all backgrounds and experiences to feel included and accepted.

January, 2023

Corona Files

So from now in London this confusing Brexit govt tells us we can at last visit other people’s homes, but only in their garden and keep 2m away. And only 1 house per day. Strictly no mixing people from different houses in 1 day.
And also if we have to, we are allowed to use the toilet of the house that we visit. These are the rules but who will police all this?
They say they have already fined 14,000 people for rule breaking but when there is a big demonstration like this week for George Floyd, all the rules disappear as everyone comes out.
And people in the government are breaking the rules and then give excuses on television – like going 60 miles for an eye test. It’s a very strange confusing time.

We are allowed to travel unlimited distance to go to exercise but can not use the trains unless we have an essential reason. Risky if you get stopped.
So a lot of people are driving – near where I live the traffic can be more than 1 mile, just one person in a car about 40 times their body weight to move around. With all the pollution.
I am thinking of going to the sea next week (Brighton) to get some clean air – if the rules will change again, to stay with friends. (Siraj Izhar, London)

Marit Lindberg (Sweden)

Wow, its difficult to be imaginative when a prisoner of the State.
I wrote a couple of essays on my blog on corona which got a lot of responses – they are also in other places.
Playing around with some ideas but nothing concrete. My time clock is too messed up. I sleep a lot.
I take a regular walk in the city and the Thames; the City is eerie, the homeless are struggling in particular as everyone has disappeared. There is a big gap here between what is said in the media and what happens in practice.
Anyhow to see the empty deserted monuments of Capital is very poetic

but of course the money extraction from around the world is still going on.
Want to make a work at some point….

When its low tide, I go on the Thames.

The geese and other birds keep me sane.
How long for….
Wish I could escape. I think Berlin would have been easier than London. (Siraj Izhar, London)

During the time of the big lockdown here in Vienna I made the recordings for the short film “Spring Will Not Be Televised“. The focus of these recordings is on TV-Sets in private living spaces that are visible from the streets outside. During nightly walks through the city I aimed to find as many of these TV-Sets as possible and to film the programs that were televised. In the cutting process I later tried to form a narrative out of the collected footage in a very free and associative way. The result, rather automatically than intended, turned into a media-based portrait of our present-day world.

What particularly interests me in this project is the fact that it is built on two visual levels.

The first level is the one of the televised image. It enables both, a view outside onto what´s going on in the world but also inside, onto the interests and media habits of the TV viewer. In times of isolation the wish for escapism and the dependency from digital media become visible more than usual. In this situation, media not just functions for purposes of entertainment but as one of the only sources for information about the world outside.

The second visual level is the environment the TV-Set is placed in. Here I tried to portray the ways of how information spreads through media. The film starts with images of the big TV-stations and media houses. Therefor I filmed inside the newsrooms from the streets outside. Starting at these epicenters of information the camera the pans to the media consumers. As the perspective gets closer and closer into the private spaces the images on the TV-Sets become clearer. Finally you have to feeling to stand inside the living rooms of the TV viewers.

For me personally the film shows an atmospheric picture of a society in state of emergency. At the same time I think that the pictures indicate how society has maneuvered itself into this situation by it´s doubtful ways of acing and dealing with the world. (Michael Heindl, Wien)

today_masked required for groceries and public transport_quick mask sewed out of an old men shirt_use a masked present in Shanghai as cutting template_for me it looks like a sculpture_or a model for a sculpture_ (Kathrin Rabenort, Köln)

(Kate McCabe, Mojave Desert)

seat – eat – walk – in St. Gallen (Marlies Pekarek, St. Gallen)

(Agnes Prammer, Wien)

Munich, South thermal power station
the good weather and my well-behaved adherence to the rule not to go mountaineering because of the pandemic is driving me crazy.
As compensation I paint large-format alpine landscapes with African groups of people.
In Photoshop I mount a giant pocket watch in a bizarre rock gate.
In a moment I will call Robert to see if we can go climbing on a hidden rock.
Robert says: not so. (Wolfgang Aichner, München)

(Wolfgang Aichner/Thomas Huber, München)

I am in Cape Coast at the moment and not Accra. In Accra, there is a stricter lockdown than Cape Coast where one can roam the street but still most businesses are closed and we are conscious about Covid 19 prevention steps all over the city. These are some photos I took in the streets and a few are from a market fumigation exercise. (Kwame Aidoo, Ghana)

lot of hope also to change things for a better world. (Kim Dotty Hachmann, Berlin)

New times, call for new Looks-self-portrait with homemade mask that was created out of recycled art supplies. (Tina Dillman, Pittsburgh, PA, USA)

Set of Images of heart shaped rocks: Sharing love out in the world, is an intervention that I’m doing in my local community-when I go out for a walk, I bring a set of these with me, and I leave them at various points along my journey. No two rocks are the same, as each is hand crafted with an oven bake polymer clay. Wanting to spread hope and compassion to those that find these treasures. (Tina Dillman, Pittsburgh, PA, USA)

Here is a performance documentation I did with Krinzinger called Interruption (Duo)
At this a certain fragility and calmness as the singers feel the tremors of the fluorescent lights beating underneath their bodies.
I feel it has a sense of being on hold and poised in a delicate balance. The fluorescents are themselves at the end of their lives so there is space of intermittent and precarious behaviours going on but with a sense of rebirth too which I feel all adds up to a reflection on current times…(William Mackrell, London)

been very busy those times, storing my studio. it’s like a big retrospective for me, finding back works from 1981 to 2020.
rethinking human relations also. For me, nothing really changed. I’m stuck at my desk and in my studio while seing nobody except my son and girl … half time. (Yann Le Crouhennec, Die, Frankreich)

last chance to get back from Hawaii to berlin and almost got stuck in new york… (Hans Winkler, Berlin)

The streets are more empty than usual, but it is far from being quiet out there. I live on a very busy street, the overground U-Bahn is in full view. I noticed that the church bells ring at noon. I work mostly from home but I feel mostly imageless. My desk looks like this at the moment. (Jorn Ebner, Berlin)

(Matthias Beckmann, Schautafel des Schuppentiers Pangolin: Schuppentier, Skelett des Schuppentiers, Schuppentier in eingerollter Pose, Berlin 2020)
The pangolin is maby the host of the corona virus.

(Win Knowlton, Berlin Wall 2020, Berlin)

Looking out the window of the Lichtenberg Studios July 2019, Yash, Bangalore

(Surekha, Bangalore)

Christian Stock, Wien/Tux, “Kri(e)se” Dispersion on canvas, 100 x 100 cm, 1985

I was calling to Sweden today and my friend reported that her mother is concerned about the police state in Czech Republic, while she is concerned about that the Swedish state is doing less to protect people. Write now she is reading Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg) by Thomas Mann.

(Matthias Roth, Berlin)

(Max Sudues, Berlin)

Poem for Rod

ticking

art or poetry

we are

our part

life itself

the human world

the end

I am not your danger

(Jürgen Olbich, Kassel)

All pictures 28 March, Mexicoplatz, Berlin

Actually, everything is quite bickering, everyone is allowed out, but only in twos, or if from a household with several, everything is up to except groceries, drugstores, apotecs, gas stations and „Spätis“. In Bavaria, only those people who live together or are “life partners”, whatever that means, are allowed to go out together. That is really terrible, with over 50 percent of single households a very stupid decision, I feel sorry for the poor people.

Everyone more or less adheres to these commandments and the rules of distance, about 2 meters apart. From time to time there is already tension, some older people become almost hysterical, they have very much internalized that the old have less chance to survive, while the young remain quite safe, especially the high death rates from Italy are worrying.
Not too much has changed for me, I work mostly from home anyway, but I can no longer go out to eat or celebrate, nor organize parties or openings myself, nor can I travel. Now I do sports via Youtube instructions at home with my girlfriend, not bad at all, outside in the yard I start to do tests for a new project for interventions in public space, because I can’t come to my friends and workshop in the Uckermark.

Economically I’m doing reasonably well, I have a fixed income for this year, which hasn’t broken away, but I’m very worried about the whole cultural structure, but also about the small-scale economic life, if we have bad luck, we’ll end up in front of international chains and a mail order company… (Uwe Jonas, 28 March, Berlin)

March, 2020

Heather Lyon

I greeted the see, Rummelsburger See, part of the River Spree, at dusk the day of my

arrival in Berlin. The water birds came to meet me with calls across the water, Eurasian

Coot, Swan, Mallard, Canada goose. Latitude 52. Longitude 13.

I came to Lichtenberg Studios in search of birds and a certain hue of blue, Prussian

Blue / Berlin Blau. I hoped to record the bird songs, to create painted and stitched

imagery from their vocalizations. I was not prepared for the memories of my time living

in France to return within the songs of the birds, Common Wood-Pigeon, Eurasian Blue

Tit, European Robin. The blue was the first modern pigment, created by accident by a

painter in Berlin in 1706 who sought red, but used potash contaminated with blood.

The resulting crystals were a brilliant dark blue. This color has been important in my

work for well over a decade, and it seemed only natural to delve deeper into this blue

at its point of origin. I found it on the streets and in the used clothing shops in cotton

and wool.

Most days I made my way by bike or on foot to the see, to embroider on deep blue

fabric by the water, record the songs of the birds, observe the subtle yet steady

changes of spring. I collected used clothing from the neighborhood to use in my fabric

works, sewing them into new pieced shapes and forms, small quilts, a poncho to use

in a performance. The embroidery became the varied blue lines and marks of bird

songs, dipping, swooping, rising, falling through transparent fabric, all calls and songs

recorded on my walks.

The Malchower See was the site of several performances in and at the edge of the

water. Again the birds were present. They were reflected in the water as they flew past

while I moved my body, informed by the feeling of the energy of the place, the energy

rising from that body of water into mine. I brought my project “Semaphore Love

Letters” to the see. A distant figure waved from the far shore as I signaled with my flags

a message across the water.

Water draws me. Water connects me to home, familiar yet unfamiliar. I often stood at

the edge of the see, memorized by the ever-changing colors and movement of light on

the water. The patterns of clouds, the occasional cool March sun breaking through,

reflected off the ripples and undulations from passing boats and water fowl. I too am a

body of fluid presence, like the see.

May, 2023

Chen Wang

Walk through the city. Day in, day out. Share and cross the same places, the same spaces with the others. What goes on in them when they see me? What is their first thought? Where are you coming from? What do you want here?

Sharing the same spaces. Many years now. And yet, I always remain … different. In appearance, skin color and accent. A migrant. A perpetual tourist.

And so I sit there. I want to be without face, without color, without voice. Erase my outer self. Blur the boundaries of ethnicity, gender and culture. To be one? To forget myself?

May, 2023