Saturday, July 25th

7:30 pm

CAKE : If Maps Could Talk They May Sound Like This

- An encounter between Bettina Hutschek and Adriana Young Valdez -

BREST

A performance-lecture by Bettina Hutschek

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W h a t S h a p e i s B u s h w i c k ?
An experimental geography collaboration between Liz Kueneke and Adriana Valdez Young

 

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Followed by a discussion between Bettina Hustchek and Adriana Young about their interests, their different approaches and perspectives in urban planning and mapping.
With participation and moderation by architects Lee Altman and Matt Thomas and Chez Bushwick performance curator Jerome Pique.

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Food and Drinks will be served after the performance

 

« In a city like Brest, where stones and postcards are the rulers, memory does not find its place. How can that be? I will explain.... To begin with, I will tell you a legend: The city of YS, said to be the most beautiful city in the world, was originally built at sea level and protected from inundation by dikes, to which only Gradlon, king of the Cornouaille, had the key. Dahut, Gradlon's daughter, found the city boring, catholic and sad. (...) the Devil persuaded Dahut to steal the key from her sleeping father, and *then he opened the dikes. The wild ocean fell into the city, drowned the streets and suffocated the yelling of the inhabitants. (...)In Brest, people say that you reached this legendary city when you went far, far to the west. After Ys, the world ended. The city of Brest is situated on an inhospitable coast, at the very end of France, at the end of Brittany. A popular saying goes that you never pass through Brest, but you need a reason to go there. (...) During the 19th century, Flaubert describes the city like this: extremely ugly houses, a square drill-ground, a theatre where nothing is played. Throughout the centuries, Brest has been destroyed several times. »

Bettina Hutschek - In BREST

 

« ... Our mapping derive began at Golden Stitches on the corner of Varet and Bogart Streets- an embroidery factory that produces customized shirts, aprons, and other accoutrements for Boars Head - one of the country's largest purveyors of meat!  The distribution center is right across the street, and Golden Stitches embroiders not only the uniforms of the hundreds of neighboring workers, but fills the company's national embroidery orders.  The owner, two machine operators and the operations manager all added to the fabric map of Bushwick - marking a Spanish food restaurant on Flushing as the heart of their neighborhood and the Boars Head plant as a positive place, as it is the source of their jobs. Next, we headed to Cafe Orwell - a caffeinated cave of freelancers on laptops and artist watering hole.  Genesis and Amanda interviewed customers who were camped out with their laptops and artists just taking breaks from their studios on their perceptions of the neighborhood.  The coffee table was turned on them as well, as newcomers who self-identified as "gentrifiers" asked Amanda and Genesis what they thought of the new people moving into their neighborhood.   Sidewalk discussions ensued about the tensions between long-term and newer residents. »

Adriana Young - In W h a t S h a p e i s B u s h w i c k ? . MAPPING THE NEIGHBORHOOD'S ECONOMIC, PHYSICAL AND CULTURAL CAPITAL.

 

 

BREST

A performance-lecture by Bettina Hutschek about the city of Brest (France), exemplary for any city that has experienced destruction and reconstruction.

In Brest, memories had been suppressed and set in concrete by modernity's architects. Now they are materializing in shape of water and cone, they penetrate the city's inhabitants and slowly bring about the stony city's dissolution. "Old world's" mnemic images in form of postcards collide with modernity's utopian images, causing the collapse of matter and the junction of myth and reality.
The scientific lecture is undermined by poetry, fiction and the discrepancy between image and image legend. Archive material, personal observations, myth and Bergson's memory-cone are interwoven by narration to become a poetical analysis of the politics of images and the transformations of urban space. The performance also broaches the issue of "official" culture of remembrance and its inscription in public space as well as personal memory and perception of history.

 

 

W h a t S h a p e i s B u s h w i c k ?

MAPPING THE NEIGHBORHOOD'S ECONOMIC, PHYSICAL AND CULTURAL CAPITAL
An experimental geography collaboration between Liz Kueneke and Adriana Valdez Young

"What Shape is Bushwick" is a participatory installation that invites people to map their own economic, cultural and physical footprints and cross-sector connectivities. Participants will choose to respond to one or all of a list of questions about their perceptions of the neighborhood by sewing simple symbols into the a hand-embroidered street map of Bushwick. They can also freely embroider along the edges of the map and alter the borders and shape of the urban fabric. Through this exercise, the residents of Bushwick will reflect upon their own neighborhood perceptions, uses and aspirations with the end goal of forming a both personal and community map. The project is a collaboration between the public artist and psychogeographer Liz Kueneke, who has implemented participatory embroidery projects in Barcelona, Manhattan and Bangalore and Adriana Valdez Young, the research director of CAPITAL B.

 

 

 

Biography Bettina Hutschek

Born in Germany, I received my B.A. in Philosophy and Art History from Humboldt-University, Berlin in 2003 and my Diploma of Fine Arts from University of Fine Arts, UdK Berlin, where I studied with Lothar Baumgarten, in 2005. In 2008 I became Meisterschüler (MFA-equivalent) from the HGB Leipzig. After working and performing at the art center in Brest (2007-2008), I came to New York City as a Visiting Scholar at TISCH School of the Arts, Department of Performance Studies, NYU, for the 2008-2009 academic year. My work has been exhibited internationally, including Palais du Tokyo (Paris), Galerie ACDC (Bordeaux), centre d'art passerelle (Brest), centre d'art Quimper, Filmfestival Kassel, Jeune Creation (Paris), Columbus Art Foundation (Ravensburg), Gallery R&B (Köln). I have performed at Art-O-Rama (Marseille), at Kunstverein Tiergarten (Berlin), centre d'art passerelle (Brest), in the public space of Brest and Berlin, Kunstverein Langenhagen, Rheinschau/artcologne (Köln) and others.

Artist's Statement : My work generates various forms: essay films, book works or performances, both in art and public spaces. Always based on narrative practices, I juxtapose layers of fiction and reality in order to create "transitory spaces" - these transits procreate mental spaces, mythological narrations or so-called "world explanations", which subtly question the politics of images or situations, offering metaphors about contemporaneous phenomena.

http://www.bettina-hutschek.com

 

Biography Adriana Valdez Young

Adriana Valdez Young is a community cartographer, under-utilized space modifier, and urban lifestyle researcher. She teaches a course about the suburbanization of NYC at the Parsons School of Design and is the Research Director for CAPITAL B. Her projects explore extreme modes of domesticity and the relationship between shopping, the war on terror and freedom.  She loves to map, sew and talk to people about their communities.

Press:
http://trummerkind.com/mall/Pressed_.html
http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Analysing-Mall-Mania/338294/