HYBRID SCULPTORS – “it is nothing without you”
- February 10, 2020
- In a performance developed for the URBAN NATION Museum, the artist duo HYBRID SCULPTORS shows the creation of immaterial painting and virtual sculptures
- Various art forms work together in an experimental collaboration and create a complete work
- With the invitation of the artists and the performance, the new orientation of the URBAN NATION Museum in terms of content in its program is becoming apparent for the first time
The works of the artist duo HYBRID SCULPTORS (Keez Duyves, PIPS:lab, and Thomas Bratzke aka ZASD) moves about the field of painting, play, and the new construction of artistic practices and play with an extended virtual reality. They act as a mirror for deeper reflections on human perception and can be read as a contribution to answering the question of what sculpture and painting can be.
The works of the artist duo HYBRID SCULPTORS (Keez Duyves, PIPS:lab, and Thomas Bratzke aka ZASD) moves about the field of painting, play, and the new construction of artistic practices and play with an extended virtual reality. They act as a mirror for deeper reflections on human perception and can be read as a contribution to answering the question of what sculpture and painting can be.
In the performance “it is nothing without you”, developed especially for the URBAN NATION Museum, HYBRID SCULPTORS produces immaterial and yet spatial painting that refers to urban space and the signs, motifs, and textures inserted there autonomously and anonymously. Murals, tags, and pieces on Berlin’s stone and building walls are becoming the basis for a new form of painting that moves about in an expanded reality (3D / AR / Mixed Reality). Thereby, different forms of art merge into a previously unknown body.
With “it is nothing without you” HYBRID SCULPTORS brings together calligraphy, painting, drawing, sculpture, dance, and music. The dancer and break-dancer Kadir “Amigo” Memiş from the Flying Steps will be part of the performance and for the first time equipped with a motion capture system. Memiş is focused on the development of his own dance script as well as “Zeybreak”, a dance form that fuses elements of breakdance with the Turkish Zeybek.
Forms of interplay
The musicians Richard “Ritsche” Koch (trumpet) and Michael Haves (bass, soundsystem) also contribute to the performance and communicate directly with the other participants. In this way they try to create their own form of “gathering” in which all participants influence each other.
The performance is reminiscent of the interplay of jazz on stage and the meeting of writers at the “Corner”, a corner of a train station, to look at their graffiti on passing trains and to critically discuss their style. In the early 2000s, all the artists involved belonged to the amorphous Berlin group jazz-stylecorner. They laid the foundation for the search for this kind of experimental meeting.
“With the invitation of HYBRID SCULPTORS and the performance shown, the new orientation of the URBAN NATION Museum in terms of content is also noticeable in its program for the first time. The artists’ references to graffiti and urban art culture offer an interesting context for the URBAN NATION Museum and its current and future exhibition practice. Thomas Bratzke and Keez Duyves repeatedly refer to graffiti and urban space in their works. This background and the artistic positions developing from it, which always refer back to urban art, graffiti, and street art, will be of particular interest for the museum’s future exhibition practice,” says Jan Sauerwald, director of the URBAN NATION Museum.
Poetic anecdotes told without words
In an immediate process, surface textures, especially from the areas of street art and urban art around Schöneberger Bülowstraße, are scanned and then modeled into bodies. Objects, faces, clothing, tags, graffiti, and murals are recorded with a 3D augmented reality tool called “The Potator” and thus serve as living material for virtual brushstrokes. The surfaces scanned in this way can be drawn into the room and brought into new contexts with other objects and situations: A dancer twists himself into a scanned house wall and disappears into it, a trumpeter plays an abstract picture into the room, a billboard overflows with spatial ornaments. The central element of the performance is the common energy of all art disciplines involved. By means of projections the invisible parts of the works can be viewed during the performance.
“Free of resistance, the virtual reality of thoughts and also of digital simulations appears, but the more resistant the world on the street appears. We put these things in a direct relationship to each other. Hybrid sculptures are not in a virtual reality, but they do have a virtual part. Hybrid sculptures are part of an extended physical reality at a place where we can meet as usual” says Thomas Bratzke aka ZASD.
HYBRID SCULPTORS have already been guests at the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) Karlsruhe, the Art Quarter Bethanien/Berlin, and at Schloss Biesdorf/Berlin.
HYBRID SCULPTORS
KEEZ DUYVES (PIPS:lab) / Media Art, Performance
THOMAS BRATZKE AKA ZASD / Sculpture, Performance
MICHAEL HAVES / Music, Sound design
RICHARD KOCH / Trumpet
MISCHA LEINKAUF / Camera
Featuring KADIR “AMIGO” MEMIŞ / Dance
When: Saturday, February 29th, 2020
Session 1: 7:30 PM – 8:15 PM
Session 2: 8:30 PM – 9:15 PM
The evening concludes with music and drinks until 11 PM.
Where: The URBAN NATION Museum project room, Bülowstr. 97, 10783 Berlin-Schöneberg
Admission is free / donations appreciated
Interviews with the artists Keez Duyves (PIPS:lab) and Thomas Bratzke (aka ZASD), and the director of the URBAN NATION Museum, Jan Sauerwald, are possible. If interested, please contact us at pr@urban-nation.com.
Further information on URBAN NATION can be found on our Instagram and Facebook.
A look into the work of HYBRID SCULPTORS can be found here.
(Museums Management: Jan Sauerwald)