From October to December this year, the international artist residence Villa Waldberta will host ten artists engaged in the WTD-project. Villa Waldberta – owned by the City of Munich – is located in Feldafing near the Stanberger See and offers scholarships to artists from all over the world, giving them the opportunity to stay in this house for a few months. The Creative Lab participants are working on projects related to the themes of WTD: Sustainability and young urban scenes.
Short description of the artist’s work at the Creative Lab:
Matthias Wermke – FSPU
Matthias Wermke will work on the utopian vision of urban wasteland in Munich. He investigates the boundaries of public space in urban environment through different kinds of interventions and performances. In his work he temporarily overrides limitations and constraints, often without permission or invitation. The aim is to question common standards and to show the beauty beyond these standards.
Bert Scholten – MEDIA DESIGN
Bert Scholten’s recognizable scenes embody contemporary society and its cultural codes. It is about wasting time on internet, city life, subcultures, group behavior and how scenes and social networks are knit together. Subjects of interest are irony, goodwill, fun, authenticity and boredom. Scholten will combine animations, music and zines in a site specific installation. It will function as a time document of contemporary codes and culture.
Mac Krebernik – MEDIA DESIGN
While staying at the Villa Waldberta during the What’s the Deal? residency he will be working on an interactive installation about the correlation between skateboarding, wood consumption and forestry. He will create a virtual world with forest, cities and skate-parks and project this on a wall. This system is supposed to be self-regulated and additional interactive elements will be added to enable the audience to manipulate the system.
Team “Causa Creations”: Tillman Hars, Gayatri Vijayshima and Georg Hobmeier – SERIOUS GAMES
The team “Causa Creations“ Georg Hobmeier, Gayatri Vijayshima and Tillman Hars will use the residency to thoroughly test their current project “Burn the boards“ which has been developed together with the university in Vienna. Its objective is to inform people of the consequences and danger of E-Waste. With the help of a Serious Game where the player takes over the role of an Indian laborer in a factory in Mumbai, the impact of the current e-waste recycling system on the laborer will be shown.
Lisa Simpson – DESIGN
Lisa Simpson is a sewing agent. Searching for rhythm and melody in the movements of a seamstress—hacking into garments—Lisa Simpson makes music out of making clothes. By transforming wardrobes she is questioning contemporary consumption habits, bringing forth a discussion around the sustainability of the fashion industry. Lisa will produce a set of recreated garments to be shown and sold at the Design Concept Store in Maximiliansforum and at the final event. She is open to hold a workshop, inviting the local community to investigate mending, altering, patching up, and sewing their own clothes and providing a DIY platform to make new clothes out of old ones, hacking into garments that are no longer in use. She also plans to do her music-sewing performances together with artists from Munich.
Onur Ceritoğlu – DESIGN
His work can be considered as long term projects based on research and participation. Mostly he uses found objects and materials that are elements of architecture and design. The work has a critical look on decay on material properties, recycle and reuse of constructional waste. Onur will build a sustainable sculpture in the Villa Waldberta. The project will be based on the work called ‘Evci’ (Home-body), an art work assembled of found (discarded) furniture parts. It will be made available to different users who can transform the art work according to their needs in their flats. Every temporary ‘user’ of the work will reinterprete the form and function of the object.
Jurij Bobič and Petra Gosenca (Collective GUMB) – DESIGN
Jurij Bobič and Petra Gosenca founded the Collective Gumb In 2011. This collective is exploring new creative ways how to turn waste into objects of everyday use. During their stay, both artists are going to explore unusual combinations of used man-made and natural materials, creating unique lamp shades. In the last few years they have been increasingly involved in urban gardening as well as foraging for wild food which has led them to a broader view of resources at hand.
The first products of the Creative Lab can be seen at Episode IV of the Nomadic Sculpture starting November 22 at Maximiliansforum in Munich. The end results will be presented at the final event of WTD in June 2015.
