TRANSPARENZ – Exhibition Opening at WESTPOL A.I.R SPACE Leipzig

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EXHIBITION OPENING
7 November 2015  |  5 pm

WESTPOL A.I.R SPACE
Westwerk Leipzig
Karl-Heine-Straße 85
Hof A / 2. OG
04229 Leipzig
Germany

Participating Artists
Marcel Buehler | Sven Braun | Wednesday Farris | Peter Ruehle

Duration of the Exhibition
8—20 November 2015

Opening Hours
Thu — Sat: 2 pm — 7 pm
Sun: 2 pm — 6 pm

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10 x 10 – Exhibition Opening at Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung Berlin

10x10

OPENING AND GARDEN PARTY  – 10 YEARS EHF-BENEFIT EXHIBITION

9 September 2015  |  6 – 9 pm
Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung
Tiergartenstraße 35
10785 Berlin

Exhibition Opening | 10 X 10 | 6:15 pm
Dr. Hans-Jörg Clement, Team Leader Culture Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung

Participating Artists
Nicole Bianchet | Marcel Buehler | Martin Dammann | Ondrej Drescher
Julius Grünewald | Michael Just | Veronika Kellndorfer | Michael Müller
Miwa Ogasawara | Hans-Christian Schink

Performance | 6:30 pm
Nezaket Ekici

Music
Siegfried Renz

Highlights of the Tourism History—No. 3

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„Cumulonimbus“, Marcel Buehler, digital montage using “Portrait of a Man, Said to be Christopher Columbus” by Sebastiano del Piombo,  1519, oil on canvas, 42 x 34 3/4 in. // 106.7 x 88.3 cm, The Metropolitan Museum Of Art, New York City.

What would tourism look like today if it weren’t for Christopher Columbus? Without that Italian in royal services who, 523 years ago today exactly, started his journey to India and found America? Not as the first person ever. No, approximately 500 years earlier the Icelander Leif Eriksson arrived there already. He was not even the one to spur this new discovery on. This needed Amerigo Vespucci, the newly “discovered” continent’s namesake.

But let’s start at the beginning. On September 3rd 1492, Columbus starts the first of four expeditions to the west to find an alternative maritime route to India – i.e. China – because everything that was located behind India was also India. Equipped with ample mathematical knowledge, sponsored by friends, patrons, and former employers and blessed with the impudence to utilize the then already common idea that earth is rather spherical than a disc, he actually started to search for said seaway. And he found his “India”. Which in the aftermath led to the well-known side effects: robbery; genocide and colonization of the “New World”; liberation movements of all kinds; more settlement and civil war and the ideals of freedom; Tinsel towns and Pied Pipers, especially the latter as revenants in moral disguise.

Today the adventure of these world-changing travels has shrunken to the casual tingling sensation during take off and landing from the “Old” (Europe) to the “New World” (the Americas). You don’t need courage to hop on a plane. Indeed, we take it for granted that this is standard for travel. When one thinks of the many achievements to technology and human philosophy, it truly is a marvel. But like the person flying from one continent to another, we take this for granted as well. Furthermore, it seems that a growing number of people walk around like sleep walkers – not even half aware of the advancements in knowledge around them and tempted to return to pre-enlightenment thinking and behaviors. Unfortunately, this type of journey is going in the wrong direction. The earth is still a sphere as in Columbus’ times. But sometimes it feels as if it gets flatter by the hour.

Collage from “The Journey” featured in Archive Collective Magazine

Since the start of 2015 my social media project The Journey: Psychogram in 360 Collages runs on Facebook, Instagram, Google+, and others channels. Each day, and in chronological order a new image will be shared.

The Archive Collective Magazine has featured one of the works in its June issue titled “Secret”. Check it out!

 

Secret — June 2015 issue — Archive Collective Magazine

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Highlights of the Tourism History—No. 2

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One of the most seriously underrated tourism highlights in world history took place, if the Evangelists are not mistaken, around 2,000 years ago today, namely the Ascension of Jesus.

Despite two millennia of history, it is easy to see that this event marked the launch of a new fad—travel—to which the well-to-do offspring of European monarchs would later succumb, under the banner “Grand Tour,” and likewise, later still, that of the upper classes. Such brats had it good at home but after safely returning from abroad as cultivated men of the world they could take on affairs of State at last, or some other business.

And to this day, nothing has changed. Only last year, their broad monarchist fan base could be observed on this festive occasion—now renamed Herrentag, i.e. Gentlemen’s or Fathers’ Day—donning bowler hats, carrying razor-studded canes and pushing beer barrels on handcarts across plains, fields and fens, attempting with the aid of mind-blowing substances to attain maximum enlightenment in the shortest possible time. Cheers to Geramn effectiveness!