Recent
MILAN · MAKERLAB
ACTIVISM IN PUBLIC SPACE
for two weeks they have set up a temporary office provided by Artkitchen and worked with different people, such as sociologists, photographers, architects and designers. after this they re-appropriated the empty square and opened it up for the general public in collaboration with Esterni as a part of Public Design Festival.
Makerlab reflected upon their actions by answering to following questions: why to engage the public, why to do it in the public space, why use local resources and why to do it again. you can also read more detailed dairyabout their stay in Milan.
Makerlab will also have the great opportunity to explore design for Human Rights at the centre of DMY International design festival on 350 square meters. join them on the planning party.
more pictures on flickr.
Members involved
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Pedro Pineda Ballester
Designer
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Jay Cousins
Industrial Designer
BERLIN · FLYING CONTAINERS
WHERE DID PLATOON GO?
containers were flying well, no turbulences, no accidents, everything went well. PLATOON Cultural Development started in early 2000 and this was our second move with containers. we stayed in Weinmeisterstr. 3 for about five years, then in 2007 we moved to Alte Schönhauser 3 for five more incredible years and now we just moved to our new headquarters at Schönhauser Allee 9. not a far move, but a big one.
now our mission is PLATOON KUNSTHALLE Berlin. the first groundwork has been laid, there is still a lot of work to do, but we are already excited.
a big THANK YOU to the PLATOON network and members for supporting us by documenting and helping usin all possible ways. see you in our Kunsthalle soon!
more pics on our facebook page.
Contributed by Matej Ficko
MUMBAI · MOTHER PERERA
PLAYING IN A PRISON
MUMBAI · Sasha Perera, PLATOON member #3209 and singer of Berlin's super trio Jahcoozi, a.k.a. DJ Mother Perera is doing a short tour in Asia. so far she played in Mumbai, Delhi and in Bangalore.
her very special experience was to play in the Tihar prison (largest in South asia) in Delhi, where she grabbed the mic together with the bboy kids from SlumGods. they played to male prisoners, who are waiting up to five years for their trial.
the idea is to raise cash to build studios for the prisoners. a band from the prison played too. "spending five years waiting for so-called justice can be made a little easier if you can make tunes. i hear that," Sasha said.
Mother Perera gave also an interesting interview for Indian-Polish blog Imported Go(o)ds. here is a short teaser.
IMPORTED GO(O)DS: if we’re not mistaken, this is at least your second visit to India? last time was in november 2011 with the full Jahcoozi trio, and now you’ve been on a short solo run DJ’ing. how’s India treating you?
SASHA PERERA: i love coming to India! although the truth is that i have a love-hate relationship with India – love the vibes but hate the elitism and the skin and vagina bleaching wash! it was great to play here for the first time in november – i’d never played for a whole club of South Asians who look like me. of course, clubs in India tend to be much more elite than in Europe and Berlin in particular. a drink costs about 3 times the price that it does in Berlin and for us it’s very odd to find ultra posh lobster restaurants in clubs here. we never play in places like that in Europe but we were playing at the Blue Frog in Mumbai and I swear people were eating lobster! i’m patient though and i wanna play here nonetheless. hopefully there is gonna be more music and less lobster here at some stage!
Contributed by Matej Ficko
Members involved
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Sasha Perera
Singer / Song Writer
BERLIN · URBAN ART CORE
get your daily dose
BERLIN · almost everyone has a blog and almost everyone is taking pictures. why not, it is simple. fair enough. but when we strive to get the best out of our daily dose of information, we appreciate to have profiled gatekeepers, who keep an eye on the quality of the content.
one of them is Brenna Urban #6005, founder of the well respected blog Urban Art Core, an independent street art, urbanism, graffiti and urban exploring magazine. the enthusiastic blog was founded in 2009 and until now Brenna established him as a so-called power blogger with a lot of daily up to date insider information.
But Brenna is also a passionate photographer. since 2006 he closely works with known street artists, such as Buff Diss, Morten Andersen, FinDAC, Rallito X and Danny Doom #5860. as things developed within time, the artists have let him to capture them in the most intimate movements. they gave him access to their studios or took him along, when they at night went on the streets to do some actions.
Brenna's latest photo projects is called "On the shoulders of giants" - two giant paintings by american urban artist James Bullough. they are located on Torstrasse 111 in Berlin Mitte, upcoming contemporary art space restored by art and studio house Torstrasse 111 and Co Verlag. the opening ceremony will take place on friday, 27th of april.
over the time Urban Art Core became one of the voices of Berlin's and also international creative urban/graffiti scene. get your daily dose now.
Contributed by Matej Ficko
Members involved
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Brenna Urban
Blogger
Photographer
CHICAGO · MATTERNET
A PATH TO A ROADLESS WORLD
CHICAGO · the mantra, how technology is making our lives easier and our work more efficient, is going on constantly. this can be true to some degree, but there is still a large part of the world's population, although they have access to this technology, who lack the most basic infrastructure and in the end the technology is not working for them.
imagine a situation in Africa. a woman calls a doctor and orders the medication for her sick child, but she needs to walk few hours every week before she gets there. in remote areas she is also sometime unable to do so.
Arturo Pelayo, PLATOON member #5911 along with an international team have come up with a concept called Matternet. Arturo and the team met at NASA Ames Research Park in California where they came up with the idea together at Singularity University, which is hosted inside the Research Park. along with ARIA and Matternet, Arturo also founded Ocean University, a cruising academy for thinkers, designers and entrepreneurs where the goal is to bring principles of Design aboard the ship and engage in week-long projects.
With ARIA, Arturo sets his sights even higher this year, working towards the development of a new roadless transport system, which will be a revolution in logistics and will provide a more democratic way to gain equal access to isolated regions all around the world. this is the vision of Matternet.
Matternet, as a technology concept, integrates a network of grasshoppers, a small autonomous flying transport vehicles to deliver various loads to a specific destination. with applications such as food and medicine delivery, courier services, mountain search and rescue applications and many others in isolated regions around the world that are now inaccessible.
the cost-cutting remote aircraft could easily recharge at solar power stations. these stations could in turn also serve as cultural centers to share knowledge and resources with the local and international community.
we are very interested to know more about the end results of the project and to see how the idea will materialize. read the article by BBC and the Q&A we did with Arturo below.
Contributed by Matej Ficko
Members involved
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Arturo Pelayo
Instructional Designer
MUNICH · STROKE URBAN ART FAIR
magnet for artists
MUNICH · another edition of the unique art fair, run by Marco Schwalbe #4758, took place in the beautiful Praterinsle.
Stroke Urban Art Fair was again a magnet for all kind of international street artists and ambitious galleries. this year more than 10.000 people visited exhibitions, live paintings and checked out the latest ideas floating around in the world of urban art.
Vallerio Vittozzi #5938, who also exhibited some of his works, contributed nice pictures. check them out on our facebook page.
looking forward to Stroke Urban Art Fair BERLIN edition!
Members involved
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Marco Schwalbe
Event Manager
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Valerio Vittozzi
Visual Designer / 3D Artist
SEOUL · Urban art project
creativity among ruins
SEOUL · Seoul Urban art Project (SUP) is a contemporary movement with self motivated artists melting together different media. group is made up of 16 various artists - street & graffiti artists, painters, illustrators, film makers and photographers.
also three PLATOON members are a part of the group - painter Jazoo Yang #5398, street artist JunkHouse #3740 (also resident of Kunsthalle Seoul artist lab) and sound artist & DJ Soo Lee #3785. several other SUP members have been also active at Super Color Super Sketch events in PLATOON Kunsthalle Seoul.
SUP's purpose is to escape limited workspaces and galleries and their motto is "real art in the real streets". that's why a lot of their work occurs also on demolished areas like the Ahyeon-dong redevelopment zone in western Seoul.
the collaboration between artists started in december 2011 and few weeks ago they have released their first episode "A Hyun Dong". in a interview for Art & Seoul magazine artist Jamie Bruno described one of their locations: "the church was a strange location, crosses, pews, huge photo albums and donation records: all discarded and abandoned. we worked there through winter and mostly on Sundays due to the larger police presence during the week."
Contributed by Matej Ficko
Members involved
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Su-young So aka JUNKHOUSE
Multimedia Artist / Urban Artist
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Jazoo Yang
Artist
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Soo Lee
DJ
BERLIN · what is your KluuU?
new dimension of sharing
BERLIN · do you have any clue what KluuU is? probably not. for the start let's just say that it is a live conversation platform, where people can get in touch with each other, based on their profession, interest and experience.
the new interesting project is co-founded by PLATOON member and inventor of Berlin legendary Photoautomat Ole Kretschmann #6170. KluuU has recently won award for one of the best innovations in the field of web 2.0 & social media. read more below in Q&A with KluuU founders Ole Kretschmann & Patrick Frank.
we already share our experiences everyday on various channels and media, but how is KluuU different?
KluuU is a live video chat platform. we connect people using subject and content - written and oral. a KluuU is easy to create and enables fast content findability. we conciously decided against automated search mechanisms because we trust in the competence of people when we let them think for themselves.
how does it work?
pick a theme and a title for your KluuU, upload a photo and video intro if you like, specify times of availability, and you're ready to go! other people can see your conversation offer and contact you via message or live video chat. KluuU also features an integrated payment system to charge for video call time. it's also just fun to browse, the platform aims to broaden people's horizons.
how should a good KluuU look like or what should it contain?
ideally, the description and foto for a KluuU should clarify the subject of the conversational offer and arouse the curiosity of the reader. providing some information on the profile page is important for establishing the trust of other users. but there's no strict definition for what a "good" KluuU should look like. the infrastructure was conceived to promote creativity and room for interpretation.
what is your favorite KluuU that you stumbled upon lately?
The KluuU "Must-See Series - Don't cry, watch TV series" - noted theater director Stefan Bachmann compares modern American TV series with realist novels of the 19th century.
Michaela's KluuU "What should I get for their birthday?? Definitely not pyjamas!"
YosemiteBear Vasquez a.k.a. the "Double Rainbow Man" - and one of the biggest YouTube stars in recent times with over 40 million channel hits - has created a KluuU and is now available live.
everybody is talking about the growing start-up scene in Berlin. how do you see it?
there are currently a lot of people working on startups in the city, without a doubt. Berlin has been a magnet for innovative people for a while now. since we're freelance art and creative entrepreneurs we haven't had much contact with the technology scene yet, we've only met a few people from the startup scene personally. but that's starting to change. in may we're throwing a big party in Berlin and want to invite everybody to raise their glasses to KluuU!
Contributed by Matej Ficko
Members involved
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Ole Kretschmann
Entrepreneur
SEOUL · PLATOON KUNSTHALLE
celebrating 3rd anniversary
SEOUL · wow… 3 years already? time flies by quickly. yeah, it has been our third year rocking the block. these days we are all celebrating the 3rd anniversary of PLATOON Kunsthalle Seoul. a lot of crazy and cool things happened in that time.
at this point we would like say a big THANK YOU to everyone, who supported us and in these three years. for the anniversary PLATOON Kunsthalle Seoul prepared a three day celebration marathon. come and celebrate with us!
... and just to remind you, that PLATOON Kunsthalle Seoul will soon get a younger brother in Berlin.
Location
gangnam-gu . nonhyeon-dong 97-22
Seoul, South Korea
BERLIN · MEET THE HYBRIDS
revolting against humankind
part of Pictoplasma was also the Character walk with exciting happenings throughout Berlin. in our containers we hosted the exhibition Hybrid by Pleix, a virtual community of digital artists based in Paris. they do cool installations, commercials, films and music videos, like for Basement Jaxx and Plaid. also their campaign for Amnesty International to promote the end of the death penalty is well known.
at our containers. we had a special room for an intimate meeting with the surreal, post-modern characters.. the Hybrids! almost 2000 people came in five days and we were really happy to host the exhibition and meet so much nice people.
more photos on Facebook and check also the nice video report by Kristina Tschesch 6014# and Andreas Spieß 6015# by Arte Creative.
we asked few questions to Rouxel Laetitia #6164 and Jean Philippe Dealander #6185 from Pleix.
Q: you have made the cool characters and also gave them their own personalities and ways to interact with people, but what is the initial idea behind?
A: the animals are getting really angry about mankind and how they are being treaten. they are now revolting and reacting aggressively to people, when they approach them.
Q: during your exhibitions you also see how people react. what do they do?
A: their reactions are a mix between being scared and laughing. sometimes they also feel uncomfortable.
Q: how will your interactive characters develop in the future?
A: they are going to be exhibited in Eindhoven in november and there is going to be a lot more of them.
Contributed by Matej Ficko
Location
Alte Schönhauser str. 3
Berlin, Germany
Members involved
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Laetitia Rouxel
video artist
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