An art event by the Art Group GOTTLIEB.
Exile Café is an art work that comes into being through the active
participation of its guests and is about to set off on a long journey. It’s an
installation which, when activated, becomes a meeting point and a place
for communication, where the people present and their interactions are
part of the art.
The artists have taken the notion of Exile onto a spiritual level. Exile Café speaks to all
those who find themselves in spiritual exile, or feel they are strangers in their own land,
because they do not belong and cannot relate to this increasingly profit-oriented society.
Exile Café offers all such people a temporary home.
Participants/guests are invited to contribute an object, which in their eyes represents their
spiritual home, and to place it in one of the forty suitcases that are set up in the café. It
might be a photo, a poem, a book, a piece of music, a trinket or whatever else. The
contents of the suitcases will remain a constant part of the artwork, which the artists will
document and later publish in a catalogue.
The actual café, with tables and a bar, is set up around the trunk installation; a meeting
point in a foreign world where friends can get together as well as meet new people.
The Art Group GOTTLIEB is present throughout the performance/activation of the café.
Those who visit the café are welcome to approach the artists and get to know them. The
invisible space between the contributed objects bears witness to these personal
connections.
The Art Group GOTTLIEB proposes to open its ,spiritual trunk" in the form of a short
concert — GOTTLIEB dark art music — as music, which is far from the mainstream or
subsidized avant-garde, it embodies a form of exiled being itself.
Exile Café is a travelling artwork which will be performed in different places throughout the
world. The only constant element are the many trunks and their content. In accordance with
the particular circumstances in each place or country, the furnishings of the café will be
organised by the artists in association with the people in the respective places in which
Exile Café is activated. All the human relations that are created in the process are
understood to be part of the work, as traces that remain even after the café has moved on.
Each station on this spectacular journey will be an exceptional place, which in its form,
function or particular features evokes feelings of isolation and alienation or temporary
security.
Exile Café’s first venue, its place of departure, so to speak, was a six week installation
which was activated four times in the atomic bunker at Kurfurstendamm in the heart of
Berlin, which is part of the museum THE STORY OF BERLIN.
Perfectly set up to cater for a catastrophe, the bunker represents in vivid form a temporary
escape — cut off from a threatening world outside which was once people's home, the
bunker also symbolizes the human madness of self-annihilation.
The Berlin public greeted the exhibition with much enthusiasm. A large number of
sometimes very personal objects were collected in the cases.
One of the next ports of call for the Exile Café will be the city theatre of a Polish port. In this
location the backdrop for the art work will be a multi-levelled steel construction, which looks
something like an enormous prison. During the activation of the Exile Café, the extravagant
scenery will provide a stage for a cycle of plays by Polish authors who died in exile.
The bay of Danzig is also known as a place which in the past many people who were driven
into exile fled to in order to escape by sea.
Each new location for the art work presents a challenge to the Art group GOTTLIEB and
their work. Each time, the work is developed and complemented by different activities that
are thought out anew to correspond with the particular framework of each place. In Berlin,
for example, an ambassador's table was set up in the café and all the ambassadors, who
are seated in Berlin, were invited. In addition, so-called speaker ladders were erected to
offer guests the opportunity to hold a spontaneous speech to the gathered crowd. In
Poland, a collaboration with actors, who will perform under the artists’ direction, is planned.
The exile café will then move on to an exceptional venue in the Ruhr area in Germany
where it will be activated on three different levels. Taking into account the particular
acoustic dynamics of the location, a new composition will be performed there for the first
time. In addition, the art group GOTTLIEB is currently planning to stage the exile Café in a
derelict tram depot. Here, a few days before the café is activated, the artists plan to travel
with some of the cases on a tram through the city thus directly confronting the city
inhabitants with the unusual art work. A further city project involves a choreography with 40
dancers who will be embedded into the activation of the Exile café.
Exile Café combines elements of plastic and dramatic art, music and a social event.
Through its interdisciplinary character and socio-political relevance, exile café speaks to a
wide range of different groups of interest. Its own website provides the curious with detailed
information regarding the content and performance of the art work:
www.kunstgruppeGOTTLIEB.de.
Exile Café is an artistic idea that materializes into an art work through
the interaction of place, time, meeting and exchange, recognition and
transmission.
goal
dangerous
scissors
understanding
where is my place
