Färberei

Die Färberei 
Was situated in the back courtyard of a residential building, a former textile washing and dying laundry and dry cleaners... Three stories with various workshops... Downstairs, aside from gallery, there was a woodshop, and -once the mainstay of the operation: a spraypainting and streetart studio... One could sense that once upon a time the whole building was teeming with taggers, but those times have waned, and the former street urchins now holding curator posts and editorial positions on various platforms, including this one, supported by the city itself. (originally after seeing the site, I thought there would be more tag-ivity, and we might tap into some of it... But in the end we used only the silkscreen studio on the first floor to produce some T-shirts...)











So gallery of the first floor, where we presented some paperwork from Buktapaktop and video from both groups... Along with what was in effect a hole that accompanied us throughout... Digging for water with a pneumatic drill, shovelling broken concrete across the otherwise pristine white floor... Work in progress as it were and maybe a good metaphor for our activities there: digging ourselves ever deeper into a hole, having to widen and displace it as we went along.









Upstairs we had what became a playroom " spielraum" meaning room to wriggle, to try things to modify and to re-arrange... Not quite the nerve-center, but used for exchange, interchange with the various projects at hand... Material preparation and stockroom, -once the archives- it had a high ceiling for space of thought, and pulleys for washing lines, to which I applied a system of hanging up the clothes we were to use at each venue, to put them back once we were through: at the back we hung up our usual " Buktablecloth" as inspiration ( and we used it for the "Opean #8" at the Einstein on thursday... ) so there was the paper banner used at the "KloHäuschen" ( did not use cloth there, so in the end one was still pristine in the end) a large linen square was used for the 4 th of July Picknick at the KunstPavillon, and another was used a schematic representation for our interchange, featuring the non-human actors we were addressing ...

Furthermore there was the blue banner reading " Akkakana" for the Kösk-parade, and two clothworks by LL, used at various points during operations... There were also D-K flags and the Bukta-flag not seen since the inception in 2012.... Lise used the windows for explanetory drawings she was te refer to later on.... The walls were adorned with various materials, as presentation and as interim solutions during production...














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On the top floor we had the run of the office, the kitchen, the terrace, you name it... ( the regular crew were just moving to more shady officespace, it being quite hot... Perfect weather for the Finnish crew to be baking all day long... Steamy weather!
So we had the run of the place, and aside from passing encounters, would gather mainly on the rooftop terrace once the sun got behind the wall a bit for an inter-group pow-wow... Quite informal, mind you, but specific enough to get a good idea about what each of us were doing and what, as grouping, we could offer to the whole.
To top it all off there was a huge defunct chimney to disperse the fumes of our hard-thinking combined efforts....












more soon

Sect...