Last monday we had the set down of the exhibition „Pattern & Signs“ in the Gallery Nord in Berlin Moabit. The summer weather in Berlin goes up and down, and we always catched the hot days for our events, also at this final event. We decided to keep some of the art works of the international artists. Some will go back with Varsha Nair in September. She will come again to Berlin for a project in the „Haus der Kulturen der Welt“. Maybe we will continue „Pattern & Signs“ with some concept changes in the south of Germany. But the preparations just started. We have to make new applications for rooms and money.
Many other things happened in the last two months. It was a hard time, because all our applications for financing workshops in connection with cultural education, and also for projects and stipends failed. Alfred an I talk a lot on how to deal with this. Today, Alfred had to cancel the Banyan Exhibition in Ghana, proposed for the end of this year. His Ghanese partners asked him for a fee of more than 1000 € for a 10 day use of the gallery space. An absurd amout of money for this. Sometimes I´m very sad about this kind of behavior. We did a hard work to realize the 10 Banyan exhibitions with artworks from 50 international artists. Most we financed with our private money and we used our honorar for workshops connected with the Banyan Project in Germany to finance the parts in the other countries. We made a lot of compromises also with the length of the exhibitions, sometimes we had to say ok for 5 days only, and arranged us with the huge work of set up for such a short time. Now it stops because of the uncompromising attitude of the partner in Ghana. It seems networking and money is not really compatible…. Maybe we are to idealistic…. After 7 years travelling with projects it makes me very tired to deal with all the local disadvantages like climate, animals, diaria and the attitutes of some people. My head is always full of „musts“ and „have to do´s“, and the short holiday times in between are always marked of the hunting for the next internet connection.
In the last week, I made a important decision for myself: the next trip to Asia will be a private research, without any projects.
