Oliver Behrmann
Video Glitch Lab / El Sótano Analógico
Video Glitch Lab is a video art project with obsolete software and hardware by Oliver Behrmann that shares space with El Sótano Analógico, an association of audiovisual artists started on September 2020 by producer nationalX and Behrmann. The space, in the center of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, is divided into a a VHS rental store, an retrogaming room, and a multifunctional space for events, workshops and exhibitions. Video Glitch Lab is an experimental laboratory for the investigation of new audiovisual experiences based on the aesthetics of error and the combination of technology from different decades.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Video Glitch Lab serves as a space for audiovisual experimentation and laboratory for testing new glitch aesthetics
VGS (Video Glitch System) + Nationalx @ NUMA Festival
Second live show of VGH + Nationalx during the NUMA Cirrcuit Festival, celebrated on May 30th. on Equipo PARA, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
The NUMA Cicuit is a festival dedicated to experimental music an art. This time we prepared a minimal v a p o r va w e party with selected music and VHS video tapes, which where mixed and transformed with a glitch generator in abstract and colorful visual landscapes, projected on the wall and shown in CRT TVs. The show was also streamed by Audiotalaia festival:
VGS (Video Glitch System) + Nationalx during the live gig at NUMA Circuit, Santa Cruz de Tenerife
VGS (Video Glitch System)
Video Glitch System (VGS) is a new project created in early 2019 by multidisciplinary artist Oliver Behrmann (founding member of the VJ team DelayTV), dedicated to live video experimentation with analog and obsolete hardware, which can be modified or short-circuited to create errors and others effects on video sequences. Marcos Estrella is also member of VGS as a cameraman in events that require live images, using vintage cameras connected to the setup of video mixers, VHS players, color processors and other analog devices controlled by Oliver. The resulting images can be seen by the public on a projection screen or LED, and / or on analog TV towers. We work with Tachyons + glitch generators, that give live shows a very different aesthetic to the one generated by the computer programs currently used.
VGS during a live gig at a Vaporwave Party in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and different studio and promotional pictures.
Fishing at Tropicalia
Installation with 680 fluorescent fishes made from recycled plastic bottles hanging from a 14 x 9 m. fisher net and illuminated with UV light.
This work was part of the Tropicalia I festival, celebrated on June 8th. in Magma Arte y Congresos, Playa de las Américas, in the south of Tenerife.
General view of the installation at the MAGMA Arte y Congresos center in Playa de las Américas during the Tropicalia I festival.
27 CLUB
Show at Soekiart Paderborn, from December 11th. 2018 to January 11th. 2019. After the series of portraits "Spirits", Behrmann creates the "27 Club", five works to think about the dangerous mix of genius, depression, drugs and art. The quintet quickly climbed to the brink of success, a path that's not easy when you're young, sensitive, millionaire, and drug addicted. The chances of ending up like Kurt, Amy, Janis, Jim and Jimmy are exceptionally high when all these factors come together. For more information visit www.soekiart.com
General view of the installation at Soekiart in Paderborn and portraits under UV light of Jim Morrison, Jimmy Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse, all dead at age 27.
FISHING
Installation in the exhibition space of the Raum für Kunst in Paderborn with 500-600 fluorescent fishes made from plastic bottles and illuminated with UV light. Other pieces were shown, mostly media works: in a room apart, a selection of videos produced during the last 10 years was presented. Also a glitched version of the first Pepsi-Cola plastic bottle commercial. The exhibition was open from November 2nd. to 11th.
General view and details of the installation at Raum für Kuns in Paderborn
Fishing at the Museumsnacht
Open-air installation with 200 fluorescent fishes made from plastic bottles and a UV flood-light in a small street of the Königsplatz in Paderborn during the Museumsnacht (Night of the Museums) on August 25th. The installation was made in collaboration with the art and culture association Zwischenstand, based in the same place, who programmed a black light night inside their exhibition space.
General view and detail of the installation in the public space during the Night of the Museums in Paderborn
Fishing on the Hill
The project Fishing begun in 2011 in the Faculty of Fine Arts of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Behrmann was experimenting with UV light and fluorescent materials inside a black box of his own construction. He started to create objects with cardboard, of coarse appearance to the normal light, but turning in a magic aspect under black light. We must bear in mind two key moments: the economic crisis in Spain and the accident of Fukushima's nuclear power station (1).
Almost accidentally, Oliver discovers that plastic bottles are ideal for fabricate neon colored fishes. The same year he mounts an installation of more than 2000 fishes during the Keroxen festival, inside an art space called The Tank, a former crude oil tank of the refinery of Santa Cruz, that was re-converted into an exhibition and cultural activity center.
The project starts having an ecological appearance; the problem of plastic in the oceans turns vox populi. In 2015 Behrmann makes 250 fishes for the interior court of the Museum of the Nature in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, this time they were illuminated from inside by a bulb in each fish.
In Germany, country of Oliver Behrmann´s residence since 2015, and in collaboration with the gallery Soekiart, three performances were celebrated in Paderborn, Cologne and Berlin, where the artist manufactured the fishes inside an isolation box and wearing an individual protection suit.
According to United Nations in 2050 there will be more plastic than fishes in the oceans; in front of this environmental cataclysm, Behrmann´s work remember us the importance of being aware from this matter and that we have to change our habits of consumption.
(1) Nuclear fuel has the property to produce fluorescence.
Esther Batista, historian
General view from the outside of the black cube (300cm x 300cm x 300 cm)
A video of "Fishing on the Hill" showing the reactions of the public.
Installation view from the inside, with fluorescent fishes made from plastic bottles.
Handlauf
Minimalistic intervention in public space during the Pader-Kultour festival in Paderborn, Germany on March 20th. "Handlauf" (handrail in german) was an intervention with pink plush on the handrail of a wooden bridge over the river Pader, in Paderborn. Two pieces of plush fabric of 30 cm x 12 m covered the handrail.
The work wanted to make visible the unnoticed structures around us by giving them new colors and textures wich highlights their original function.
So, the dark and hard wooden handrail was covered with soft pink plush in order to invite the visitors of the festival to touch it and play with the new fluorescent surface on top of the bridge.
Pader-Kultour is an open-air art festival along the river Pader. In 2018, over 30 artist made intervention following the 4 km long course of the river, while over 10.000 people walked the route.
General view and details of the intervention on the wooden bridge over the river Pader, the smallest river in Germany.
ALIEN X
On Saturday, February 17th, Oliver Behrmann and Carlos Gamonal presented their 10th. gastronomic performance at soekiart Berlin, located at Quartier 206 in Friedrichstrasse.
The Spanish chef de cuisine Carlos Gamonal and the artist Oliver Behrmann dissected together, for the first time in Berlin, an alien corpse cooked from candy jelly, with real surgical instruments and serve filets of the body and alcoholic bloody shots live.
The Performance is based on the fake short film Alien Autopsy from Ray Santilli (1995) who makes a subject of discussion an autopsy of an alien corpse after the alleged UFO crash of Roswell in 1947 and started a wide debate about the authenticity of the videomaterial and the ethical approach to such an autopsy.
Images of the gastronomic performance that recreates the Roswell alien autopsy, this time at the Berlin based gallery soekiart.com
SPIRITS (Deine Idole sind tot) @Berlin
Group show at the gallery / pop-up store soekiart Berlin, located at Quartier 206 in Friedrichstrasse, the main shopping street of Berlin.
In this group show, the same concept of "Mitarbeiter des Monats/Employee of the month" as in soekiart Paderborn was applied. Each of the artists has an own space and color: black rooms for the fluorescent works and video-art of Oliver Behrmann, a golden wall for Volker "der Goldene Reiter" and a deep red wall for Mrs More.
The "Peep-Show room" is a small space behind a big black shop window with holes, so people from outside can look to the video projected inside, a selection of Behrmann´s recent actions and interventions in public spaces.
There is also an "Aquarium", a large floor covered up with black fabric. Inside there is an installation with fluorescent fishes and jellyfishes, posters of heavy-metal bands, chains, steel bars and ultraviolet spotlights.
On three shop windows, big-format paper works of the "Spirits" series are displayed.
Installation view of the aquarium at soekiart.com Berlin
soekiart Berlin has four big sized shop windows and is inside the Quartier 206 shopping mall.
General view and details of the "aquarium floor" located at the back of the gallery.
SPIRITS (Deine Idole sind tot) @Cologne
Solo show on November 2017 at MakiMaki Sushi Green in Cologne.
Second stop of the exhibition "Spirits" in the vegan restaurant from the downtown of Cologne. "No fish fish" was the concept; the shark and the fishes were a kind of protest against the plastic contamination of the oceans. Meanwhile, the dead stars of 2016 were also floating as spirits over the restaurant visitors.
Performance on November 11. at MakiMaki Sushi Green in Cologne.
Fourth performance transforming plastic bottles into fluorescent fishes, this time inside an isolation box in front of the restaurant.
General view of the exhibition installation in the vegan sushi restaurant.
During the performance "Fishing 4.0" inside the isolation room constructed in front of the exhibition.
SPIRITS (Deine Idole sind tot) @Paderborn
Solo show on September 2017 at Soeki Art / Jessilicious Kitchen in Paderborn.
Art can be defined as the representation of the immaterial. In this show of Behrmann there are two different works: on the walls are the Portraits of big stars of the 20th century who died in 2016; while under the ceiling is hanging a fish school made from plastic bottles.
Icons of the pop culture like Prince Roger Nelson, David Bowie or Muhammad Ali are painted in neon colors and sprinkled with color spatters, -a characteristic technique of the artist- and were produced for the last exhibition “Something with media” in the KleppArt Paderborn. The represented idols have to finished to exist in an terrestrial way, but not so their spirits, which will affect the following generations in an artistic as well as in an personal context.
The multicolored fish in the blanket are dead. They were produced from plastic bottles, now the same material which contamine the seas. In this part of the work, recycling and the memory of our oceans is linked; here the artist refers to the spirit of the ecology which has already appeared in previous exhibitions: “Fishing”, an installation of 3000 fishes was shown in an empty petrol tank during the KEROXEN 2011 festival, or “Deepwater blues”, a work from 2012 at the TEA in Tenerife, criticizing the risks of the deep sea oil drilling industry, after the drilling platform Deepwater Ocean caused the biggest oil leak in oceans of the history.
The spirits feed our passions, them are this which form us and inspire. The represented stars reflect them. The fishes are the collective spirit of the ecology and represent the struggle for the balance of the planet and a responsible consume in an limited world. Definitively, to do the correct as individuals and to be a part of something bigger. And at that point the art can help, bringing fresh air in the spirit of the environment and ecology.
More infos here: https://soekiart.jimdo.com/
General view of the exhibition at Soeki Art / Jessilicious Kitchen during an night event with blacklight illumination
During the performance "Fishing 3.0" on the Night of the Museums in Paderborn, making the fishes, and a detail from the window.
And the stars will look very different today
“And the stars look very different today” was an room installation inside the group show “Irgendwas mit Medien” from the Kleppart Gallery in Paderborn on February 2017. Based on the former exhibition at TEA “Y Flash Gordon estaba allí con calzoncillos plateados”, the installation recreated a rehearsal room from the 70´s in retro-futuristish trash style. The walls were covered with silver foil and adorned with painted posters of album covers from stars died in 2016 as David Bowie, Prince, Muhammad Ali, Princess Leia and Lemmy Kilminster from Motorhëad. Old carpets were on the floor and the ceiling was covered with black fabric. A stage was on one end and in the opposite different old furnitures. Neon tubes in different colors and blacklight were used to create the adequate ambient, also little details like a full ashtray and half-empty beer and wine bottles for the smell in the room. The big front window to the street was wrapped full of articles and newspaper covers of the death from the stars hanging inside. Every Saturday night there was a concert or another cultural activity to interact with the public, as an practice of relational art. During the month of the show, following artist performed live on the stage: Sonic Boogie (Paderborn), J. Krawietz (Berlin), Raposo (Berlin), Marcos Elódie (Tenerife). Also collectives like Irjuvik (Paderborn), El Susto (Berlin) and El Hombre Bala Records (Tenerife) collaborated in this show.
General view of the room installation at KleppArt Paderborn. On the stage, several artists performed during this exhibition.
Above: View of the front window with copys of newspaper and magazine covers from the death of the icons. Left: Installation details.
ALIEN 9
9th. gastronomic performance by Oliver Behrmann and chef Carlos Gamonal during the 4th. edition of the Cuerpo a Cuerpo festival, celebrated in La Regenta center of arts, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, on November 2016.
This serie of performances consist in the autopsy of an alien corpse, made entirely of jelly candy. The eatable alien body was cutted with surgical instruments and served to the public during the action. The show is based on the fake movie from Ray Santilli about the autopsy of an alien corpse after the Roswell UFO crash in 1948.
Oliver Behrmann and Carlos Gamonal dressed in full protection suits performing the alien autopsy at the art center La Regenta.
Repetitionsgewehr II
Action in the public space. Video projection from the inside of an almost demolished building on the last standing up showcase window. The video was shown with an portable projector and it is a 2-seconds loop of the work with an heavy demolition hammer in POV. Loudspeakers were also placed on the inside to hear the sound of the demolition hammer. The video was sawn by people passing by for around half an hour. The action was unannounced and without permission. On the next day, workers finished to demolish the building.
Mobile video projection inside an almost demolished building. View from the street and stills from the video of the action.
Fishing II
Installation of 240 fishes made out of plastic bottles with dimmable LED lights inside, “floating” over the inner yard of the MNH Museum in Tenerife during the portuguese culture festival “MusaLusa”. Each fish was made cutting and folding one 1L Coca-Cola PET bottle, then painted with drops of fluorescent colors and some chrome silver spray. The electric installation was made by an specialized firm. During the festival, many concerts and events were hold on the stage and the artificial beach that was build in the inner yard of the museum. This work is based on "Fishing" (2011), an installation of 2000 fluorescent painted fishes and 120 UV neon lights in an empty petrol tank, during the festival Keroxen.
General view and details of the installation at the inner yard of the MNH Museum and the fishes.
Cóctel en La Tejita
Action realized in the beach of La Tejita (Tenerife) consisting in offering a false cocktail with colorful pieces done from rubbles of tourist buildings. It was a relational event in an landscape that has remained till now in a practically natural condition and that is on the verge of being modified by the construction of a modern five star hotel, situated in the first line of beach and adjacent to the protected natural space from Montaña Roja. The performance was focused to take, with irony and humor, a critical look to the tourist phenomenon in order to avoid the mistakes of the past, inviting the assistants to analyze, to debate and to think about different models of economic and social development for the Canary territory. The video of the action was presented two weeks later in the Ateneo de La laguna, closing the cycle "Proyecto para adecentar la vía pública (III)".
Pictures of the action at the beach of La Tejita (Tenerife) by photographers Fran Pallero, Phil Crean an Lucilla Bellini.
ALIEN 8 -El Kraken-
On the night of October 9, 2015, the Berlin/Canary Island based artist Oliver Behrmann and Carlos Gamonal, chef of the Michelin-Star awarded restaurant El Drago in Tenerife, performed their 8th. autopsy of an alien creature made of jelly candy; this time it was a Kraken. The event was part of the Periplo Festival in Puerto de La Cruz and took place in the inner court of an abandoned hardware store in the middle of the city.
The gelatineous creature was 10 metres long and had a weight of over 200 Kg. It was disected by Oliver and Carlos as surgeons and a team of 6 assistants inside an restricted area of 6 x 15 metres. In over 2 hours, the tentacles, eye, mouth and inner organs were cutted and offered to the public on multimedia pedestals. Around 200 persons came to taste the jelly candy Kraken and drank his ink, done with spiced dark wine. During the autopsy, close-up images of the operation were projected live on a wall, while the surgeons talked with wireless headmics about the disection.
Oliver Behrmann, Carlos Gamonal and some assistants during the measure of the Kraken.
A moment of the gastronomic performance.
Installation for the video documentary presentation at Industriegebiet, Berlin.
Familia Real
This work is part of the group show "25.000 ft. / 25 ft. - Orientaciones", at the Instituto Cabrera Pinto in La Laguna (Tenerife), from september 11 th. to november 31th. 2015. Unfinished copy of the same named painting "Familia Real" (270 x 320 cm.) of spanish artist Antonio López, substituting the original family of the King with the members of the canary punk band of the 80´s Familia Real. On the floor, to the left, an old Disney Princess TV shows the music video "Estoy podrido" (1982) from the band. On the right, the used paint, materials and work photos are displayed.
Installation view and details of "Familia Real".
Paseo Gastronómico
Gastronomic installation with the chief cook Carlos Gamonal hold in the Jardines Victoria, an victorian garden in La Orotava (Tenerife). Consisting in 15 interactive pedestals to serve different typical canarian dishes. They have LED lights, sound, fog machines and tablets for interact with te public. A theater group (Zalatta Teatro) acted also live recreating historic persons from the city. It was an artistic expression combining art and food.
An article about this project is here.
On the left, Carlos Gamonal and Oliver Behrmann in front of some of the gastronomic pedestals. On the right, the logo of the project.
Installation view and details of the interactive pedestals at Jardines Victoria. Photos of Jordi Verdes Padrón.
La fuerza se chupa
Permanent installation for the renewal of the Banda Aparte Cocktail Club, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The walls of the 2-floor dancing hall were painted in chrome silver and different elements were installed on it, mostly made of fluorescent or silver painted foam and electronic garbage. A 2,80 m. long dancehall hammerhead shark was build and hung from the ceiling. Changing ambients were created using dynamic light control and movement sensors.
Installation view and details from the works at Banda Aparte Cocktail Club.
Repetitionsgewehr
Video (2-seconds-loop with audio) for the group show “25.000 ft.”, curated by Ramón Salas and exhibited at the Instituto de Canarias Cabrera Pinto (Tenerife) from October 3rd. to November 15th. 2014. This exhibition requests the emerging artists (former students) witch participated in previous editions of “25 ft.” to think in an artistic key about their evolution, situation and their vision of the art in the context of today, from the space opened between the expectations and the reality, from the depth of the submarine to the cruise height of the plane in which the young persons were obliged to emigrate and in that he tourists come, anxious to contemplate the Canary Islands as a paradisiac spectacle free of worries. The video shows in a loop of 3 seconds, filmed from the FPS-perspective, my daily job as a demolition worker during my “emigration” to Germany.
Video and installation view at Instituto de Canarias Cabrera Pinto.
Feliz 1974 (Action)
Action consisting in burning the banner of my own exhibition "Feliz 1974" in front of the El Tanque Art Space, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, on April 25th, 2014. The action was an response to the destruction of the previous banner by an unknown person. For more information about the solo exhibition "Feliz 1974", read the entry below.
Burning the exhibition banner outside the El Tanque Art Space (photo by Carsten W. Lauritsen). The banner after the burning (view and detail).
Feliz 1974
During the New Year's Eve of 2014, millions of people from all over Spain celebrate happily the calendar change and the arrival of a new year, hopefully better than the years before.
Meanwhile, the streets of Santa Cruz de Tenerife are invaded by the enigmatic message: <<Feliz 1974>> (Happy 1974). On the same night, the artist Oliver Behrmann decides to congratulate his fellow-citizens by liberating hundreds of stickers with the above mentioned message in the whole city, action that was preceded by the drawing, with an excavation spade, of the same congratulation on the sand of the Las Teresitas beach. The actions do not stop until January 23, 2014, day in which the Minister Wert visits San Cristóbal de La Laguna for the re-inauguration of the cathedral. After the protests outside, Behrmann projects on the dome his immense message, Feliz 1974.
From these protests is the audio and the voices of the thousands of people assembled outside, who sounds in the Espacio Cultural El Tanque, joined with the image of the intervention of the artist.
Feliz 1974 brings us forty years back, still inside the Franco regime. In the following year, the general Franco dies, giving an end to the dictatorial period; but without many possibilities of predicting it. According to multiple analysts and intellectuals, the current policies, reforms and laws of the government of the country, the absolute majority of the Populares party, are very similar to those that were in effect forty years ago. Contradicting or deceiving in occasions the constitution, it seemed that the intentions of the top of the government party is to eliminate, with a single stoke, the political and social advances of the last four decades.
So, probably it is better to say Feliz 1974 and have a look around us, to whom we were, to who we are and into whom we are turning.
Arístides Santana, independet curator and writter.
Links to an article in digital newspapers Canarias 24 Horas: here.
Panoramic exhibition view inside the El Tanque art space, located in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
Installation details. This is an audiovisual installation in a space with 16 seconds reverb / echo.
Luisa, Dua, Alejandra & Alejandro
Statues made of concrete from the mould of four real personas were placed at Solar, a private parking lot of the canarian architect and artist Carlos Schwarz, located at Suarrez Guerra street 15, Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The open ceiling location was reconverted into an professional exhibition space by art historian and curator Lola Bardel. DeManifesto, project curated by Dalia de la Rosa, shows the works of Oliver Behrmann, Acaymo S. Cuesta and Laura Gherardi. They have taken possession of the space, it is the time for the relation, for the coexistence, that these works deposited for the city and the persons who live and visit it. Three bodies in relation, three sensibilities under the same threshold and who untie themselves in a different but complementary way.
For the finissage, a performance called "Grabadas en la retina" was made, in wich the concrete statues were ritually burned.
Oliver Behrmann created for DeManifiesto four statues madeo of concrete and dropped fluorescent paint on them.
Untitled
La New Art Fair
"Untitled", 2014, teddy bear, stone, duct tape and broken carglass, was shown in La New Gallery (Carranza 6, Madrid) on the La New Art Fair, an paralel artfair to ARCO Madrid 2014 and curated by Semíramis González and sponsored by Absolut Vodka. It took place on february 20th. - 21th., and 25 emergent artist exhibited on two floors their latest works: Adriana M. Berges, Alberto Marcos, David González-Carpio, David Ortega, Edurne Herrán, Felix Coll, Joo Eun Bae, Jorge Flores, Jorge Mañes, José Carlos Naranjo, Kela Coto, Martín Blázquez, Miren Pastor, Nauzet Mayor, Nuria Baena, Oliver Behrmann, Plastic Guajiras, Pol Parrhesia, Rigoberto Camacho, Rocío Guerrero, Santi Xander, Santiago Gómez Carreras, Sebas Cabero, Simón Arrebola y Xavi García.
Links to articles: here and here. Link to an interview with the curator about the fair: here.
Exhibition view with standard lighting (left) and details with a spotlight in darkness.
Feliz 1974
"Feliz 1974" (Happy 1974) is a series of ongoing actions that criticize the current political changes in Spain, like the cuts in the social, laboral and individual rights. It is about making visible the increasingly fear of the majority of the spanish citizens, that believe that the new laws looks more and more like those from 40 years ago, at the end of the fascist regime of Francisco Franco.
The first action was to place 1974 stickers with "Feliz 1974", a cynical new eve´s greeting, in the center of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
Also on the last day of the year 2013, there was another action in the Las Teresitas beach in which the artist, dressed in a smoking suit, drew a giant "Feliz 1974" in the sand.
The third action took place some hours after the visit of the secretary of Culture, Jose Wert, to the Cathedral of La Laguna in order to inaugurate the reforms of the dome. During his visit, thousands of students, artists and other persons protested, ending with clashes against the riot police.
At night, a big "Feliz 1974" was projected on the new dome for aproximately one hour, setting metaphorically the cathedral 40 years back.
Links to articles on spanish newspapers about this action: here and here.
Writting "Feliz 1974" (Happy 1974) on the sand of the Las Teresitas beach, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, on December, 31 of 2013.
Stickers with "Feliz 1974" on the walls of Santa Cruz. The new dome of the cathedral of La Laguna, with an projected "Feliz 1974" some hours after its inauguration.
Installation view at the end of the performance. Photo by Ventura Mendoza.
Sweet Dreams (Performance)
The performance was based on Füssli's painting "The Nightmare" (1781). In this work, a woman lies asleep on the bed while a mare is sitting on her abdomen. The incubuses or mares were, according to the Scandinavian mythology, small and black creatures that enter to the dormitory through little holes in the doors. Then, they sit on the stomach of the sleeping people, producing respiratory difficulties and anxiety to them, in order to start the nightmares and get inside. The mares were devilish creatures that try to possess their victims and force them to sexual relations in their dreams.
During the performance, Oliver represents the sleeping woman and falls in a deep dream, after taking an overdose of sleeping pills. The mare is represented by Trinidad, she is a singer and neuropsychologist, who was sitting on his stomach, while she was playing guitar and singing several dark and dramatic songs. At the end of this action, the public was free to intervene on the body of the performer, with some different materials and tools, like fluorescent paint or scissors.
This performance closes the cycle of works about personal monsters, initiated one year before with another performance, "Die Young, stay Punk".
A video from spanish television broadcast of one of the songs interpreted by Trinidad during the performance is here
An article in Vice Spain about the performance is here.
An article in Vice Germany about the performance is here.
H. Füssli, "The Nightmare" (1781), Oil on canvas.
The documentary video.
Poster announcing the event.
After the intervention of TRINIDAD. Photo by Valentín López Cabrales.
Sweet Dreams (Installation)
The daddy longlegs spider (Pholcus phalangioides) is also called the skull spider because of the form of his cefalotorax, it is accustomed to live in the ceiling of rooms, caves, garages, basements, etc. In his job as a construction worker in Berlin, Oliver demolishes the walls of the basements that are used by them as home, causing, in most of the cases, their death.
Often are these catastrophes in miniature, events ignored by his levity, superficial scratches in the soul, small daily dramas, seemingly insignificant accidents, furtive looks and words ... the brute matter that our subconscious gathers of the wake condition for converting it during the night in our more brave fantasies. This is the real substance, of that our dreams are made, or at least, our nightmares.
Remembers and images of the diurnal activity, choosed at random, come again to life beyond the frontiers of reality to live forever lodged in our heads and lending their physical appearance to the Monsters, these disturbing emotions that represent our internal fears, personal conflicts, shames and suppressed desires. Daddy long legs is still living inside his own hangman, weaving the webs that will catch new remembers of the exterior world and slipping softly on his silk thread down to the bed of the dreamer.
The ceiling sculpture was made only with neon lights, CFL bulbs and transparent tape, provided by Klebeland Berlin.
(Waiting in order to deliver my artwork as the first one) Action during the pre-opening exhibition "Macht Kunst" of the KunstHalle Berlin in the Deutsche Bank center at Unter den Linden (former Guggenheim Berlin), consisting in camping in front of the door of the exhibition hall one day before the start of the receipt of works and waiting to deliver it the first one. The work was a photography, a portrait during the waiting. Everybody was able to show an artwork in an official show hosted by the Deutsche Bank, so thousand of people were waiting in front of the KunstHalle, in a trail of more than one kilometre lenght, during the three days that the works could be delivered. A video that documents the whole action was taken, from the beginning, on April 5th., to the 24 hours exhibition at the KunstHalle, on April 8-9th.
Am warten, um als Erster mein Kunstwerk abzugeben
Installation view and details of the spiders. Bed, transparent tape, neon lights and CFL bulbs. The bed is the real one from the artist´s bedroom. Photos by Ventura Mendoza.
Photography for the exhibition "Macht Kunst", taken during the action consisting in camping and waiting out of the exhibition room, in order to be the first one to deliver it.
The photography on the wall with the number "1" as the first delivered work (left and center). Oliver and Friedhelm Hütte, art department director of Deutsche Bank (right).
Intervention in public spaces consistent in creating trails of monster footprints in the snow. The actions took place in different places in Berlin, like the Lustgarten, Mauerpark and former Reichstag on February 2013. Some actions were made before in the city of Paderborn, on the sportfield of the Ahorn Sportpark and also on the backyard garden of a friend´s house. The video documentary was filmed by Alby Álamo, with music composed by J. Krawietz.
Chased by Monsters
Footprints of Monsters on snow in front of the Altes Museum and Kanzleramt in Berlin.
Alien of the End of the World
Culinary performance of Oliver Behrmann and chef Carlos Gamonal during the Festival of the End of the Word, celebrated in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria on December 2012. It was the 7th. of a series of performances, consisting in the autopsy of an alien corpse, made entirely of jelly candy. The green alien body was opened and served to the public during the action. The show is based on the polemic movie from Ray Santilli about the autopsy of an alien corpse after the Roswell UFO crash in 1948 (He first said that this was the original footage of an forgotten US Air Force video, but later he admitted that it was a fake).
Deepwater Blues
During this culinary performance a green alien corpse made of jelly candy is obduced and served to the public.
Solo exhibition at Área 60, TEA (Tenerife Espacio de las Artes), curated by Arístides Santana. This interactive audiovisual installation is based on the events of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, one of the worst environmental disasters ever. It examines critically the different social and economic aspects of the current society. A fragment of the videostream from internet shows the repair works on the sunken drilling rig, while the soundtrack comes live from the reverbed ambient sound of the 60 square meter exhibition room. This passes through the microphones directed to different sea shells whitch catches, transforms and distorts the original roomsounds due by their special construction. This sound can be heared from the headphones on the wall, and also through the loudspeaker of a crashed car situated in the middle of the exhibition space, envolving the whole room in a near-underwater experience. Also the neon bars and LED ambient lights create a dark and deep atmosphere whitch helps to submerge the visitor to the ocean ground. Collaborator guests: University of Purdue (Olispillhub.org), Desguaces Geneto, MNH and many friends.
For more info from the curator, Arístides Santana and pictures from Teresa Arozena, click here.
Giro Académico (Y el Giro de la Academia)
Exhibition view of DEEPWATER BLUES. Sea shells, microphones, audio mixers, cable, glass, painted wood, lighting, video (loop), and crashed car.
Detils from the audiovisual installation DEEPWATER BLUES, Área 60, TEA, Santa Cruz de Tenerife
Performance presented on June 29th. 2012 at El Generador, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, as an act not only to do a reading from the autobiographic poembook "Die young, stay punk" (published 10 years ago and reedited 2012) about heartbreaks and other love diseases, but also to get again through all these intense moments and situations in front of a public, as a way to liberate body and mind from the pressure of being for the third time in love, and for the third time unloved. Conceptionally near to the Vienesse Actionimsm, in this performance, Oliver´s body was painted, vomited, burned, cutted, punched and alcoholized. The Death was musically interpreted by Elodiè. Autopublished in 2003, "Die Young, stay Punk", shows the most intimate and naked thoughts and feelings of the author. With a raw and painful language, he tells us modern tales and parables based on his past stories. Read the book of poems here.
Light and transparent tape sculpture for the group show held in the exhibition hall Cabrera Pinto, in La Laguna (Tenerife). Two of the horseskulls, made for a further installation, were crossed with green neonlights in between two walls in a narrow corridor inside the exhibition hall. Firt approach to the technique of tape sculpturing with different animal skulls as model.
Die Young, Stay Punk
Installation view of the tape/light sculpture in the exhibition space Cabrera Pinto during the group show "El Giro de la Academia" (The Turn of the Academy).
A moment of the performance "Die young, stay punk", screaming the poem "Gritos del silencio" through a megaphone, with the body covered with paint, sweat, tears, blood and burnt skin.
ALIEN 6
An intimate talk with a cockroach on a tin (left) and setting the left breast on fire (right) during the performance at El Generador.
Second open-air alien autopsy, performed live at Gastrocanarias, the first International Gastronomic Festival of the Canary Island, hold in Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife. In this case, a 70-Kg heavy alien, made out of jelly candy in different colours, tastes and consistency, was obduced and cutted by an 10-surgeons team leaded by Oliver Behrmann and the international recognized chef Carlos Gamonal, who feeded during 4 hours an 800 people audience with the "flesh" of this sweet outerspace creature. A semitransparent UFO crashed a few meters away on top of an dolphin statue, and inmediatly a team of alien experts, dressed in full-body protection suites arrived, surrounded a security perimeter and poceeded to recover the death alien creature. Heavy surgery machinery was employed on this alien autopsy, due to cut the body as soon as possible in little pieces and give it to the public. Younger and older people screamed, laughed and tried to get one piece of this extraterrestrial beeing with sweet taste and sticky, gelatineous inner organs.
If you want to watch the video-trailer of this performance, click here.
Some actions happening during the gastronomic performance "ALIEN 6" in Puerto de la Cruz, a show for the Gastrocanarias Festival.
Y Flash Gordon estuvo allí con calzoncillos plateados (Juego de Máscaras)
The installation "Y Flash Gordon estuvo ahí con calzoncillos plateados" was made for the group show "Juegos de Máscaras - La Identidad como ficción" at the exhibition room A from TEA - Tenerife Espacio de las Artes - in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, along with other international and regional artists like Andy Warhol, Sarah Lucas, Douglas Gordon, Cindy Sherman, Jorge Ribalta, Martín & Sicilia, Cristobal Tabares, RoRo or Esteban Encarneviva. The installation is conceived as a rehearsal room of a fictive glam-rock group, inspired in part of the decoration of Andy Warhold´s "Factory" and also in the british glam-rock scene imagery. It is "a wink to the movement of the glam-rock that arises in the seventies and that represents more than no other musical movement this use of the makeup, of the parody, of the distortion and of the transformation".
The exhibition catalogue (with photos of the installation on pages 140-149) is found here.
If you want to watch the video from TEA, resuming the group show (the report of this installation starts at 5:20), click here.
Installation view of the Glam-Rock room from the group show "Juego de Máscaras" in TEA (Tenerife Espacio de las Artes)
2011 is Dead
Some posters made for this installation. From left to right: NME cover, KISS, David Bowie and Patti Smith. 120 x 90 cm, black and fluorescent pigments, fluorescent spray and ink on paper.
Installation for a New Eve´s party celebrated in the club Baobab, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Under the slogan "2011 is Dead", many personalities (not necessarily famous) who died during the year 2011were rescued from the oblivion and simbolically re-lived in a sort of danza de los muertos, to party into a new year accompanying the living ones to cross the border between something that died and on the same time was born.
It was an assemblage between common objects, trash, newspapers refering to these dead people, and the portraits of them, some in large scale prints and posters, all coloured with fluorescent paint in order to glow under a ultraviolet lighting. Twelve 2 x 1 m. panels were built to cover the walls of the floor, as well as other places like the bar and entry, were covered with generous portions of fluorescent death.
If you want to see the Flickr album with the pannels, sculptures and posters, click here.
Oliver Behrmann drinking a mojito in front of some of the 12 fluorescent panels created for the New-Eve party "2011 is Dead".
Kim-Yong-Il. Amy Winehouse, Osama Bin Laden and Steve Jobs, four personalities who died in 2011. Fluorescent and black pigments on paper, 120 x 80 cm. each.
Deepwater Blues
Five of the over 100 coloured laser prints of personalities died in 2011. Spray and fluorescent markers on laser prints, 29,7 x 21 cm.
Deepwater Blues is a project exhibited in different art spaces on Tenerife. It gives live sounds from a shell to the original videostream of the oil spill from the sunken "Deepwater Horizon" drilling unit in the Gulf of Mexico. It started in University as an exhibition project and became soon reality in an open studio at El Apartamento in 2010, at the same time when the oil spill still flowed underwater. Since his start, six different small-scale versions were built and exhibited. They all have contribuited to test the acoustic effects and tunings necessary to construct the much larger scale version exhibited at Área 60 in TEA. In these pictures the installation is shown at the La Garanja exhibition centre, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, as a part from the group show of art students "Smile", hold on October 2011.
If you want to see the Flickr album with pictures of several shows of this series, click here.
Partial view of the installation in the La Granja Exhibition Centre in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
Installation view and detail from the sea shell and audiovisual elements used in the La Granja Exhibition Centre in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
ALIEN 5
First open-air show of Oliver Behrmann and the international awarded chef Carlos Gamonal during an contemporary art-weekend in the small village of Santa Úrsula, in the northern of Tenerife, Canary Islands. While a DJ combo was playing electro sounds live, and a VJ group mapped with live visuals the stage, a new alien body was surgically cut and analized. Over 500 people surrounded the 6 x 6 metres platform where the performance took part in order to watch the show and get a piece of the alien body, made entirely out of jelly candy in different tastes, colours and consistencies. It was the first time that we had a so numerous public and we were totally overrunned, so that the go´gos, inaitailly asigned to dance in the main stage arround the DJ´s, had to come to our platform and help us to distribute the cutted alien pieces to the screaming public, anxious of eating some part of the extraterretrian. At this point, and after acting just two weeks before in London, we realized that definetively exists no difference between the reaction of the crowd, no matter in what country or type of town we do the show, it simply functions.
Some Go-Go angels helped us to distribute tha alien flesh to the public of this first open-air performance in the village of Santa Úrsula.
ALIEN 4 (London)
A gastronomic performance made on September 2011 at Village Underground, London, as part of the festival "A typical day on Golden Beach / CATH", in witch Oliver Behrmann and the star-chef Carlos Gamonal opened and served to the public a green alien body made out of jelly candy. The show is based on the polemic movie from Ray Santilli that shows the autopsy of an alien corpse after the Roswell UFO crash in 1948 (He later he admitted that it was a fake). The alien was lying onto a real autopsy desk, possibly the same used in Santilli´s film. After no longer than 20 minutes of show, the crowd entered into the restricted surgical area and begun to pull on the extremities of the alien, tearing all apart, while grabbing on his opened chest to get a piece of his inner organs. At that moment, the public really turned into something like posessed zombies. Amazing.
Scenes from the alien autopsy at Village Underground, London, during the "A Typical Day on Golden Beach" Festival. Photos by Ventura Mendoza.
Fermina Flip
A video about incomplete urban spaces, left city landscapes and skaters made for the Bienal Off from Lanzarote (Canary Islands).
Fermina's Island - also called the Island of Love- in Arrecife (Lanzarote, Canary Islands), is a perfect example of an secret spot, an hidden and closed place inside the heart of the city, an architectural ghost that returns to life transformed into a place used in a very different form to its initially designed use, though never realized. "Fermina Flip" was an action made during the show Biennial Off 2011 in Lanzarote, consisting in the "assault" of Fermina's Island to skate in it. An illegal, but officially announced and approved assault, an administrative shortcut that serves as metaphor to the endless history of the Island of Love...
The actors during a pause of the filming (above) in a photo from Fernando Robayna. Screenshots of the short documentary made for the Bienal Off from Lanzarote.
Fishing
"Fishing" was an installation which formed the central visual piece of the "Keroxen" Festival on November 2011. Dedicated to the contemporary and experimental music and dance, the festival created by artist Néstor Torrens, is held each year on a former petrol tank in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, reconverted into a cultural center. In this installation, over 2000 fishes, made out of old plastic bottles, were floating at 8-12 metres high on the dome of the dark tank, forming a circle with a diameter of 24 m. Also 72 blacklight tubes were illuminating the fluorescent hand painted fishes, conveting the petrol tank in a impressive and huge deep-sea aquarium.
You can see many photos of Juan MaRe, the official photographer, on the link to his website here.
"Fishing": Over 2000 fishes made from recycled plastic bottles, fluorescent paint, 72 blacklight tubes. Installation view at the Keroxen Festival.
Deepwater fish made out from a 8-litre plastic carrafe (left), and tropical fish, made out of an 2-litre Coca-Cola bottle (right). Both painted with fluorescent spray and acrylic.
Panoramic view inside the petrol tank while the Keroxen 11 festival. Photo by Juan MaRe.
Video of the "fishing" of the bottles from the trash in the streets of Santa Cruz. Collective Action Painting during in the Cabrera Pinto exhibition hall in La Laguna.
Fishing (process)
Participation in the annual "25 Pies" collective exhibition / discussion forum at the Cabrera Pinto Institute in the city of La Laguna and curated by Ramón Salas. During one month, the process to create a further installation (for Keroxen 11) was showed daily live, from 10 am to 8 pm, cutting and painting thousands of plastic bottles for the upcomming festival. About 3000 bottles were collected before, in a street performance that took place for several weeks and basically consisted in "fishing" them out of the garbage bins, dressed with a full-body protection suit, similar to the Fukushima workers on the destroyed reactor (the disaster happened nearly at the same time). At the show, collective action-painting sessions were organized. Four fridays, a DJ was playing while volunteers of all ages could expres themselves and help to paint the fishes.
The exhibition room after the third collective action-painting session. Nearly 400 fishes made out of plastic bottles were painted while a DJ was playing music.
Installation view of the working space almost near the exhibition end (left), and suited in full-body protective wear to "fish" the plastic bottles out of the garbage (right).
ALIEN 3
Third gastronomic performance for the festival CATH (Canarias At The Hotel), wich was celebrated on July 2010 in the Hotel Taburiente in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. At this time, Oliver Behrmann and the chef Carlos Gamonal did an autopsy to a pregnant alien (made out of jelly candy in different flavours and colours), extirpating a fetus and putting it with ice and alien blood (Absinth) into a mixer to create an outerspace cocktail. Of course, the regular surgery to the alien was also made, so that the public could taste the different body parts and inner organs of the 60-Kg creature. During the autopsy, some bands played live on the stage behind, and arround 300 spectators could enjoy the show at the hotel.
Some scenes from the gastronomic performance at the Hotel Taburiente, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
ALIEN 2
After the good reception of their firs gastronomic performance, Oliver Behrmann and the chief Carlos Gamonal were invited to repeat their show on Juli 2010 in Madrid, as a shorter version of the CATH festival in the luxury ME Hotel. This time, they decided to make the alien in Tenerife, transporting it in pieces and reassembling it in Madrid for the action. Due to the high temperatures that summer, from arround 40º C, the jelly candy of the alien body partially melted and gave the extraterrestrian a more terrific look than planned and a much softer consistency to his body. , Nevertheless this alien monster, a mixture between ET and Freddy Krüger, still tasted incredibly well, and the approximately 400 spectators who came to see the show enjoyed every morsel of the sweet alien flesh.
If you want to watch the video on YouTube from this second autopsy, click here.
Based on the famous Rooswell incident, in Area 51, New Mexico, where suposedly an UFO crashed and at least one of the alien were autopsied in this secret military base,. This performance recreates the plot, but the alien is made of jelly candy and will be served to the public. This first gastronomic performance took place in an as surgery room transformed hotel room in Los Realejos (Tenerife) during the first CATH (Canarias at the Hotel) festival. The concept was to give the rooms to different artists, to make interventions on it. Carlos Gamonal JR, the chief cook from El Drago joined the project and begun to cook the sweet alien in the kitchen of the hotel room. After finished, the alien was transported to the fridge chamber of the hotel and rested there that night. The next day, the kitchen was cleaned and the setup for the performance prepared, so that later that night, the show could begin. The hotel room was very little, so that the spectators had to came in in short groups. The alien was analyzed, cutted and given to the public to taste, while a camerateam was registrating all on video and photo. After 40 minutes, mostly of the alien was amputated and the rest was left on the autopsy desk for self-service.
The finished alien was melt a little bit because of the high temperatures in Madrid (fifth picture). Oliver and Carlos during the autopsy at Hotel Me (sixth piture by Encarneviva).
Alien at the Hotel (AATH / CATH)
After filling the entire mould, the hot jelly candy must be stored in a fridge to get cold and hard again (third picture). A little alien fetus was also made (fourth picture).
Oliver Behrmann modelling the body in plasteline, before making the mould (first picture). Then, the mould is filled with hot jelly candy mass by Carlos Gamonal (second picture).
Some scenes from the first gastronomic performance at the hotel room during the CATH. Photos by Danny Russel.
Arte, Arquitectura y Paisaje Patinable
A work for the 2 Bienal de Canarias, in 2009 and shown in El Tanque and in the Sala MAC, consisting in a video a a serie of 21 large-format photographies. The creation of new urban spaces brings often a secondary phenomenon that was not foreseen in the initial plans of the architects: the skaters. This spontaneous settling does not take place by chance, but it is originated by the existence of certain structures and architectural elements that forms a perfect habitat for the skaters, as for example, the renewed place of El Corte Inglés in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the remodelled park García Sanabria, or the new Plaza de España. In approximately ten minutes of duration of this video, a current vision is exposed from inside the scene of this urban tribe, the skaters, fullly integrated in in the architectural and contemporary landscape in which they move. The video was filmed and edited by Aitor Padilla Peraza, with an original soundtrack from Resonance.
Three of the photographs that were presented on the MAC Exhibition centre in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, as part of the Biennial programme.
OLIVER BEHRMANN (C) 2017