Wednesday, 30 March 2011

Kid Congo Powers in the Reading Room - photos

On Monday evening the reading room was amass with guests wanting to listen to the wonderful and humorous 'road' tales of the marvellous Kid Congo Powers, which included fabulous anecdotes of tours, drive-in movie theatres and an especially memorable one about Jeffrey Lee Pierce's reaction to Stevie Nick's legs protruding from a car... RATS!

Kid was accompanied by Berlin-based musician Fred Bigot and the audience went on to enjoy a 45-minute exclusive story-telling session against the ever-moving backdrop of Snoring in the USA, the sound and video installation by Kristina Leko and David Smithson currently on show at the NGBK until April 13th 2011.

Michiel Brand kindly made video documentation of the event which can be viewed on his Vimeo site.

Here is a selection of photographs from the event:









Report about Eva Khachatryan, NGBK and Kombiticket in Deutsche Welle!

This article is in German

Saturday, 26 March 2011

Kid Congo Powers in the Reading Room, Monday 28th March 2011


Putting up Poetic Puzzles while sweepin the Streets with Joy

Gaby Bila Günther's creative writing and spoken word performance workshop went very well the last couple of days. 6 very concentrated participants joined in over the 3 hours per day sitting in the reading room.
















Amy went out on the street with Gaby and put her poems up on the wall


whilst other participants practiced performing their pieces in the space against the backdrop of snoring sounds

Friday, 25 March 2011

Kombicar, Sunday 20th March

Sunday was a stunningly beautiful day, really indicated the start of Spring. And of course the perfect day for a run in the Kombicar. Along with the artists David Smithson and Kristina Leko, Katja Jedermann from the AG Ausstellungsübernahme as a kind of Berliner ExpertIn and myself as chauffeur, a total of 20 inquisitive guests waited at their designated posts to take a ride in the car. David and Kristina had devised a kind of reenactment of their work on show at the NGBK and new passengers were handed a script on entry into the vehicle.

 David greeted guests with a script


 each guest was allocated a part in the script

whilst another one was handed a camera by Kristina to film the proceedings

Needless to say, the dulcet sounds of SNORING were also to be heard, this time coming from the car radio itself! Each stretch would pass by a relic of American occupancy in the city - we went past the obvious ones including Tempelhof Airport, Checkpoint Charlie and Haus der Kulturen der Welt but also past a few anomalies such as a drive in Burger King in Charlottenburg that 'occupies' an important piece of 1960s architecture and the Amerikahaus which during its inception was intended as an information centre about the USA but quickly became a hub for demos in the late 60s.




On returning to the NGBK, David and Kristina gave an hour long artists's talk, explaining the premise behind the work, discussing the activities in the car, and talking about finding out who snores the loudest, amongst other things.



Thursday, 17 March 2011

Kombiquiz!

Third edition of the Kombiquiz, this time with the quizmasters Pauline Curnier Jardin and Catriona Shaw!

Kid Congo Powers in the Reading Room, 28. March 2011

Monday 28.03.2011, 18:00 - Kid Congo Powers in the Reading Room.
A spoken word performance by Kid Congo Powers with musical accompaniment at the NGBK.

Legendary Mexican-American musician Kid Congo Powers, founding member of The Gun Club and guitarist for The Cramps and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and even former president of the Ramones Fan Club will be gracing the NGBK with his particular charisma and charm to give a spoken word performance, mixed with guitar accompaniment.

No stranger to being ‘On the Road’ (along with its many hazards), his performance promises to be a glorious insight into the more underground aspects of American culture and the very different type of American dream associated with this.