MiLo Truck meets PLATOON

so today, whilst everyone was working busy as a bee in our hot containers, we hear someone screaming outside:


„ PLATOON !!! “


we all run simultaneously at the window and all i could see was a huge red container parked right up in front of us.





it was our beloved MiLo Truck with part of the Crew coming to greet us for a last salute before the Truck is given back to whom it belonged to in the first place.






yes, the Mindestlohn Tour is having a break...but not a very long one though, we are setting off again for a seaside walkabout in august.





for all those of you who didnt have a chance yet to know more about what the MiLo Tour actually is,
i leave some hints over here:




1 2 3 4 6

„working poor“: tour-start of exhibition-container

„working poor“: the wages per hour in germany are going down steadily– nearly to poverty line. in order to address this problem PLATOON has been working hard for more then one year to create a strategy for this campaign with ver.di and NGG, aiming to achieve its goal of introducing a law for minimum-wage in germany (we reported this already in previous entries).










for a better understanding of the topic minimum-wage and especially to show the frightening truth to as much people as possible, PLATOON created an
exhibition-container for the „working poor“ campaign.
the container is now finally ready!













the exhibition-container shows the national problem of „Hungerlöhner“. inside the exhibition-container there are portraits (gorgeouse photographs by marc brinkmeier and emotional articles by judka strittmatter) of people, whose income just hardly overruns the poverty line. extensive information material and special features, like a DVD or minimum-wage-t-shirts are available within the exhibition. the minimum-wage-puppets are also on their way and you will certainly see them in every city touched by the exhibition; the puppets visualise professions suffering particulary from wage-dumping, for example nurses, waiters and security guards.
























this exhibition-container is now touring through more than 50 cities in 80 days in germany. the tour started this week on 1st of may in erfurt. nearly every day the the exhibition is located in another city and is accessible for everyone. here you can find the tour-diary including google-maps etc..














i also want to remind you of the signatures-collection for a minimum-wage at the website, where everyone may support the campaign. on the according weblog you can find the reports and pictures of the tour...














i think, the hard work, the dirt and the sweating of all the involved person was succesful – but best you look and see for yourself ...

short movie of moving truck..

NEW MOVIE: PLATOON.asia 2007

right now tom and i stay in hong kong for a bigger workshop with adidas asia-pacific-headquaters about a region-wide marketing project.. but we will tell you later about this project..

our beijing projects develop well as tom reported lately..

so just to give you an impression of what is going on here in asia with PLATOON we edited a new movie from the footage we did in november in hong kong / beijing / seoul..

watch it and enjoy.. and feel free to give us some comments ;-))

One Night in Beijing!

hello everybody out there,







































last week i had a nice meeting with codec from the pfadfinderei in beijing.









a few weeks ago neebing from old town beijing asked us if we were interested in a new hotel-project.











so they invited us to come over to have a meeting with the client an everybody who is involved in the project.













































from the first moment we thought about graft as a partner for the interiour-design or rather as an architect´s office.






we asked them and they confirmed it. so i flew over from seoul to beijing and met them allready. it´s a really nice project. let´s see.... more later;-)























it was super funny with gregor and codec. we had a lot of fun and interesting talks.




















































and we met the manager from "the place". a brand new shopping-mall with a huge led-screen about a 250 meter length. really massive.....


and now they are looking for the right content.;-) it look´s like that is the real playground for the pfadfinderei.......




















the last night codec and me went out to have a look to the beijing-clubscene witch we allready scanned in october last year.







and factual we met a guy who looked really tall beside codec.;-) it was the doorman from the club.




it was a funny night. at the end i missed my flight in the morning and changed me schedule so codec and me catched a taxi to the airport together. allready arrived at the airport the nightmare for me started. i lost all me documents in the taxi. passport, visa, tickets, money, everything.


i reconised it immediately and started a fast run behind the taxi to catch it. but it was to late. so all my stuff was gone. thank god that codec got the receipt from the taxi.

so i went to the policestation and at least it takes 30 minutes and all stuff arrived back at the airport. what a shock.... there is one thing i learned from this story: if you are in that kind of trouble, don´t hesitate to go to the police. they have so much power in china. it´s amazing.




thank´s again to neebing. he really hosted us well in beijing and it seems like this is the begining of a great friendship.

in the meantime i arrived well back in seoul.

more about seoul in the next days. it is great to be back here, super hosting, meeting many famous people here and we are looking forward about what´s happend in the future.

stay tuned......

2006: PLATOON.review

we posted 160 blog entries in 2006. many things happened! here is a brief review of the most important PLATOON.operations in 2006:

february: etoy.corporation leaves the PLATOON.host
the international art-collective arrived with their container in summer 2005 (movie). during these last 8 month we had a lot of fun but also a lot of exchange of ideas and we made friends!

within their general meeting here in berlin and afterwards they worked a lot on mission eternity (a death cult for the information age)

here is a small movie of their departure.







march: the minimum wage campaign
PLATOON developed and realized this nation-wide campaign for the german trade union ver.di.
within this campaign we developed internet communication via weblogs and a special form of street protest.

this campaign is still going on and we have to work on it also in 2007.






may: confidential CIA.prison detected
next to our area in berlin-mitte walter gitmo offered public tours thru a former CIA.prison for terrorists. this theater play hosted by PLATOON irritated a lot of people!























june: the world cup @ PLATOON.area
maybe the most exhausting operation PLATOON realized during the last 7 years! we built an arena for almost 500 people around our pool and placed a monster LED-panel for the members of our club. within few days our place was overwhelmed by people who wanted to join the club. for 4 weeks we had a 24/7 operation in providing drinks, food, fun and security. every evening there was a never ending party for this hot summer spectacle. thank you all again for making this happen!

short movie of world cup @ PLATOON





july: pecha kucha @ PLATOON
we hosted our first pecha kucha event on the PLATOON.area. a fast and furious presentation panel: each presenter is allowed 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds each - giving 6 minutes 40 seconds of fame before the next presenter is up. this keeps presentations concise, the interest level up, and gives more people the chance to show their work.














soni riot
PLATOON.anna presented her 6-months-work-diploma 'soni riot'. PLATOON oversaw her work as a second corrector. the result: a hard rocking vj-act!











pool saison
after the world cup the summer arrived again and we started the pool saison for the people around us. the pool was open to the public 6 days a week.



























the end of the summer festival
PLATOON.marcello ended his internship with a music-festival-project. he worked out a big line-up of bands and organized the whole event. thank you!






















october: PLATOON.asia
after our first secret trip in april 2006 (we didn't post any entries about it) to seoul/korea we had a second 3 week trip to hong kong: entry 1 . 2 . 3 / beijing: entry 1 . 2 . 3 . 4 / seoul: entry 1 . 2 . because of an invitation of adidas asia/pacific we researched some facts and developed some ideas for them. we will see what will happen in 2007 ;-)) but we are sure: there will be a second PLATOON in seoul soon! stay tuned!

























november: hugo boss prize, new york
after the asia trip we had to fly immediately to new york for another operation. we did the video-documentation for the biannual art prize at the guggenheim museum. we made several interviews and trailers for the hugo boss website. the challenge was to create a serious and art related documentation and edit it within hours.
















december: recover for 2007
after this rocking and exhausting year we just made our upcoming plans for 2007.
what will we do in real life?
what will we do in asia?
what will we do in second life?
how will we survive the next party?

thank all of you for escorting us within this blog and supporting our ideas worldwide.

stay tuned for the next operations!

ASIA UPDATE: SEOUL REPORT TWO

if you have any chance just reserve a river-view-room at the grand-hyatt-hotel in seoul.. the view is fantastic as you can see and you are very close to every hot part of this 20 million city..

on the second day we had a meeeting with gary koo and his crew from probe design. they gave us a full presentation of their internet-design and consulting work.. maybe we should make some projects with this agency ;-)

gary made a contact for us with the sarubia gallery.. they are one of the most innovative off-galleries in seoul.. we met kwan-hoon lee for a longer discussion about cultural engagement in korea.. nice talk even if we needed an interpreter because he didn't speak any english..

gary was a contact out of the PLATOON-network: jan michael hess from mobileeconomy.de gave us the contact. he also introduced us to simon bureau. he is also an expert who gave us a special overview of the specific posibilities in korea.

the interpreter was a friend of simon and was a really interesting artist who we met before and who became somehow our guide and friend for those days: soo, a tartist (t-shirt-artist) who does really crazy perfomances also: look at his site! he never shows his face in the media.. so he covered his face on the picture.

one day we visited papertainer museum.. this container-art-commerce-project stopped by in seoul so we had to see it: containers.. a lot of containers!

after a week full of meetings, research and concept-work we had another family-yang-dinner: eva, cheol-woong and cheol-hong invited us to a very special chinese restaurant. this dinner with its warm family-atmosphere becomes the highlight of our korea-trips ;-) thank you!!

when we left seoul we were sure about our decision: seoul is the next PLATOON.city

stay tuned for our last ASIA.REPORT.HONGKONG..

and the winner is.....

jeah, we did it. since saturday we are back in berlin. and on top we are still alive and kicking.
some of you asked us what we have to do with the hugoboss-prize 2006? so here comes the solution of the riddle ;-)

after we did the documentation of the prize giving ceremony in 2002 they asked us if we want to do it this year again:

ten years hugoboss-prize with by now the 6.th winner.

established in 1996 to recognize significant achievements in contemporary art, the hugo boss prize is a biennial award administered by the solomon r. guggenheim foundation and presided over by an international jury of museum directors, curators, and critics. the prize carries with it an award of $50,000. past winners of the prize are: Matthew Barney (1996), Douglas Gordon (1998), Marjetica Potrc (2000), Pierre Huyghe (2002), and Rirkrit Tiravanija (2004).

on the evening of november 14 at a reception at the guggenheim museum, Thomas Krens, director, solomon r. guggenheim foundation, Lisa Dennison, director, solomon r. guggenheim museum, and Dr. Bruno Saelzer, chairman and CEO, HUGO BOSS AG, announced that Tacita Dean has been named the winner of the biennial hugo boss prize.

Dean is the sixth artist to win the prestigious prize. she was selected from a group of seven shortlisted artists: Jennifer Allora (US) & Guillermo Calzadilla (Puerto Rico), John Bock (Germany), Damián Ortega (Mexico), Aïda Ruilova (US), and Tino Sehgal (UK), in addition to Dean (UK).




An exhibition of Tacita Dean's work will be presented at the guggenheim museum from february 23 through june 6, 2007.









so platoon did the interviews with all the nominated artists, the director of the guggenheim museum, those responsible persons from hugoboss, the jury and some vip´s like dennis hopper. at the moment we cut the material into short films and you can watch them on friday this week on the hugoboss-prize.com












a spezial thanks goes out to missy galore at this point. we already known her since the last 5 years and when we got the request from hugoboss it was obvious for us that we want to do this job with her. by herself she is very involved to the art-scene in new york. she is an video-artist and runs a label for vj-ing, video-instalations and video-art since the last 14 years. so the perfect conversation partner at all. thanks missy.;-)


















tomorrow we will blog some stuff about a political/cultural action that we joined and which happend on thursday last week in front of the carnegie hall.

at this time it is extremly difficult to do some action in the general public because of the police and the actually law in the states. new york is getting more and more a state of control and it´s no fun to be there at this time ;-(

so stay tuned

NEW YORK IS CALLING

sorry for not finishing the asia reports right now.. there were so many things happening in the last week in seoul and hong kong.. we couldn't make it.. so we just had a 1.5 days stay in berlin before leaving for new york for the HUGO BOSS PRIZE 2006.. a story we will tell you later.. so.. this is the departure-picture from PLATOON.. as you can see: we are still not well rested ;-))

stay tuned..