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!

A BOOK ABOUT THE HOOD

in summer a photographer asked us to take a picture of tom and me and the PLATOON.area.. today he and angelina from berlin story publishing presented the result to us: a book about our neighbourhood, schönhauser strasse

a realy nice book about a nice area and it's people! see some pictures..

the name of the photographer: stefan maria rother:

“Berlin is a city to discover. To show the greatness of this city, my photographic expedition concentrates on the small things, the streets, the people and their places.
Berlin is a city of changes. At the beginning of the 1990s you could find cool clubs in the Alte and Neue Schönhauser – the in-crowd dominated the area. Today, the street thrives on this legend. The Schönhauser is everchanging, a balancing act between shop windows of global fashion companies and passionate people with dreams.

Berlin is the city of its people, and maybe one needs to look at the faces of this city to give Berlin a face.”

here you can order it!

Marc Brinkmeier: photographer & worldwide adventurer

Marc B Fosten , Platoon´s highest agent, and im not just referring to his rank here but especially to his actual physical size... had some of his extraordinary pictures featured yesterday by South Africa´s Sunday Times, with an alleged article about his experience with the children of Rainbow United, a football club based in one of Cape Town´s poorest area.







Marc has been traveling widely during the past few years, his compelling desire to capture some very human epiphanies within different cultures, kept feeding his unsatiable curiosity about human social relationships, conditions and the corresponding factors making different cultures closer rather then spread afar in a set of wrong and disputable assumptions. you have to go there to see with your own eyes....









with projects taking him from South Africa. Congo, Namibia, or places as different as Russia and Bangladesh; Fosten is surely a man constantly on the go...well, sometimes I wonder how he manages to keep his pace...here and then, in between his projects, we are glad to see him coming back to the headquarters here in the container, although it must be said he´s a freelancer and works totally independent on his own.











some of you might remember him from the World Cup times during the summer....or at the Pecha Kucha night here in PLATOON...


* the german speaking can also enjoy this podcast










Well, he surely doesnt pass unnoticed...
With his tiny pink slips stretched to the limits like he was a little boy and somehow drunk a magic potion that in a matter of seconds made him grow into an incredible giant.











so „Fäustchen“ to you mein lieber...






















*„Fäustchen“ being the PLATOON Salute...
fist against fist then bouncing against your heart... like sharing energies...and if it doesn´t make any sense to you, nevermind,,, who knows...knows.



## and now you can find him also on myspace ##

mobile clubbing

the „new" craze shaking up London these days has hit again...this time in the literal sense of the word.
last friday at 18:12 a crowd of flashmobbers met somewhere in London for a massive open-air pillow fight!

it´s not the first time...we heard about smart mobs already sometime ago....nevertheless since then, large gatherings of pillow fighters and I-pod dancers seem to have become more popular then before.

in fact during the past months we had the pleasure to observe an escalation of these kind of extravagant public meetings...the fact is that people love to get together and most of all they love to party for the sheer pleasure of it.

Mobile Clubbing started since Pillow Fight Club's first event (17:40, 6th oct 2004, outside st pauls cathedral). since then several gatherings have been witnessed, astonishingly all over the world.
*have a look at this blogspot
and this first-hand account

however the meeting on the 11th of october at liverlpool street station and the one following on the 30th of november at paddington station, where about 3.500 clubbers attended, made it again a very popular trend...and for sure one that isn´t driven by any commercial or political reason. also media representatives could not simply ignore it...reuters reports....
daily mail article

well, we hope to see more of that....perhaps we should think of something to do over here...and since we have the advantage of getting a lot of snow (actually what happened with all those white fluffy flakes?) we might even gather for a massive snow fight....anyone up for some action?


*further links for Mobile clubbing on myspace

4th Pecha Kucha Night in Berlin

Tuesday 12.12.2006
Ballhaus Ost
Pappelallee 15
10437 Berlin (Prenzlauer Berg)

start 20:20h | open from 19:30h | entry fee €3,-

presented by Pecha Kucha Berlin, pechakucha.de
Pecha Kucha or 20/20: fast, furious, fun and information.

Arrive early, they start at 8:20 pm

Guests:

Georg Betz (leg extensions, Gebrüder Betz)
Hiroko Oda (design student)
Sascha Lobo (author, Zentrale Intelligenz Agentur)
Stephan König (Genausoundanders)
Thilo Staudt (painting, graphic design, art, BUTTERBAY:ORG)
Graco Spinner (Spinner)
Olivier Froehlic (film music "Der rote Elvis")
Thorsten Rauser (Adam - the intelligent elevator, The Binary Family)

more about Pecha Kucha around the globe!

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..

New York Street Action

as i already mentioned it is not big fun to stay in new york in these times. more and more bans for everything. absolute ban on smoking in any restaurants, bars, clubs etc. coupled with an alkohol drinking ban on the streets it´s really discriminating for us as smokers. you are not allowed to take your drink outside from the bar for a smoke. and when there are too many people outside smoking it is also not allowed because of the right of assembly. it could be a demo....;-(

anyway you can feel that the americans are totally affraid about an eventual next attack by themself. for me it seems like they have a bad conscience about their conduct of war and at least therefore they would have everything under control. now you must carry with you your id-card by law everywhere in the states.

but there are still some combatants out there who are taking high risks for spreading out their rage against the goverment and the society. one of this actions took place last week in front of the carnegie hall.

jason flores williams is an attorney to be, with mexican roots and he reckoned for this reason that he would get arrested for this action. In fact it only took 2 minutes untill the police arrived. but the officer was really cool and he only kept a close watch on the scene. probably because jason wore a business-suit and looked so reliable.;-)


watch the video..

after the action we went to a small bar on the 59.th street to celebrate jason`s birthday. it was fun......


at the end of the night we took our last drinks at the nublue. a small live-club with a really nice trip-hop live-performance. that was really hot.....but as i told you before without smoking it is not really fun.;-)


this is the carnegie hall speach in written words:

The Inside of Despair

I am ripping apart my head. Hundreds of characters. A dumpster of diseased efforts. An army of let downs. Nothing but another lost child of the 21st century. Its scars are all are scars. We are the monkeys of mass delusion. No vision, no authenticity, so harmless that we’re dangerous. Never here. Never there. A messiah society of Christ figures stuffing our faces with food, lying on the couch and fondling our respective genitalia.
Denial and fear are in the air. Does anyone have the guts to stand up anymore? To be a freak anymore? To be controversial in a way that counts for something? To be anything more than a mere shadow of the next fucking guy. To be a little less well adjusted in a world in such deep shit.
Call me raw and immature – but I want to beat the hell out of these cultural elites. I want to grab them by their tuxedo collars, throw em down on the ground and say. “Yo, open the gates, let us breathe some life into this dead culture. Give the new a chance to be born.” You might think you’re special and unique, but from where I stand you look like beat down robots. You’re miserable inside and you can’t tell what’s down or up, so let go or get out of the way.
Subvert everything, everyone is complicit and nothing deserves to be left standing. And when you ain’t got nothing…right?. Standing right here, right now is the only way I know how to fight the apathy. Standing right here, right now is the only way I know to fight the disconnected creeps who control this society. Being right here right now is the only way I know how to take on the anemic art world, the elitist culture pigs, lame dead writing, lame dead people and the sell out of our souls and lives. Being right here right now is the only way I know to disturb these rich people who don’t give a fuck about anything as long as they can get dressed up, come to Carnegie Hall and pretend like everything’s okay as long as they give a couple bucks to the democratic party.
(the boss) No retreat, baby, no surrender. They can marginalize us dismiss our art, evict us, deny access and lock us out of their fancy venues like they’ve always done. Let them, their ways are dead! Creative resistance is the new art. Fuck their consumer culture, their wars, power governments, mega-corporations, identity distortion, mass media, evangelism, emptiness, apathy and zero integrity. Fuck whatever it is they have to offer because I aint gonna shut up and go along with the plan. I rather hang around in misery for another forty years –fighting for the goddamned dispossessed, expressing my fractured soul and living a life that the mainstream doesn’t give a shit about. If a tree falls in the woods with no one around, does it count for anything? Probably not. But I prefer being off the radar screen to being recognized as on of THEM. I will stick with the homeless and the convicts. I’ll stick it out in the pouring rain. I’ll stick with the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.
Not one person I admire bowed down to the establishment. Not one person I admire sold out for comfort. Not one gave up their visions to go along with people who wouldn’t know life if it punched them in the face. My heroes were shunned by places like Carnegie Hall; they were segregated, doomed, fucked over and mocked as inconsequential. The world has always been run by whores. The smug (UWS) pukes who think that maturity means going out to fancy restaurants and insulating themselves from the struggles of the world. But it’s the ones who stood their ground, who walked down dark alleys when they heard screams, who fought for art and justice when no one was watching…They’re the ones who broke down walls and forged new consciousness.
We’ve got a sacred duty to subvert this sick culture. Because you can walk these streets forever, and have no idea what we’ve done to other people. You can stand on these corners forever, and have no idea that we’re at war. If artists have any role to play it all, it is to blow apart the hypocritical, unimaginative fat gut of American society. And now that we’ve been gentrified out of our own spaces and neighborhoods, now we’re coming up here to do it!

text by Jason Flores-Williams

about JFW
Jason Flores-Williams believes that creative resistance is the new relevant art. Subvert everything, nothing deserves to stand! We must produce culture that is beyond their cooption. We have to fight The Man on his own turf. JFW wrote the High Times' Call To Resistance, which was at the center of the 2004 Republican National Convention protests in New York City. His novel "The Last Stand of Mr. America," has been a controversial cult hit and got him banned from reading at Columbia University. JFW is a frequent contributor to the Brooklyn Rail, is currently in law school, and has organized protests all over America.

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