Jarrar is participating in this year’s 7th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (on view until July 1, 2012, free entrance) with a further aspect of the project that uses another official sign: postage stamps. In utilizing the Deutsche Post AG service called “individual stamp”, the artist produced stamps for the State of Palestine to be used in the regular mail. More than 20,000 stamps have been sold so far. Used on letters and postcards, they have circulated worldwide. Central element of the design is the Palestine Sunbird. It embodies the wish to create an open, independent country guaranteeing freedom to everyone to carry one’s life in one’s hand.

Jarrar’s passport and postage stamps tell the story of a state-to-be. But reality goes against him and other Palestinians. Instead of continuing again and again the discussion about a one- or two-state solution, using these stamps is a simple gesture that helps to create normality.

Read an interview with the artist by David Miller here.

You can buy the stamps at the counter of the 7th Berlin Biennale. To order stamps please contact fz@berlinbiennale.de. Against a small surcharge, the standard stamps of 0,55 Euro were produced with the “individual stamp” service of Deutsche Post AG and are valid for regular mailing. One sheet of 20 stamps costs 16 Euro (plus additional shipping fee for mail order of 1,45 Euro). Stamps are sold by sheet only.

Certainly not a new approach is the proposed ‘Rewarding Life’s Work’ Law scheduled for 2013, which will force freelancers from the very beginning of their career to pay a fixed tax of at least a monthly €350 into the country’s pension system – a tax that increases with age, but is not related to your income. Needless to say, this will have some crucial effects on Germany’s cultural landscape. We are not politicians, and it’s not that we know the answers to a huge problem, but we do know that a magazine like mono.kultur would not exist if such a tax were in place.

Find out more here, or if you are registered in Germany, sign the petition for stopping the ‘Rewarding Life’s Work’ tax here.

The Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland (JRMiP) calls for the return of 3,300,000 Jews to Poland in order to re-establish the annihilated Jewish community. The movement was initiated by Israeli-born artist Yael Bartana in 2007 and has since spread internationally. It aims to create an atmosphere for a Jewish appearance in Europe. The Jews of today are not the same people who were expelled from Europe—the Europeans of today are not the ones responsible for the ethnic cleansing. This may be the appropriate time to unite again—and change Europe and Israel for the better.

The JRMiP is a response to these times of crisis, when faith has been exhausted and old utopias have failed. The aim of the First Congress of the JRMiP is to ultimately formulate the concrete platform of the movement and collectively imagine the future. The three-day long gathering departs from a letter of the late leader of the movement, Sławomir Sierakowski, found after his assassination, and considers the following questions:

- What should be changed in the EU to welcome the Other?
- What should be changed in Poland to become part of the revived EU?
- What should be changed in Israel to become part of the Middle East?

For the first time since its foundation, JRMiP members assemble, joined by international speakers, to reflect upon particular demands. The movement needs all of you who sympathize with the issues of different Diasporas in general.

Watch the official promo video here.

First International Congress of the Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland (JRMiP) in Berlin
May 11 – 13, 2012
Daily from 3 – 10.30 pm
Hebbel am Ufer – HAU 1 , Stresemannstrasse 29, 10963 Berlin
In the frame of the 7th Berlin Biennale
More Information on the Congress / Program / Tickets

But none does achieve the curiously moving balance between distance and empathy like Berlin-based photographer Tobias Zielony, who has spent the last few years hanging around the abandoned outskirts of Western industrialization, spending time with what during the Paris riots French president Sarkozy famously dubbed racaille – trash. The results show a different kind of youth, or rather the regular kind of youth, the one we tend to look away from and quicken our steps – disillusioned, bored, normal. But real people, who happened to be born into different circumstances than the academic middle class that we might be used to. It’s grand and honest work.

His latest series, Manitoba, documents the native indigenous youth in the Canadian province, lost between the two cultures of their ancestors and modern life. The photographs are on view at Berlin’s KOW gallery until April 15, with a presentation of the accompanying book published by the indefatigable Spector Books, at Motto on April 12.

Tobias Zielony: Manitoba

KOW Berlin
Brunnenstrasse 9
10119 Berlin

Photography by Tobias Zielony

What is the European Union’s official strategy towards Belarus? What are the political and economic expectations for Belarus and, also, for the new candidate countries? What is required and what are the possible consequences? The example of Poland shows us how the very process of transformation and neoliberal reforms in politics and business impacts the social life, now we can take a critical look on it and raise questions. What would be the lessons for today Belarus and other countries where transformation processes has just already started? Can we imagine a different scenario of political and economic transformation?

Today, March 20, 2012, 7 pm:
Political Transformation (into Democracy)
Krytyka Politycna in Berlin #5
Event in the frame of the 7th Berlin Biennale
KW Institute for Contemporary Art , Auguststrasse 69, 10117 Berlin

With:
Olga Karatch (Director of the nongovernmental organization ‘Nasz Dom’)
Marina Naprushkina (Artist, Director of The Office Antipropaganda)
Gisela Neunhoffer (Author „Neoliberal Hegemony: A Global Critique”)
Martin Schibli (Curator, Kalmar konstmuseum)
Agnieszka Wiśniewska (Krytyka Polityczna)
Moderated by Zdravka Bajovic (7th Berlin Biennale)

Admission: 1 Euro

Photo of Cairo by Joanna Warsza

Probably, you have already met Candy, a fashion magazine celebrating transvestism, transexuality, crossdressing and androgyny. The cover with James Franco, shot by Terry Richardson was a big thing for the press. Fanzine137 is a fanzine – as it is understood from the name -published by the same editor Luis Venegas. As Candy, Fanzine137 is self published and limited edition.

Dodo received her formal education at the prestigious Schule Reimann and went on to become a successful costume and fashion illustrator. She reached the peak of her artistic career in the years 1927 to 1929, when she created a string of caricaturally drawn, brightly coloured gouaches for the Berlin-based satirical weekly Ulk. These pictures depicted the mondaine life of the modern urban socialite, as well as the increasing alienation of the sexes. With sharp contours, oscillating between Art Déco and the New Objectivity, Dodo managed to capture the essence of the cosmopolitan lifestyle of the late twenties with which she was so intimately familiar.

This first retrospective, presented by the Art Library in Berlin, features around 120 of her works from all periods of her life: mondaine fashion illustration, illustrations for Ulk, her ‘pictures of the unconscious’ (created in Zurich in 1933 while undergoing psychoanalysis), illustrations for Jewish magazines and works created in exile in London.

Opening tonight, February 29, 7 pm:
Dodo (1907–1998) – A Life in Pictures
Dates: March 1 – May 28, 2012
Art Library
Matthäikirchplatz
10785 Berlin

Image: Dodo, “In der Loge” for the satirical weekly Ulk, 1929

Martin Zet

One month after the call for donations Krytyka Polityczna—media partner of the 7th Berlin Biennale—organizes a debate at KW Institute for Contemporary Art that contextualizes this incident and the extreme reactions. In light of the discussion about right-wing demagogic tendencies in Europe the panelists will talk about Zet’s original intention and offer a critical dialogue with the audience.

Tonight, February 20, 2012, 7 pm:
Krytyka Polityczna in Berlin #3
A debate on the occasion of Martin Zet’s campaign ‘Deutschland schafft es ab’
Debate in English, free admission
KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Auguststrasse 69, 10117 Berlin

With:
- Ingo Arend (taz – die tageszeitung)
- Stéphane Bauer (Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien)
- Sebastian Wehrhahn (Mobile Beratung gegen Rechtsextremismus Berlin)
- Koray Yilmaz-Günay (specialist for migration, Rosa Luxemburg Foundation)
- Artur Żmijewski and Joanna Warsza (7th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art)
Moderated by Igor Stokfiszewski (Krytyka Polityczna)

Photo: Artist Martin Zet

A message from Hamish Fulton, walking artist:
“I think that global warming comes about as a result of the fact that we don’t consider other life forms. We think: only humans. Obviously it’s a stupid point to make, but the Internet only applies to human beings. You can’t have ants using the Internet. It is something that is incredibly human-based, and so, for example, you can watch a very beautifully filmed wildlife film about Antarctica or the North Pole, and you’re sitting on a seat, watching this amazingly filmed presentation of polar bears and so on – but the question is: what good does that do, other than being amazed at the life of polar bears, or even more amazed at the camera people; the skills of the camera people become sort of the overriding story, then the bears, then global warming, and all the time we’re sitting there and watching this.”