our box is never too full

Our friends from Zirkumflex launched yesterday a new project called "DEGNI DI NOTA. Design in Italy in critical times". Part of the DMY here in Berlin, the project brings stories and objects by Alfonso Cantafora, Esploratori dello Spazio, esterni (with Jair Straschnow & Wouter Nieuwendijk), Francesco Faccin, Sonia Pedrazzini e Servomuto.

Tonight they will have an opening reception from 7pm at Zirkumflex gallery (Fontanestraße 25) - a good option for the people who will be around for the DMY at Tempelhof.

You can view the project from Monday to Saturday, at 2pm - 9pm until the 18th of June. You can also (and I really recommend it) participate, discuss and contribute to the discussion with designers and critics on Friday the 3rd, Saturday the 4th and Sunday the 6th, at 3pm - 7pm.

Find more details on the Event Page on Facebook.

Olá Minders, ciao Boxers!

Long time since our last post here... even longer since our last experience! But no worries... we are still here, we just decided to take the next step and bring a much more exciting and mind blowing event. Let's call it The Event by now...

Meanwhile we all have projects on our own that we like to share with you (so you will realize that we weren't just enjoying the sun - or the cold - in our absence).

Michela, the smiley girl, got sometime for her own back on her home land, Italy - but just for a while. She has been busy travelling around everywhere looking for "special creatures" hanging on the trees around the cities. The name of those sweet and funny creatures is "Le Giovanne Rampanti". You can find out more about them at its Facebook Page - if you find one in your city, please take a picture and send us!!!

Our sweet Elisa has been busy with her photography path... she has a blog which is a platform for her projects and photographs, specially her adorable project LONG DAYS’ JOURNEY INTO NIGHT.

This project is a visual journey from reality to abstraction, a dialogue between her and the others, from day to night and all the way back, from parties to loneliness, from the beauty of human bodies to dreamy landscapes, from the distorted view of the faded eye to the sharpness of the moment (the blog is a must see, seriously boys&girls, you have to check out the Fading Focus)!

Our adorable communications girl, Sabine just started up her own PR agency last year called Maia and did PR for people like spot galerie, joco agentur für kommunikationsdesign, night delight, and work as a pr-agent for clients like Vodafone, Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, Paul van Dyck . Also she has been working as a freelance writer and started a new job in a nice PR agency in Mitte. WOW the girl has been busy!

Our favorite Brazilian, Rica, has been taking some time off to take care of his personal projects and also to go back to school - the lazy mind is the house of the Devil, as our grandmas used to say... hehehe He is gonna be the responsable for this blog for now on... So let's help him and send anything interesting that worth be published here, such as nice events, cool places, interesting people profiles and amazing art, design and music! Just drop him an email to [email protected] telling what's the jewel about and he will do the rest!

So my crazy Berliners (and all the other "-ers" around the world!) enjoy the beginning of the Summer (or the Winter, depending where you are...) and we see us soon ok?!

Don't forget to send us some love from time to time on our Facebook Page and our Facebook Profile as well!

The Kunsthochschule Weißensee, founded in 1946, has obviously a long tradition. It´s in the vanguard of sculpture, stage and costume design, painting, fashion design, product design, textile and surface design and visual communication.

One of the unique and defining features of the Berlin Weissensee School of Art is the fact that all students attend a one-year interdisciplinary art foundation course together. This foundation course is principally oriented towards the perception and visualisation of humans and their environment. With this educational background Lisa Spengler and Moa Hallgren worked for their Diploma project on their object-project REMÖTIL. The libertines created a furniture-object collection composed of founded old clothes and thrown away furniture from Berlin’s streets. Getting back to their original they suceed in giving the waste a new value.

Wait and see REMÖTIL objects during our next event. Those who can´t wait after all, this much can be said, Lisa and Moa will sell some hand-made products on 12th December from 1.00-8.00 pm at the christmas market at Wostel, Hobrechtstr. 66 (between Lenau- and Weserstr.), Berlin.

Dear readers and friends,

it´s our one year anniversary this month. As we´re getting emotional while christmas it´s time for a melancholy, confident reflection and acknowledgment.

During a year of hard work, discussions, experiences, coalescent team-spirit, personal encounters with individuals, artists and creatives we grew and backdated we´re proud of becoming a baseline of modern culture in Berlin. For something with an incredibly low rate of money and an incredibly high rate of ideologies we´re a big step forward. We took a trip to Salone del Mobile in April to relaunch our association, redesigned our logo, had a one-night-stand at Tammen Galerie, got supported by the local press and tried to establish a next level connection between culture and design, where we encourage the art-goer to break out of the passive, “white box” gallery-malaise and get hands sticky. We found the common denominator for a collective art experience - independent of your extraction, education, nation or social status - the famous ArtyFun Sessions. We want to adhere to this disposition.

First year of Mind the Box draws to a close. But a rolling stone gathers no moss! Anyone who’s ever suffered one night with us knows we´re bubbling over with ideas. Lively Mind the Box expands, refines and puts out its feelers. We´re always good for a new surprise. Thanks to all of you very, very early birds, who realised the potential of Mind the Box and followed the sound of hushed pitter-patter of our little feet coming down the streets of Berlin. We´re getting louder and louder… we promise!

Ciao a tutti!

Last week we went to Milan, Italy to took part of the Think Tank Music Festival, bringing the Berlin's energy and creativity to our Milanese fellows to experience.

It was a pity that the snow didn't let Travis join us with his fabric installation workshop, but Pappbrille did a very good job by its own! The table was packed with the Italian heat all night long! The people fell in love with the concept and created the most fashionable paper glasses ever.

Also there was there 2 great berliners performances, one by Justin F. Kennedy presenting for the first time in Italy the performance "Mimesis", a very intense work about the body's mimesis. The other was presented by Marek Berlin, which presented us with a very cool performance mixing body moves and video projections in front of white balloons wall. Both artists were supported by Felipe and his amazing videos.

To keep the "tradition" of MtB events besides all the experience and fun, we had also live bands all nights playing at the festival, very well organized we have to say.

That was our first journey... where should we go next?

Due to our mission to become an international cultural patron Mind the Box makes an inital step in this direction. We are invited by the Think Tank Festival 2010 in Milan.

Think Tank is a new-born music festival based in Milan. The international music award provides international young, independent musicians an experimental ground and at the same time an important platform to show their talent. The musical talents face up the scrutiny of an international noted jury consisting of Curt Smith (Tears for Fears), Jimmy Destri (Blondie), Roger O'Donnell (The Cure) and many more. Besides the musical challenge several art performances and exciting exhibitions curated by different organizations will expect the inquiring audience over a period time of 5 days. MtB will join Spazio concept to select the art part for the final night on the 3rd of December 2010. To proceed as normal our guests await the obligatory live music part plus most prominent DJs and a bar to keep things lively.

Our two former artists Travis J. MEINOLF and PAPPBRILLE by Cantemir Gheorghiu will bring the creative energy of Berlin to the italian city. Meet them and our team on 3rd December 2010 at Think Tank Milan!

Live Forum - Mediolanum Forum Via G.Di Vittorio 6, Assago (MI)
 Parcheggio Gratuito Park B

some rights reserved by ToriMBC

Mara Goldwyn, writer and journalist from Berlin, met two of the Mind the Box-Team to do an interview for ArtSlant Berlin. ArtSlant is a contemporary art network. The portal is open to the contemporary art community. Since their opening in February 2007 they have been bringing the best in art buzz and events on a city-by-city basis to the web.

Elisa Longhi and Rica Amaral talked about the essence of MtB, our theme of interacitvity, about Berlin and its art-scene.

The artist Toms GRINBERGS lives and works in Berlin. After graduating Riga Art and Design school for furniture design and stage design at the Latvian Academy of Art, GRINBERGS became a freelance artist. Since then he expresses himself in various kinds of techniques and forms of art. His work in collaboration with Peteris Kimelis and the "Authors Collective" involved real-time video, audio and performance elements. He took part in several exhibitions. He works as stage designers assistant at the Berliner Volksbühne.

Dorit BIALER lives and works in Berlin. As an artist with a graphic background, the two are inseperable to her. Her projects are using a thriving method in the 2010 art and design world - info graphics. Telling a story through quantity information and facts, while visualizing them in colours, shapes and illustrations.

Her newly project "HELLO, I WANT TO STUDY YOUR LOVE HABITS" is a socioloy research during the exhibition at our ArtyFun Session#03. The viewers are the artists and the test subjects at the same time. The information that is gathered creates the artpiece and the visual effect. So what was your love habit again?

Chun-Chi WANG is a Taiwanese artist based in Berlin. She uses interactive video installations, performance, photography and all the current tools of the digital image to study the new relationship between humans and technology. The work of her reveals the excess of mechanization and virtualization in the post-modern world, in which speed of progress supersedes humanity and sensibility in power and control. Her works have been shown widely on the net and in international exhibitions throughout Europe, USA and Asia.

The video installation "I like Nighttime" she´ll present during our next ArtyFun Session#03 is a short film about forgetting and memory. Uses a fictional voice text, attempting from the perspective of narrator to depict the low-swooping curtain of Taipei. The whole city becomes a screen for the film. Through the camera lens, the city night presents different appearances, quiet and raucous, creating immense room for the viewer’s imagination.

BANGA is back at the next ArtyFun Session#03...

BANGA is made from 60% water and 40% spirit. Working with the water element within this pure drink we aim to enrich and charge BANGA with positive energetic properties.

It is already known that water has properties that enable it to take on special subtle qualities found only within the sub atomic patterns. These patterns interact with water patterns found in the human organism, thus changing the vibrations of intracellular energy.

Energise your BANGA with thoughts, words and emotions!

Game “CURE the BANGA”:

You can “charge” or “cure” the BANGA with your thoughts. Just hold the container and think of something – and put it back. Write the ideas that you thought on a small piece of paper. This will then be used to charge BANGA for the next people playing.

The artists behind BANGA:

Linards KULLESS + Juste KOSTIKOVAITE live and work in Berlin. Linards KULLESS studied arts in Riga. He works with video, photography and instalation art. The artistic playground of Linards includes theater performances, new media, outfit and interior concepts. In his art projects one can find ethnographic influence, esoteric knowledge and modern human search for identity.

Dear Friends, Berlin, melting pot for the mixing of different people, foreign cultures and various districts - colourful and diverse. But what makes this city with you? Are you a fallen victim to the whims of foreign interests? We will help to find it out. Kicking off this forthcoming night the monthly ArtyFun Session#03 comes back! Enter this world... Seeing inflationary horn-rimmed glasses you now can join in the Berlin-Mitte-Style by creating your own PAPPBRILLE. Tongue-in-cheek you should break up with this chichi fashion dictate by attending BANGA, a shamanic platform for the creation of energetic potions. And who knows, maybe you´ll feel up to enter THE ROOM OF FORTUNE which throws a glance at your fateful future? This should motivate you to open up your visual gaze for the interactive info graphic action. By a bunch of strings your thoughts and imaginations gathered will mould the art piece and visual effect. Don´t rest on your simple viewer position like a vegetable, you´re the test subjects!

8 pm > doors open "info graphics" - live action > Dorit BIALER "i like nighttime" - video installation > Chun-Chi WANG "banga" - vodka cure performance > Linards KULLESS + Juste KOSTIKOVAITE "the room of fortune" - live performance > Toms GRINBERGS "pappbrille" - workshop > Cantemir GHEORGHIU Live Concert Onyx ASHANTI + DJ Set Performances and workshop going on all night

Mind the Box and EeMIL KARILA present: "One-Night-Stand With The Gallery" For one night we take over GALERIE TAMMEN in Friedrichstraße. Quite unexpectedly you gain experience through an eventful night of interventions and performances and artpieces by the visual artist EeMIL KARILA. 7.30 pm > doors open exhibition of videos, paintings and drawings by EeMIL KARILA 9 pm > dance performance "Das Sofa" by MICHELE GATTA + MOTOKO YOKOTA coreographie by LOLA LUSTOSA + EeMIL KARILA 9.30 pm > cabaret by JACK WOODHEAD + JESSICA GADANI 10 pm - 3 am > DJ set by DJ ROLEX, DJ PJOTOR + TUHMA JANNE Let us face it: Through globalization and the unlimited civil liberty of each individual we sometimes get lost. The pivotal question we should respond to is "What do I believe in?" Therefore we bring a night of self reflection and challenge. The exhibiton will be the impetus to dare. Think about your role in the world and your ideas. Show us your vision, your personal ideology by using the disposable cameras, white boards and the voice recorder provided in the gallery rooms. Your thoughts, pictures and voice statements create the "Ideology Of The Night". All visual and verbal comments collected and combined will set up a video. This video will be available online. It´s your voice. So let´s get loud!