Phil Collins Exhibition, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany - In every dream home a heartache

Phil Collins,  In every dream home a heartache
Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany
April 18 - July 21, 2013

For his upcoming exhibition at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany, the artist PHIL COLLINS is producing a new piece “my heart’s in my hand, and my hand is pierced, and my hand’s in the bag, and the bag is shut, and my heart is caught ” in collaboration with guests of GULLIVER, a homeless centre located in the centre of Cologne. There, Phil Collins installed a phone booth with a free line that anyone could use for unlimited international calls, the only condition being an agreement that the conversations were recorded. The collected material, which was then posted to a group of international musicians, served as the basis for a compilation of original new songs which will be presented in the exhibition as 7” vinyl records in specifically designed sound booths, into which the visitors can retreat, alongside a selection of video installations and photographs from recent years. 

PHIL COLLINS

Rude Boys, Leith Street #1, 2011

Lightjet print on Fuji Crystal Archive, 70 x 70 cm.

Courtesy Shady Lane Productions.

Having grown up in Runcorn, North England in the 70s and 80s, Phil Collins’ main interests lie in music, TV, and pop culture in general, originating in that time. In his films and photographs, he investigates the relationship between man and camera and the characteristics of the respective media in their everyday context. By instrumentalizing the apparatus of popular culture, he uses mass media strategies and critically applies them to an artistic context. His focus is always on direct engagement with ordinary people, who occupy center stage in his project-like videos, photographs, and sound pieces. Phil Collins travels to remote places—frequently scenes of political conflict— that fascinate him because of the changes taking place there. He uses newspaper ads and castings to encourage locals to participate in his work, especially people following their own agenda in encounters that often possess a high emotional charge.

Phil Collins is confronting today’s short-lived and noncommittal communication per text messages and constant short calls from smart phone to smart phone with an analogue and slowed-down factor, which is emphasized further through the use of the almost anachronistic medium of the vinyl record.

PHIL COLLINS

This Unfortunate Thing Between Us, 2011

Installation view, Artes Mundi 5, Chapter Art Centre, Cardiff, 2012.

Courtesy Shady Lane Productions.

PHIL COLLINS

This Unfortunate Thing Between Us, 2011

Installation view, Artes Mundi 5, Chapter Art Centre, Cardiff, 2012.

Photo: Robin Maggs.

Courtesy Shady Lane Productions & Artes Mundi 5.

Phil Collins collaborators have included men and women whose lives have been ruined by reality TV (The Return of the Real, 2006), who have had unpleasant experiences as a result of TV shopping (This Unfortunate Thing Between Us, 2011), or who have performed karaoke versions of songs by The Smiths in various parts of the world (The World Won’t Listen, 2005). 

PHIL COLLINS

the world won't listen, 2004-2007

Three-channel synchronised video installation; colour, sound; 56 min.

Production still, Gedung Medeka, Bandung, 2007.

Courtesy Shady Lane Productions.

Never judgmental, Phil Collins’s work reflects his interest in the formats and forms employed by the entertainment industry and in the personal consequences that its treatment of the individual can have. The artist is producing a new piece for his show at the Museum Ludwig. It requires the participation of local inhabitants and features collaborations with various musicians from all over Germany.

Exhibition curator: Anna Brohm

The exhibition is supported by Stiftung Kunstfonds. 

“my heart’s in my hand, and my hand is pierced, and my hand’s in the bag, and the bag is shut, and my heart is caught ” is a supported project of the Academy of the Arts of the World.

MUSEUM LUDWIG, COLOGNE
Heinrich-Böll-Platz - 50667 Köln
Museum website: www.museum-ludwig.de

Other post about this artist: Phil Collins at Cornerhouse Manchester 2010

Phil Collins – Cornerhouse, Manchester

Phil Collins
Cornerhouse, Manchester
Through 20 November 2010

Just as it was mandatory in British schools to attend Bible lessons, in Soviet Russia, Yugoslavia or East Germany, Marxism was a central part of the curriculum. I’d often wondered about this. What had happened to the Marxist teachers now? Were they teaching business studies? -- PHIL COLLINS

Marxism Today is a film project by British artist Phil Collins. It takes as its starting point the Marxism classes that were a compulsory feature of East German schools prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, investigating what became of the teachers of this subject after Marxist ideology became increasingly discredited and after the teachers themselves became surplus to requirements. 

After extensive research, Collins located many former Marxist-Leninist teachers from across the former German Democratic Republic. From the ones that came forward, the artist selected three women – Andrea Ferber, Petra Mgoza-Zeckay and Marianne Klotz – to be the subject of a 35-minute film, called marxism today (prologue), which launched to considerable acclaim at the Berlin Biennale in June, and will have its UK premiere at Cornerhouse, in October 2010.

Combining interviews with these women in their homes or current workplace with archive footage from the heyday of the socialist state, Collins’ film considers the ramifications of the social and political transformations of the past two decades from a human perspective, and with a generous and engaging sense of empathy. We learn that one of the interviewees switched from introducing students to the principles of Marxist/Leninist philosophy to setting up a dating agency for intellectuals, while another refuses, on principle, to eat bananas or drink Coca-Cola to this day.

The second phase of the project shifts its attention from former East Germany to Manchester, where Marx’s confidant Friedrich Engels wrote his influential ‘The Condition of the Working Class in England’ in the late nineteenth century. While Marxism Today: Prologue is exhibited at Cornerhouse, as part of the AND Festival, Collins will be in the city for a series of workshops and events, and preparing for a second stage of filming. For this next chapter of the project, Film and Video Umbrella and Cornerhouse will bring three of the Marxist-Leninist teachers to Manchester to give an introduction to Marxism at a state school, a private school and a religious school.

Collins will follow the lives of students and teachers at these schools through the eyes of the visitors, recording the reaction of pupils and parents to the lessons of this apparently discounted political creed. In the context of the recent global financial crisis, what kind of conversation will emerge from this encounter, and how do issues of class, labour and economic value figure in the lives of young people now?

marxism today is funded by Cornerhouse (Manchester), the Berlin Biennial 6 and DAAD Berliner Kuenstlerprogramm, Film and Video Umbrella (London) and Abandon Normal Devices (AND).

PHIL COLLINS was born in Runcorn, UK in 1970 and currently lives and works in Berlin. The artist earned his B.A. at the University of Manchester and received his M.F.A. from the University of Ulster, School of Art & Design, Belfast. Recent solo exhibitions include the world won’t listen, Tramway, Glasgow (2009), Aspen Art Museum, Colorado (2008), Dallas Museum of Art, Texas (2007), Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2007), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA (2006), Tate Britain, London (2006-7), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2006). Recent group exhibitions include The Making of Art, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2009), Acting Out: Social Experiments in Video, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2009), Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality and the Moving Image. Part II: Realisms, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington (2008), Life On Mars, 55th Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2008), Double Agent, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2008). Phil Collins was nominated for the 2006 Turner Prize.

CORNERHOUSE, MANCHESTER

70 Oxford Street, Manchester, M1 5NH

www.cornerhouse.org

2 October - 20 November 2010