There is a city that you can keep out of your everyday life as possible: tourist Berlin. What should one experience in barren places like the Mall of Berlin or the boulevard Unter den Linden? The collectively produced (Stuart Middleton, Richard Sides and Angharad Williams with 3 fragments, Iris Bauer and Theo Burt) room, sound and video installation "Bug out" in the project space gallery crooked teeth goes the opposite way and draws the tourist route in fast motion Middle up. Also successful is the thematic-psychedelic diamond pattern carpet, made of discarded floor coverings, which the artists have recently fished out of a container behind the Martin-Gropius-Bau (until September 5th, only by appointment: info@schiefe-zaehne.com , Schliemannstrasse 37).

BUG OUT

Video forms the main fabric of BUG OUT, a split screen documented journey snaking through Berlin’s tourist locations. 

Interspersed throughout the timeline is footage sourced from the internet that relates to our conversations around high and low class modes of travel, fake news, tourist behaviour and hyper-mechanical reproduction. 

The different temporalities of tourism - the city-break; live/work ex-pat cultural class; overseas experiencer all reveal contradictions embedded in the fabled journey of ‘finding one’s self’. 

Reproducing the same images of the same locations. The Eiffel Tower exists on countless SD cards, and is scattered all over the internet. Why leave the house? 

We collaboratively wrote a monologue taking inspiration from the relentless, in-character trip taken by actor Kip Pardue as “Viktor”, directed by Roger Avary for the 2002 film, Rules of Attraction (based on the Brett Easton Ellis book of the same name). “Viktor takes a trip” - to Europe, and the hedonistic montage reveals an privileged college student.  As the ultimate experiencer, he kills time until encounters manifest themselves. A self induced existential crisis concludes his trip. “I no longer know who I am, and I feel like the ghost of a total stranger.“

Trust the tale not the teller. 

Different creative processes respond to these ideas in a variety of ways. Iris Bauer (alobhe) was invited to make audio works in response to footage sourced from the internet as well as contributing an audio visual clip of a festival campsite at the break of dawn. Cut-up day-tripper narratives are seen overlaid with a chopped and screwed frenetic audio mix. 

From 2005-2010, frictions between young local gangs in the suburbs of Glasgow and across the Scottish central belt (yung teams, fleeto(s), sqwads) bled onto YouTube, in the form of diss (as in disrespect) mixes and photo montages. Hardcore rather than hiphop provides the backing for call-outs between groups, fuelling/enjoying the conflict. In their original format these uploads are characterised by their spontaneous low fidelity. Theo Burt has selected and meticulously edited the audio components as well as transcribing the vocals. 

Athens based musician 3fragments (Marion Goix) has contributed in the form of a mix comprising of field recording, original music and a testimony which threads through the video both with visuals and without.

Duration approx. 32 mins, includes audio and visual.




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Wake up at 4am with my Nokia phone alarm after two hours sleep. 

Pack my bag for the 5th time and decide to not pack my vegan johnnies. 

Leave the flat at 4:25am forgot my st. Christopher hanging on my side of the bed. 

I'm not usually so superstitious - I don't wear it in Glasgow because of sectarianism. 

Plus, I'm not a catholic.

I turn back. 

Cycle 7 miles to the airport on a mountain bike stuck in one gear because I didn't have money for a cab.

Stole a cheese and onion sandwich from wh smith and got paranoid that I was being followed by an undercover cop who turned out to be an American.  

People come from America to find their relatives in glasgow ship logbooks. 

They wanna know where they’re really from. 

The airport was full men on stag dos, everyone has tattoos now.

I frogmarch to the bathroom and the toilet speaks to me about its job, we laugh and have a nice conversation. 

I don’t wanna leave. 

I stare at the departures board, someone is repeating my name over the tanoy - this is the last call. 

I make my flight, just. 

We land, people clap. 

I jump an RE-7 train to town, I don’t buy a ticket but I’ve been warned the controllers are brutal. 

I hedge my bets.  

I try to call my friends, my phone wouldn't work so i went to Alexanderplatz and ate an xl curry wurst and chips.

Watch as a man crawled out of a photoautomat on all fours like a dog. Covered in curry sauce.  

Hire a bike for fifteen euros and ride around for a little bit before I get to my air b n b. 

The host welcomes me at the door wearing a chefs hat. 

Hotels are over. 

He tells me I haven’t booked for the first night, I don’t sweat it. 

I take the wifi code and download tinder. 

Air b n b is over. 

I link with my friends on the street and we cruise the hot spots. 

Saw Madame Toussauds. Saw the Brandenburg gate. Saw loads of weird Nazi stickers on street boulders. 

There is no shelter from the sun and it’s hot as blazes. 

The streets are wide - almost became road kill.

We ate sushi for lunch, someone else ordered. It tasted like the sea and trash. 

How do they make fish eggs green?

A Roma woman next to a memorial asks me in perfect English for my signature on a piece of paper. 

She’s really looking for a donation, I decline. 

An old man emerges on his bike from a hedge. He stops me and is pissed at the “gypsy” and tries hard to say “fraud” but some other word keeps coming out. 

I laugh and walk away. 

People like telling you what to do here. 

Which sucks. 

Meet a chicks with chainsaws model at Hitlers bunker. It’s now a car park. 

She sells me an ounce of MDMA.  

Bosh some off some rusty keys. She tags on. 

We go to find a postcard but they all had union jacks on them. Weird. 

Wandered around, buy a Toblerone ice-cream and it looks like the dick shape of a guy I fucked once. 

Met a friend. 

Went to some art exhibition. 

Weave around loads of hot thin rich people dressed like poor people with greasy hair. 

Didn't get what the fuck it was about but got into an argument about Steve jobs with a girl from New York and went back to her place 

did a load of coke but didn't feel anything 

Forgot Chainsaw was with me, try to initiate a threesome - I am really alone. 

Chainsaw tells me there are theories that pose that our bodies are just genes needing to propagate, so I’m done with the day. 

We wander to a superclub. My friends leave me. 

She tells me there are sex rooms. 

I put my thumb in her mouth, she is shocked by the taste but not for long. 

We queue for three hours, I get bored and ditch Chainsaw. 

This city never sleeps.

Bumped into an Indian chick in the park sitting on a table tennis table, we made out and she let me eat half of her falafel wrap, we went back to hers but the flatmate was in and she freaked out and I had to leave. 

I stand outside a closed Starbucks and Surf tinder. A guy picks me up in a rented Lamborghini but he had shaved armpits so I had to bail.