The cinema lobby is a celebrated space of gossip. While waiting in line or drinking some wine, people typically like to utilize their time to exchange gossip – far from trivial, such gossip is the productive stuff out of which relationships and reputations are made or unmade and new possibilities of difference are envisioned. In order to enable this, CHEAP – Tim Blue, Daniel Hendrickson, Susanne Sachße, and Marc Siegel, Special Guest: Vaginal Davis – will work a glamorous circular cocktail bar in the austere silver Filmhaus Atrium, there will be a lovely boutique with CHEAP products and specially selected beauty accessories. Daily "Beauty Moments" will feature various stars of underground glamour, from Kreuzberg to Winnipeg. Twice a day our television monitors will show critical artist responses to the aesthetics and forms of the mass media by Team Ping Pong and Birgit Hein. b_books presents stimulating works of literature, theory, or cultural criticism. Drink, chat, accessorize, watch, read: Get more out of life! Come to the Gossip Studio!
Family Pictures, Rooftop Garden Films, and Peep Shows
Next to the Gossip Studio, in the Red Foyer, there is a photo exhibition of the New York celebrity photographer, Sam Siegel (1917–2000), Marc Siegel's grandfather. A video by Vaginal Davis comments on these pictures. On the opposite side of the foyer we are showing the unedited footage that Danny Williams shot in Andy Warhol's factory. Williams was the uncle of Esther B. Robinson and the cameraman and boyfriend of Warhol. He disappeared without a trace in 1966. Next to this is the "Rooftop Garden", in which we are showing films by Marie Losier, Vaginal Davis (La Petite Tokinoise), and Shannon Plumb (Paper Collection, 2007). Marie Losier's films can also be seen in the cinema at the opening (Eat My Makeup!, 2005, Flying Saucey!, 2006) and the closing (Manuelle Labor, 2007, with Guy Maddin's hands). Gossip has always belonged to the cinema. Two works by Daniel Eisenberg and Michael Brynntrup not only recall early peep show formats, but also the original voyeuristic potential of cinema.
