Kinderhook & Caracas is a project space in Berlin run by artists Sol Calero and Christopher Kline. It is named after the two artist’s hometowns; Caracas, Venezuela and Kinderhook, New York. Their program focuses on the presentation of solo exhibitions and collaborative research projects with an emphasis on creating a cohesive, in-depth, new body of work and ever-changing methodology in order to develop projects which might not be exhibited otherwise.
From January 2016 until summer 2018 Kinderhook & Caracas has devoted their program the project called Conglomerate, a collaborative Gesamtkunstwerk, an online, artist-run TV Network produced in collaboration with artists and filmmakers Ethan Hayes-Chute, Derek Howard and Dafna Maimon. The creators release blocks of content featuring guest artist contributions and original segments on www.conglomerate.tv and curated a series of TV-sets as exhibitions at Kinderhook & Caracas, and in other exhibition spaces such as David Dale Gallery, Glasgow; 1646, The Hague; Tenderpixel, London or Peles Empire, Berlin. Conglomerate acts as a producer of original programs, also inviting additional Berlin-based and international artists to realize their own segments, sets, commercials and specials for the network. Mixing diverse content ranging from melodrama, documentary, comedy, interview, music, and art into a unified body of 30-minute blocks composed of recurring shows and one-off segments broadcasted on the web.
Through the multiple ways the different elements and modes of collaboration are woven together, the blocks form a kind of network of voices, perspectives, relations, skills, and collective affective labor. The varying degrees of involvement of Conglomerate’s makers and contributors create platforms within platforms, or artworks within artworks, where one artist’s practice can be featured within another’s. This flexibility and continuous shifting of vision and responsibility from maker to maker offers a new potential model for the sustainable and independent realization of larger art projects.
www.conglomerate.tv
http://www.kinderhook-caracas.com
