July 20, 2020

April Gertler, social practice artist & founder of PICTURE BERLIN residency | EP28 Subtext & Discourse

48 minutes

April Gertler is an American artist who has been living and working in Berlin since 2005. She studied at University California, Berkeley (BA, Social Science Interdisciplinary Studies - Hons), California College of the Arts (BFA - Photography) and Bard College (MFA - Photography). April did an exchange semester at the Städelschule in Frankfurt/Main, which is what initially brought her to Germany. After finishing her MFA, she returned to Frankfurt and subsequently moved to Berlin.

April's work is preoccupied with the idea of the communal experience of a moment as an access point. That access point has taken a variety of forms including lecture performance with the sharing of baked goods, one night bars and exhibitions in additional to collaborative durational walks.

She has exhibited and taught internationally. In 2009, April started a peer-to-peer knowledge exchange art program PICTURE BERLIN for international artists. The program has developed into multiple programs each year. Last year (2019) marked 10 years of the program and April and her team were awarded a significant Hauptstadtkulturfond from the Ministry of Culture for the project INTERIORS TO BEING, a month long festival of performance, exhibitions, walks and discussions which celebrated the alumni and participating artists from PICTURE BERLIN over the years.

Since the start of PICTURE BERLIN, April has been simultaneously working on her own practice which has included other performative and curatorial projects such as Sonntag and TAKE THE CAKE - a hybrid baking show and lecture performance. In the Fall of 2020 April will be opening a new project space in Neukölln called WIRWIR, with Adrian Schiesser.

April's most recent projects include the Sonntag Book, an overview of Sonntag - a collaborative project she has been doing with Adrian Schiesser which invites an artist to show their work in a private apartment for a Sunday afternoon presentation. The artist's favourite cake is also served during the matinee exhibition. April and Adrian have been doing the project since 2012. In addition, she recently finished a new episode of TAKE THE CAKE titled, APPELTAART which she performed in Amsterdam.

April has been teaching Analog Photography as an Adjunct Professor at Bard College Berlin in Berlin, Germany since Spring 2016.

Interview with April Gertler recorded by Michael Dooney on 29. May 2020 in Mitte, Berlin.

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