Sperrgutmarkt am Spreewaldplatz (Samstag, 5. Mai, 2012)

Wo alte Möbeln und Trödeln Verpflegung brauchen, da ist Trial&Error auch! Viele waren auf dem Spreewaldplatz, um sich von ihren Sachen zu verabschieden und/oder etwas von anderen Menschen zu adoptieren. Trial&Error war da mit einer offenen Werkstatt (ganz offen, mit Bäumen statt Wänden!) Da waren auch Kinder, die alte Möbelstücke kreativ umgestalten haben, Erwachsene die Möbel repariert haben und Menschen, die Gegenstände neu angemalt haben, unter Anderen! Es hat alles nicht nur Spaß gemacht, es hat sonst auch vermeidet, dass viele Sachen, die noch gut waren, nicht direkt in die Mülltonne landen. Was einer nicht mehr braucht, kann von jemand anderem weiter benutzt werden!

Danke allen Leute, die da waren, für die schöne Stimmung! Besucht unsere Webseite oder meldet euch an unseren Verteiler an, um auf dem Laufenden zu bleiben ;)

Natural Cosmetics Workshop Imgages by TAU*MH are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Gasoline on our faces? Avoid skin dehydration without using chemicals!

In a consumer life nearly every product is a source of evil somewhere on the planet:

Depriving local population in central america from affording their staple foods, using lots of non recyclable packaging, polluting the environment, abusing human rights through its production or contributing to soil erosion, the list is never ending. But if there is one aspect on which we mostly all agree to be important to protect when we use a product, this is our own health.

In the field of cosmetics, we often hear contradictory messages about what’s good for us and what’s dangerous. For me, toxic substances in body lotions, sun screens and lip balms took a long time to unveil. Skin moisturising are marketed to be so essential for survival, how could they be harmful? Once we discover the tricks, a little bit of information and experimentation can help in deciding what really is important. In Kulturlabor Trial & Error we always try to promote workshops that let people learn by themselves, experiment and make their own opinions afterwards.

Our skin is an organ much like our intestines; it absorbs all kinds of substances and it stores them or transports them to our bloodstream. Said in a different way: if you wouln’t drink a glass of gasoline then you don’t want to rub it on your skin either. “Of course I would never rub gasoline on my skin!”

Taking a closer look at the label of conventionally produced body lotions, it turns out that several petroleum derivatives are their main ingredient. Why? For example, mineral oil, a very popular member of the petrol family, is a byproduct from the distillation of crude oil into gasoline. It’s a leftover and it’s really cheap: it’s probably more expensive to properly dispose mineral oil than to buy it and this is the reason why it’s used largely in the cosmetic industry. You can easily find it in Baby oils, Hand creams and Hair gels; inspect the labels for these terms, they are all different forms of the same substance: Paraffin, Petrolatum, Petroleum Jelly, Mineral oil.

Although mineral oil is used in moisturisers, it’s not a moisturiser in itself; it creates an oily layer on the skin that locks in moisture, hinders pore transpiration and prevents elimination of toxins through the skin. Not only is it not beneficial, it’s also considered to be carcinogenic by the World health Organisation.
An alternative to petroleum based oils are plant oils that do the same job as carriers and maintaining the consistency of moisturisers and additionally contribute to our skin health due to vitamin content and antibacterial properties.

Luna Leung, natural cosmetic specialist and Jorge Vilar, chemist, together with the Kulturlabor Trial & Error E.v. network offered a workshop to prepare lip balm and body butter from all natural and organic ingredients like Bees Wax, Olive, Castor, Coconut, Sesame and Almond oils as well as Cocoa butter and Shea butter. The procedure required only simple kitchen activities like melting and blending to prepare and all the participants brought to upcycled or reused jars of natural cosmetics.

You should try it out. Watch out for more workshops at and recipes contact Luna Cosmetics www.facebook.com/luna.natural.cosmetics.

Check out Trial&Error new headquarters!

Trial & Error has a fresh new co-location! A massively nice house next to the river, big garden, loads of creative workshop spaces with many inspiring people. We are in the proces of creating a workshop space as well as join in with other great inititatives that are happing, like a lovely community garden! Sounds good? Join us!

Every friday we will spend fixing up the place, common areas, rooms for workspace and massive storage! This week we will continue with the trash collecting point and fix some of the windows….and enjoy the sun! If you have tools, bring them as well!

Cycle together? This friday meeting with bikes at 10:30 a.m., Hermannstrasse 170. You can join us later as well here: Regattastr. 262, Berlin.

Map:
http://maps.google.de/maps?q=Regattastra%C3%9Fe%2CGr%C3%BCnau%2CBerlin&hl=fr&ie=UTF8&ll=52.410407%2C13.598977&spn=0.001721%2C0.005284&sll=51.151786%2C10.415039&sspn=14.408862%2C43.286133&oq=grunau+re&t=h&hnear=Regattastra%C3%9Fe%2CGr%C3%BCnau12527+Berlin&z=18&layer=c&cbll=52.410437%2C13.598763&panoid=0j2zENCR3vR0aKrzEkrRng&cbp=12%2C68.1%2C%2C0%2C-22.5

Thanks to Jacob and T&E crew for the beautiful pictures!

Trash of the Month. Plastic bottle

This time we decided to get closer to a trash, which we touch, smell and taste almost every day, but which is a rather unfamiliar terrain for most of us. The Trash of the Month in April was: the plastic bottle.

After experimenting with the material, Jorge, our in-house chemist introduced everyone to the world of plastic. As it turned out, there is seven different kind of plastics, each with different characteristics, industrial uses and ways to reuse. Lesson learned: if there is one way, try to avoid plastic stuffs.

But our creative audience - with a little guidance of our crew - had many ideas, how to make nice and useful things out of this really problematic material. The results: window gardens, bird feeders, coat-racks, vases, charger holders, boxes, jewelries.

Thanks for every participant, it was a pleasure to have you all here, in ODC. Extra thanks for your trash-proposals to the next event, we hope we will see you all in May again!

Check out this short film about bottled water, that we have also screened at the event:

http://www.storyofstuff.org/movies-all/story-of-bottled-water/

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Photos by: Janis Pesiks

Kulturlabor Trial&Error e.V. went to Belgrade, Serbia to make the contemporary art museum Galerija-legat Milice Zorić i Rodoljuba Čolakovića our home and workspace for a week!

We met and worked with beautiful people from Škart who make political posters and social projects, Karkatag who makes kinetic gardens and machines out of old bike parts and Elektrika Pancevo a small gallery with independent publishing.

The days where filled with interesting talks, public talks and learning to work with each other. The event was part of the conference „(Graphic) Designer: Action, author or universal soldier?“.

We also had the opportunity to meet with the Kaktus network from Occupy London, attend lectures from the conference and explain them how and why we work with Kulturlabor Trial&Error.

The trip was made possible through the financial support of the Step Beyond travel grant from the European Cultural Foundation.