News |Villa Aurora & Thomas Mann House Night in Berlin

Dr. Steven Lavine spoke on the future role of the house in transatlantic relations. | Photo: Dirk Bleicker

Around 300 invited guests from culture, politics and the media came to the Komische Oper Berlin at the end of October to celebrate the VILLA AURORA & THOMAS MANN HOUSE NIGHT.

After welcoming remarks by the chairman of the association, Dr. Markus Klimmer, Dr. Steven Lavine, Founding Director of the Thomas Mann House in Los Angeles and former President of CalArts, spoke on the future role of the house in transatlantic relations.

Afterwards we had a premiere: FACE FAUST was the first collaboration between the composer and musician Paul Frick and the poet Albert Ostermaier. The sound-text performance, a tribute to Thomas Mann and Los Angeles, was improvised and drew from literary sources from FAUST to the REDEN AN DAS DEUTSCHE VOLK by Thomas Mann. Paul Frick and Albert Ostermaier will stay at the Villa Aurora in 2018. Paul Frick holds the Villa Aurora scholarship of the Musicboard Berlin.

This year, a clear focus of the night was on the Thomas Mann House: Video artist Niklas Goldbach held the Villa Aurora fellowship by the Berlin Senate in spring 2017, during which time he shot the video work 1550 SAN REMO DRIVE, the address of Thomas Mann House. The work is a collage of shots of the house before the renovation and texts from Thomas Mann's diaries.

1550 SAN REMO DRIVE by Niklas Goldbach | Photo: Dirk Bleicker

Gallery: Villa Aurora & Thomas Mann House-Night

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