Villa Aurora Events Archive
October 2016
Jan Brandt
me Collectors Room Berlin (Auguststraße 68, 10117 Berlin)
Information
Book premiere
Stadt ohne Engel (City without angels)
In 2014, the author Jan Brandt travels to Los Angeles, the City of Angels, to begin his fellowship at the Villa Aurora. During this time he explores fulfilled and unfulfilled desires and, in his book CITY WITHOUT ANGELS, gives the shimmering cosmos an unprecedented voice. In his novel, Jan Brandt speaks of the people he met on his forays: from neo-hippies to a celebrity chef, from a start-up entrepreneur and a young commission poet to a gangster rapper. These are stories about soldiers of fortune who try living the American dream, despite all odds. In CITY WITHOUT ANGELS (DuMont 2016), literary reportages mix with essays, personal encounters and observations with newspaper articles. Twitter reports and facebook messages melt into a collective urban roar. This is a book about the pulsating city of Los Angeles, the “probably most insane metropolis of the world”.
Villa Aurora invites together with me Collectors Room and DuMont publishing company to the book premiere on October 13th 2016. The evening will be moderated by the author and former Villa Aurora fellow Florian Werner.
Participant
Jan Brandt was born in 1974 in Leer (Germany). He studied History and literary studies in Cologne, London, and Berlin and visited the German School of Journalism in Munich. His novel AGAINST THE WORLD (DuMont 2011) was nominated for the German Book Prize and awarded the Nicolas-Born-Debut Prize. Most recently, DuMont published DEATH IN TURIN in 2015.
Welcoming Reception
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Los Angeles, CA 90272)
Participants
Coming from the realm of theater and design, Annekatrin Hendel became a documentary filmmaker in 2004. She is part of the last GDR generation able to tell authentic stories about a country that has disappeared. Her goal is to do away with the notion of a German Democratic Republic of uniformity, melancholy, and constant despondence but a society that knew passion, youthful euphoria, diversity and powerful stories of friendship and betrayal.
On 10/18 she will present trailer of her films "Flake" (Rammstein 2011) , "Vaterlandverräter" (2011) "Anderson" (2013) and "Fassbinder" (2015).
Visiting fellow Klaus Pockrandt works in the field of visual communication, with an emphasis on poster art. During his one-month stay in Los Angeles, he will collect photographic impressions of urban spaces, which he plans to incorporate into a graphic-design series.
Stefanie was born in Oberhausen/ Germany. Stefanie, the child of Spanish immigrants, grew up in the Rhine Valley. She studied European ethnology and political scienes in Bonn, Berlin, and Warschau. Her debut novel "Tigermilch" (Tigermilk) was widely praised and was nominated for the 2015 Independent Foreign Fiction Awards.
On October 18th Stefanie will present her new literary project.
Sebastian was born in 1980 in Würzburg. From 1999 – 2008 he studied fine arts at the art academies in Nürnberg, Lyon and Leipzig. His work has been shown in solo exhibitions at the Museum Folkwang, Essen, the Museum for Photography Braunschweig, the Wilhelm-Hack-Museum Ludwigshafen, the Kunstverein Göttingen and at the Anna Leonowens Gallery in Halifax. He participated in the 6th Berlin Biennale and in group exhibitions at the Frankfurter Kunstverein, Z33, Hasselt, Tokyo Wonder Site/Institute of Contemporary Art Tokyo, as well as at the Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau, Dresden and the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio. In 2012 he completed an art-in-architecture project for the German Federal Cultural Foundation in Halle an der Saale.
Bettina Pousttchi was born in Mainz, Germany. She studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and in the Whitney Independent Studio Program of the Whitney Museum in New York. In 2014, she was awarded the Art Award of the city of Wolfsburg. Bettina Pousttchi lives and works in Berlin.
Bettina Pousttchi works in photography, sculpture, video, as well as on site-specific architectural interventions in public space. She explores the connection between systems of time and space in a transnational perspective. In 2009/2010, she realized the photo installation Echo on the façade of Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin. For the period of 6 months 970 different paper posters formed an afterimage of the just demolished Palace of the Republic on Berlin´s Schlossplatz. Bettina Pousttchi's work has been the subject of monographic exhibitions at the Nasher Sculpture Center Dallas (2014), Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (2012) as well as Kunsthalle Basel (2011). Her work was presented at the Venice Biennale in 2003 and 2009.
Kerstin Zilm
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Los Angeles, CA 90272)
Information
Finally the dream comes true: her assignment as foreign correspondent for the German public radio network ARD brings Kerstin Zilm to California. Full of enthusiasm she discovers coast, desert, San Francisco, Los Angeles and the national parks. She meets celebrities, admires dolphins at sunset and stays at a camp ground with direct connections to aliens. Even traffic jams and the perils of bureaucracy cannot stand in the way of her California adventure. It is a wonderful trip and an invitation to pack your bags and follow her.
The reading will be held in German and English.
Participant
Born in Munich, Germany and having grown up close to the black forest, Kerstin Zilm discovered her love for reporting as an intern at RIAS - Radio in the American Sector - in Berlin shortly after the wall came down in 1990. For 13 years she worked as reporter, host and editor for several German public radio stations including assignments as junior correspondent in Washington D.C.. In 2003 she came to Los Angeles as head of Germany’s Public radio’s correspondent for the U.S. West coast. In 2008 she founded her own production company soundslikerstin and now works for radio, print and tv.
The Psycho Records
Lecture at Skylight Books (1818 N Vermont Ave)
Information
Skylight Books and Villa Aurora are proud to present Laurence A. Rickels, reading from his newest book The Psycho Records.
The Psycho Records follows the influence of the primal shower scene within subsequent slasher and splatter films. American soldiers returning from World War II were called “psychos” if they exhibited mental illness. Robert Bloch and Alfred Hitchcock turned the term into a catch-all phrase for a range of psychotic and psychopathic symptoms or dispositions. They transferred a war disorder to the American heartland. Drawing on his experience with German film, Hitchcock packed inside his shower stall the essence of schauer, the German cognate meaning “horror.” Later serial horror film production has post-traumatically flashed back to Hitchcock’s shower scene. In the end, though, this book argues the effect is therapeutically finite. This extensive case study summons the genealogical readings of philosopher and psychoanalyst Laurence Rickels. The book opens not with another reading of Hitchcock’s 1960 film but with an evaluation of various updates to vampirism over the years. It concludes with a close look at the rise of demonic and infernal tendencies in horror movies since the 1990s and the problem of the psycho as our most uncanny double in close quarters.
Laurence A. Rickels is professor in art and theory at the Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe. He is the author of Aberrations of Mourning (1988), The Case of California (2001), Nazi Psychoanalysis (2002), The Vampire Lectures (1999), The Devil Notebooks (2008), Ulrike Ottinger: The Autobiography of Art Cinema (2008), I Think I Am: Philip K. Dick (2010), and Germany: A Science Fiction (2015).
Hilde Waldo
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Los Angeles, CA 90272)
Information
Much More Than a Secretary
Hilde Waldo and the legacy of Lion Feuchtwanger
October 22, 2016 is the 110th anniversary of Hilde Waldo’s birth in Berlin. We want to take this as an opportunity to remember Lion Feuchtwanger’s secretary of 17 years, and celebrate her achievements. And we want to talk about some important, but largely unknown aspects of her life: her friendship with members of the German resistance group "Uncle Emil"; her connection to her life-long friend, the diplomat Erich Kordt; his help in rescuing her from Nazi persecution; her testimony on his behalf in Washington in 1945; and their enduring friendship afterwards.
Not only was Hilde Waldo the perfect secretary for Lion Feuchtwanger, diligent, loyal, educated, and fluent in English. After Lion’s death in 1958 and Marta’s death in 1987 she was instrumental in putting Lion Feuchtwanger's literary papers in order, overseeing the transfer of his library and his house to the University of Southern California, keeping in touch with his publishers in the U.S. and abroad, and much more. When the Villa Aurora, where the Feuchtwangers had lived, was transformed into the artists residence it is today, Waldo, who had worked there for half a century, slowly faded from memory.
Waldo's fate was, as we will see, greatly intertwined with history's events; she coped with them creatively and bravely built a career for herself in Southern California. The time has come to tell the surprisingly complex and exciting story of her long life.
Participants
Herbert Krill is a documentary filmmaker and divides his time between California and Central Europe. In 2008, he produced the documentary Feuchtwanger Lives! for 3sat TV (German Public Television).
Alexandra Tyrolf is a scholar of American Studies based in Leipzig, Germany. She is currently writing her dissertation on Jewish-German women writers who emigrated to the U.S., Marta Feuchtwanger, Salka Viertel, and Victoria Wolff.
Partner
We would like to thank USC Feuchtwanger Memorial Library for their collaboration .