May 2013

Villa Aurora, Pacific Palisades Film Festival presents:

After the Revolution (Nach der Revolution)

by Dörte Franke and Marc Bauder

Germany, 2010, 91 min., digital

After the Revolution deals with the situation directly after the fall of the Wall. It includes rare footage of roundtable discussions with the political elite of the GDR and reflects the situation from a present-day persprective.

Lifetime Achievement Presentation and a highlight reel to UDO KIER following the screening.

The screening is one of two special events during The 9th Annual Pacific Palisades Film Festival.

For more information about Friends of Film and The 9th Annual Pacific Palisades Film Festival visit http://www.friendsoffilm.com/

Admission: Suggested Donation $ 5

RSVP required at infola@villa-aurora.org. You will receive a confirmation.

Street parking is available on Los Liones Drive. Shuttle service begins at 5:30 pm and will start from Los Liones Drive, off Sunset Boulevard two blocks North-East of Pacific Coast Highway.
Please do not park on the Topanga State Park Lot!

On May 10th, the 80th anniversary of the book burning by the Nazis,  Villa Aurora Forum and Literaturhaus Berlin, supported by Atlantik-Bruecke commemorated the literature of then persecuted and banned authors and journalists.

In front of a packed house, the overwhelmingly intense and gracious Frank Arnold read texts by authors such as Pablo Neruda, Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Liao Yiwu and Joseph Brodsky. Ernest Wichner, Director of Literaturhaus, adeptly introduced the authors and gave the night a bitterly humorous ending with texts by 8th century Persian author, Abu Nuwas.

We know today, that it was the trigger, Heine talked about, when saying they not only burned books, but humans. It all ended with millions of deaths in gas chambers, on battle fields and in bombed-out cities.

On the occasion of the 80th anniverary of the book burning we will look back at the historic events and the decades that followed, as books were and are being burnt, and authors and journalists -in their pursuit of the truth- are still being persecuted, jailed and murdered.

Location: Literaturhaus Berlin, Big Hall, Fasanenstraße 23, 10719 Berlin

On May 22nd, FELLOWS & Friends met at the artists’ residency Torstrasse 111  in honor of Alice Wang and Benjamin Tong, Villa Aurora’s 2013 Berlin fellows,
The Berlin fellowship was founded in 2012. It gives L.A. artists the opportunity to work and live in Berlin for a period of several months. The Villa’s goal is to foster transatlantic exchange. Whereas the fellowship program offers artists living and working in Germany a chance to stay and work at Villa Aurora in Los Angeles, Fellowship Berlin is designed to invite artists from the Los Angeles area to stay in Germany.
In addition to housing facilities, Torstraße 111 offers gallery spaces, where Alice Wang and Benjamin Tong presented their works.
Alice Wang was born in China and studied in Toronto, Los Angeles and at New York University. The artist and fimmaker lives in Los Angeles, and since 2012 she has been spending time in Paris as an art fellow. Her work on view at Torstrasse was titled ‚The Secret Blackness of Milk‘.
A native of Toronto, Benjamin Tong studied computer sciences and has a Master of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts. He was an arts’ fellow in Mexico City and currently exhibits in the U.S., in Canada and Europe. His performance had the title: ‘In a thousand years we will have corrected the earth’s rotational axis shifting it 45 degrees aligning to that of Venus, and the polar icecaps will have melted giving the seas a flavoring of lemonade’.
Dr. Miriam Kellerhals opened the evening with a lecture on art and copy right. She explained the prerequisites, an artistic creation has to have in order to enjoy copy right protection and the rights resulting from it.  Furthermore she discussed the circumstances, under which the work can be quoted, copied or satirized by others, without violating copy rights. Kellerhals cited German legal opinions and the decision by the New York Court of Appeal in the case of „Patrick Cariou vs. Richard Prince“ (April 4th, 2013).
Dr. Miriam Kellerhals studied in Konstanz and Munich, and trained as a lawyer in Berlin. Then she worked as research associate at FU Berlin. She wrote her dissertation about copy right in employment. As an attorney, she specializes in copy and media rights and media law, teaches at various colleges and lectures internationally
Ulrike Seyboth and Ingo Fröhlich, our hosts at Torstrasse 111, presented their catalogue „ich zeichne die Zeit, du malst den Moment“ (I draw the time and you paint the moment) published by Lukas Verlag in Berlin.

Program

6:00 p.m.

Art and Copyright
Lecture by Dr. Miriam Kellerhals & Discussion

7:30 p.m.

ich zeichne die Zeit, du malst den Moment
Catalog presentation by Ulrike Seyboth & Ingo Fröhlich / Torstraße 111 - Lukas Verlag Berlin 

8:00 p.m.

Opening & Party with Alice Wang & Benjamin Tong, Villa Aurora Fellows in Berlin at Torstraße 111

Exhibitions:

The Secret Blackness of Milk / Alice Wang

In a thousand years we will have corrected the earth’s rotational axis shifting it 45 degrees aligning to that of Venus, and the polar icecaps will have melted giving the seas a flavoring of lemonade. / Benjamin Tong

Free entrance

Please R.S.V.P. at infoberlin@villa-aurora.org or 030 – 20 62 36 40 until May 20, 2013

Alice Wang (b. 1983, China) is an artist and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. She received her BSc from the University of Toronto, BFA from the California Institute of the Arts, and MFA from New York University. Since the summer of 2012, Alice has been living and working in Paris through the support of the Carla Bruni-Sarkozy Foundation. Alice has exhibited work at The Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, Deutsches Haus in New York, and forthcoming projects at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, and Immanence in Paris. Her experimental film The fallacy of misplaced concreteness is distributed by Vtape, and part of their permanent collection.

Benjamin Tong (b.1981), studied computer science at the University of Toronto, and then received an MFA at the California Institute of the Arts. His projects have appeared in various spaces such as; The Hart House (CAN), Images Festival (CAN), REDCAT Gallery (CA), Sonja Roesch Gallery (TX), Hochschule für Bildende Kunst HBK (GER), RosaB.net, and LA Mart (CA). A transcript of The Parrot Lecture, published by Golden Spike Press and performed at CalArts, can be found at Printed Matter (US), Ed. Varie (US), Art Metropole (CAN) and Ooga Booga (US). He has also been in residence in Mexico City for the SOMA summer program.

Villa Aurora and the Austrian Consulate General present

Vögelein Schwermut

A Liederabend presenting Irene Wallner and Maria Raberger

In Person: Walter Arlen

Vögelein Schwermut is a collection of songs for alto and piano, featuring Jewish composers who were banned, persecuted and/or murdered during the Nazi regime. The concert’s title is derived from a song by Erich Zeisl of the same title, based on a poem by Christian Morgenstern.

The program includes songs by Walter Arlen, Viktor Ullmann, Erich Zeisl, Erich Schulhoff and Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

Irene Wallner studied vocal performance at the University of Music and Performig Arts in Vienna. She has performed as a soloist in Austria, Germany, Italy and Norway. Inspired by performing with exil.arte*, Irene is dedicated to the interpretation of Austrian composers, who were persecuted durin the Nazi regime.

* exil.arte operates as a centre for the reception, preservation and research of Austrian composers, performers, musical academics and thinkers who, during the years of the ‘Third Reich’ were branded as ‘degenerate’.

Maria Raberger studied at the Bruckner Conservatory in Linz and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. She focused her studies on repetition, chamber music and vocal accompaniment. For many years, she has played the orchestra piano and celesta with the Bruckner orchestra of Linz. She is a member of the trio “donau3klang” and “Ensemble versatile”.

Tickets: Free for Friends of Villa Aurora // $15 for General Audiences (at the door)

RSVP required: infola@villa-aurora.org. You will receive a confirmation.

Location: 520 Paseo Miramar, Los Angeles, CA 90272

Street parking is available on Los Liones Drive. Shuttle service begins at 4:00 pm and will start from Los Liones Drive, off Sunset Boulevard two blocks North-East of Pacific Coast Highway. Please do not park on the Topanga State Park Lot!

Reading and Discussion with Helmut Böttiger, SODA Salon @ Kulturbrauerei, May 29, 2013

Helmut Böttiger, whose book “Group 47 – When German Literature Wrote History” was awarded the Prize of the Leipzig Bookfair, presented his strong work on the legendary alliance in German literature.

A group of unknown authors was brought together in 1947 by Hans Werner Richter,  and, at the end of the 50s - a time without competing literary cycles and festivals - had risen to the leading voice of the literary scene in Germany.
From this very group emerged stars and personalities such as Ingeborg Bachmann, Günther Grass or Peter Handke and literary critics such as Joachim Kaiser or Marcel Reich-Ranicki.

In discussions with Johan de Blank, initiator of the series “Literary Freedom”, the history, the development and the perpetual charges of the group’s anti-Semitism and rejection of the literary community in exile were analyzed along with individual statements by members of the Group 47.
The audience was left with the lasting impression, that literature can occupy a prominent political place, should it choose to voice the ills that politicians and society fail to address.
The group dispersed with the beginning of the Brandt era and the 68 generation.

Exil-Literature and Group 47 - Helmut Böttiger and Ingo Schulze discuss the legend of a federal literary establishment

Group 47 originated from a circle of German authors with the goal of renewing German literature after the fall of the "Third Reich", and by doing so foster the democratization of the German post-war society.

To this day, the literary discourse is influenced by former members of Group 47, such as Günter Grass, Martin Walser or Marcel Reich-Ranicki. Others were Ingeborg-Bachmann, Paul Celan, Ilse Aichinger, Siegfried Lenz, Alexander Kluge and Heinrich Böll. In 1967 the group dissolved due to fierce disputes on the relationship between politics and literature. The group's take on the topic of "Exile" and the members' relation to the writers, who left Germany in the 30s and 40s, was characterized as "problematic". Helmut Böttiger's book „Die Gruppe 47. Als die deutsche Literatur Geschichte schrieb“ (The Group 47. When German literature wrote history) was a prize-winner at the 2013 Leipziger Buchmesse. He and writer Ingo Schulze will discuss  the group and how relevant it is for today's literary environment.

Helmut Böttiger was born in 1956. He studied German philology in Freiburg. Until 2001, he was the editor of the cultural pages of the Frankfurter Rundschau. Today Böttiger works as author, journalist and critic in Berlin. His book on the Group 47 won a prize at the 2013 Leipziger Buchmesse.

Ingo Schulze was born in 1962 in Dresden. He studied classical philology in Jena and worked as theatrical adviser and journalist in Altenburg. His prize-winning books have been translated into more than 30 languages. Today Ingo Schulze lives and works in Berlin.

This program of Villa Aurora and Literarische Freiheit (Literary Freedom) is part of the over- arching Berlin cultural theme for 2013 called „Zerstörte Vielfalt“, "Diversity Destroyed". The events commemorate the power grab of the National Socialists in 1933 and the November progroms in of 1938, and reflect on the subsequent destruction of the social diversity in Berlin.

Place: Soda-Salon of Kulturbrauerei, Schönhauser Allee 36, 10435 Berlin, as part of the series „Literarische Freiheit“ (Literary Freedom)

Tickets are 5,00 EURO