Villa Aurora Events Archive
May 2016
Exhibition
Museum of Photography Berlin (Jebensstraße 2 10623 Berlin)
Information
M+M 7 Days
In an installation created especially for the Fürstensaal room of the Museum für Fotografie, the Munich-based artist-duo M+M are featuring a film cycle entitled 7 Days. The seven-part work is shown in its entirety, each part having been developed successively by M+M within a timeframe just short of seven years. The installation is akin to a multi-perspective cinema, in which the language of film expands to include the surrounding spatial structures and incorporate new narrative styles. Each film of the cycle tells its own story, though split in two and projected as separate, parallel variants. The protagonist – played by the actor Christoph Luser – finds himself subjected within the “seven days" to a variety of seemingly mundane, yet also entirely contradictory, situations. All seven films relate in some way to key scenes from different movies, in which the psychological dimension of interpersonal relationships plays a particularly significant role . By presenting them in dual format, M+M create new interpretations of the scenes while developing a cinematic language that explores the mutability of contemporary identity.
This approach characterizes M+M's re-imaginings of scenes from a number of films, including Jean-Luc Godard's Le Mépris (1963), John Badham's Saturday Night Fever (1977), and Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980), with each film dedicated to a particular day of the week. There are certain themes that crop up to some degree throughout the different films, such as the relationships between father, mother, and child, and the forces of erotic attraction (or alienation) between a man and a woman, or between men. Each film comprises a precisely synchronized dual projection, with identical dialogue, camera work, and editing, in the midst of which one character is replaced by another. Consequently dialogues and storylines are subject to change both in terms of their mood and meaning, be it on a subliminal level or more substantially, which in turn brings an unsettlingly diverse range of different facets to the fore. An integral aspect of7 Days is the arrangement of the projection screens in the room, the fragmentation of the homogeneous film space and its narrative structure into a multi-perspective cinema, from which an engaged observer is able to derive interconnections between the projections, multiple images, and stories. By exploring the possibilities and peculiarities of synchronized storytelling, a form with which the 7 Days film installation actively experiments, M+M give expression to their interest in the increasingly complex experiences of space, identity, and time, that have come to characterize our society.
M+M frequently combine different media in their conceptual-oriented work, from photography, video, and film, through sculpture, to architecture and projections in public spaces. Their activities have in recent years focused on multimedia installations.
Partners
An exhibition of the Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Mussen zu Berlin, in cooperation with Villa Aurora.
Welcoming Reception
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Los Angeles, CA 90272)
Participants
Jam Rostron aka PLANNINGTOROCK comprises alternating sound coloration as well as mask and light installations. Her debut album "Have It All" was released on Chicks on Speed Records in 2006. Together with Mouns Sims and The Knife, PLANNINGTOROCK realized the opera "Tomorrow, In a Year" for the Danish performance group Hotel Pro Forma in 2010. In the same year, PLANNINGTOROCK toured with the LCD Soundsystem and signed a record deal with DFA Records. In 2014, she released "All Love's Legal" on Human Level Records.
On May 4th it's time for "Lets Talk About Gender Baby"
Jam will talk about her last album "All Love's Legal" and screen two music videos to illustrate her on going pursuit to use her music and video's to discuss gender politics and heavy issues such as Misogyny and Patriarchy
Listen to PLANNINGTOROCK here and on Soundcloud
Since the mid-90s Tatjana Turanskyj has been working in theatre productions, performance- and video art. She was a founding member of Berlin women's film collective hangover Ltd.* (2001-2007), in all of whose 5 films Tatjana Turanskyj performed, and acted as a co-writer and co-director (REMAKE winning 1st Prize at Oberhausen in 2005). Since 2008 Turanskyj is a partner in turanskyj&ahlrichs*** GbR. Her acclaimed and award winning film The Drifters (Eine flexible Frau) is her first project with producers turanskyj&ahlrichs*** and had successful runs at more than 15 international festivals, such as Berlinale, Gothenburg and Cannes.
Her second film TOP GIRL was premiered in 2014 at the 64th Berlin Film Festival Berlinale/Forum and had a theatrical release in Brazil.
She is co-founder of the ProQuote Regie initiative aiming at equality for female directors in film and television.
In 2010 she started a film trilogy about women and work in our society. She will explore these topics and explain her technique in a brief "lecture performance".
German-born Burhan Qurbani is the son of political refugees from Afghanistan.
His graduation film Shahada tells the story of three muslims in Berlin during the month of Ramadan. Qurbani's goal was to give the discrepancies between the German and Islamic culture a cinematic outlet. Shahada premiered in the competition of the 60th Berlin Filmfestival in 2010. With his film "Wir sind jung. Wir sind stark" (We are young. We are strong) from 2014, Burhan Qurbani traces the small ridge between the loss of identity resulting in an escape into an ideology with a promise of perspectives for the future. It is the picture of a lost generation shortly after German Unification.
Burhan Qurbani lives in Berlin, Stuttgart and Helsinki. In addition to being a filmmaker he sang in the English-speaking rock band Pretty Used.
May 4th, Qurbani is showing scenes from his latest movie "We are young. We are strong." and will talk briefly about his adaptation of Alfred Döblin's novel "Berlin Alexanderplatz".
Watch the trailer of "We are young. We are strong" here
Luise Schröder is a visual artist based in Leipzig, Germany, where she studied Photography and Media Arts at the Academy of Visual Arts from 2004-2013.
Within her artistic practice she is dealing with aspects of "history in the making" from a today's perspective and how cultures of remembrance and commemoration are influenced and formed by media and image production.
For the reception she is going to present her current project: "Shaping the Myth".
To see some of Luise Schröder's work online click here
Rocks into Hitler’s Window
Literaturhaus Berlin (Fasanenstraße 23, 10719 Berlin)
Information
Thomas Mann’s Radio Dispatches to the Germans
Thomas Mann’s 58 radio dispatches, which were aired by the BBC between 1940 and 1945 with its signal reaching as far as Germany, are a political response to the crimes of the Nazis. They are proof of the author’s determination, to protest –from his American exile- against the actions of the NS regime in Germany, triggering ongoing and often hostile discussions.
On May 25th, 1943, commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Book Burning , he made an especially haunting appeal to the German "listener".
It is strange, that among all the infamous deeds of National Socialism, linked up in a bloody chain, this idiotic commemoration, resonates the most, world-wide, and will live on the longest in people’s memory. The Hitler regime is the regime of the Book Burning and will remain exactly that. - Thomas Mann
Gustav Peter Wöhler, actor and singer. He will read texts, related to the Book Burning and Thomas Mann..
Dr. Sonja Valentin, author and dramaturge. On the basis of their book “Rocks into Hitler’s Window” (Steine in Hitlers Fenster) she will analyze Mann’s dispatches in the context of his oeuvre and life in exile.