Villa Aurora Events Archive
November 2017
Sandeep Mukherjee
68project (Fasanenstraße 68, 10719 Berlin)
Information
Sandeep Mukherjee, who lives and works in Los Angeles, not only fills entire exhibition rooms with his installations, but also makes these rooms physically experienceable. His work, which often consists of individual modules, reacts to the situation of the room, plays with light and shadow, and opens up new perspectives depending on the point of view. Sandeep Mukherjee is Berlin Fellow of Villa Aurora in 2017.
Partner
A cooperation with
la > x – Exhibition and Film Festival
Berlin
Information
The kick-off event for la > x is the exhibition opening at FAHRBEREITSCHAFT on September 12, 2017, with works from Margaret Honda, Stephen Prina and Christopher Williams.
The film festival, curated by film scholar Dr. Marc Glöde will be shown at the kino arsenal – institute for film and video-art from 10 am to 10 pm with works by Edgar Arceneaux, John Baldessari, James Benning, Morgan Fisher, Alex Hubbard, Rodney McMillian, Sarah Morris, Ryan Trecartin and Jennifer West. The program also shows Berlin and LA as sister cities who despite their differences, look back on a long and broad film tradition, reaching from mainstream-cinema to artistic experimental films – which are the main focus of this program. The film presentations will be complemented by discussions surrounding the topic „statements and projections.“
At 9 pm, the concept artist, filmmaker and musician Stephen Prina will bring the program to an end with a concert on the cinema stage
The admission is free. This was made possible with the support from Regierender Bürgermeisters von Berlin – Senatskanzlei, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, Villa Aurora & Thomas Mann House e.V., the office of taylor wessing and Haubrok Foundation.
Further Information on www.haubrok.org
Philipp Lachenmann: DELPHI_Essentials
ACE Gallery Los Angeles (5514 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90036)
Information
On October 4, 2017, renowned ACE Gallery on Wilshire Blvd., together with VATMH opens DELPHI_Essentials, a solo exhibition by visual artist and former Villa Aurora fellow Philipp Lachenmann with works that are specific to LA and to Berlin. Lachenmann is considered one of the outstanding artists of his generation.
Philipp Lachenmann’s work consistently lays bare the essential formations of art, decoding the inherent representational structures in their tangled reference monopolies, exposing their strategies and thus making them readable on a new level. This approach shifts the center of gravity of much of contemporary art away from the radical relativism of the 90s, in a direction that reaffirms both authorship and engagement with society. The Lachenmann exhibition is the only one to occupy the entire gallery space, and at the height of the autumn art season.
Lachenmann studied art history, philosophy, and film before completing post-graduate study at the Academy of Media Arts KHM in Cologne, Germany. His work has been exhibited at the Shanghai Biennale (2004), Museum K21 Düsseldorf (2008), Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin (2011), Deichtorhallen Hamburg (2012), KW Kunstwerke Berlin (2016); and screened at MIT Short Film Festival Boston (2008), IFFR Rotterdam, SIFF Seattle, SFIFF San Francisco (2009), NYFF New York (2010), and HKIFF Hongkong (2011). Lachenmann has been awarded the German Academic Exchange Program (DAAD) New York (1998), the Villa Aurora residency in Los Angeles (2003), Villa Massimo in Rome (2012), and a residency grant for 2018 at the Villa Tarabya Istanbul, Turkey.
Welcoming Reception
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Los Angeles, CA 90272)
Participants
Ute Wieland majored in German philology and theater studies before obtaining a degree in directing from the University of Television and Film in Munich. In 1989, her debut feature film "Im Jahr der Schildkröte" earned her a nomination fort he prestigious German Film Prize.
After working exclusively in TV for many years, Ute Wieland completed her second movie, the soccer comedy "FC Venus", in 2006. Her third feature "Freche Mädchen" followed suit in 2008.
Wieland turned to TV again to direct Germany's most successful crime show "Tatort". "Freche Mädchen 2", the sequel to her 2008 success, was released in 2010. Wieland's two-part made for TV movie "Deckname Luna" (2012) about a citizen of the German Democratic Republic targeted by the Secret Police was nominated for the Grimme Prize, In 2014, Wieland directed the tragic comedy "Besser als nix" about a high school dropout and misfit from rural Germany who tries to gain a new perspective on life. Ute Wieland adapted Villa Aurora Fellow (2016) Stefanie de Velasco's novel "Tigermilch" (Tiger Milk) which was presented at this year's German Currents.
Andreas Mand's works include novels like "Grovers Erfindung" (Grover's Invention, 1990), "Das rote Schiff" (The Red Ship, 1994), "Kleinstadthelden" (Small Town Heroes, 1996) "Paul und die Beat Maschine" (Paul And The Beat Machine, 2006) and "Der zweite Garten" (The Second Garden, 2015). From the cheerful to the melancholic, the loosely connected volumes portray everyday life in cities such as Krefeld and Minden. Mand's typical protagonists are activists of the subculture, artists or even children. Apart from that he wrote a historical study of a reciter in the 1930s ("Der Traum des Konditors" / The Confectioner's Dream, 1992) and two plays. According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung his latest novel "Der zweite Garten" shows the writer "at the height of his art." A critic of the Süddeutsche Zeitung concludes: "So he became the potential cult author of a lost generation …"
Florian Fischer works artistically and documentary with photography and film. He studied visual communication, photography and image sciences. His diploma thesis "The Blue of the Sky" was awarded the Aenne-Biermann-Prize for German Contemporary Photography. Fischer was an artistic employee at the Harz University and completed the Werkleitz Media Master Class. In cooperation with Johannes Krell he produced the short film "Kaltes Tal", which was shown at international film festivals. "Kaltes Tal" was awarded with the German short film prize in gold.
www.flofischer.de
Senthuran Varatharajah was born in Sri Lanka in 1984. His family fled to Germany when he was four months old. He studied philosophy, theology and cultural studies in Marburg, Berlin and London. In 2016 he published his debut novel "Vor der Zunahme der Zeichen" (S. Fischer). Among others it was awarded with the 3Sat Prize at the "38th Days of German-Language Literature", the Alfred Doblin Fellowship of the Berlin Academy of Arts, the Berlin Senate Fellowship, the Kranichsteiner Literaturförderpreis, the Bremer Literaturförderpreis, the Chamisso Award and the Rauriser Literaturpreis.
Alida Tota was born in Kukës, Albania. She studied journalism at the University of Tirana and is a PhD candidate in diplomacy and international relations.
Alida has been working as a journalist since 1995. She covered the Kosovo crisis from 1998-1999 and has been working for several radio and TV channels in Albania and the region. She is an expert on central government, press communications, and proceedings at high-level state institutions, including the Council of Ministers and the Parliament of Albania. She also held the office of National Coordinator for LGBT Rights in Albania. From 2008 to 2013, she taught journalism at the Albanian University in Tirana.
In August of 2016 she covered the tragic death of a 17-year old worker at a landfill, due to poor working conditions, lack of insurance or safety precautions exposing a presumably illegal contract between the Mayor of Tirana and the operator of the landfill. Alida was pressured to abandon the project, and upon her refusal, was fired. She sued her employer for back pay and for violating her right to free speech. After her family received death threats, they fled to Sweden for a brief exile. They returned in 2017, Alida revived her court case and finally won at the end of October.
Villa @ Goethe: Senthuran Varatharajah
Goethe-Institut Los Angeles (5750 Wilshire Blvd #100, Los Angeles, CA 90036)
Information
About "Vor der Zunahme der Zeichen"
Completely by accident, Senthil Vasuthevan and Valmira Surroi start a conversation on Facebook. Senthil is working on his doctorate in philosophy in Berlin, Valmira is studying art history in Marburg. For seven days they tell one another about their lives, never meeting in person. Their messages touch on their families, fleeing from civil wars, their childhood in refugee homes and their times of school and study. In his debut novel, Senthuran Varatharajah writes insightfully about origins and arrival, remembrance and forgetting, and about the cracks in our lives which only time can reveal.
Searching for a language of one’s own – a poetic dialogue about spaces of asylum.
“Villa @ Goethe”
With this reading, Villa Aurora and the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles continue their collaboration. Under the label “Villa @ Goethe”, artists residing at the Villa Aurora have the opportunity to showcase their projects (past, present, and future) with the friends, patrons and guests at the Goethe-Institut.