Villa Aurora Events Archive
2016
Eclectic Salon
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Los Angeles, CA 90272)
Information
Celebrating the Diversity of L.A. Musical Landscape
Tuesdays@MONK Space und Eclectic Salon present: Varied Trio
Program
Lou Harrison was not the first composer to write for violin, piano & percussion, but he did create its most lasting and beloved work, the Varied Trio, from which the current ensemble takes its name.
This program takes the Varied Trio as a point of departure and inspiration for the evening, featuring pieces from every decade since the composition of Lou’s masterpiece. Composed two years after the Varied Trio, Paul Dresher combines a minimalist sensibility with Harrison’s lyricism in his stunning Double Ikat. Japanese composer Tochi Ichiyanagi wrote the engaging and rhythmic dance piece Trio Interlink in 1992 for the same performers that premiered Harrison’s work. The concert will also feature two duo works from the first decade of the 21st century: Don Womack’s An Infinite Moment, based on fleeting images of “things that cannot last but will always be there”, and Three Movements for Violin and Vibraphone, LA Phil principal timpanist Joseph Pereira’s insightful take on the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Rounding out the program is the premiere of Tristan Koster’s virtuosic and vivacious Memory Fragments, commissioned and written for the trio.
About Varied Trio
Three of Los Angeles’ premiere chamber musicians--Yuri Inoo, Aron Kallay, and Shalini Vijayan--form the Varied Trio, a fearless chamber ensemble dedicated to the music of the here and now. Explorations in color, rhythm, and melody are born from the unique combination of violin, piano, and percussion. The trio’s repertoire ranges from icons of the genre, such as Lou Harrison’s Varied Trio, to new works created specifically for the group by the leading composers of today.
Salon Sophie Charlotte 2016
Berlin
Information
More than 100 participants dare to find answers to these questions at “Salon Sophie Charlotte 2016”: Astrophysicists, art-historians and human rights theorists, writers, filmmakers and theologians, mathematicians and future-scientists. The salon is dedicated to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Around 1700 he founded – together with Electress Sophie Charlotte – the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. The visionary thinker Leibniz keeps encouraging us until today to have new visions. It was he who gave the impulse to ask for the “best of all possible worlds”.
For this event, all rooms of the academy building located at the Gendarmenmarkt will be open to debate artistic-scientific contributions on the topic of alternative worlds: For children and adolescents as well as, for lovers of amusing research and serious science, for fans of science slams and paternoster-performances.
Empires and Better Worlds
About 20 years ago, her fellow writer Ingo Schulze, raised in the GDR, travelled in the opposite direction towards Russia, where he spent some years to estalish a newspaper. Hoppe and Schulze will compare notes on the East-West-Relationship over the change of time: Two opposing empires that each give an idea of a better world.
Partner
An event of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities in collaboration with Villa Aurora.
Welcoming Reception
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Los Angeles, CA 90272)
Information
James Gregory Atkinson is a German-American artist. He holds a degree in Photography and Design from Lette-Verein (Berlin) and is currently studying at Städelschule, Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste. Since 2014 he works together with Frankfurt based artist Helen Demisch on common projects. Passing his studies at the Cooper Union School of Art in New York City (2015) Atkinson will be graduating from Städelschule in 2016.
Atkinson's artistic practice unfolds in a multidisciplinary way. He uses various media like painting, photography or film. Atkinson is interested in contemporary identity models and their representations in the media. His artistic itinerary often starts with found material harvested from mass media or from everyday phenomena. In his work, Atkinson reactivates his source material and entangles it with his persona when appearing in various roles in his own photographs and films. Atkinson highly values the collaborative act. In the past he worked together with musicians, theorists and artists in various constellations. Hence, his artistic work emerges in a broad spectrum of forms, ranging from the White Cube to live Rap concerts.
Atkinson is a grant of the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes.
On January 26th he is going to talk about his new project in LA at Villa Aurora.
Martina Kieninger was born in Stuttgart. She studied chemistry and molecular biophysics in Stuttgart and got her PhD from Heidelberg University. She teaches chemistry at the Universidad de la Republica Oriental del Uruguay in Montevideo.
In 1996, she received the Internet Literaturpreis by DIE ZEIT, followed by a number of residencies, including the 2016 writers residency at Villa Aurora.
She wrote several novels Die Leidensblume von Nattersheim (2005), Sängerin an der Lampe (2007) and the 8-volume science reader for children Kinder entdecken die Naturwissenschaften (Children Discover Natural Sciences).
Her novel Tango Tumpamaro about "Angst" is to be published in 2017. She is currently working on the ParrentsBaffleBook employing microwave, bitcoins, internet, natrium and Hip Hop.
On January 26th she will read an excerpt of her novel desoxyriboli.
Born and raised in Berlin, Anja Marquardt is an alumna of the University of the Arts in Berlin and New York University's Graduate Film Program. Her debut feature, She's Lost Control, had its world premiere at the 2014 Berlin International Film Festival and won the Berlinale Forum's top prize, the C.I.C.A.E Art Cinema Award. It was also included in the 2014 New Directors/New Films showcase at Lincoln Center and MoMA. She's Lost Control was also a 2015 Film Independent Spirit Awards Nominee for both, Best First Feature, and Best First Screenplay. The film had a theatrical release in the U.S. and Canada (Monument Releasing), Germany (Arsenal Distribution), and France (Zootrope) with an upcoming release in Hong Kong (Edko), and is still traveling the international festival circuit.
Marquardt has several projects in development and is spending her time at Villa Aurora writing and preparing her next feature film.
On January 26th she will show an excerpt of her film, She's Lost Control, currently available on Netflix.
Watch the trailer here.
Alwin Lay graduated from Düsseldorf Academy (class of Christopher Williams) and the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. Recent exhibitions includes his solo show in 2015 at NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein (Catalog) and participations in group exhibitions at Kunsthalle Recklinghausen, Kunstverein der Rheinlande und Westfalen Düsseldorf, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, Haus der Photographie, Deichtorhallen, Hamburg.
Although the meticulously staged artworks of 1984 born artist Alwin Lay are especially founded in the medium of video, photography and installation, a sculptural origin cannot be denied. Even so, Lay’s works are not a mere reflection of the relationship between photographed image and sculpture as they deliberately play with intuitive expectations that form the contexts of our everyday experiences. Similar to the methods of a magician, Lay uses these everyday situations as a foundation for the manipulation of their physical, temporal and aesthetic laws. The result is an array of strange or absurd, humoristic interludes. Lay intentionally creates seemingly surreal moments and sequences, in which antecedents and anticipated outcomes are interrupted by narrative vacancies. At the same time Alwin Lay’s simulations create a space of contemporarneity in which the beholder can only linger and experience the present moment.
On January 26th he is going to talk about his recent works.
Check out his work here!
Lotus Eaters
WEISS BERLIN (10719 Berlin)
Information
The exhibition Lotus Eaters addresses the fictions of good living and its relations towards the aesthetics of apathy. In their material form, they are embodied questions: What kind of memories do objects hold under which influences? Can an abstract sculpture be a aneasthezied gesture? Can an object suffer from depression? Can it flee? The works in Lotus Eaters refer above and beyond the myth of uprooted Lotophagen up to Topoi, substances and figures of alternative culture of life such as Robert Bootzin or Henry Miller’s memoires, Big Sur and the oranges of Hieronymus Bosch: “Some say, they don’t want to dream away their lives. As if life itself wouldn’t be a dream, a very real dream, that you cannot wake up from! We fade from one dream state to the next: from the dream of sleeping to the dream of being awake, from the dream of life to the dream of death. Everyone that ever had a good dream, would never complain about wasting time. If anything – he is happy about taken part in a reality that enhances and increases everyday reality.”
Elif Erkan (*1985, Ankara) lives and works in Los Angeles. Erkan graduated from HfBK Städelschule Frankfurt am Main, where she studied with Willem de Rooij. Her works where internationally shown, for instance at WIELS Centre d’art contemporain (Brussels), at Portikus (Frankfurt am Main), the Maison des Arts (Brussels) and Villa Aurora (Los Angeles).
Lotus Eaters is the first exhibition of Galerie Weiss Berlin. The presentation of American contemporary art is the gallery’s focus. Weiss offers residencies for artists in Berlin, especially from Los Angeles and New York. The artists represented are, among others, Elif Erkan, Alex Becerra, Evan Nesbit, Stanya Kahn, Eric Mack, Celeste Dupuy-Spencer, Buck Ellison, Allison Miller, and Keith Mayerson.
Partner
Lotus Eaters is a collaboration of Galerie Weiss Berlin and Villa Aurora.
Robot Koch
Los Angeles
Information
Following Raumfeld’s recent U.S. launch, the Berlin-based makers of wireless multi-room streaming speakers invites you to a very special evening at Villa Aurora. Experience live music from electronic musician Robot Koch and his Ensemble accompanied by live visuals.
Space is limited, Admission with confirmation by Villa Aurora only!
RSVP @ infola@villa-aurora.org
ZUHÖREN – Continu und Gespräche
RADIALSYSTEM V GmbH (Holzmarktstr. 33, 10243 Berlin)
Information
Tuesday, 9. February 2016, 7 p.m.
Carolin Emcke is a freelance journalist based in Berlin. She writes and talks about subjects such as globalization, war, human rights, theories of violence, bearing witness and cultural identities.
Mohammad Al Attar is a Syrian playwrighter and dramaturge. His last piece »Antigone of Shatila (2015)« tells the Greek story out of the perspective of Syrian women seeking refuge in Lebanon.
MiCT (Media in Cooperation and Transition) will present Start FM: a radio station focusing on culture and information in Arabic for refugees and migrants. A pilot program with guests and live music realized by MiCT - Media in Cooperation and Transition. This Berlin-based NGO has many years of experience in promoting media in areas of crisis in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Eastern Europe.
Presentation: Christian Mihr, Reporters Without Borders
To be followed by an installation with food, live music and DJ, and documatary film «Not Who We Are« by Carol Mansour (Lebanon)
Fellow Screening | Anja Marquardt | She's Lost Control
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Los Angeles, CA 90272)
Information
(New Directors/New Films, Lincoln Center)
Q&A with director Anja Marquardt after the screening.
Los Angeles
68projects (Fasanenstraße 68, 10719 Berlin)
Information
Berlin - L.A. Trilogy III
Participating artists
Marcel Buehler | Hans Diernberger
Veronika Kellndorfer | Anna McCarthy
Hans-Christian Schink | David Zink-Yi
SILENT SALON SPECIAL
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Los Angeles, CA 90272)
Information
NOSFERATU
with live musical accompaniment by Markus Horn
F.W. Murnau, Germany 1922, 94 min., silent, digitally restored complete version (2006)
With new piano soundtrack by Markus Horn
Shot in 1921 and released in 1922, Nosferatu was an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, with names and other details changed because the studio could not obtain the rights to the novel (for instance, "vampire" became "Nosferatu" and "Count Dracula" became "Count Orlok"). Stoker's heirs sued over the adaptation, and a court ruling ordered that all copies of the film be destroyed. However, one print of Nosferatu survived, and the film came to be regarded as an influential masterpiece of cinema.
Participant
Markus Horn’s musical language goes beyond the typical influences of late romanticism, bringing new impulses and fresh sounds to the world of silent film accompaniment.
In recent years Horn performed his music to Fritz Lang's masterpiece "Metropolis" at shows all over the world, receiving standing ovations for his intense symbiosis of film and music. With" Nosferatu" he is now presenting his second soundtrack to a German silent film, which sees its U.S. premiere at this year’s San Luis Obispo International Film Festival.
Partners
Eclectic Salon
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Los Angeles, CA 90272)
Information
Sounds of Exile
Austrian Composers in the U.S.
Sigrid Hagn, piano and Julia Ammerer-Simma, cello
play works by Arnold Schoenberg, Alexander Zemlinsky, Eric Zeisl, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Fritz Kreisler, Wally Weigl and Karl Weigl.
Sigrid Hagn is the founder of the mozARTE-Quintet Salzburg. The ensemble was chosen to represent Austria in the course of a major tour in Turkey, at the celebrations for the 2010 European cultural capital Istanbul. The quintet is touring internationally.
Cellist Julia Ammerer-Simma plays with Camerata Salzburg, Salzburger Kammerphilharmonie, Girardi Trio, and Mozarte Trio.
Partner
The Sounds of Exile is a cooperation with the Austrian Consulate General.
Screening of "Sanctuary"
Goethe-Institut Los Angeles (5750 Wilshire Blvd. Suite 100, Los Angeles CA 90036)
Information
Sanctuary
Dir. Marc Brummund. Cinematography: Judith Kaufmann. Editor: Hans Funck.
Germany, 2015, 104 min. German with english subtitles, digital.
Germany, May 1968: As the country is caught up in the midst a new era of freedom that includes the Rolling Stones, bell-bottoms, mini-skirts, the sexual revolution, and protests against the Vietnam War, rebellious 14-year-old Wolfgang is at odds with his parents.
As a last resort, he is sent to Freistatt, a foster home for difficult children. There he is to be “educated” to become a decent boy.
Wolfgang puts up a determined resistance against the brutal working conditions and the perfidious education methods of the wardens; he doesn’t allow them to get him down.
But for how long can he manage to resist the system of violence and oppression without brutalizing himself?
Based on true accounts, Brummunds film is about a boy’s merciless to save his last bit of humanity and dignity in an oppressive system.
Discussion with Director Marc Brummund, and reception following the screening.
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SANCTUARY (Freistatt) Trailer from Pluto Film on Vimeo.
Partner
"Villa @ Goethe" is a cooperation of Goethe-Institut Los Angeles and Villa Aurora
Eclectic Salon
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Los Angeles, CA 90272)
Information
Celebrating the Diversity of L.A.’s Musical Landscape
Saturday, March 26 @ 8:00 p.m.
Eclectic Salon #3: Plucking
In cooperation with MicroFest
An Evening of Tom Johnson
MicroFest and Villa Aurora present the world premiere of Johnson’s Plucking (2015) for nine ethnic instruments, featuring a global village of world pluckery that includes Japanese koto, Middle Eastern oud, Indian sitar, Persian tar, African kora, and more. Also included will be a selection of his wonderful Rational Melodies, the West Coast premiere of Doublings for Double Bass (1980) for contrabass, his hilarious Failing: a very difficult piece for solo string bass (1984), plus traditional repertoire from our international soloists.
Eclectic Salon
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Los Angeles, CA 90272)
Information
Celebrating the Diversity of L.A.’s Musical Landscape
Eclectic Salon # 4
Villa Aurora and Salastina Society present Masterpiece Discovery
A piece of music held in reverence and awe by fellow musicians, Beethoven's String Quartet in C# Minor Op 131 stands out among that composer's works as an astounding example of his creative genius. This is the music that Schubert wished would be the last thing he would hear in his life. Beethoven himself called it a new approach to composing, and it looked far enough into the future so that it remains a profoundly inspirational and novel work to this day.
Brian Lauritzen and the musicians will take you on a tour of the work before the complete performance.
Los Angeles
68projects (Fasanenstraße 68, 10719 Berlin)
Information
Artist Talk
Hans Diernberger, Veronika Kellndorfer, Hans-Christian Schink in conversation with Julia Rosenbaum (in German).
Women’s Rights and Journalism in Syria
Berlin (Friedrichstraße 231 (2nd back yard, 3rd floor), 10969 Berlin)
Information
Panelists
YASMINE MEREI, journalist and human rights activist, editor-in-chief of the feminist magazine Saiedet Souria
YAHYA ALAOUS, journalist and human rights activist
DINA ABOUL HOSN, journalist, author, and translator, co-founder of Abwab, Germany’s first Arab-language newspaper for refugees
Moderator: JULIA GERLACH, freelance journalist and author
Women’s Rights have been a sensitive topic for journalists in Syria for a long time. In some parts of the country extremist Islamic groups severely curtail women’s mobility and deny them access to education, enforcing their extremely restrictive vision of gender roles with massive violence. Many refugee women and girls are routinely subjected to sexual violence. Prostitution and forced marriages are part of their sad reality.
The Assad regime, although portraying itself as enlightened and moderate has overlooked, even long before the protests in 2011, the rise of an Islamic-conservative movement. Journalists voicing concern about and reporting on the deficits in women’s rights too openly were punished.
Participants
YASMINE MEREI: journalist, linguist and human rights activist. Merei worked for several Syrian papers and was co-publisher of the magazines Al-Haqiqa and Suwar. She is managing editor of the woman’s magazine Saiedet Souria (http://saiedetsouria.com), founding member of the Syrian Women's Lobby and Associate Director of the Campaign Against Childhood Marriage. Yasmin Merei was a Villa Aurora Fellow from June to December 2015.
YAHYA ALAOUS was imprisoned from 2002 to 2004 for his articles critical of the human rights situation in Syria. After his release, he was stripped of his civil and political rights. He continued writing anyway, mostly for Thara, an underground weekly e-magazine for women’s and children’s rights. After the revolution started in 2011, he wrote for an opposition newspaper under an alias. He eventually had to leave the country and has been living in Berlin since April 2015. His column about his life as a refugee appears in the online edition of Süddeutsche Zeitung.
DINA ABOUL HOSN is a journalist, author and translator and member of the coordinating committee of the Syrian Feminist Lobby. A member of the Druze, an oppressed minority, she suffered from ever increasing governmental harassment since spring of 2011. She moved to Dubai in the fall of 2012 and worked as a reporter for the Gulf News. However, the presence of Syrian secret service agents made her life too dangerous, and she applied for political asylum in Germany. Aboul Hosn is co-founder of Abwab, the first Arab-language paper by and for refugees in Germany (https://issuu.com/abwab.de). Dina Aboul Hosn also works as English-speaking editor for the website I am a human story (http://iamahumanstory.com/en/).
JULIA GERLACH was based in Cairo for seven years and reported on the Arab World for German-language media such as the Berliner Zeitung, Focus, Cicero and Neue Zürcher Zeitung am Sonntag. In 2015 she moved back to Berlin. Her book Der verpasste Frühling. Woran die Arabellion gescheitert ist (The missed spring. Why the Arab uprising has failed) was published recently by Ch. Links Verlag.
Exhibition Opening
Museum of Photography Berlin (Jebensstraße 2 10623 Berlin)
Information
M+M 7 Days
You are cordially invited to the exhibition opening on Wednesday, April 27, 2016 at 7 pm.
Moritz Wullen
Partners
An exhibition of the Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Mussen zu Berlin, in cooperation with Villa Aurora.
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.
Artist´s Talk
Museum of Photography Berlin (Jebensstraße 2 10623 Berlin)
Information
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.
We are young, we are strong
Los Angeles
Information
Screening
WE ARE YOUNG, WE ARE STRONG
Dir.: Burhan Qurbani, Germany, 2014, 116 min., German and Vietnamese with English subtitles, digital. Screenplay: Burhan Qurbani, Martin Behnke. Cast: Devid Striesow, Jonas Nay, Trang Le Hong, Joel Basman, Saskia Rosendahl, Thorsten Merten, Paul Gäbler, David Schütter, Jakob Bieber, Swantje Kohlhof, Mai Duong Kieu, Aaron Le, Lariss Füchs, Axel Pape
Discussion with Director Burhan Qurbani, and reception following the screening.
RSVP via Eventbrite
August of 1992. Three years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, anti-immigrant attacks targeting a refugee shelter on the outskirts of the former East German city of Rostock culminate in the notorious “Night of the Fire.” Following three days of violence, nearly 3,000 rioters, neo-Nazis and bystanders set fire to the shelter, trapping Vietnamese refugees and a group of journalists inside.
Qurbani’s controversial film recounts the hours leading up the evening’s startling events as experienced by three very different characters:Lien, a young Vietnamese immigrant, caught in a struggle for survival; Stefan, an insecure youth, who, along with his friends participates in the night’s riots; and Stefan’s father Martin, an ambitious local politician torn between advancing his career by remaining silent, and standing up for his ideals, taking action to stop the riots.
Qurbani meticulously recreates the look and feel of the era, when many East German cities struggled with unemployment and feelings of isolation from the West, exposing the complex issue of xenophobia in a country thought to have been healed by German reunification.
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Select Awards:
- German Film Award 2015 (Best Supporting Actor - Joel Basman)
- Sofia IFF 2015 (International Jury Special Award)
- Deutscher Schauspielerpreis 2015 (Best Actor-Devid Striesow)
- Rome IFF 2014 (Best Editing, SIGNIS Award- Ente dello Spettacolo, Sorriso diverso Roma-Best Foreign Film)
- Filmtage Hof 2014 (Best Costume Design, Best Set Design)
- The German Cinema Award for Peace - The Bridge (New Talent: Burhan Qurbani)
Participant
Burhan Quirbani was born in 1980 in Erkelenz (Nordrhein-Westfalen). Following school in Stuttgart, he worked in the theater as a dramatist’s and director’s assistant. Beginning in 2002, he studied directing at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg.
His short films have screened at festivals around the world, winning numerous prizes including the German Camera Award and the German Film Critics’ Award in 2008 for Illusion (2007). His graduation project and feature debut, Shahada (2010), premiered at the Berlinale (2010) later winning the Golden Hugo in Chicago.
zerfall_gebiete
SPEKTRUM | art science community (Bürknerstraße 12, 12047 Berlin)
Information
Thomas Köner & Ulrich Krieger
dissolve_areas
sounds disintegrate
re-grouping conglomerates
imploding to dust
drifting apart
breathing bristle gray textures
The duo 'zerfall_gebiete' blends the soft, acoustic, extended quasi-electronic sounds of Krieger's saxophone with the elaborated electronics of Koener: the instrument sounds like electronics, the electronics sound like instruments and in the end it is unimportant who has done what, all becomes one. The different fields merge into a single, complex soundscape, which together with the visuals becomes an integrated experience. Dark Ambient drones, subtle noises, slow developing sensual textures, and an occasional hint of a melody…
Ulrich Krieger is well known as a saxophone player in contemporary composed and free improvised music as well as a composer of chamber music and electronic music.
Thomas Köner is working as media artist across the spheres of composition, visual arts, installation and music production.
Silent Salon
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Los Angeles, CA 90272)
Information
Three Shortfilms
Saturday, June 25 @ 8:15 p.m.
Three short films shot in and around Los Angeles in the early 1910s.
Mabel Normand starring in A Dash Through the Clouds (1912, 12 min.) made in Culver City with Mabel flying a plane.
The Speed Kings (1913, 12 min.) filmed at the Santa Monica car races.
Teddy at the Throttle (1917, 30 min.) starring 18-year-old Gloria Swanson, directed by Clarence Badger, and costarring Bobby Vernon and Wallace Berry (Swanson’s husband at the time). Locations include the Beverly Hills Hotel, the old Pacific railroad trestle and a still very rural Los Angeles.
Partner
Generously supported by
Rosha Yagmai
Galerie Weiss Berlin (Bundesallee 221, 10719 Berlin)
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Waxworks
Every year, Villa Aurora awards a Berlin Fellowship to an artist from Los Angeles. We, once again, partnered up with Galerie Weiss Berlin, whose main focus is the presentation of current American art. Previous exhibition partners included the Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik ZK/U and Residenz Torstraße 111.
Rosha Yaghmai lives and works in Los Angeles. In 2007, she graduated from the California Institute of the Arts with a MFA and became a fellow at Terra Foundation in 2009. Her upcoming solo projects will take place at Weiss Berlin, at Kleopatra in New York among other venues. Furthermore she will contribute to the exhibition Knowledge at the Mount Wilson Observatory in Los Angeles. Her works have been exhibited in various show rooms, such as Public Fiction in Los Angeles, Commonwealth & Council in Los Angeles, GBK in Sydney, Kayne Griffin Corcoran and Thomas Solomon Gallery in Los Angeles, the Riverside Art Museum, LACE, LAX><ART, Estacion Tijuana, and Transmission Gallery in Glasgow.
Silent Salon
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Los Angeles, CA 90272)
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4 Nights of Picnic & Silent Film with Live Organ
Saturday, July 16 @ 8:15 p.m.
Poor Little Rich Girl (1917, 64 min.) starring Mary Pickford in a film that her producers did not want to release but became a huge hit when Mary played a rambunctious, plucky girl for the first time.
Directed by Maurice Tourneur, adapted for the screen by Frances Marion and with oversized props by production designer Ben Carre, Poor Little Rich Girl was ground- breaking at the time.
Partner
Generously supported by
Welcoming Reception
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Los Angeles, CA 90272)
Participants
Russian composer Olga Rayeva will present "Quest" , one episode from the opera project she developed with the Russian author Wladimir Sorokin. The oeuvre consists of a prologue and eight episodes each of which function as a stand-alone as well. "Quest" is a purely instrumental episode, which will eventually be turned into a dance piece.
To hear Olga's work, check out her website.
Alexander Gumz was born in 1974 in Berlin. He is a poet and organizer of literary events for KOOK and poesiefestival berlin.
He co-founded several festivals for literature and music: LAN. Drei Tage junge Literatur und Musik in Berlin, HAM.LIT. Lange Nacht junger Literatur und Musik in Hamburg, Teil der Bewegung in Leipzig and Frankfurt/Main and Wortgarten - Literatur und Musik in der Uckermark.
Alexander Gumz' poems were published in literary magazines and newspapers, broadcasted on German radio and TV. His first volume of poetry, »ausrücken mit modellen«, was published by kookbooks, Berlin, in 2011, followed by »45sec«, poems with photos by Michael Mieß, SuKuLTur, Berlin, 2013. A chap book with New York poems will be published in Autumn 2015 by parasitenpresse, Cologne.
At our Welcoming Reception, Alexander Gumz will read a few of his poems in German, as well as some English translations. He is also going to talk briefly about texts he is planning on developping during his residence at Villa Aurora, which will deal with both the sunnier and darker sides of Los Angeles.
To read more about Alexander (in German) go to his website.
Having collaborated together for over 10 years, Magda Mayas and Tony Buck plan to continue and expand their approach and vocabulary over their period together at villa Aurora. Incorporating new instruments, recording and visual components into their current focus of prepared piano and percussion, they hope to further develop and increase in scope the framework within which they compose and improvise.
At the introductory concert on the 21st they will present explorations of various sounds sources and layered time, both prepared and spontaneous, drawing on recording, installation, video and improvised performance.
To get an impression of how Magda and Tony sound live, check out their performances on
youtube.
If you want to catch Magda and Tony earlier, you have the chance to see them this Saturday at gallery Klowdenmann in Culver City from 7-9pm.
Jan Jelinek is going to present his multi-faceted work using three short audio examples: starting with an early release called Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records (2001) and continuing with his experiment of a multimedia biography with Ursula Bogner. Jelinek will end his presentation by introducing us to his latest work - a Music Concrète Composition about the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. Finally he will talk about his current project project LA Screen Memories, which he is planning to work on at Villa Aurora..
Listen to Jan Jelinek on youtube and on SOUNDCLOUD
Gildas Coudrais
68projects (Fasanenstraße 68, 10719 Berlin)
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HEAT – A Summer Show
Following a series of successful exhibitions in 2013 and 2014 in Los Angeles, Gildas Coudrais presents works in his first solo show in Berlin. The “HEAT” is curated by art historian Katharina Schulenberg-Leduc and supported by Villa Aurora. The title both reflects Coudrais’ artistic modus operandi and shows his intention to debunk and caricature society’s superficiality. He pursues questions such as: “What is the relationship between content and appearance?” “What is the proportionality of word and image?” And: “In which way does the art embrace the viewer?
Curator: Katharina Schulenberg-Leduc
Supported by Villa Aurora
Opening: Thursday, July 28 6:00 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Silent Salon
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Los Angeles, CA 90272)
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4 Nights of Picnic & Silent Film with Live Organ
Saturday, August 6 @ 8:15 p.m.
Southern California Premiere of the Restored Copy!!
A Woman of the World (1925, 104 min.) stars Pola Negri in a comedy about a worldly European Countess who comes to visit her American cousin to find culture shock at every turn. Today, Negri is associated with playing the classic “vamp” character, but here she shows she could also be a delightful comedienne. Directed by Mal St. Clair, this film has just been restored by Paramount and will have its preservation premiere at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival in June. This screening will be the first in Southern California.
Partner
Generously supported by
Silent Salon
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Los Angeles, CA 90272)
Information
4 Nights of Picnic & Silent Film with Live Organ
Saturday, August 27 @ 8:15 p.m.
Show People (1928, 79 min.) stars Marion Davies as a young woman who comes to Hollywood to be a star and of course, hijinks ensue. Directed by King Vidor and co-starring William Haines, this farce turns the lens on Los Angeles and filmmaking in the silent era. Davies was often underrated because her stardom was assumed to have been the result of her relationship with William Randolph Hearst, but her comedic timing and talent shine in Show People.
Partner
Generously supported by
Eclectic Salon
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Los Angeles, CA 90272)
Participants
C. Spencer Yeh is recognized for his interdisciplinary activities and collaborations as an artist, improviser, and composer, as well his music project Burning Star Core. Among others, his work was presented at MoMA NYC, Whitney Museum NYC, Walker Art Center Minneapolis MN and the Liverpool Biennial. Recent recordings include "Solo Voice I-X" (Primary Information), "Wake Up Awesome," with Okkyung Lee and Lasse Marhaug (Software Recording Company), and “Long Pig” by New Monuments, his trio with Ben Hall and Don Dietrich (Bocian). Klick for more Information
SK Kakraba is arguably the foremost living exponent of the gyil, a native xylophone constructed from 14 wooden slats arrayed across calabash gourd resonators. What gives the instrument its unique character is the buzzing sounds that accompany each marimba-like tone, produced by silk walls of spider egg sacs pulled across each hole drilled into the gourds. Kakraba grew up in Saru, a traditional farming village in northern Ghana, in a family of gyil players. In 2012 he moved to Los Angeles where he has quietly developed a growing fan base with his gripping solo performances, playing pieces that are traditionally used for a wide variety of functions—weddings, funerals, dances, and more. Last year Kakraba released two acclaimed solo recordings, including "Yonye" for the label run by Unwrinkled Ear collaborator Sun Araw, and "Songs of Paapieye" the first newly recorded release on the celebrated reissue imprint Awesome Tapes From Africa. His sound is dazzling: warm meditative clusters of melody stack up to become glowing overtones of high-energy orchestral complexity.
Tony Buck is regarded as one of Australia's most creative and adventurous exports, with vast experience across the globe. He has been involved in a highly diverse array of projects but is probably best known around the world as a member of the trio The Necks. Current projects include TRANSMIT (a guitar driven post-rock project), SPILL with Magda Mayas; New York based trios GLACIAL (with David Watson and Lee renaldo); THE FELL CLUTCH (with Ned Rothenberg, Stomu Takeshi and David Tronzo) and a long standing duo with Axel Doerner. He also creates video works for use with live music performance and has had pieces shown in Tokyo, Belfast, Berlin, New York and Sydney. Klick for more Information
Magda Mayas, born 1979, is a pianist living in Berlin. Developing a vocabulary utilizing both the inside as well as the exterior parts of the piano, using preparations and objects, she explores textural, linear and fast moving sound collage. Alongside the piano, Mayas has recently been performing on a Clavinet/Pianet, an electric piano from the 60s with strings and metal chimes, where she engages with noise and more visceral sound material, equally extending the instrumental sound palette using extended techniques and devices. Mayas performs internationally solo and in collaboration with a large number of musicians and composers. Current projects are "Spill", a duo with drummer Tony Buck, a duo with Christine Abdelnour (sax) and "Great Waitress", a trio with Monika Brooks (acc) and Laura Altman (cl). Since 2013 she has also been producing radio pieces for ABC Australia and Deutschlandradio Kultur and has released 20 CDS to date. Klick for more Information
Partners
Villa Aurora and the Unwrinkled Ear present Eclectic Salon Special.
This concert is part of The Unwrinkled Ear Concert Series and is supported by Black Editions, and the Goethe-Institut.
Jan Brandt
me Collectors Room Berlin (Auguststraße 68, 10117 Berlin)
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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)
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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)
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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 .
Janet Sternburg
Lapidarium (Hallesches Ufer 78, 10963 Berlin)
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Seeing Is a Living Thing
Can a still photograph embody living perception? Can it contain its abundance? Can photography, not a time-based medium, render ongoing flow? Can it do justice to an overspilling world? To these questions, Janet Sternburg (b. Boston, 1943; lives and works in Los Angeles and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico), a writer and philosopher as well as a photographer, says yes. Her work proves that photography can render the perceptual movement that is our experience. Working without any optical or digital manipulation and with the simplest of means – disposable and early iPhone cameras – she brings together the manifest aspects of the world on a single plane, portraying a vision of interpenetrating and layered time and space. Often shooting through windows, she uses reflection not to mirror but rather to blur conventional separations between inside and outside, solid and fluid, subject and object. These are images of consciousness – its fluidity and porosity as opposed to the delimitations that structure reasoned thought – fused with everyday life.
“Overspilling World” is Janet Sternburg’s first monograph. With texts by Sternburg, art historian Pepe Karmel, photographer Catherine Opie, curator Alexandra von Stosch, and filmmaker-photographer Wim Wenders.
Eclectic Salon
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Los Angeles, CA 90272)
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Varian Fry Quartett of the Berlin Philharmonic
The younger members of the Berliner Philharmoniker also uphold the Philharmoniker tradition of becoming involved in chamber music alongside their orchestral activities. In the 2012/2013 season, the four musicians Philipp Bohnen and Marlene Ito (violin), Martin von der Nahmer (viola), and Rachel Helleur (cello) founded the Varian Fry Quartet, named after the American journalist and freedom fighter Varian Fry (October 15, 1907 September 13, 1967). Fry ran a rescue network in Vichy France that helped over 2,000 anti-Nazi and Jewish refugees to escape Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, among them being Lion and Marta Feuchtwanger.
The November 18th concert at Villa Aurora is the quartet’s exclusive appearence in Southern California.
Program
W.A. Mozart Divertimento F-Major KV 138
Tanja Dückers
Literatursalon im Kantkino (Kantstraße 54, 10627 Berlin)
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My Old West Berlin. Locations in Berlin
Inspired by Walter Benjamin’s memoir »Berliner Kindheit um 1900«, Villa Fellow Tanja Dückers reflects on her own childhood and youth in West Berlin of the 1970s and 80s. Through her poignant observations of everyday life she revives the lifestyles of the divided city’s West. On the streets and in courtyards, behind firewalls and in old hair salons, the author encounters oddities and sadness, comedy and tragedy, and also animals – from rats to foxes and even hippopotamuses.
This evening’s musical accompaniment will be provided by the singer and accordeonist AnniKa von Trier.
Annekatrin Hendel
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Los Angeles, CA 90272)
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VATERLANDSVERRÄTER (Enemy of the State)
Director: Annekatrin Hendel, Documentary, Germany 2011, 90 min., German with subtitles
It is about as difficult to reach him as to get to him. Director Annekatrin Hendel trudges through a lot of snow in the middle of nowhere in the Uckermark (a region in north-eastern Germany). It is the first day of shooting for a film on 75-year-old writer Paul Gratzik, former Stasi informant, turned apostate, turned dissident. The first thing Gratzik defiantly announces is that there will be no discussion on the Stasi. She will just have to get that out of her head. Period. But now we have the film. On one hand it is a psychological profile of an extraordinarily paradoxical figure, a "man of extremes": satyr, seducer, radical and hermit. On the other hand, VATERLANDSVERRÄTER tells a story about the GDR, its critics and the Stasi as it has never, in the 20 years since the End of East Germany, been told before.
"Vaterlandsverräter" is a multifaceted portrait and so far the best cinematic counter model to "The Lives of Others".
- Berliner Zeitung -
Participant
Director and Producer Annekatrin Hendel was born and raised in Berlin, Germany. After finishing her study of design, she worked as a freelance costume and production designer. In 2004 Hendel started her own company IT WORKS! Medien and acts as a producer of feature films and documentaries, director and CEO. Hendel is a member of the German film academy.
Manfred Flügge
Berlin
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Escape from France
The Americans who saved Marta and Lion Feuchtwanger
Following an adventurous escape from German-occupied France, the Jewish-German writer Lion Feuchtwanger and his wife Marta, were able to escape to the US in the autumn of 1940. This was only made possible through the efforts of their American rescuers Varian Fry, Hiram Bingham, as well as Martha and Waitstill Sharp. They broke rules and risked their positions and their lives. During the 1930s and 40s in France, their heroic actions saved countless lives.
In a bilingual publication written for Villa Aurora, which was the Feuchtwanger’s exile home and later reopened as an artist recidence, Manfred Flügge, author and former Villa Fellow, traces the story of Marta and Lion Feuchtwanger’s escape. On Tuesday, December 6th at 8 p.m., Manfred Flügge will present his book along with photographs and filmsequences in the Literaturhaus, Fasanenstraße in Berlin.
Participant
Manfred Flügge was born in 1946. He grew up in the Ruhr Valley and studied Romance languages and history in Muenster and in Lille. He tought at the Freie Universität Berlin from 1976 until 1988. Manfred Flügge works and lives in Berlin.
Performance Lab #3
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Los Angeles, CA 90272)
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Feuchtwanger Refreshed #3
USC's MFA students and professors in Dramatic Writing are once more bringing new life to the work of Lion Feuchtwanger, this time writing 1-5 minute scenes inspired by Feuchtwanger's famous 1933 letter to the Nazi occupant of his confiscated Berlin home. Four actors will perform the plays in the same living space where Feuchtwanger once held readings of his own work.
All are welcome.
Michael Fehr
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Los Angeles, CA 90272)
Participants
Michael Fehr (*1982, Bern, Switzerland) is a stage maverick. In his performances, he transforms words into sound and stories into music, until the point of redemption. Each of his performances is a unique experience that cannot be recreated. The Bern based lyricist, writer and musician was recently awarded the renowned Kelag prize at the Ingeborg-Bachman-Competition. In 2015, he won the Bayern2-Wortspiele-Preis, which awarded him a one-month fellowship at Villa Aurora. His live cantations of sound and poetry will be accompanied by guitarist Manuel Troller (excerpt from: Theater am Neumarkt, Zürich).
Manuel Troller (*1986, Lucerne, Switzerland), guitarist and composer, is actively working in diverse musical genres. Since 2006, he plays and composes with the internationally active Band Schnellertollermeier – who plays music without compromises, ranging from free improvisation, Hardcore-Jazz, modern composition to brute rock music – but feels just as home in Pop.