Magazine #29 of the Federal Cultural Foundation / Kulturstiftung des Bundes

Nº 29 Spring/ Winter 2017/18

Follow up

Editorial “As soon as we put things in focus, we’ll find a way out.” This is how Alexander Kluge described his approach in an interview he gave for our Magazine #18.

(And now visitors can admire the productivity of his approach in his current exhibition “Pluriversum” at the Museum Folkwang in Essen). When we sharpen our focus, we recognise the contemporary relevance of historical events, we find ways out of what are presumably closed chapters of the past, or vice versa, we can escape the cul-de-sacs of our times by revisiting the past. What Kluge so poetically formulated can be summed up by two catchwords which are often used to describe the central tasks of Germany’s cultural institutions: “access” and “presentation”. The texts in this issue of our Magazine address, in very different ways, events, topics and figures which are rooted in history, but require a fresh approach—new access. They beg to be “followed up”—a chance to revisit them, view them through new eyes, develop them further. The authors demonstrate how sharpening our focus increases their relevance and vibrancy. And what had become worn with overuse and blurry with historical distance suddenly appears oddly relevant to us contemporaries.

Such is the case of the pictures by the Yugoslavian artists’ group EXAT 51. If we look closely, we recognise the forms and principles of the Bauhaus in the pictures and history of this artists’ collective of the post-war era. Behind the Iron Curtain, the reception of the Bauhaus was nothing less than a rejection of Socialist realism. Tihomir Milovac, chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, describes (p. 2 in the insert) how the follow-up to the Bauhaus and related modernist trends in the post-war period became a hot-button political issue in Southeastern Europe. Ahead of the Bauhaus centennial in 2019, he offers an illuminating view of the connectivity of an artistic movement which shaped modernism in Germany like no other.

Another follow-up project, this one organised by the Leipzig Museum of Contemporary Art (GfZK) in cooperation with the OFF Biennale in Budapest, introduces German audiences to Gaudiopolis, a littleknown children’s republic in post-war Hungary.

What does it mean nowadays to practise democracy and teach young people to become “independent and self-confident citizens” based on the democratic ideas of Gaudiopolis? In the context of imperilled civil societies, authoritarian governments and political radicalisation, the participating artists see Gaudiopolis as a metaphor for a united community.

The Budapest resident and writer Zsófia Bán revisits her family history which takes her back to Gaudiopolis (p. 5). In contrast to the “City of Joy”, which offered hundreds of homeless and hungry orphans a home and a future in politically unstable times, László Darvasi’s novella portrays a vastly different and darker vision of today’s war children and orphans who are stranded as refugees in Hungary (p. 7).

As part of our “Global Museum” programme, the Lenbachhaus in Munich revisits the world-famous Blue Rider artists’ collective, for which its collection is internationally renowned. Against the backdrop of other artists’ collectives which were not as fortunate to attract worldwide attention in the Western art scene, the art, self-image and form of production of the Blue Rider call for new forms of presentation. Matthias Mühling, director of the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, explains how renewed focus on artists’ collectives can advance our understanding of global modernism and alter our conventional view of the Blue Rider (p. 10). Perhaps

more importantly, Mühling draws attention to how radically our thinking must change in order to view a museum from a global perspective.

The Swiss writer Lukas Bärfuss, who provoked heated debate at home when he warned that direct democracy could potentially run counter to Switzerland’s founding principles and promote populist “nonsense”, revisits the legacy of his compatriot Hermann Hesse (p. 13) on the occasion of a new exhibition at the Literaturhaus Berlin. As the first Nobel Prize winner after World War II who, together with his wife, saved numerous fellow artists from Nazi persecution, Hesse was internationally admired and celebrated by the Hippie generation and their children. Today, 55 years after his death, young readers seem to have lost sight of him. Why is that? In his disarmingly introspective essay, Lukas Bärfuss proves his skill as a keen observer once more.

We first became acquainted with Vladimir Čajkovac when he was a fellow at the German Hygiene Museum in Dresden. Funded through our International Museum Fellowship Programme (FIM), he conducted research on the world’s largest collection of AIDS-related posters (some 9,000 from over 100 countries) for a project on “AIDS as a Global Media Event”. It is a happy coincidence that he has revisited this topic and his research work ahead of the upcoming world premiere of the music theatre piece “AIDS FOLLIES” (p. 15). Focusing on the life story of the so-called “Patient Zero”—supposedly the first person to contract AIDS—Čajkovac traces the global cultural history of HIV back to its very beginnings.

The singer Cesária Évora (“Bésame mucho”) is a legend. The Cape Verde islands off the coast of West Africa are probably more famous for being Évora’s home than they could ever be through tourism.

What the Buena Vista Social Club is to Havanna, Évora is to Cape Verde. As Daniel Haaksmann reports in his interview with Ole Schulz (p. 17), a whole new generation of Portuguese-speaking (Lusophone) African musicians has appeared from the shadow of this extraordinary artist who passed away in 2011. Haaksman heads the “LusAfro” project, financed through the TURN Fund of the Federal Cultural Foundation.

Poetry has a fixed place in our Magazine. Our anniversary edition in 2012 was exclusively dedicated to this genre at a time when the public’s enthusiasm for poetry was only beginning to take shape.

We are delighted, therefore, to lend our support to a promising development initiated by “Babelsprech”—an association of young German-language poets—who are now expanding their poetic scope of experience with the follow-up project “Babelsprech.International”. We invite you to learn more about the themes which are important to the German-language scene and how it is expressing them through poetry on pages 18 and 19.

Hortensia Völckers, Alexander Farenholtz Executive Board of the German Federal Cultural Foundation

Contents

The Echoes of Gaudiopolis

5 GENIUS LOCI An essay by Zsófia Bán 7 RAZOR A novella by László Darvasi 10 A DIFFERENT SHADE

OF BLUE RIDER An interview

with Matthias Mühling, director of the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus

13 HERMANN HESSE—

A HISTORICAL ENCOUNTER

Lukas Bärfuss asks why we

aren’t reading Hermann Hesse anymore

­ 15 SCRIPTED REALITY Vladimir Čajkovac on staging AIDS as a spectacle

17 ÉVORAS CHILDREN Daniel Haaksman discusses the music scene in the Lusophone countries of Africa

18

Poetic positions by Marina Skalova, Alke and Anna Ospelt

 IN PICTURES

Exat 51

Stachler

20 NEW PROJECTS London 1938 A statement for German art The Eye of the City The flâneur from Renoir to the present The Construction of the World Art / Economy Plants A different nature Ideology, Abstraction and Architecture EXAT 51 / Jasmina Cibic Radiophonic Spaces An acoustic obstacle course through the realm of radio art Black Holes Why we forget African Mobilities Architectures of refuge Écraser l’infâme!

The artist and the concentration camp— The collection of the Memorial and Museum Sachsenhausen Waste Products of Love An exhibition of works by Elfi Mikesch, Rosa von Praunheim and Werner Schroeter Acting through Images Exhibition project featuring Želimir Žilnik The Policeman’s Beard Is Half Constructed Art in the age of artificial intelligence The State of the Art Archives An international conference for archives documenting the history of modern and contemporary art Perverse Decolonization A (self-)critical research project by the Akademie der Künste der Welt in Cologne The European House of Gambling A “casino egalité” for public places in Europe Peitz 55 Woodstock at Karpfenteich Musik 21 Festival 2017 About the word warehouse An ethnography of digital friction Berlin Atonal 2017 Festival for sound and light experiments Hallo Festspiele Auditory spatial research ISM Hexadome Immersive architecture for sound and video art Organ Festival 2017 International festival Private Operas Five new chamber musical theatre pieces from two perspectives Queering Holocaust History Artistic-academic interventions in Holocaust remembrance policy (and politics) New Greek Wave Contemporary theatre from Greece Resistance and Devotion 60th anniversary of FIDENA X SHARED SPACES Theatrical excursions into the world of start-ups and digital natives Crossover and Dance Reunion Richard Siegal / Ballet of Difference & Schauspiel Cologne / Tanz Köln

4

THE ECHOES OF GAUDIOPOLIS

Up until the beginning of 2012, signs at every border crossing informed visitors that they were entering the “Republic of Hungary”.

Then came the constitutional reform which allowed the state to shorten its name to “Hungary”. Yet Hungary can look back on a “republic” that was as unusual as it was exemplary: Gaudiopolis. The “City of Joy”, home to hundreds of rescued children in the post-war era, had its own constitution and laws drafted by its young inhabitants, a democratic government and an independent newspaper. Its founder Gábor Sztehlo believed in such ide-

als as openness and solidarity, the power of free thinking and mutual discussion. In the following essay, Zsófia Bán recalls those years of real-world utopia, a society upon which many Hungarians had hoped to build a republic one day. In his short story, László Darvasi shows us how greatly the present differs from the promises of a future, manifested in the ideas of Gaudiopolis. He describes a day in the life of a customs officer in a world bereft of joy, where children are lucky to end up soaking wet in a holding cell.

5

GENIUS LOCI

of Gaudiopolis, a children’s republic which left its imprint on her own life story

GÁBOR SZTEHLO Protestant minister 1909–1974 During World War II he saved the lives of hundreds of orphaned children and persecuted adults.

He was granted the honorary title “Righteous Among the Nations” for his achievement.

The former villa at 48, Budakeszi Street was one of the orphanages he founded.

PANTA RHEI. YES, THERE ARE ALWAYS NEW WATERS FLOWING, BUT THE RIVER, THE RIVER OF HISTORY, IS THE SAME.

The Protestant minister Gábor Sztehlo saved several hundred orphaned or half-orphaned children during the Second World War. On behalf of Bishop Sándor Raffay, he engaged on a mission to save Jewish children in March 1944, the beginning of the German occupation.

At first he brought these endangered children to his uncle’s villa in Bérc Street, and later, with the help of the Swiss Red Cross, to another 32 orphanages. By the end of the war, he had saved some 1,600 children in this way, for which he was granted the honorary title “Righteous Among the Nations” in 1972. This title could never have been more fitting or perfectly appropriate than for this man. When the war ended in spring 1945, a member of Manfred Weiss’s family6 allowed Sztehlo to use their family villa in Zugló to house the surviving orphans. Thus the The narrow, staired alleyway, which had once been Pax Orphanage began operating. In September 1945, five called Árnyas Alley, or the “Shadowy Alley”, now carries months before the formal proclamation of the Hungarian his name.2 For a moment I was rooted to the spot be- Republic, 800 rescued children under Gábor Sztehlo’s cause Budakeszi Street 48 was the address of the Laud- supervision established Gaudiopolis, the “City of Joy”, a er School, where my daughter was attending, and children’s republic. Gaudiopolis had its own constitution where, I suddenly realised, her grandfather, Ottó Or- and legal code, drafted by the children themselves. They bán3—one of Hungary’s most influential poets and co- had their own government, currency (the Gapo dollar), incidentally my life partner’s father—survived the war newspaper,7 and even their own comics. The children as a child thanks to Gábor Sztehlo. This I knew because organised cultural programmes and started a library. They I had heard it told several times by him and the family, could learn a handicraft or volunteer to do community in addition to hearing him speak about it in multiple service, with each child only assigned tasks suited to their interviews.4 I stood there awestruck until I realised that age. Gaudiopolis received no financial support from the I hadn’t seen any signs or mention of it at the school. church or the Hungarian government, but relied solely I walked back up Budakeszi Street, and a bit further on the generous aid of the International Red Cross. behind the school (where I hadn’t ventured yet), there The “Wolf’s Den” mentioned on the plaque was was, in fact, a gate with a sign reading: Gábor Sztehlo the building where the older children were housed. The Orphanage.5 I opened the gate, and at the end of the smaller ones lived in the adjacent building, known as the driveway, I came to a villa which was in relatively good “Swallow’s Nest”. The institution only accepted boys at condition. Next to it, I found a marble plaque inscribed first, but later also girls, and the number of children evenwith the words: tually mushroomed to almost 8,000. These not only included orphans, but also half-orphans whose single parents didn’t have enough money to keep them fed—like Between 1945 and 1949 the grandfather of my daughter, Ottó Orbán, who later this house and this garden, became a poet and whose works also bear the deep, lastthe so-called “WOLF’S DEN”, ing wounds he suffered during the war. After some time, were the centre of GAUDIOPOLIS, Sztehlo and his colleagues not only took in orphans who for the children rescued by were brought to them, but actively went out and collectGÁBOR SZTEHLO ed them off the streets.8 In 1946 under the supervision and whose children’s republic he of Zoltán Rákosi, the institute opened a kind of school founded and led. which reintegrated these severely traumatised children into society very gradually, one step at a time, and with great care and sensitivity. Zoltán Rákosi developed what Donated by the Gábor Sztehlo Foundation was an extraordinary method of art education at the time, On the 50th anniversary of the Holocaust, which combined creativity with learning and democratic 1994. principles. Sztehlo saved many individuals who would later become quite well-known, such as the two sons of the famous magazine editor Sárközi Márta, who herself was Obviously the plaque had been erected much earlier, the daughter of Ferenc Molnár, or the television director in the years of the Third Republic, five years after the fall and university professor Ádám Horváth (the first minister of the Iron Curtain. The institute must have adopted of culture of Gaudiopolis) or the writer, critic and transSztehlo’s name much later. The plaque was hardly visible lator Mátyás Sárközi who later took up residence in Lon—at least from the street—so no one could don in 1956, and György Oláh, the future No“RIGHTEOUS know it existed aside from the residents and bel Prize winner in Chemistry, whom Sztehlo AMONG staff of the orphanage or some chance visitor had taken in earlier during the war. Sztehlo who had lost her way. You wouldn’t miss it if THE NATIONS”. had the capacity to approach everyone with THIS TITLE you didn’t know it was there. Enthralled by my the same degree of love, openness and acceptdiscovery, I was suddenly overcome by a sort COULD NEVER ance. In his interview about his life’s work, HAVE BEEN of calm as if a family history had regained conOttó Orbán mused: “What I’ve seen is that MORE tinuity, that of Gaudiopolis, the children’s rethose who were together with me, those with public and that unique spirit which had ensured FITTING THAN whom I’ve stayed in contact one way or the FOR THE a grandfather’s survival after the Holocaust, other over the course of almost forty years PROTESTANT leading to the progressive secular Jewish now, or those I’ve seen again from time to MINISTER school, which now ensures the intellectual and time, they all agree that meeting him changed GABÓR emotional survival of his granddaughter, toptheir lives, and what they got from him, SZTEHLO. ographically visible and tangible as if now finalthough no one can describe what exactly it ly marked on a map. The pieces of a mosaic was.”9 That ‘something’ was probably the

­Zsófia Bán discovers the vestiges

There are places which possess a spirit, a genius, which keeps glowing over time and makes itself known throughout history. A spirit, which, like Proteus, is similar to a Greek deity, occasionally presenting itself to mortals in one form or another, but whose entity is essentially unchanging. There is a place in Budapest, or more specifically in Zugliget on the opposite side of the river in Buda, far away from Pest, which still possesses such a radiant spirit. Its radius is limited to a relatively small topography.

It is tangibly connected to its physical surroundings and is indeed part of it. I only realised this a few years ago when my daughter, a second-grader at the time, began attending the Lauder School,1 a private school on Budakeszi Street. It consists of several buildings and premises, atmospherically situated in a relatively spacious, scenic area at the forest’s edge. It takes about 20 to 25 minutes to reach the school by car or public transport from where we live on the Pest side of Budapest. Before the war, when well-to-do citizens of Pest used to come here for relaxation, it used to take much longer. Perhaps it was the healthy distance from the commotion of the big city which lent itself to the region’s appeal. Another reason was certainly the beautiful, wooded surroundings where the rich citizens of Pest chose to build their villas and summer residences, a somewhat more modest Budapest version of Berlin’s Grunewald district. The school’s main building was newly constructed when it relocated to Buda from Pest, but the kindergarten is housed in a small, historic villa, and there are several well-preserved pre-war villas on properties near the school.

One day, I was on my way to an event at the school when I happened to pass a stairway leading to a small street not far from the school. At the bottom of the stairs (near 32, Budakeszi Street), I discovered a small plaque.

Coming closer, I read:

unexpectedly fell into place (a ­mutual place), were realigned, and it filled me with satisfaction, if not serenity. Panta rhei. Yes, there are always new waters flowing, but the river, the river of history, is the same.

6 readiness to accept and welcome people wherever they came from, and that sense of IN 1950, belongingness and solidarity which we all THE need as much today as back then. The chilCOMMUNISTS dren who were saved and raised by Gábor DISBANDED Sztehlo and who continue to regard each THE CHILDREN’S other as family established a foundation in REPUBLIC. 1990 which bears Sztehlo’s name and is dedTODAY IT IS icated to keeping his memory alive.10 Thanks CLEAR to their efforts, this extraordinary individual THAT THE and his achievements are widely acknowlIDEAL OF edged even at the state level.

GAUDIOPOLIS IN HUNGARY WAS ONLY A SHORTLIVED SHOOTING STAR.

In 1950, Hungary’s communist dictator Mátyás Rákosi nationalised and disbanded the children’s republic. Such a liberal-minded institution that inspired youngsters to think freely and act independently obviously fell into the “forbidden” category during that era.11 F ­ ollowing its closure, Sztehlo raced back and forth through Hungary on his motorcycle with sidecar like a furious angel, helping the internees and organising the nursing homes for the Protestant church where the elderly and handicapped children received care. During the 1956 revolution, Sztehlo’s family moved to Switzerland, but he insisted on staying and continuing his work in the nursing homes. In 1961, he visited Switzerland at the invitation of the Protestant church, but while he was there he suffered a heart attack. On his doctor’s advice, he decided not to travel home, but take up residence in Interlaken and continue his pastoral work from there. After his passport expired, he was no longer allowed to return to Hungary, which had been his greatest wish to the very last. Once he became a Swiss citizen, he would have been permitted to travel to Hungary again.

Two months before the ten-year waiting period was over, he finally received his application forms in the mail so that he could apply for Swiss citizenship. He never opened it. He died in Interlaken, sitting on a park bench while trying to open the envelope.

It was only in a casket that Gábor Sztehlo was finally able to return home, where he now rests in the Farkasrét Cemetery in Budapest. Since then, schools and kindergartens have been named after him, and at one of the busiest places in the city, in front of the Protestant church at Deák Plaza, there is a statue of him.12 The ideal of Gaudiopolis, the ideal of a republic built upon the principles of democracy, solidarity and love, awakened in 1989

1 The Ronald S. Lauder Foundation supports Jewish schools around the world, including chapters in Berlin and other European capitals. The Budapest chapter was founded in 1990 after the fall of the Iron Curtain. An important feature of the school is its free-thinking, creative and child-oriented instruction, which offers an especially attractive alternative to the strongly centralised, ideological teaching model reminiscent of socialist times now propagated by the Orbán government (albeit promoting a different ideology). At state schools, the children are forced to work with centrally designated and approved teaching material and obligatory textbooks.

Parents who can send their child to an alternative school usually do so. But there are still too few of these alternative, independent schools which use their own source materials compared with the many that rely on the state-endorsed system, which promotes subservience instead of producing responsible and independent-thinking citizens.

2 The plaque was erected in 2008 when the street was renamed.

and flourished in Hungary for several years afterwards, only to gradually fall back to sleep.

Today it is clear that the ideal of Gaudiopolis in Hungary was only a utopia, a brilliant, but shortlived shooting star. The efforts of the Third Republic have been undermined, its achievements destroyed, its ideals razed to the ground. Today, the cold hunger for power and property rules the land. But the idea and memory of Gaudiopolis live on, and people like Gábor Sztehlo will continue to be born, albeit seldom. For as long as the situation remains as it is, we can do nothing more than remind ourselves that we once possessed such a thing; once upon a time there was a city of joy, a children’s republic, and at the beginning of the 1990s, we Hungarians had a republic which was originally built on the ideals of Gaudiopolis and which we could have truly made something of. And now we find ourselves here. P ­ anta rhei. 13

Zsófia Bán, born in 1957 in Rio de Janeiro to Jewish parents, has an international background like practically no other Hungarian writer of her generation. She grew up in Brazil and Hungary, and studied English and Romance Studies in Budapest, Lisbon, Minneapolis and New Brunswick. As a university lecturer in American Studies, she initially made a name for herself as a scholar of modern American literature, visual culture, contemporary literary theory and the relationship between gender and literary texts. She continues to write for various Hungarian journals even though she gained international acclaim as a writer in 2007 for her book Night School. A Reader for Adults, a volume of short stories which breaks with the conventions of literary genres. In 2014 the Suhrkamp Verlag published her second ­volume of short stories, entitled When There Were Only Animals, which made it onto several bestseller lists. Bán was a guest of the DAAD Artists-in-Residence programme in Berlin. Zsófia Bán is now living in Budapest again.

3 Ottó Orbán was born in Budapest as Ottó Szauer in 1936 and died in the arms of his wife Júlia Szabó in Szigliget 66 years later in 2002. He passed away in the same house where he had met her forty years earlier and spent his life with her—a genius loci if there ever was one.

They had two daughters, Kati and Eszter. Kati Orbán has been my life partner for 25 years and we are raising our daughter Hanna together. I could be writing about them as my wife, mother-in-law and father-in-law if Hungary ever changed its marriage laws to allow same-sex partners. But they haven’t, and so I have no choice but use other linguistic forms to refer to them.

4 In an extended interview about his life’s work, conducted by Lóránt Kabdebó between 1987 and 1988, he spoke at length on the topic. The interview appeared in book form, entitled Színpompás ostrom lángoló házakkal (Colourful Siege with Burning Houses), published by Magvető Publishing, Budapest in 2016 in the series Tények és Tanúk (Facts and Witnesses).

5 During the war, the institute operated under the names “Pax Orphanage Zugliget” and the “Orphanage of the Good Shepherd of the Protestant Church”. After the war, it was called the “Pál-Vasvári Orphanage”, until 2009 when it was renamed after Sztehlo on the occasion of his 100th anniversary.

6 Baron Manfred Weiss von Csepel (1857–1922), industrial magnate of Jewish descent, founder of the Manfred Weiss Steel- and Metalworks.

7 In fact, there were two newspapers in Gaudiopolis: A Mi Újságunk (Our Newspaper) and Magunk (Ourselves).

Ottó Orbán (still Szauer at the time) was the editor-in-chief of A Mi Újságunk.

8 This inspired the film director Géza Radványi to make one of Hungary’s most famous movies, Somewhere in ­Europe, whose main character is based on Sztehlo.

9 Színpompás ostrom lángoló házakkal, 60.

10 http://sztehloalapitvany.hu/ 11 During the communist regime, there were three categories, called the Three Ts: támogatott, türt, tiltott, meaning „supported, tolerated, forbidden“.

12 A work by Tamás Vígh. Erected in 2009 on the occasion of Sztehlo’s 100th anniversary.

13 In protest of the shameful poster campaign by the Orbán government against György Soros, I wish to take this occasion to express my gratitude to György Soros for trying to make Hungary a democratic, European state, a kind of Gaudiopolis. The fact that this is not yet the case, and that we are not even demanding what had once seemed within our grasp is not only a disgrace for our current power-abusing regime, but for us all.

GAUDIOPOLIS ATTEMPTS AT A JOYFUL SOCIETY The children’s republic of Gaudiopolis (“City of Joy”), founded in Budapest after World War II, is the inspiration and central metaphor for a collaborative project between the Leipzig Museum of Contemporary Art (GfZK) and the OFF Biennale in Budapest. The “City of Joy” existed for six years and provided shelter to hundreds of orphaned children regardless of their religious affiliation, social class or nationality. The goal of the Gaudiopolis community was to relearn democracy and raise “independent, self-confident, practically trained and theoretically educated people”. In view of today’s dysfunctional civil societies, authoritarian governments and political radicalisation, Gaudiopolis represents a strong, solidarity-based community. This project aims to present works and offer educational events which exemplify and explore the idea of democratic coexistence.

The central questions of the project are: What can we do to help children and young people gain a better understanding of democracy? What role can art and art education play in this? Are there parallels between artistic work and exploratory learning methods used by children?

The project kicks off with an international symposium in L ­ eipzig which investigates the interplay of artistic practice, art education and reform-pedagogical approaches.

The symposium will serve as the basis for new works by international artists which make reference to the urban communities of Leipzig and Budapest, presented ­alongside existing works. Artists, c ­hildren and young people will be invited to participate in art pedagogical activities in a “Museum of Ideas” spanning both cities, which will be offered at educational institutions and artistic organisations at a later time.

www.gfzk.de Artistic directors: Hajnalka Somogyi (HU), Franciska Zólyom Artists: Johanna Billing (SE), Marvin Gaye Chetwind (GB), Uta Eisenreich (DE/NL), Alia Farid (KW, PR), Sven Johne, Tamás Kaszás (HU), Gergely László / Katarina Sevic (HU/DE), Manuel Pelmus (RO), Michael Rakowitz (US), Anna Witt Symposium GfZK, Leipzig: 17–20 Aug. 2017; OFF-Biennale, Budapest: 29 Sep.–29 Oct. 2017; presentation GfZK, Leipzig: 10 Feb.–24 Jun. 2018

7

RAZOR by

László Darvasi The forecast had called for rain, but still the dense, milky white morning fog clung to the landscape. In the kitchens, coffee machines burbled and the farm occupants were taking a shit. Behind the willow grove he could make out the giant English oak, a truly majestic tree that towered over the area, watching the world and taking notes. He had gotten wet up to his knees, if felt like the dampness had crept up to his crotch. Luckily he’d worn his galoshes, he could change out of them in the building. The dog came out to meet him, he’d been waiting for him. But he could jump around him, whine and wag his tail all he wanted. The damn mutt deserved to be punished, the man kicked it aside. Inside the building it was quiet as if everyone had escaped, but then he heard the radio, tuned in to some morning show, the hosts were jabbing and guffawing, and then Gál appeared from out of nowhere, groggy, rumpled, with reddened eyes. The clasp on his holster was open, he’d probably been fooling around with his gun again even though the major had chewed him out for that. He stared at the holster until Gál, without looking, reached to his side and snapped it shut.

“Were you out drinking?”

“Hell no, the border guards came when it was still dark.” Gál yawned, shoved a large, grid notepad with the sign-in sheet over to him. He almost put his signature in the wrong spot, on the sign-out line. He couldn‘t understand what this nonsense was good for, the sign-in sheet.

“They arrested fifty last night.”

“Syrians?”

“All sorts,” Gál shrugged. He couldn’t care less if they were Syrians, Afghans or Palestinians. And actually fifty weren’t all that many; one time they’d rounded up 150, a veritable little army, and they took an exact count, one hundred and five of them were wearing bath slippers. When he saw how many feet were in plastic slippers, he began counting, and there were really more than a hundred, and it was March, and them trudging through the country in plastic slippers. It couldn’t be that they didn’t have any shoes or boots back home. Maybe their feet didn’t swell up so much in slippers. But how many slippers do you need for this Elkamino? Gál lit a cigarette and tipped his head towards his office, asking if he wanted some. He did. But he didn’t like it.

The schnapps was strong, burned his throat, but there were times when he did say yes. When the heat of the alcohol coursed through his body, or more exactly his stomach, that was good, but the shudder that followed, he didn’t like that so much anymore.

Gál looked at the grimy glass thoughtfully, deciding whether he should pour himself another one. Balanced the glass in the palm of this hand, empty. Squinted through it.

“Another thing.”

“What?”

“Runts”, said Gál, pouring himself a drink, and of course, he knew Gál would. Whenever Gál considered whether to have another, he always did. But why, then, consider? Why do you consider something that you already know will happen?!

“What do you mean, runts?”

“The transporter is back, the guards, too, but four kids got left behind. It was too late when we noticed it. Now they’re here.”

“What are they doing?”

“Nothing.”

He walked into the room, they were sitting in the smaller cell where just last week a woman wearing a chador had an epileptic seizure. A man, probably her husband, was raving, and he wouldn’t let a doctor see her, then Gál drew his gun and held it to the man’s head, but that didn’t help. A delicate situation, but then the woman suddenly got better. She sat up and started talking, the spittle still drooling from her mouth. He wished he knew what she had said to the raving man, because it

immediately calmed him down. The children sat next to each other like a row of soggy-feathered sparrows. They were scared, their eyes were blinking. Adults hardly blink. They don’t get scared so much, and when they do, they still don’t blink. Their eyes glaze over, the life seeps out of the mirror of their eyes. As if they were gone. But they weren’t gone, they simply stopped seeing. But these here were blinking, they were small children, six or seven years old, they’d lost contact with the grown-ups. Or were sent ahead. He addressed them in English, it was completely hopeless. Where are you from? But, to be honest, did it really matter? Syrian, Afghan, Iraqi. Persian? Mother, Father? They didn’t answer, they blinked, one of them had dried blood on his hand. And on his cheek, forehead, temple. He took out a bag of sweets and offered it to them, Eat, eat. But then he realised they didn’t want candy, they were hungry. He went to the kitchen, grabbed a few rolls from the day before, he also found a few triangles of processed cheese and tucked two bottles of water under his arm. The first thing they did was drink, of course. He watched the one boy, how he raised his hand instinctively, his fingers opening while the other boy gulped the water down. The boy almost yanked the bottle out of the other boy’s mouth, and then the other raised his hand in the same way. After they finished drinking, they ate and blinked. They didn’t say thank you, they were small animals, hunched over their bread rolls, cradling them in their laps, chomping at them as if someone were about to snatch them away. He squatted in front of the boy with the bloodsmeared hand, looked at him, squeezed his arm. The fence had been drawn almost across the entire length of the border. And not only that. They had put razor wire on the fence, sharp, fine strips of metal which sliced and injured those trying to get through. The razor blades were pointed towards Serbia. Someone greeted him, the interpreter had arrived. She had been transferred there three days ago, a woman from the university, her predecessor had also been a woman, couldn’t stand it, flipped out, made a big scene and went on and on about human rights.

The new lady wouldn’t last long either. On top of that, she wasn’t entirely clean, meaning there was a brown tone in her skin colour—she was browner than the Hungarians, browner than himself, maybe her father had been an Arab. Her name was Sada.

She tried talking to the children, but they only blinked at her, one of them even turned away.

“Something has badly frightened them”, said Sada.

Then the bloody child said something. Just a few words, spoken very quickly. He had come back with a damp towel and rubbed the blood off the child’s arm. He wiped it away from his eyes and the corners of his mouth. It wasn’t his blood.

This child wasn’t hurt. The child allowed him to keep wiping, blinking at him with his big brown eyes, mouth half open. He obviously liked being rubbed clean. The other children weren’t injured either. He raised his hand and showed them five fingers.

He pointed at four of them and folded his thumb to his palm. He indicated, these four are you. One, two, three, four. These are you, you and you, do you understand? These are you. Is there a fifth? He stretched out his thumb and moved it. Is there a fifth child? Where is he? With two fingers, he imitated a person running away.

The child nodded.

“Dammit ...” He stood up and left the kids with the woman. How his footsteps echoed as he walked down the corridor. Gál wasn’t especially interested in the matter.

“And now you wanna bring him in?“ “Yeah, I wanna bring him in”, he replied.

“Maybe he’ll come back on his own.”

“He’s not coming back. He’s bleeding.”

“It’s gonna rain”, said Gál.

He went outside, wondering whether he should take along the dog. A few days earlier, the dog bit a woman in the face who had tripped and fallen. It wasn’t really a bite, more of a nip.

A journalist, who had been milling around, saw it, and they had a lot of explaining to do. That the dog wasn’t really their dog, its owner had been sent back to the Croatian side and hadn’t been allowed to take it with him, and so the dog had been with them for a few days. It was an accident, really nothing more, they don’t use him as a guard dog, why should they use him to attack people? But the journalist didn’t buy it. They were definitely going after the Syrians. That was obvious. The journalist wanted to take a photo of the hound, but they wouldn’t let him. The dog was ashamed of himself, came right up to him as if he had trained him. Sometimes he gave him something to eat. But he didn’t know the dog well, how could he know he’d react that way? These animals sometimes went wild for no apparent reason. He looked

8 at the greying sky, how it sank to earth. It was still early in the morning and the sky seemed so close he felt he could reach out and touch it. The air was heavy. He considered taking his coat.

Recently he found a rabbit hanging on the coat hook. The rabbit belonged to Gál who had found it tangled in the wire, suffocated.

Gál had brought it back, hung it on the coat hook and forgotten to take it home. So he took the rabbit home instead. In fact, Gál had also hung a pheasant on the hook once. A couple of hazel grouse another time. But when he took the rabbit, Gál cursed something awful and he could hardly calm him down, but really, what was Gál thinking, leaving the rabbit there, it would have started stinking by the next morning, it would have stunk up everything next to the coats. And you couldn’t easily put an entire rabbit in the refrigerator, it wouldn’t have fit and it was also filthy. They argued back and forth for a while, then he put a plastic container on the table, for Gál, and said, here you go, a taste of my wife’s cooking, paprikasch. Rabbit in paprika-sour cream sauce. They even gave some to the kid, they took it to him at the hospital, but didn’t tell him that it was rabbit. Gál didn’t have a wife, he would have sold the rabbit.

He put on the coat, but left the dog there. The first farmhouse some five hundred metres away belonged to the smugglers, the fence didn’t make their lives easy, no more free passage, now they had to pay customs. They had to pay customs before, but now they had to pay even more. Their farm looked nice and tidy, an old Passat was parked in the garage along with a huge secret vat of gasoline, and they even had a draw well. And they had horses, several breeds, even a miniature horse, the kind shown around at the marketplace sometimes. They had painted the stall blue and also the draw well. What nonsense. The man came out into the yard in his undershirt, probably counting his money, his earnings, and he smiled to himself thinking how people always counted money in their undershirts. You had to take some clothes off to do math.

“We haven’t been out the whole week, Lieutenant.”

“I’m looking for a child.”

They used to smuggle alcohol, then they were smuggling gas and cigarettes with the good old Passat. Good heavens, how long ago was it when they were dealing in jeans! The cigarettes which the Turks brought with them through the Balkans were always a big hit. Most recently, they’d been trying to smuggle in sexual performance drugs, they also came from the Middle East, Egyptian packages. And naturally marijuana, large and small portions, sometimes even—and this was new—rolled up as cigarettes. They never dealt in weapons. They had also told him straight out—never weapons. And they had also sworn never to get mixed up in human trafficking. And he believed them. Because if they started earning tons in human trafficking, it would dry up tomorrow. They knew that. You can run out of people. Cigarettes never run out. You could run out people, there were too many, you lost control of the situation, there were major fines to pay, the risk was high, but cigarettes were a sure thing.

“He’s bleeding,” he said.

In the blue stall, a horse snorted and thumped its pretty, star-speckled forehead against the wood.

“The blue is chic, Béla,” he said, “but I don’t know about a blue well ...”

“That was only a joke, Lieutenant.”

“And what’s so funny about a blue well?”

“We laughed,” said the man and turned around because his wife had just come outside. On such occasions, the women always came out a little later. At first, they were nervous, stayed inside, but then couldn’t stand it anymore and came outside. A thin, silver chain glittered around her ankle.

“I’d like to take a look in your blue draw well, Béla,” he said.

“Don’t you want a coffee, Lieutenant? We got good coffee,” the wife said. She had pretty, round breasts.

Not long ago, they’d delivered two sacks of coffee to the customs office, he got some, took it home, naturally. He didn’t accept money, but once in a while, he’d take coffee or alcohol. But they didn’t do anything like what was going on along the Ukrainian border. That was an industrial scale operation. He went there once, an acquaintance took him along, they drove through the region from one backwater village to another, half of which were gypsy settlements, a hut, a real house, a hut, real house, then a villa. But a villa that took your breath away. A palace! In every village, there were about four palaces. How was that possible, he asked his acquaintance who had taken him along in his car. And he laughed, fuck, Laszi, it’s either smugglers or customs officers living in them, they have the houses with stone

mouldings, angel statues and swimming pools. The gypsies, who walked along the road, always had bags with them, like the Romanians used to have. They used bags to put things in whenever they needed to. Whatever was there, was sold, or found or given to them, they put in the bag. But such houses! God, some of them even had turret rooms with those steep roofs! The lady officers were going home every night with their bras and panties stuffed with euros.

By the time he had finished his coffee and left the farm, it had started raining. The dirty silver pelted him, the cold pricked his skin. It wasn’t raining hard, but you could see it was a long-lasting rain, like a speech that would never come to end.

The sky had turned dark grey. The rain splatted against the leaves of the trees, he really liked that sound. The sound of rain had always been soothing to him. How slowly but surely everything, and really everything, got wet, waterlogged and heavy. Without exception.

He walked back and forth along the border, his boots squished with each step, he peered through his binoculars, everything got wet. He knew where the pits were, about four large clay pits where the gypsies and people from the surrounding farms dug up clay for building houses. Water had collected at the bottom, it gazed up at the sky, he didn’t see the child. A stork swooshed over his head, he could almost feel the rush of wind as it flew past. Then he realised that he didn’t even know the child’s name or what he looked like. All he knew was that he was bleeding because a razor had cut him. If his blood had fallen on the path, the plantains, the tree trunks, the rain would have washed it away by now. Not far from here, concealed by the nearby willow grove, there used to be a burial ground for carcasses. They closed it a few years ago, it was no longer allowed, you could smell it from far away, there were lots of complaints. The child wasn’t there either. There were mounds of trash, it seemed that people from the neighbouring villages had been disposing their rubbish and debris on the site. Massive pieces of concrete jutted from the earth with crimped and twisted iron wires protruding from them. He’d often seen cats on wires like these, jabbed onto them, skewered. The celandine was blooming in bright yellow, why did it grow so well in junkyards, for it was growing there very well, it grew on the concrete, yellow blossoms everywhere. One time they trucked in half a house to an illegal garbage dump. Where was the other half? Where do you take half a house, the windows and door frames, why didn’t anyone want this half, because they surely didn’t. Then came the lake, a winding path led to it, the grass grew a metre high on both sides. The lake wasn’t really a lake, often it wasn’t there, it dried up and stank, the remaining fish rotting away, and then it would fill up again, and when the storks and herons stood along the banks, then you knew the water was alright. A thick beard of reeds grew along the shore. A weeping willow hung its crown in the water, tomorrow its entire trunk would be twisted into it. He stared at the water, the metallic ripples, he didn’t spot anything of interest. But he kept staring until he saw a fish jump out of the water. It was already afternoon. He hadn’t seen a soul for hours. As if they were all hiding. But not because of the rain. Here along the border there were always people even in storms and howling winds. There were always a couple of figures coming or going, searching for or carrying something, sacks, bags, baskets, stealing from someone, stealing back from someone, smuggling, fleeing, riding a bicycle.

There were people even when the snow was a metre high. But not now. He followed the path to the cross, maybe he’d find someone there. Even though nobody ever hid at the cross, it was surrounded by thorny underbrush, he spotted a snake there once.

There used to be a path here, but it had grown over, the grass, the weeds had devoured it. The farms in the area died off and the weeds, the thorny creepers grew over the cross. The cross was crooked, a bit more crooked that usual, it seemed to him. Was it getting tired? Did it want to lie down?

“I’m looking for a child,” he said automatically, and then noticed that wilted flowers were strewn over the base of the stone pedestal, lined with cracks. The rain splashed among the creepers, the overgrown thorn apple. Okay, then he’d head over to Lakatos’ farm, he thought, that was his last chance, the farm wasn’t far, past the big curve on the field path where the poplar with the owls rustled gently.

He had to kick the farm dog away, a small, black, mangy bastard, spittle at his mouth, barking until it almost suffocated.

A goat stared at him, it was tied to a post, it stood motionless. A huge cockerel marched towards him menacingly, its comb looked like someone had painted it with fresh blood. The men weren’t at home, they’d driven into town to pick up some meat.

9 “Maybe they’re staying inside and playing music,” the woman added. She was fat and wore a brightly coloured headscarf.

She held a pot over her head so she wouldn’t get wet.

“Could I take your boy for a while, Mame?”

“Why should I let you take him?”

“I’ve got work, Mame.”

“Well, looks like you’re going to get wet, László,” the woman grinned, flashing her gold teeth at him.

“I’ve got a coat,” he said, patting himself.

“No, you don’t, you’ll give it to the boy. The men took ours when they left this morning.”

The boy only came up to his waist. The coat he draped over him dragged on the ground. Like he’d grown two black wings, like he wanted to fly away. He was like his own child, the one who had recently eaten the rabbit and had also wanted to fly away. But they wouldn’t allow it. When his child got healthy again, he’d drape his coat over him, too. He smiled to himself, but the boy next to him marched on with a grave expression on his face, he would have loved to kick a mole hill, but he couldn’t because of the coat. So he jumped on it instead.

“What’s your name again, Janika?”

“János,” the boy said.

When you walked over wet earth, the sound changed.

When it was dry, the grass, the straw crackled, you could see and hear how the crickets and grasshoppers ricocheted away with clacking wings. When the grass was wet, the walking got harder.

The wet grass would love to strangle your ankles. The wet grass wished it were sea grass. Now they could hardly see a thing. They walked through the thick, grey world. He was already soaking wet.

The boy asked for the binoculars and hung them around his neck.

“Where would you go if you were scared?”

“I’m never scared.”

“I didn’t say you were scared. I asked what if.”

“I told you, I don’t get scared.”

“Fine, then tell me where you’d hide if you didn’t want anyone to find you.”

“Who?” “People. Like me, for instance.”

He bent over the boy and held him fast. Janika, dammit, we’re not joking around here. He didn’t hold the boy too tightly, just both arms, and he shook him just a little as if he were trying to shake the sleep out of his big, drowsy eyes. Dammit Janika, this is not the time to be stubborn. No talking back. This is no time for fooling around. You got my coat. And the binoculars. You don’t have to be at home where you’d be bored to death.

He pulled out the sweets and put two in his mouth. Janika wriggled his arms free and reached for the bag.

“There’s a child, as big as you, who is lost,” he said.

“He hid somewhere and I don’t know where he is. Let’s look for him, OK? If we find him, I’ll give you a thousand forints.”

They stared at each other in silence, the boy had at least five pieces of candy in his mouth.

“Five thousand.”

“Three.”

“Alright, three.”

From then on, the boy walked differently. He had a purpose. And somehow he was proud that he had something to do, an important matter, like adults always had. He didn’t look around for mole hills or gopher holes, he stopped searching for eggs or nests, he squinted his eyes and looked ahead. The rain pelted the back of his coat, his hair was wet and matted, his nose was shiny with snot, dripping. The binoculars were a little heavy for him, he gave them back. His eyes were sharp enough without them. They trod through the high, drooping stalks of grass, circled through the blossoming hemlock and chicory. But their circles were getting noticeably tighter. Another stork flew over their heads, closer than before. He could even see its eyes. The boy found a stick with which he cleared the path ahead. He slashed at the rampant burrs, the prickly flowers, the marsh marigolds.

It was pouring. He wasn’t cold and couldn’t figure out why not.

He was soaked to the bone. His boots squelched with each step, as if he were heaving stones with his feet. Suddenly the boy stopped. The sleeve of the coat creased as he pointed his thin arm forward.

“He’s up there.”

“I don’t see him.”

“There, in the tree, between the leaves. I can’t see him either, but he’s there. He’s watching us.”

“He’s probably getting wet too, isn’t he?”

“Yes, but only from above. Not below. When the cold comes from below, that’s the worst. And he knows it. He’s been

outdoors for a while, so he knows it. I’m going home now,” the boy said. “Don’t go too fast, otherwise he’ll fall down. Go over to him slowly.”

“Very slowly!” he called.

And the boy wandered off, taking the coat with him, the binoculars and sweets, and the crumpled money in his pocket. He might have even been humming to himself, the rain beating on his back. The grass probably straightened itself quickly after he had passed. He looked at the giant tree. It was the majestic English oak, not far from the guardhouse. How did the child manage to climb up it? And there in front of him, he now noticed, shivering, for he was starting to get cold, were a row of dark spots on the leaf of a plantain. The rain hadn’t washed them away, but just dissolved their edges. He looked over at the tree. He only had another half hour until it got dark. He’d have to get over there by then. He started moving. Carefully he took one step after another, very slowly. It was still daylight when he reached the tree, there was still light in the sky when he could finally lean against the trunk. He was so exhausted his heaving breath sounded strange to him, someone else’s mouth gasping for air. A little slipper lay at the foot of the tree. He craned his head back and peered up into the growing darkness of winding, intersecting branches and twigs and shivering leaves which swallowed the light like coal in a sack. And he couldn’t see anything else. He couldn’t see anything that would warrant a sigh of relief, now I’ve got you, there you are, little guy. Now I got you, friend. He kept looking up until he felt something warm on his face. He touched it and knew without looking. He knew his face was bloody.

László Darvasi is one of the most original writers in Hungary’s contemporary literary scene today. His short stories, in particular, possess a poignancy which has earned him recognition far beyond Hungary’s borders. Although several of his works have been published by Suhrkamp in German translation, he is still relatively unknown to German readers. Darvasi was born in 1962 in Törökszentmiklós and has lived for most of his life in Szeged near the Hungarian-Serbian border. In addition to his diverse array of literary works, he has become an influential and independent voice in Hungarian society thanks to his extensive journalistic endeavours, occasionally writing under the pseudonym Ernő Szív, in daily newspapers, the prominent weekly journal Élet és Irodalom and various literary magazines. Just this year Suhrkamp published an extraordinary volume of his latest short stories titled Wintermorgen (Winter Morning).

10

A DIFFERENT SHADE OF BLUE RIDER The entire work, named art, knows no boundaries and peoples, just humanity.

The Lenbachhaus in Munich has adopted Wassily Kandinsky’s credo as the starting point for re-examining its extraordinary collection of Blue Rider works in the global context of other artists’ collectives. Not only will the curatorial team

Hardly any artists’ collective is as internationally renowned as the Blue Rider. Why is this, would you say?

Might it be that certain views have condensed into a cliché which is propagated in museums and explains the influx of visitors?

It is quite astounding that artworks from what is now the period of ‘classical’ modernism have become so popular. Indeed, we should ask ourselves why this is so, why a society emphatically embraces art which is almost one hundred years old and which struggled to gain the approval of contemporary audiences, and occasionally didn’t even want to. This popularity naturally benefits a movement like the Blue Rider, and by extension, a museum like the Lenbachhaus which holds the world’s largest collection of works by this circle of artists. Paintings

by Gabriele Münter, Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc and August Macke are generally regarded as “beautiful”. And there is, in fact, something beautiful about the idea of modernism. It holds the promise of world improvement, of utopias, enlightenment and progress, and art instils these ideas with a specifically novel style: colourful, expressive, reduced to the essentials. Expressionism is certainly something that can devolve into a cliché.

What has been lost in our conventional perception of expressionism?

have to rethink its exhibition strategy, but also change its perspective, which had long been limited to works of modernity. Matthias Mühling, the director of the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, elucidates on the considerations and plans underway at his museum.

We easily forget the potential for disruption which this art form used to have, its capacity for scandal.

Oskar Maria Graf reported on the lack of comprehension, even anger which Munich’s citizens expressed when presented with blue horses and abstract depictions of mountains. And Kandinsky wrote in his memoirs that viewers would sometimes spit on the exhibited works. It is difficult, if not impossible, to present these impressions and the reasons for them to audiences today. What’s more, when contemplating the promise of modernity as expressed in art, most people are too willing to forget the less positive side effects of the modernisation movements which continue to impact the entire world today.

For decades, museums focused largely on painting and the smallest circle of the female, and in particular, male artists of the Blue Rider. The 1912 almanac entitled Der Blaue Reiter has been the focus of increasing attention for some time now. Kandinsky and Marc produced this publication, which will serve as the thematic thread for our project. There is a universal understanding of art expressed in the almanac, the idea of a cross-genre, non-hierarchical and global art. One of its tenets: “The entire work, named art, knows no boundaries and peoples, just humanity.”

This is demonstrated in exemplary manner in the section of illustrations: There are no hierarchies in the arrangement of the participating artists or works of European and Russian folk art, children’s drawings, and a great many works from different epochs

from China, India, Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil, New Caledonia, Egypt, Cameroon, Malaysia and the Marquesas. This view of art as providing a common language of “humanity” independent of cultural education and national affiliation was quite visionary during that period of colonial world order before World War I. Of course, from today’s perspective, we should also critically evaluate the basic premises and achievements of the almanac. The reference to “humanity” glosses over historical-cultural relationships and imbalances of power in favour of a presumed global “essence”.

Your exhibition draws attention to the subject of artists’ collectives which is a central aspect of the Federal Cultural Foundation’s “Global Museum” programme. What does this group possess that any individual member— many of whom were famous—doesn’t have?

The same as in all endeavours which are the result of collective cooperation: The group is stronger than any single person. Unions, protest movements and artists’ collectives are quite similar in this respect. Community possesses great value—being there for one another, challenging each other, working together. Relationship work is absolutely vital for the stability of society.

Another thing artist groups of modernity have in common is their rejection of the genius cult ­surrounding single artists, who are supposedly so

11 vastly different and much better and sublime than all others. Some of them also renounce the academy-market-museum system and its money-driven business and rewards.

In the context of the “Global Museum” project, we at the Lenbachhaus see the artists’ collective as a necessary and long-overdue effort to examine the categories of authorship, autonomy, ideology, and canonical aesthetics. Especially because the Blue Rider itself also questioned these categories. And not least of all, the focus on artists’ collectives is an opportunity for us at the museum to think and work in an even more collaborative way.

How do you explain that only a handful of the founding members and participants in the activities by the Blue Rider are still known today? Others, outside of professional circles, are all but forgotten.

group in these short years. They were both artistic and personal in nature, they occurred between subgroups, between couples, between the sexes, between the more affluent and poorer members, and were also sparked by the relationship to gallery owners and publishers. The First World War put an end to all of the lively and intensive discussions. The letters exchanged between these artist friends, right up to their untimely deaths in some cases, are an elegy to the time they shared together.

The prevalent idea of the Blue Rider as a compact, even mythical artist group, however, is a phenomenon of its post-war reception after 1945, first in Germany, and then internationally in the Western world.

bund exhibition in Cologne in 1912 and the Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon (First German Autumn Salon) at Herward Walden’s Sturm Galerie in Berlin.

In this respect, both projects were among the most significant international art exhibitions prior to the First World War, and nothing comparable took place in any other country.

In the non-hierarchical view of art, as expressed in the almanac, which assumes a basic equality of human emotions and expressive forms, there are also underlying social and democratic ideas. How “social” were the members of the Blue Rider, how “democratically-minded” were they really?

The “social question” was a topic which Kandinsky What distinguishes the Blue Rider from other artists’ had discussed with interest in his unfinished law discollectives which are still widely discussed sertation. It would be worth investigating to today—the Bauhaus, the Dadaists, the Surwhat extent the Blue Rider was truly moved THE BLUE The reception of the artists of the Blue Rider was realists, Black Mountain College and the like? by the real-life experiences of normal people.

RIDER WAS characterised by an increased interest in individual Did they have anything in common or any Specific references in the almanac to “social” INTERESTED positions. Naturally, this is due to the fact that prac- striking differences? and “democratic” ideas can be found in sevIN tically all of the members had long careers which eral annotations in the Russian contribution SPIRITUALITY continued beyond the brief existence of the Blue The Blue Rider wasn’t and never wanted by the Burliuk brothers.

AND IN ­ Rider, and the reasons for their fame lie in their to be an art institution. The Bauhaus, for In the end, the references to these topics DIRECT AND complete oeuvre. The Blue Rider also invited unafinstance, had an institutional structure— are only implicit. Kandinsky and Marc, as UNADUL­ filiated artists to participate in their exhibitions, founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar in well as the other editors of the almanac Der TERATED some of whom were already quite well-known out1919 on the basis of the State School of Blaue Reiter, among them Arnold Schönberg FEELING, side the group, such as Robert Delaunay or Hans Arts and Crafts in Weimar with a focus on and Macke, were far more focused on renewNOT Arp. What’s interesting is that compared with Marc, architecture, and then later in Dessau, on ing life through art and combining new artisIN TECHNICAL Kandinsky, Macke, Alexej Jawlensky, Paul Klee or industrial design—or Black Mountain tic forces in Germany and abroad in order MASTERY. Alfred Kubin, the female artists like Münter and College in North Carolina, in which Josef to achieve spiritual sublimity. The practical Marianne Werefkin were treated rather shabbily and and Anni Albers continued cultivating the implementation of these ideas, for example, were strongly defined through their partners. For Bauhaus philosophy after their emigration to the through the selection of images for the almanac, this we can justifiably lay blame on museums, curaUnited States. The Blue Rider wasn’t even a tightpresenting artworks side by side by different peoples tors and also the book market, for instance. The knit artists’ collective like the Parisian Surrealists and from different times in equal standing, had a desire for large audiences and higher sales figures or the artists of Die Brücke, who were also collabsignificant impact. The modernist moment of the by rehashing the same famous names over and over orating on their joint programme around the same Blue Rider lies in this pluralism of forms and the can hardly be undone. time (1905/1913) and shared a high degree of styassertion of multi-layered dimensions of meanlistic similarity. The Blue Rider was rather a looseing—aspects which continue to enjoy relevance and Is the image we have of the Blue Rider group too holy connected circle of artists which shared a basis of acceptance to this day. For they expected nothing mogenous? Were there any inner conflicts which we diversity. This pluralism of expressive forms—for less from this aesthetic renewal than a common prefer to ignore so as not to tarnish the “pretty group example, the expressive abstraction of Kandinsky, “language” which could be used to communicate picture (with ladies)”? the predominant animal symbolism of Marc, the beyond the restrictive boundaries of national lancolourfully vivid reinterpretation of reality, landguages and cultural education from which we come.

The image of the Blue Rider as a homogenous, harscapes, still-lifes, portraits, the Zoological Garden monious artist group is certainly a cliché. Perhaps and walkers by artists such as Münter, Macke and Yet the artistic language of the Blue Rider has become it was most accurate in 1908/09 in Murnau where Elisabeth Epstein, or the intellectual artistic imag- much more the group’s “brand” than their philosophy Kandinsky, Münter, Jawlensky and Werefkin spent es produced by Klee—these essentially distinguish of spiritual and social change. Why aren’t we reminded a number of productive weeks painting together, the Blue Rider from other artist groups of that time. of this more often, or rather, why hasn’t it left more of sharing ideas and going through a similar, What united them was rather a spiritual ap- an impression on our cultural memory?

THE BLUE RIDER innovative stylistic development. There is proach, namely finding new forms in art WAS THE legitimate reason why this period has been capable of immediately and authentically Actually we do believe that the writings in the alONLY attributed to the Blue Rider, though it acexpressing its content—the inner vision. manac or Concerning the Spiritual in Art by Kandintually took place shortly before the group AVANT-GARDE This spiritual idea of the Blue Rider, parsky have had an enormous and widespread impact.

MOVEMENT existed. Indeed, the four artists had just ticularly evident in Kandinsky’s and Marc’s When I was teaching in Colombo, the painting proWHICH formed the Neue Künstlervereinigung belief in the “spirituality of art” which led fessor there was translating Concerning the Spiritual München (New Artist Association of Mu- ­SUCCEEDED IN them towards abstraction, did in fact have in Art into Singhalese. All of the students wanted to nich, or NKVM) with several other colartistic repercussions with numerous refdiscuss this text. There are more than mere traces CONDUCTING leagues in 1909. To be exact, the history of erences throughout the 20th century until of this philosophy which still exist in our cultural JOINT the Blue Rider began with the first conflict. the present day.

For example, just think of memory. The fact alone that primary-school chilEUROPEAN When the majority of the NKVM jury reabstract expressionism in the post-war era dren in almost every school in Germany receive inACTIVITIES. fused to include Kandinsky’s large-scale, in America and France, or the numerous struction in painting, or that a standard of German almost wholly abstract Komposition V in its third references to symbolism in artworks by Klee. schooling is teaching children abstract design while exhibition, Kandinsky, along with Marc and Münter, they listen to music, demonstrates how strongly our resigned from the association. The history of the How “globally” active was the group? Was it able to put thinking has been influenced by the Blue Rider. It’s Blue Rider is essentially comprised of just a few ac- its transnational credo into practice? only that we don’t always know where these ideas tivities. They organised the now famous First Exhioriginally came from. With regard to artistic probition by the Editors of the Blue Rider—named The Blue Rider was “globally” active in the sense duction, the Blue Rider was interested in spiritualafter their almanac which was already in planning— that it collaborated—to an astonishingly great exity and in direct and unadulterated feeling, not in at the turn of 1911/12 at the Galerie Thannhauser, tent—with other European and Russian coltechnical mastery. It regarded the creative expresand included works by several new artists, such as leagues—and with the American synchronists sion of children as an ideal. In this sense, we can Albert Bloch, Delaunay, Macke and Schönberg. In through Marsden Hartley. They were—and this is describe their paintings as democratic in the best spring 1912, they presented their second exhibition important to point out—the only avant-garde sense of the word, for these are not brilliant masfeaturing solely graphic art, followed shortly theremovement that succeeded in conducting joint Euterpieces created by extraordinarily talented indiafter by the publication of the almanac. The brief ropean activities. They reached out to internationviduals, capable of producing something after years history of the artists’ circle concludes with various al artists, especially from Russia, France, Switzerof academic training and maturation of their craft, exhibition activities, including the tour of the first land and Austria, for contributions to their almanac which they alone master.

Blue Rider exhibition, which was shown until 1914 Der Blaue Reiter. Moreover, Macke and Marc sucOne of the direct consequences of the Blue Rider and made it all the way to Scandinavia. ceeded in commissioning an array of well-known is that we can go into a museum, free of the burden Plenty of conflicts flared among members of the international avant-gardists for the large Sonderof historical knowledge, and judge its relevance to

12 THE GLOBAL MUSEUM In recent years, the discourse in the fine arts has increasingly turned its focus to non-European developments in contemporary and modern art. And it is certain that museum activities will continue to be influenced by non-Western artists, curators and theorists in the future. With its programme “Global Museum”, the Federal Cultural Foundation is supporting projects at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen Düsseldorf, the Nationalgalerie—Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main and the Lenbachhaus Munich which present their collections of modern art in a global perspective and reflect on their own collection histories.

The goal is to emphasise the global web of relationships between people, artistic trends and objects which has long been neglected in the conventional narrative of modernism. Not least of all, the projects aim to examine the role museums can play in a society increasingly shaped by globalisation and migration.

Under the working title “Group Dynamics—The Blue Rider Collection and the Artists’ Collectives of the Modernist Period in a Global Context”, the team at the Lenbachhaus wish to explore the potential of the Blue Rider group from a global perspective and in relation to other active artists’ groups of the modernist period worldwide for presentation in a major exhibition. The first part of the MMK exhibition project is set to open in Frankfurt in November 2017, and the second part will take place at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (MAMBA) in 2017. Entitled “A Tale of Two Worlds”, the exhibition will feature important pieces from the MMK collection in dialogue with key works of Latin American art.

Also in 2018, the Nationalgalerie—­ Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and the Kunstsammlung NRW will present the findings of their joint working and research collaborations.

www.kulturstiftung-bund.de/­ museumglobal MMK Frankfurt am Main—A Tale of Two Worlds: 24 Nov. 2017–2 Apr. 2018 MAMBA Buenos Aires—A Tale of Two Worlds: 18 Jul.–30 Oct. 2018 Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin—Global Resonances: 23 Mar.–19 Aug. 2018 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, K20, Düsseldorf—Eccentric ­Modernism: 9 Nov. 2018–Mar. 2019

our lives, or simply enjoy it. The arrangement of the images in the almanac doesn’t convey art-historical facts, but rather suggests that every work of art belongs to the present and can be interpreted even if detached from its historical circumstances.

One of the most magnificent ideas in the almanac Der Blaue Reiter is that every cultural achievement is valuable. The history of the destruction of cultural works shows us, unfortunately, that this idea is by no means self-evident.

ONE OF THE MOST MAGNIFICENT IDEAS IN DER BLAUE REITER IS THAT EVERY CULTURAL ACHIEVEMENT IS VALUABLE.

What hypothesis do you work with when you present other artists’ collectives from different parts of the world in the context of, or as a co-text to, the Blue Rider?

We don’t have a hypothesis; we ask ourselves lots of questions because we want to get past our blind spots which exist in our knowledge and even in our areas of academic interest.

Instead of proposing a hypothesis, we confront similar processes at different locations and create a narrative from it. Once upon a time, 1901, the same year Kandinsky along with several artists in Munich established the artists’ association and art school “Phalanx”, the resistance forces of the Asante Nation in present-day Ghana—after several years of armed conflict and despite military defeat—succeeded in securing a cultural victory.

They deceived the British by defending a replica of the “Golden Stool”, then relinquished it and allowed it to fall into the hands of the British. While the colonial rulers triumphantly transported a fake throne back to London and exhibited it as proof of their superiority, the original remained in the possession of the Asante. As a result of their successful deception of the British, the Asante and their neighbours cultivated a collective and subtle form of symbolic communication, which is now prevalent in many parts of Africa today and can be described as an aesthetic form of resistance: Wax-print textiles, which had first appeared several decades earlier in West Africa, became an ideal medium of communication. Fabrics bearing images of throne stools or parasols, symbols of the political system of the Asante, rapidly became widespread and were employed as a kind of “silent” protest, to which the colonial administration was oblivious. This is how a group of people were able to raise their voices without speaking—a strategy which quickly spread across the entire West African region and the continent and is closely linked to the idea of human dignity (especially) in the face of political oppression. The goods produced using the wax-printing technique developed in the Netherlands eventually became an African material, a hybrid cultural technique. From the point of view of the suppressed, such aesthetic means of expression and appropriation served as examples of how colonial rule could be infiltrated in a subtle way. The Phalanx is firmly anchored as a key component in the successful narrative of modernism. Compared with the local scope of the Phalanx’s art-based projects, the action by the Asante had global consequences.

The Asante also used aesthetic and artistic methods for politically asserting INSTEAD their own identity and their aversion OF A to colonial rule. Both strategies are HYPOTHESIS, WE highly relevant today, also for the inCONFRONT ternational exhibition community, as SIMILAR well as for joint political and aesthetPROCESSES ic action in a broader sense. Direct AT DIFFERENT comparison allows us to highlight LOCATIONS AND strategies or readjust assessments. We CREATE A want to learn more about such relaNARRATIVE tionships, also parallel developments, FROM IT. and consider them as part of the larger picture.

Could you describe the goals of your exhibition in terms of “before and after”?

We feel the need to reacquaint ourselves with the Blue Rider thanks to a more global perspective, and we hope that this has lasting effects on our future work with the collection. We feel it’s important to critically re-evaluate the collection holdings. The museum staff of the Lenbachhaus hope that this project will result in a revision and expansion of their curatorial and art-historical views.

The question regarding the specific character of an artists’ group (not the individual artists), the question of inspiration and impact, also with respect to the international context, requires a new approach and a new investigative method. This includes, for example, combining the findings from all other relevant disciplines like ethnology, history, folklore or postcolonial studies. Various art forms were and continue to be assessed in different contexts—and this should be pointed out in the exhibition. Yet, we have to rethink the forms of presentation and develop them further in order to illustrate the cultural relationships through graphic narration, for instance, instead of auratic depiction. Hopefully this will enable us to draw attention to objects and documents from the diverse estates of the Blue Rider artists which we have overlooked in the past because they didn’t correspond to the conventional categories of “art”.

The questions were asked by Friederike Tappe-Hornbostel.

Matthias Mühling (*1968) is an art historian and has served as director of the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau in Munich since 2013. As a writer and curator, he has produced numerous publications and exhibitions on 20th- and 21st-century art, including solo exhibitions featuring Monica Bonvicini, Marcel Duchamp, Kraftwerk, Florine Stettheimer and many other artists. Matthias Mühling has also organised group exhibitions on such topics as video art, emotions, labour and “Mondrian and De Stijl”.

13

HERMANN HESSE — A HISTORICAL ENCOUNTER Lukas Bärfuss asks why we aren’t

reading Hermann Hesse anymore. We should be ashamed of ourselves.

The first time I ever heard of the writer Hermann Hesse I was twelve years old, when one of his books, the story Beneath the Wheel, became popular in the higher grades at our school. I didn’t read it at the time—with the exception of the first few pages—but I do vividly recall the brown-coloured book jacket which seemed dark and depressing, and which in combination with the title, has always evoked a sense of brown bleakness whenever I’ve thought of the writer Hermann Hesse since. A colour which became the tone of his skin and a W, a letter seldom found at the end of a word in German, as in Calw, Hesse’s birthplace, located in Württemberg, as the flap text will always tell you.

None of this is necessarily interesting in itself. Nor the fact that when I was sixteen, I, like so many others, devoured Narcissus and Goldmund and Siddharta in quick succession. In that first year after completing mandatory schooling, I worked abroad and was entirely on my own.

I can’t remember the books very clearly anymore. Other books made a deeper impression on me. And I’ve hardly read Hermann Hesse since. I’ve encountered him here and there. I put him aside.

The basic contours of my experience with Hesse likely resemble those of most people. This is the only reason why they might be interesting—to realise how a reader’s relationship to his author is a reflection of the times, the zeitgeist. This reader is a young person, and youth— especially in bourgeois society—is a problem, a danger that some do not survive.

Hermann Hesse writes about this danger, about the lethality of certain ideas. He speaks of the gift, the feeling, the intimacy a child loses on his way to manhood.

He knows of the training and conformance that are necessary to become a proper and sensible member of society. And it often happens that the child does not survive his transformation into a man.

Because youth eventually comes to an end, so does one’s interest in Hesse’s writings. The adult citizen no longer needs a Demian, or a Steppenwolf. In this society, living a rapturous life is generally unsuitable.

Hesse remains a case, however, a revealing and extraordinary case in German-language literature of the 20th century. There are several reasons for this.

First of all, there’s the duration and breadth of his

success. In the one hundred years between 1896, which marked Hesse’s debut, and 1996, when his fourth volume of correspondence was published, hardly a year went by without the release of a new edition. Over 100 million of his books have been sold.

He financed the most important publishing company for post-war West German literature. Clearly there are reasons enough for which he deserves our gratitude. He could be a role model. But no one wants to emulate Hermann Hesse. What contemporary writer feels called to cultivate his legacy, to continue his tradition? And what young ­academic would build her career on his texts?

Hermann Hesse’s works are suspected of being kitsch. One could write a history of kitsch based on his works, a history of the steps, the arcades, the ceremonies with which middle-class culture stages its works. The display cases in museums, the peepholes at fairground stalls, the premium editions bound in half-linen and full-leather, the trimmings which denote their significance, the ceremony, the place of the obscene and vulgar—all of these structures and

14 The Swiss Hermann Hesse and the “Third Reich” EXHIBITION AND EVENTS While most are aware that Thomas Mann’s role during the Nazi years was one of moral authority in the face of National Socialist transgression, few are familiar with Hermann Hesse’s role. This exhibition at the Literaturhaus Berlin wishes to change this by examining Hesse’s position with respect to the “Third Reich”. The focus lies on Hesse’s literary, political and social activities from the beginning of the 1930s to the mid1950s, and in particular, to the intensive literary and personal relationship he fostered with Thomas Mann. As a Swiss national, having gained citizenship in 1924, Hesse played a special role in navigating between German resistance, “inner emigration” and exile. In the years of National Socialism, Hesse put numerous writers and intellectuals in contact with publishing companies, intervened on their behalf with the Swiss immigration authorities and even provided direct financial assistance, e.g. to Walter Benjamin, Peter Weiss, Siegfried Kracauer and Robert Musil. Countless friends and relatives, especially from Austria, sought help from Hesse’s second wife Ninon who came from a Jewish family herself. Hesse’s position as a writer was a constant balancing act—his books were tolerated by the Nazi authorities, but also occasionally sabotaged.

And while the S. Fischer Verlag was dismantled and was forced to relinquish numerous authorial rights, Hesse continued to publish his works with the imperial German Restverlag.

The exhibition will present a portion of the unpublished correspondence between Hermann Hesse and his son Martin, as well as between Hesse and Thomas Mann. The organisers hope to shed light on the contemporary and cultural contexts with historical items, documents, photos, Hesse’s original aquarelles and multimedia components. A comprehensive accompanying programme of readings, a film presentation and expert discussion forum will supplement the exhibition at the Literaturhaus Berlin. The organisers also plan to stage the exhibition in Zürich, Ukraine, Russia, the United States and China.

www.literaturhaus-berlin.de Artistic director: Lutz Dittrich Curators: Volker Michels, Gunnar Decker, unodue (Florian Wenz, Costanza Puglisi) Participants: Lukas Bärfuss (CH), Jan Bürger, Richard Dindo (CH), Eva Eberwein, Michael Kleeberg, Udo Lindenberg, Bärbel Reetz Exhibition, Literaturhaus Berlin: 8 Dec. 2017–11 Mar. 2018; mobile ­exhibition, various venues in Ukraine, Russia and China: 2 Mar.–28 Dec. 2018; mobile exhibition, various venues in the USA: 7 Sep.–28 Dec. 2018; exhibition, Museum Strauhof, Zurich: 19 Oct. 2018–13 Jan. 2019

categories haven’t prevented Hesse’s work from spill- must not be allowed to extend IT IS ing over its confines. His works have refused to stay beyond a certain age. This obTHIS SHAME where people wanted them. ligation is called ‘growing up’.

THAT For the anti-communists, he was a wolf in red And thus he no longer quessheep’s clothing. For the real socialists, he with his tions the conclusions from DISTINGUISHES HESSE’S spiritual quality was an unreliable comrade. The polar- economics and pharmaceutics, ised world demanded a world view from everyone. There he swallows them, both in the CASE AND FROM WHICH was no escape. symbolic and literal sense.

Despite his ideological unreliability, the East GerAnd when someone re- WE CAN LEARN SOMETHING man authorities wanted to print his works. For the minds him in his stagnation of ABOUT THE committee in Stockholm, there was no ignoring him, the promise, the Cartesian HISTORY OF though they suspected he was an anarchist. Or was that summit, of the great, non-neonly a phase—a phase of his early years? And conserv- gotiable, the principles, the CIVIL SOCIETY IN THE 20TH ative critics wanted to know whether he wasn’t poison- citizen feels as if he has been CENTURY. ing the morals of the young generation, the youth who caught in flagrante. He didn’t would also become a problem and later call themselves mean it that way. Change is an the 68ers. incentive, yes, but not someHis citizenship was a telling sign of his volatility. As thing to aspire to. the son of a German-Baltic missionary, he was granted Yet Christ died at age 36, and as there are still relics Russian citizenship by parentage, became a Swiss na- of Christian mysticism in the culture of civil society, like tional at age four when his father took a position in Ba- the story of the Sermon on the Mount along with its sel, then returned to Calw where he, in order to attend promise of transformation, the adult citizen senses how school, became a Württemberger. And then at the end little peace is contained in his economic existence. And of his forties, he once again became a Swiss citizen per- this hollowness at the centre of his existence requires manently. This back and forth raises suspicions even compensation. today. No one would put their hand in the fire for HerIn our generation the spiritual has found a refuge in mann Hesse’s Swiss citizenship. Nationally speaking, technology. The gurus of today are software and hardhe’s a chimera, a hybrid. What should you think of a man ware manufacturers. In their workshops, they cultivate who obviously never possessed a natural homeland? the connection of the Eastern with the Western heritage.

One senses this mistrust in many places in They have replaced the antiquarians who the documentation of his political writings. In once displayed Noh masks and Buddha statTHE his correspondence with Heinrich Rothmund, ADULT CITIZEN ues in their libraries. The East, for the longhead of the Swiss Immigration Police between est time, was a place reserved for special NO LONGER 1919 and 1954. Later in the accusations, insinprints and bibliophiles. Today, after the NEEDS uations by a literary critic in the Nationalzeimarriage in Silicon Valley, it has become A DEMIAN, tung in Basel where he was more or less openmainstream.

OR A ly denounced as a Nazi collaborator.

No one expects to be saved by this spirSTEPPENWOLF. These disputes lie in the distant past. The IN THIS SOCIETY, it, technology will not redeem the citizen. artillery smoke has dissipated, the rubble has The Enlightenment did not prevent excessLIVING A been carted away. And yet shame still hovers es of violence. It has accelerated and proRAPTUROUS over the quiet graves of some writers. It is this liferated them. Literature as propaganda, LIFE IS shame that distinguishes Hesse’s case and physics as the fundamentals of artillery, GENERALLY from which we can learn something about the chemistry in weaponry, administrative UNSUITABLE. history of civil society in the 20th century. sciences as the prerequisite for the indusAt the centre of Enlightenment, and by trial extermination of human life—this is extension, civil society, lies a promise. It is the method all proven and described, it is the contemporary’s exused by René Descartes, inscribed in his Discours de la perience. méthode, first published in 1637 in Leyden.

He flees from these contradictions by turning inBut I shall have no fear of declaring that I think I have been ward, seeking serenity, the virtues of the Greek Stoa. It fortunate, as I have, since my youth, found myself on paths that had once been the saving grace for subjects who were have led me to certain considerations and maxims from which I bereft of the ability to bring about change, under the have formed a method by means of which, it seems to me, I have reign of the Roman emperor Augustus during which the ways to increase my knowledge by degrees and to raise it every political action was deadly and salvation was not gradually to the highest point to which the mediocrity of my mind to be found in public, but only in private. “Stoicism, and the short span of my life can allow it to attain. indeed, stood for order and for monarchy,” according to Increasing one’s knowledge by degrees until it Ronald Syme’s portrayal of The Roman Revolution under reaches the highest point, the summit—does this only Augustus. The monarchy, that form of dominion, justiapply to science? Or can or should one perhaps under- fied by the third party, that requires no justification and stand it in a biographical sense as well? When we increase must be accepted as a given, our knowledge, does it follow that we lead a better life? can be found in the final preWHEN And what would it be, this better life? A life without sentiments of a canon. The WE INCREASE suffering? In the wake of the 20th century, we know it contemporary individual still OUR was this race to the top that produced the fruits of knows about an order which KNOWLEDGE, modern society. must have existed at one time DOES IT FOLLOW The European of the 21st century, however, mis- and assigned every piece of THAT WE LEAD trusts this Cartesian promise. He knows how ambivalent content its appropriate place.

A BETTER LIFE? the fruits of this progress can turn out to be. Setbacks He presumes that this order AND WHAT are normal, bankruptcy is a constant worry. The con- had a comforting effect. Those WOULD IT BE, temporary has learned to assume a pragmatic approach who lived in it separated the inTHIS BETTER to daily life. What this means, in his case, is to ensure significant from the essential.

LIFE? he remains an economic factor. Predictable, and thus They were capable of passing measurable, with a price attached. As the British say, to judgement. For the contempomake a living! rary, the comforting judgement only exists as a gesture, The problem the contemporary has with the notion as a reference. Nowadays judging means making an ecoof progress is the inability to steer it. The research find- nomic decision. ings are acknowledged. The models are accepted. What It is the memory of the broken promise that fills me else could he do? How could he—the contemporary— with shame when reading Hermann Hesse. Shame is the permit himself to be put at unnecessary risk? He is not social recognition of weakness. It goes hand in hand with allowed to quit. He may, however, take time out. But pity. But both, shame and pity, are detrimental to a sucafterwards, he must return to the economic cycle. His cessful life in society, they must be replaced. We have existence demands consolidation. Sturm und Drang found a synonym for pity: empathy, sympathy. Sympathy

15 is considered a skill, a means of deciphering, of improving and at best, of making good use of a social situation.

The merchant, the trader, requires empathy. He wants to understand his customer’s needs. The better he understands them, the more precisely he can customise his service. Sympathy is the affirmation of what exists, but criticism requires pity. Herein lies the common root of Christianity and Western science. It secularised the idea that redemption can be achieved only through weakness and pity.

For the citizen of the 21st century, there is no redemption, there are only solutions. He has not rid himself, however, of the desire to transcend all contradictions, he has simply suppressed them. Reading Hermann Hesse reminds him of this act of suppression. A sense of shame overcomes him. If one day he learns to live with the knowledge that there is no salvation, no summit, no God, and that every attempt to find it is futile, then Hermann Hesse will mean nothing to him anymore. Feeling shame, however, demonstrates that, despite everything, he still understands Hesse.

Lukas Bärfuss (*1971 in Thun, Switzerland) has written numerous radio plays, theatre pieces and works of prose, including the novels One Hundred Days (2008), Koala (2004) and most recently Hagard (2017), all published by Wallstein in Göttingen. His novels have been translated into twenty languages, and his plays have been performed at theatres around the world. Most notably, his play The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents earned him international recognition.

Bärfuss is a member of the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung (German Academy for Language and Literature) and his literary distinctions include the Mülheim Dramatikerpreis, the Anna Seghers Preis and the Berlin Literaturpreis.

SCRIPTED REALITY What plot line excites your interest? In the first years following the discovery of HIV, the news stories about AIDS resembled sensational horror flicks and kitschy tearjerkers. Vladimir Čajkovac describes how the disease has been staged as a media spectacle.

“Once upon a time in America, in the heyday of urban consumer culture, a primitive, but lethal organism begins to devastate unsuspecting individuals amid their assiduous pursuit of pleasure. Death comes swiftly, and it is particularly gruesome. The first victims are typed as sexually promiscuous and have a history of drug or alcohol abuse. Each is deviant or marginal to the mainstream in some way. The organism also attacks women and, most pathetically, young children, but only in the last instance white, middle-class, heterosexual males who remain monogamous or chaste. (…) Owing to a combination of political and economic factors, no effective action is taken, until the death rate escalates and the threat to society can no longer be ignored. (...) Once the media catch on, however, there is a barrage of irresponsible and exploitative journalism.

Anxieties run high and produce hysterical fears that the peril may spread without limit, unless there are concerted efforts for precaution and general community surveillance.

In the end, three agencies rise up to meet the challenge: law and order, biomedical technology, and old-style ingenuity and self-reliance. (...) After much self-sacrifice and Herculean effort, the deadly organism is isolated, studied, and eventually wiped out. Many are dead, but American society can now return to normal.” 1

stories credibility and promises authenticity. Yet due to its malleable meaning, it can be manipulative. Obviously AIDS is an undeniable reality, but nonetheless, we must ask ourselves how and through what eyes we are perceiving the disease as an event, as a narrative and phenomenon.

The first example of a disease being staged as a media spectacle took place in 1885 in Newark, New Jersey when four children were bitten by a rabid dog. After local media organised a successful fundraising campaign, the children were sent to Dr Pasteur in Paris in December 1885 to receive a new experimental treatment.

The daily papers in the USA regularly printed lengthy reports about the trip and the progress the children were making in therapy. This relatively insignificant event attracted such overwhelming public interest in the media, that the children, upon returning, were invited to appear at the Globe Museum in the Bowery. There, among the displays, they sat upon a pedestal to be marvelled at by the visitors who, according to press reports, came in droves to see them. The crowds were so large that the museum remained open even at night.

What reads like a summary of the AIDS epPeople have an insatiable need for such inidemic is, in fact, the plot line of an entirely dif- timate glimpses, and the rapid development of ferent story, namely Steven Spielberg’s 1970s media technology in the 20th century made it blockbuster “Jaws”. For the American literary possible to satisfy this need. And if ever there scholar Daniel Selden, this short plot was a disease which delivered ample synopsis of the Hollywood movie ofmaterial for such a media spectacle, UN­ fers an ideal scenario for outlining the CONTROLLABLE then it was surely AIDS. In the early essential aspects of the AIDS epi1980s, the viral epidemic of AIDS NATURE, demic: uncontrollable nature, a deaderupted simultaneously with what the A DEADLY ly primitive organism, fringe groups American theorist Paul Treichler diPRIMITIVE and a proverbial heroic deed comagnosed as a cultural “epidemic of sig­ORGANISM, bined with traditional values. This FRINGE GROUPS nification”. In pace with HIV, the thought experiment and analysis by world witnessed the rampant spread AND Selden demonstrates how strongly A ­PROVERBIAL of medical theories, rumours, fears, our view of AIDS is influenced by forprejudices and interpretations which HEROIC mulas and scenarios which are already were used to describe, combat and DEED established in mass media. understand this yet unknown disease.

COMBINED “Based on a true story” is a formula often used and even more often misused by the film industry. It lends

WITH ­T RADITIONAL VALUES

Once upon a time in America, there was a monster ... In their musical theatre project AIDS FOLLIES,

16 the artists Johannes Müller and According to Judith Williamson, IN THE AIDS Philine Rinnert explore precisely this AIDS was either portrayed as a horNARRATIVE, spectacle surrounding AIDS and how ror story or a melodrama: “Suffering HIV WAS it is perceived by society. The startbecomes a commodity isolated from ing point of the project was the life CERTAINLY THE any systemic cause: just as the source of the alleged “Patient Zero”, Gaetan MAIN MONSTER, of any problem can be located in BUT BEING Dugas. Dugas died in 1984 at age 31 Horror discourse in the Monster, A VIRUS, IT WAS equally its effects can be drained of from kidney failure—caused by ­I­NHERENTLY AIDS. Following his early death, Duany social dimension and lumped INVISIBLE. gas was veritably demonised, for onto the individual Victim.” In the IT REQUIRES many accused him of being the culAIDS narrative, HIV was certainly VICTIMS prit behind the spread of HIV in the the central monster, but being a viAND USA. His life story was publicised for rus, it was inherently invisible. Ryan ­ P ERPETRATORS. the first time in 1987 in the book And White was cast in the role of the inthe Band Played On by the investigative nocent victim. Rock Hudson showed and openly gay journalist Randy Shilts. The quite plainly that anyone could get infected, and newspapers barraged their readers with specu- despite the revelation of his double life as a holations and false reports, for example, that Du- mosexual, he was treated respectfully in light of gas intentionally transmitted the disease from his reputation as decent guy and favourite with the West to the East Coast of the United States, the ladies. This left Gaetan Dugas to fill the role facilitated by his job as an airline attendant. of the monster. And hardly anyone paid attenMany have repeatedly expressed their doubts tion to the story of Robert Rayford which surwith this theory, but the legend of “Patient faced around the same time. It was the story of Zero” has stubbornly lived on. Only recently was a black, officially heterosexual teenager, who Gaetan Dugas acquitted (once again) of any died from AIDS in the heartland of America in wrongdoing.

St. Louis in 1969, and it was ignored, plain and simple.

Shilt’s book was made into a movie of the same name in 1993. One scene showed Dugas’s Likewise, the memory of AIDS is supposed character speaking with his doctors. Dugas ap- to be plain and simple: a plus, the ribbon, the pears a bit nervous, a bit arrogant, red splotch- triangle, the circle, a zero. The complex history es of Kaposi sarcoma visible on his neck, as he and present-day circumstances of the AIDS epbrags about his sexual contacts: “We’re talking idemic have been and continue to be compressed about thousands of men all over the world, into a few choice symbols which can be easily whose faces I cannot even remember ...” Gaetan duplicated and distributed, symbols which do not Dugas may have not been “Patient Zero”, but offend anyone and allow each of us to easily parhe certainly infected numerous men with HIV ticipate in the global war on AIDS. However, if because of his irresponsible behaviour. the disease is reduced to occasionally wearing a red ribbon, it softens the history of a hard and The history of AIDs, however, began much unfair battle and ignores the complex of race, earlier than that—at a hospital in Léopoldville, class, sexuality, guilt and shame which are tied to now Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of HIV/AIDS. The repeated moral acquittal of “Pathe Congo. It was there that Belgian and Amer- tient Zero” does not make the reasons for his ican scientists identified HIV in conserved condemnation disappear. All the more important blood samples. The anonymous samples dated that the project AIDS FOLLIES presents and back to the year 1959, one year before the coun- distinctly reminds us of the complexity underlytry declared independence from Beling the virus panorama. In our present IF THE gian colonial rule. Colonial exploitaage which is so passionately taken with DISEASE tion and massive labour migration facticity, these images, these media IS REDUCED had ruptured the social fabric in the portrayals and the realities which are TO region to such a degree that HIV influenced and shaped by them must found fertile ground there in the ­OCCASIONALLY also be tied back to the individuals and WEARING A mid-20th century. And this on top of their fates.

RED RIBBON, the harsh working and living conditions in the rapidly growing city and IT SOFTENS THE HISTORY the autochthonous injustices, espeOF A HARD cially with respect to sexual relations AND UNFAIR which enabled the virus to spread unBATTLE. checked.

Most stories about AIDS begin at a somewhat later date, and with every retelling, they sound more and more like a fairy tale. Once upon a time in 1981 in San Francisco and New York, when doctors noticed asymptomatic conditions in five young, previously healthy homosexual men ...

Neither the media nor the general public showed any particular interest in the new disease in the years immediately following its discovery. It was the disease that afflicted “others”, depending on how one wished to define “others”. Interest in the subject of AIDS increased dramatically starting in July 1985. The first major news stories concerned the case of the teenager Ryan White, who was infected by HIV contamination blood, and the AIDS death of the actor Rock Hudson. Suddenly the disease had a face the public could identify with.

1

Daniel Selden: “Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Go Back in the Water ...” in The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, ed. by Henry Abelove et al., New York 1993, pp. 360–380.

2

Bert Hansen: Picturing Medical Progress from Pasteur to Polio, A History of Mass Media Images and Popular Attitudes in America, New Brunswick (NJ) 2009, p. 396.

3

Paula Treichler: “AIDS, homophobia and biomedical discourse: An epidemic of signification”, Urbana (IL) 1987, pp. 263–305.

4 David Caron: AIDS in French Culture, Social Ills, Literary Cures, Madison (WI) 2001, p. 101.

Vladimir Čajkovac (*1981) is a curator for contemporary art and culture. For many years, his research has focused on the interaction of images and significations with regard to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. He has worked as curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb and as a fellow at the German Hygiene Museum in Dresden as part of the International Museum Fellowship Programme of the Federal Cultural Foundation. Vladimir Čajkovac lives and works in Berlin and Zagreb.

AIDS FOLLIES A VIRUS PANORAMA The artists Johannes Müller and Philine Rinnert have developed a musical theatre project titled “AIDS Follies” which explores the subject of AIDS and how it is perceived in society. The resulting “virus panorama”, as they call it, offers an alternative perspective to the conventional narratives and stereotypes related to HIV and its spread. Their project was inspired by the recent exoneration of the alleged “patient zero” Gaetan Dugas, a Canadian flight attendant who many had long believed to be the first person to spread HIV in the United States. Based on Gaetan Dugas, the project tells the story of the virus—not that of the art scene of the 1980s, the “Africans” or the “homosexuals”, but rather a story that marks a much larger chapter in the history of our civilisation, one in which new colonial metropolises and the combination of poor hygiene and mandatory vaccinations play a central role.

Aesthetically, “AIDS Follies” embraces the tradition of the political cabaret of the queer pop culture of the 1980s. The composer Genoël von Lilienstern is creating an original song cycle for the project. In composing this music, he incorporates found footage and references to music which has some connection to the history of the virus: love songs from various decades, European and African arias, Cameroonian pop, colonial marches, porno sounds and the audio tracks of scientific educational films. In a succession of scenic and musical numbers, the musicians and performers condense and amplify the information, theories and legends which have formed around the virus. The life story of one individual and the global cultural history of HIV interweave to create a “panorama” which follows the development of the virus back to its very beginning.

Artistic directors: Johannes Müller, Philine Rinnert Composer: Genoël von Lilienstern Video artist: Benjamin Krieg Playwright: Kenny Fries (US) Research consultants: Kenny Fries (US), Michael Worobey (US), Jacqueline M. Achkar (US) Sophiensaele, Berlin: 2018; Theater Rampe, Stuttgart: 2018; Brut, Vienna: 2018

Yugoslav Pavilion, Stockholm Fair, 1950. Design: Ivan Picelj, Vjenceslav Richter, Aleksandar Srnec

EXAT 51 OR THE SOMEWHAT DIFFERENT DESIGN OF SOCIALIST DAILY LIFE TIHOMIR MILOVAC No, they probably wouldn’t have been surprised. If someone had predicted that the young artists Ivan Picelj and Aleksandar Srnec, who dropped out from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb shortly after World War II, or Vjenceslav Richter, who was studying Architecture at the time, would someday have an enthusiastic following of experts and advocates of Constructivism, Neo-Plasticism and Geometric Art after spending six decades relentlessly searching for new forms of communication, they probably would have said something like: “Yes, we’re convinced that our work is enabling many people to experience the world in a new way, that reality can be changed, and therein lies a great chance for a better future!” Their utopian idea of art as the synthesis of diverse creative disciplines, which they first attempted to present in their pavilion and exhibition designs for international trade fairs in Europe and the United States, is an indicator for the ubiquitous aesthetic and practical efficacy of modernism.

Their collaboration began in 1948 when they won the design competition for the “Book Exhibition of the People’s Republic of Croatia” in the Zagreb art pavilion. During the following years, especially in 1950, they designed several exhibition stands at international trade fairs, e.g. in Vienna, Hannover, Stockholm and Chicago, featuring leading economies in and outside of Europe. This joint project allowed them to put their idea of the “plastic unity” of art, design and architecture into practice, and experiment with space and forms. It created the core, from which the three artists would develop their future design principles.

By 1952, when no further commissions for exhibition designs were coming in, the three of them welcomed the architect Zvonimir Radić to their group, along with other architects, with whom they shared the same attitude towards art and society. And so it happened that on 7 December 1951, they published their manifesto which also marked the founding of their group called the Experimental Atelier 1951, or EXAT 51, for short.

Post-war Europe was keen to discover new forms of collaboration and possibilities of economic recovery.

The relatively young state of Yugoslavia, which had distanced itself from the predominance of the Soviet model of real socialism and stood firm under Stalin’s pressure to join the Warsaw Pact in 1948, ventured on an independent political path that more closely resembled Western politics than those of the Eastern Bloc.

The changes in social paradigms also demanded changes in the paradigms of

communication. It was obvious that respect to the design of daily life. “socialist realism”—the most literal Another similarity they shared was translation of the communist ideolothat architects were represented in gy for a society established in the both groups and served as a “cohenew world order of the Cold War after sive force”. The notion of artistic World War II and in search of its synthesis as proposed by EXAT 51, own geopolitical space—was neither Espace and Movimento arte concreta, appropriate nor useful. Consequently, came about as a result of architects Yugoslavia aspired to integrate (engineers), artists (sculptors) and itself into the global economic designers who all jointly collaboprocesses and market economy as much rated in renewing and activating the as possible, despite having demosocial function of spatial and decratic deficits which didn’t align sign-based culture. with these aspirations, such as the significant lack of a multi-party The manifesto of EXAT 51 was parliamentary democracy. Yet from signed in December 1951 by the arthis aspiration and as a result of chitects Bernardo Bernardi, Zdravko the communist ideology of seeking a Bregovac, Zvonimir Radić, Božidar socialistic order that could counter Rašica, Vjenceslav Richter and the many negative aspects of capiVladimir Zarahović, and the artists talistic societies, there arose a Ivan Picelj and Aleksandar Srnec. new “self-administrative” system in One year later, they were joined by which all workers were equally intethe painter Vlado Kristl, and in grated in the working processes in 1953, the group organised their first which they participated. joint exhibition with paintings by Ivan Picelj, Božidar Rašica, Vlado Artistic and cultural practice in Kristl and Aleksandar Srnec—an event such social circumstances required that triggered an earthquake in the an adequate response. This came, one art and cultural scene. The fact could argue, spontaneously, almost that their manifesto was the natural like a result of artistic dialectics. consequence of a practice, which the In direct contrast to revolutionary artists and architects had already social upheavals, Richter, Picelj established in their trade fair and Srnec strived instead for contiprojects, is echoed in one of the nuity in their artistic and concepcentral tenets of the manifesto in tual language, initiated by the which the group “sees its primary artistic avant-garde of the pre-war task as one of directing its artisperiod. This included the Bauhaus, tic efforts towards achieving the the Russian avant-garde and the De synthesis of all fine arts, and secStilj movement, all of which were ondly, to instil the work with an quashed in the early 1930s by Hitexperimental character as there can ler’s National Socialism and Stabe no creative approach in the area lin’s communism, and which were of fine arts without experimentation”. erroneously described by the EuropeAll of the members of EXAT remained an cultural scene in the post-war true to the principles of experimenperiod as closed chapters of artistation in their independent careers tic discourse. That this was not the as artists and architects well after case, that the language of the their collaboration ended in 1956. avant-garde, especially in works of constructivist, geometric abstracTihomir Milovac is the chief tion and Concrete Art had survived, curator and head of the and that its advocates included Experimental and Research ­ members of an entirely new, young D ­ epartment at the Museum of generation of artists, architects Contemporary Art in Zagreb. and designers, was reflected by the fact that directly after the war, artist groups began forming very similar concepts based on the ideas of the historical avant-garde. These groups included Forma 1, founded in Rome in 1947, the Movimento arte concreta in Milan, which commenced its activities in 1948, as well as the Arte Madi movement in Buenos Aires in 1946 and the Espace group in Paris, which most closely resembled EXAT in terms of their programme and which, like EXAT 51, also published its manifesto in 1951.

They were also involved in activities staged by the Parisian gallery Denise René and the journals Art d‘aujourd‘hui and Architecture d‘aujourd‘hui, with which the EXAT members had also cultivated working contacts during those same years.

Both groups proposed similar tenets in their manifestos, inspired by the connection between ethics and aesthetics, to which they aspired in their joint artistic practice with

Book Exhibition of the People's Republic of Croatia, Art Pavilion Zagreb, 1948. Design: Ivan Picelj, Vjenceslav Richter, Aleksandar Srnec

Yugoslav Pavilion, Vienna Fair, 1949. Design: Ivan Picelj, Vjenceslav Richter, Aleksandar Srnec

Yugoslav Pavilion, Vienna Fair, 1949. Design: Ivan Picelj, Vjenceslav Richter, Aleksandar Srnec

Jugoslav Pavilion, Chicago International Trade Fair, 1950. Design: Ivan Picelj, Zvonimir Radić

Jugoslav Pavilion, Chicago International Trade Fair, 1950. Design: Ivan Picelj, Zvonimir Radić

"Highway" Exhibition, Art Pavilion Zagreb, 1950. Design: Ivan Picelj, Zvonimir Radić, Vjenceslav Richter, Aleksandar Srnec

"Highway" Exhibition, Art Pavilion Zagreb, 1950. Design: Ivan Picelj, Zvonimir Radić, Vjenceslav Richter, Aleksandar Srnec

Yugoslav Pavilion, Stockholm Fair, 1950. Design: Ivan Picelj, Vjenceslav Richter, Aleksandar Srnec

Croatian Local Economy exhibition, Zagreb Fair, 1950. Design: Đuka Kavurić, Ivan Picelj, Zvonimir Radić, ­ Vjenceslav Richter, Aleksandar Srnec

Yugoslav Pavilion, Vienna Fair, 1952. Design: Ivan Picelj, Vjenceslav Richter, Aleksandar Srnec

17

ÉVORA’S CHILDREN

“LusAfro” is a project funded by the TURN Fund of the Federal Cultural Foundation which brings together musicians from Germany and Lusophone countries of Africa. Ole Schulz spoke with the project’s artistic director Daniel Haaksman.

Herr Haaksman, you wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung that the future of pop music lies in Africa. How did you mean that?

African music used to be primarily marketed as exotic, folkloric “World Music”. Nowadays there is a new generation of African artists which is interpreting Western styles for a modern African audience, tying into global trends and embedding them locally. We’re seeing energetic mixtures of Hip-Hop, Afropop and Dance Hall in cities like Lagos in Nigeria and Accra in Ghana. What makes them so innovative are their rhythmic and often complex beats.

And then there are the demographics: while our society is becoming one of senior citizens where nostalgia dominates our music charts and discourse, six out of ten African countries have populations with an average age of under 24, and the African music industry is growing at an impressive rate.

In 2016 you released the album “African Fabrics” in which contemporary African dance music meets the bass sounds of the northern hemisphere. For this album you recorded music with musicians from Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Uganda.

I was interested in working with local styles and musicians on location and then translating these into a European context. There are some harder pieces in there, Throws & Shine from Portugal, for example, who combine Kuduro and rock, but there are also much more reduced works like “Raindrops”, which features a traditional marimba melody. My goal was both to re-contextualise the music and re-examine our Western projections on Africa.

Is that why you chose the artist Tobias Rehberger to design your LP cover as a collage of wax prints—that brightly patterned cotton fabric?

The history of wax prints ideally exemplifies the inconsistency of our projections. Everyone thinks of them as being authentically African, yet wax prints were invented by Dutch textile makers who imported them to Africa at the end of the 19th century where they quickly became popular. These “African Fabrics” are, in fact, a product of the early phase of globalisation.

You’re the artistic director of the project “LusAfro”.

What is the project about?

It’s about cultivating artistic exchange between German musicians and their colleagues from the Lusophone nations of Africa. Portuguese music made in Africa exists in a niche market, the likes of which are far better known in English-, French- and Spanish-speaking countries. For this reason, we want to increase public awareness of the diverse music produced in Lusophone Africa. For example, Brazilian Samba was originally developed from the Angolan Semba. Nowadays there’s exciting new dance music coming from Lusophone countries. In the 1990s, for instance, Kudoro became popular in the Musseques, the poor districts of Luanda. This high-speed music is a hybrid of Semba and Eurodance. In the outskirts of Lisbon, where many people of Lusophone African descent live, the guys from Buraka Som Sistema developed Kudoro further, producing an Angolan-Portuguese version with sounds of club music and rap which made it onto the European charts.

The first part of the “LusAfro” project took place in April on the Cape Verde Islands. Ever since Cesária Évora, the music of Cape Verde has become known the world over. What was your visit there like?

It was an intensive experience. We only had one week for workshops and recordings in the studio.

The musicality of the Cape Verdeans blew us all away, and because the studio was always booked, we set up two additional studios in our hotel rooms.

And what we recorded was amazing stuff. Perera Elsewhere from Berlin, for example, developed an ethereal-sounding electro dub augmented by an enchanting vocal track by Fattú Djakité. And for “Funatrap” I recorded a track which mixed the frenetic, traditional Funaná rhythm with a Dancehall beat at half the speed. The vocal version features the young generation of Cape Verdean musicians— singers like Ceuzany, Fattú, Nissah Barbosa and Dino d’Santiago and rappers like Helio Batalha and Rapaz 100 Juiz.

The project invited musicians from other Portuguese-speaking countries to participate—such as Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé & Príncipe, Angola, Mozambique and the diaspora in Portugal. Kalaf Epalanga, former MC with the Lisbon-based Buraka Som Sistema, happily observed that never before had he sat at one table with musicians from all of the Lusophone countries of Africa.

This is due in part to the specific colonial history of Lusophone Africa. The Portuguese-speaking countries achieved independence relatively late, in the mid-1970s. The crimes committed as a result of slavery and tyranny have never really been addressed in Portugal nor in the former Portuguese colonies. But that is slowly changing. Today, the young immigrant generation in Portugal is proud that music from their home countries in Africa— styles like Kuduro, Kisomba and Funaná—has gained international acclaim. Someone like DJ Marfox from the label and DJ collective Principe Discos in Lisbon has meanwhile become a figurehead of contemporary Portuguese culture and gives performances around the world.

For more information and audio samples, visit www.lusafro.org.

Concerts at Club Gretchen in Berlin as part of the WDR event series “Big Up!” on 25 Nov. 2017

Daniel Haaksman is a German DJ, music producer, journalist and music label operator.

Haaksman serves as the artistic director of the “LusAfro” project together with Francis Gay from WDR Cosmo.

Ole Schulz is a historian and journalist. He works for various publications, e.g. as an editor for the weekly cultural pages of the newspaper taz.

TURN—Fund for ­Artistic Cooperation between Germany and African Countries The projects financed by the Federal Cultural Foundation through the TURN Fund reflect the plurality of artistic themes, movements and forms which have ­contributed to the rapid developments on the African continent. The fund encourages diverse cultural institutions in Germany to address contemporary African art scenes and their debates, as well as ­collaborate with partners from African countries on joint cultural projects. The TURN Fund has already provided funding to 85 projects. Because of sustained demand and in hopes of anchoring African perspectives at institutions in the long term, the Federal Cultural Foundation has decided to continue operating the fund until 2021.

www.kulturstiftung-bund.de/afrika/turn

18

»POETRY IS DEAD, LONG LIVE POETRY!«

Based on this motto, twenty young poets from six countries convened for the 4th Babelsprech conference at the Literarisches Colloquium in Berlin on the Wannsee. They participated in intensive debate on a wide range of topics: What common boundaries does poetry share with other social fields? How does it cooperate with other art forms? How does poetry respond to other languages and poetic traditions? What effects do translations have on poetry? In the workshop “Poetry in the Border Area”, which was

also the thematic focus of the conference, the participants drafted statements to serve as the basis of discussion. It wasn’t easy to choose one that was representative of them all. We finally decided on the statement by Marina Skalova. We’ve also included two other samples from the Babelsprech laboratory—a poem by Alke Stachler and a translation by Anna Ospelt. We present these poems in their original language. The original English-language poems by Elisabeth Sharp McKetta can be found on her website.

Statement on the 4th Babelsprech Conference

by Marina Skalova baustelle aus baustellen, pflastersteine stapeln sich in hügeln, rundum weitflächiges nichts zigarettenstummel, notizen, kieselgrund * ist lyrik im grenzgebiet oder ist lyrik ein gebiet an & für sich? ist lyrik autonom oder existiert sie immer nur im kontext? wie autonom ist lyrik im bezug zu ihrem eigenen kontext? wie autonom ist lyrik im bezug zu der tradition ihres materials? wie verhält sich lyrik in einer sprache zu den traditionen anderer sprachen? verträgt deutschsprachige lyrik das erbe anderer literarischer traditionen? vertragen andere literarische traditionen das erbe der deutschsprachigen lyrik? muss lyrik sich vor invasoren schützen? zerbricht sie durch zu viel außen? zerbricht sie durch zu viel innen? * wie verhält sich lyrik zu dem, was nicht lyrik ist? wie verhält sich lyrik zu einwanderern? wie viel prosa verträgt lyrik? wie viel performance verträgt lyrik? wie viel theater verträgt lyrik? wie viel supermarkt verträgt lyrik? wie viel buchhandlung verträgt lyrik? hat lyrik angst vor reibungen? hat der betrieb angst vor reibungen?

In hopes of expanding the Babelsprech network to include poets from other European countries, the initiators of “Babelsprech. Young German-Language Poetry”, funded by the Federal Cultural Foundation, organised a follow-up project titled “Babelsprech.International”, also financed by the Foundation. In times of resurgent nationalism, the young poets felt it was all the more urgent to create a joint European frame of cultural and artistic reference. From 7 to 10 September, fifteen poets from Moldova, Romania, Ukraine, Germany, Switzerland and Austria met at the Meridian Festival in Czernovitz to participate at the Babelsprech.International conference. For more information, visit www.babelsprech.org.

wenn sich zwei gattungen reiben, vervielfachen sie sich dann? wer zahlt in diesem fall das sorgerecht? * wenn lyrik ein gebiet an & für sich ist: wird sie von außen bedroht? benutzt sie stacheldraht? muss man eine mauer um sie errichten? wenn lyrik im grenzgebiet ist: muss sie absperrungen überqueren? welchen preis zahlt sie, um von A nach B zu gelangen? darf auf sie geschossen werden?

Marina Skalova was born in Moscow in 1988 and grew up in Germany and France. In 2016, the renowned French publishing company Cheyne released her first bilingual volume of poetry entitled Atemnot (souffle court), which received the Prix de la Vocation en Poésie. Skalova established the project Silences de l’exil, which investigates the loss of language experienced by immigrants. During the 2017/2018 season, she will be working as the playwright in residence at the Theater Le Poche/Gve in Geneva. http://marinaskalova.net

19 requiem

by Alke Stachler I. hättest du dich an jeder möglichen stelle anders entschieden. ab wann ist etwas ein weg. versionen deines abbilds im holz, versionen ­deines abbilds im spiegelnden teer. wie lange du nichts mehr angefasst hast. ab wann ist etwas eine zufällige kombination, ab wann ist was ein kippbild. schon die römer nannten die natur natur. alles ist schon passiert, bevor du kamst. alles sieht anders aus, wenn sich das licht zurückzieht, alles zieht das licht hinter sich her. wie ein tier merkt der wald, wenn sich was in dir verschiebt. zieht rückschlüsse auf ein früheres leben.

II. spul zurück, hör nochmal ganz neu auf. wie die erde nach oben fliegt, richtung luft, richtung himmel, richtung blau. die farbe blau ist eine optische täuschung, wusstest du das, eine fallgrube ohne boden. eine fallgrube für jede mögliche vorstellung von ihr. das requiem im lateinischen original, auch rückwärts klingen die wörter. nicht verhandelbar. man sagt, es ist wie ebbe und flut, irgendwann werden die ebbe-phasen länger. irgendwann übernimmt das gehirn die kontrolle, der teil, der illusionen steuert. könnte ich stoppen an der stelle kurz bevor du gehst und auf pause stellen, solange, bis das bild sich abstellt. deine bewegungen wie falsch eingefädelt, deine sätze wie falsch eingefädelt, klang, der sich auftrennt, überdehnt, bis er reißt. ich weiß, ich reiße dich aus dem zusammenhang. je mehr ich an dich denke, desto mehr vergesse ich dich. je genauer ich hinsehe, desto mehr verliert das bild an sinn. farben, auflösung. wie mein schritt den weg aufschneidet, in dieser version von dir weg, wie mein gedanke an dich meinen kopf aufschneidet, dein name m ­ eine stimmbänder, der länge nach. bis zu welchem punkt lässt sich das zurückverfolgen, mein gedanke an dich als elektrischer impuls, blau. mein gedanke an dich, der in mich zurückfährt wie ein geist.

III. techniken, es anzusehen, formationen des fehlens wie formationen von eis. nur bedingt sichtbar fürs menschliche auge, der unterirdische teil ist immer der größere. ist immer der ältere. oder ist die trauer älter als das fehlen, beantworte das in einer menschlichen sprache. der trick ist, es nicht direkt anzusehen, immer seitlich knapp vorbei. der trick ist, nicht mehr zu sprechen, alle bezogenheiten zu kappen. sie sagen, es verläuft wie ebbe und flut, irgendwann werden die flut-phasen länger. der teil unter wasser ist immer der kältere. der teil, der mitwächst. der trick ist, nicht auf kiemenatmung umzustellen, das wasser in die lunge zu ziehen, die leere fläche ins auge. hier fehlt a­ lles, was ein bild ausmachen würde. hier ist das bild im bereich unter dem bild.

Alke Stachler, born in 1984 in Temeswar/Romania, has lived in Germany since 1990. In 2016, she published a volume of poetry entitled dünner ort (edition mosaik, Salzburg), produced in collaboration with the fine artist Sarah Oswald.

In 2014, she was distinguished by the Literaturstiftung Bayern for her poems about paintings by Paul Klee. Her texts have been translated into Romanian and Hungarian. www.quadratur-des-herzens.blogspot.de

Wasserkinder

by Elisabeth Sharp McKetta translated by Anna Ospelt Ich habe gelesen, dass in Japan Fehlgeburten Wasserkinder genannt werden: Kreaturen, die diesen ersten Ozean nie verlassen Kinder die ihre Luft zu lange anhalten und nie zu atmen lernen die aus der Flüssigkeit segeln, sowie sie hineingesegelt sind: Ein kaputtes Schiff in zerbrechender Flasche. Letzte Nacht träumte ich, du seist zerborsten und ich musste alles von Neuem beginnen das Erträumen von Namen das gewaltsame Öffnen meines Herzens diese umgekehrte Seekrankheit.

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta writes poetry, essays and short stories. What began as a poetry blog has now become two collections of poems, inspired by the words of strangers. (Poetry for Strangers, 2015 & 2017). Her other publications include The Fairy Tales Mammals Tell (2013) and Fear of the Deep (2016). A biography about her grandfather, entitled Energy: The Life of John J. McKetta, Jr., is scheduled for publication by the University of Texas Press later this year.

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta lives in Boise, Idaho. http://elisabethsharpmcketta.com/ Anna Ospelt, born in 1987 in Vaduz, Liechtenstein, writes poetry, prose and journalistic texts. Her work has regularly appeared in literary journals and anthologies since 2010. In 2015, she produced the monograph Sammelglück featuring photos by Martin Walser (Bucher Verlag). Anna Ospelt’s texts have been translated into Hungarian and Serbian, and she herself translates English poetry into German.

We wish to thank Max Czollek, curator (Germany) of Babelsprech.International, for selecting the poems for our Magazine.

20

NEW PROJECTS

At its joint session in spring 2017, the interdisciplinary jury of the Federal Cultural Foundation recommended funding for 31 new projects with a total volume of 4.7 million euros.

For more information about the individual projects, please visit our website www.kulturstiftung-bund.de or the respective project websites. The submission deadline for the next round of applications to General Project Funding is: 31 January 2018.

The members of the jury (31th session) are: Dr. Manuel Gogos, author and exhibition curator / Björn Gottstein, artistic director of the Donaueschingen Festival / Bart van der Heide, chief curator of the Stedelijk Museums in Amsterdam / Wolfgang Hörner, managing director of the Galiani Berlin publishing company / Prof. Dr. Gerald Siegmund, director of the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies at the University of Giessen / Susanne Titz, director of the Museum Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach / Almut Wagner, chief dramaturge of the Schauspiel am Theater Basel

Franz Marc, Tiger

LONDON 1938.

A STATEMENT FOR GERMAN ART An exhibition in Berlin and London on the largest counter-exhibition to the Nazi propaganda art show “Degenerate Art” In July 1937, the propaganda art show “Degenerate Art” opened in Munich. It was the public manifestation of Nazi cultural policy and went on tour through numerous cities in the Third Reich. In the following year, curators in London ope-

ned a counter-exhibition titled “Twentieth Century German Art” comprised of 300 modern masterpieces—the largest exhibition of German art ever presented in Great Britain to this day. Although the exhibition has since faded from memory,

THE EYE OF THE CITY The flâneur from Renoir to the present This exhibition highlights the literary figure of the flâneur, as described by Charles Baudelaire, an individual who feels at home “in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite.” The flâneur serves as a starting point for investigating how leisurely observation can create authentic images of the city and its inhabitants.

Yet the flâneur is more than an abstract figure of 19th-century literature; he is a reference to a modern form of perception. Back and forth, he crosses the threshold between the inner and outer world, between active participation and passive observation, between the past and the present. As an ethnologist of urban space, the flâneur is a contemporary figure who tells us something about how urban images are created and how perception defines reality.

The exhibition in Bonn draws attention to the artistically formed images of urban space through the eyes of the modern flâneur. The preferred medium of photography

it was one of the largest projects of exiled artists of that period. It was curated by an international group of art historians, critics and gallery owners. Around half of the displays were provided by German exiles and artists, whom the Nazis had defamed as “degenerate”.

Next year marks the 80th anniversary of the opening of the London exhibition.

The Liebermann Villa in Berlin is using the anniversary as an opportunity to reconstruct the original exhibition based on research by the British art historian Lucy Wasensteiner. Max Liebermann was one of the most prominent artists featured in the exhibition with 22 artworks. His work will serve as the starting point for the planned exhibition, in which a selection of the original pieces, information about the former lenders and the press reviews from that time will be presented and annotated. In the lead-up to the exhibition in Berlin, the renowned Wiener Library in London, home to the world’s oldest Holocaust archive, will present a documentary exhibition featuring writings, plans and interior photos of the original

offers an objectified view of metropolitan cities. The performance formats, on the other hand, emphasise physically active moments which explore and define urban structures.

Accompanied by an extensive educational programme and catalogue, the exhibition accentuates the various phases of artistic examination of this subject throughout history to the present day. www.kunstmuseum-bonn.de

Artistic director: Volker Adolphs Artists: Franz Ackermann, Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, August Macke, Peter Piller, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Beat Streuli (CH), Thomas Struth, Corinne Wasmuht Kunstmuseum Bonn: 20 Sep. 2018–13 Jan. 2019

exhibition “Twentieth Century German Art”, thereby re-opening a forgotten chapter of German-British art history. www.liebermann-villa.de

Artistic director: Lucy Wasensteiner Curators: Martin Faass, Christine Schmidt (GB), Barbara Warnock (GB) The Wiener Library, documentary exhibition in London: 7 Jun.–31 Aug. 2018; Liebermann Villa at Wannsee, art exhibition in Berlin: 7 Oct. 2018–14 Jan. 2019

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IDEOLOGY, ABSTRACTION AND ARCHITECTURE EXAT 51 / Jasmina Cibic

THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE WORLD

A new project titled “Ideology, Abstraction and Architecture” at the Haus Esters and Haus Lange in Krefeld comprises two parallel exhibitions which offer a new perspective on the legacy of the Bauhaus in the Eastern bloc countries during the post-war era. Developed in cooperation with the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, the exhibitions present two artistic positions from former Yugoslavia: that of the artists‘ group EXAT 51 which had been active in the 1950s, and that of Jasmina Cibic, born in Ljubljana in 1979.

EXAT 51 was an interdisciplinary collective of artists and architects who strived to achieve a synthesis of applied arts and fine arts, and who firmly promoted non-objective art in socialist Yugoslavia. In its manifesto of 1951, the group pledged to continue pursuing the ideals of pre-war modernism— Bauhaus, Constructivism and de Stijl. When Yugoslavia under Tito’s rule distanced itself from the Soviet Union and its preferred style of socialist realism, the members of EXAT began receiving numerous commissions to integrate abstract art into everyday socialist life. In the following years, EXAT’s members produced furniture, tapestries, journals, sculptures, paintings, animated films and even pavilion designs for world expositions and industrial trade fairs, which will be presented in the upcoming exhibition. In her films, installations and performances, Jasmina Cibic examines how national identity is created by and expressed through fine arts and architecture. For the exhibition in Krefeld, she is developing a spatial installation, in which her film “NADA Act III” will be shown for the first time. In the film, she investigates the pavilion designs for the world exhibition EXPO, each of which represent two very different political systems: one by the

Art / Economy

Ten years after the global financial crisis in 2008, the Kunsthalle Mannheim will investigate how the art world responds to and portrays the economy. The exhibition will feature a comprehensive twopart review which examines the theme with respect to modernity and the current events.

In the first part, the curators explore the art developments which arose between the two world wars in the United States, the socialistic Soviet Union and the Weimar Republic in Germany with their varying societal models and contrasting economies. The exhibition will display numerous international loans, e.g. paintings, graphic works, posters, photography and films, and emphasise how the economic upswing and the economic crisis were expressed in visual culture and the fine arts. Attention will also focus on industrialisation and the relationship between man and machine.

The second part of the exhibition is devoted to the 21st century and examines the changing views regarding work. Continuing the lines of investigation from the first section, this part will establish a link to a working world in flux and the conditions of globalisation. The exhibition will present about 35 international contemporary works from the areas of film, installation, photography, performance and social action. The artworks will explore issues of today’s professional world, comprising a spectrum ranging from physical exploitation to computer-aided management. They also make reference to global production processes, speculative financial ventures, digitalisation and information surveillance. Particular emphasis is placed on works which explore the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2008.

EXAT member Vjenceslav Richter for the EXPO in Brussels in 1958, and the other by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for the show in Barcelona in 1929.

Both exhibitions will initiate a dialogue between the Haus Esters and Haus Lange, which the project organisers hope to continue in the future. Following the presentation in Krefeld, the exhibition of the artists’ group EXAT 51 will be shown at the Zagreb Museum of Contemporary Art. www.kunstmuseenkrefeld.de

Exhibition “Exat 51 / Experimental Studio. Synthesis of the Arts in Post-War Yugoslavia” Curators: Katia Baudin, Tihomir Milovac (HR) Artists and architects: Bernardo Bernardi (HR), Zdravko Bregovac (HR), Vladimir Kristl (HR), Ivan Picelj (HR), Zvonimir Radić (HR), Božidar Rašica (SI), Vjenceslav Richter (HR), Aleksandar Srnec (HR), Vladimir Zarahović (HR) Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld: 1 Oct. 2017–14 Jan. 2018 Exhibition “Jasmina Cibic. The Spirit of Our Needs” Curator: Katia Baudin Artist: Jasmina Cibic (SI) Museum Haus Esters, Krefeld: 1 Oct. 2017–14 Jan. 2018

www.kunsthalle-mannheim.de

Artistic director: Ulrike Lorenz Curators: Eckhart Gillen, Inge Herold, Sebastian Baden Artists: Thomas Hirschhorn (CH), Alicja Kwade, Sanja Ivekovic (HR), Andreas Siekmann, Georg Winter Performance: Zefrey Throwell (US) Kunsthalle Mannheim: 13 Sep. 2018–6 Jan. 2019

PLANTS. A DIFFERENT NATURE An exhibition by the German Hygiene Museum In recent years, researchers have increasingly embraced the theory of the Anthropocene, which holds that humans have played a far greater role in permanently altering the face of the earth in the current geological age than naturally occurring processes. This theory serves as the basis of an exhibition in Dresden which discusses the consequences of the Anthropocene find-

Yugoslav Pavilion at Expo 58, Brussels—Photo: Miloš Pavlović

ings by exploring concrete examples of the study, use and protection of plants. By viewing nature as both a factor of production and a place of longing, the exhibition attempts to redefine the human relationship to nature. The exhibition is divided into three sections.

The first examines the cultural appropriation of plants as objects by artists, architects, writers and scientists.

The second investigates plants as the raw material found and used in gardens, fields and laboratories. The third section views the plant as a fellow creature whose living conditions have to be understood in order to better manage plant-human coexistence and preserve plant diversity in the future. In addition to presenting numerous artistic works, the cultural-historic exhibition at the Hygiene Museum will also shed light on the history of land use and terraforming, matters of global food production, genetic modification of plants and the role of humans in shaping and transforming the

biosphere. The exhibition will be supplemented by an extensive educational programme and accompanying catalogue. www.dhmd.de

Artistic director: Kathrin Meyer Artists: Abbas Akhavan (IR), Valentin Beck (CH), Adrian Rast (CH), Roald Dahl (GB), Mark Dion (US), Gina Folly (CH), Charles Jones (GB), Zoe Leonard (US), Huang Po-Chih (TW), Dan Rees (GB) German Hygiene Museum, Dresden: 11 May 2019–23 Feb. 2020

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RADIOPHONIC ­ SPACES An acoustic obstacle course through the realm of radio art The exhibition “Radiophonic Spaces” transports ethereal radio art to the confines of the museum, building a bridge between two worlds which are actually closer together than one might guess. Even today, numerous writers, composers, theatre artists and fine artists continue to make use of the diverse possibilities of radio. “Radiophonic Spaces” connects the artistic use of radio art and radiophony with an academic research project, headed by the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. The results of this creative collaboration will be presented as an artistically designed ob-

stacle course featuring 200 treasures of international radio art on various levels. The project highlights relationships between historical and contemporary positions—from Antonin Artaud, John Cage and Samuel Beckett to Brandon LaBelle, Rimini Protokoll and Ahmet Ögüt. On the first level, visitors are acoustically immersed in the art form.

Wearing specially designed ear phones, their movement through the room triggers various works of radio art to automatically play.

The sound pieces are arranged in ten narratives, e.g. “Record Stories” and “Radio Silence”. Iconic

pieces of radio art will be presented, each of which will represent a narrative. A web platform—modelled after a virtual mind map— will then investigate the historical development of radio art. This section will explore new possibilities of algorithmic sorting (data retrieval) of archive collections.

This project presents works of radio art which would normally be inaccessible to most people, stored in the depths of such renowned archives as the Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv, Lautarchiv der Humboldt-Universität Berlin and the New Radiophonic Workshop (BBC). The project organisers are

collaborating with various radio broadcasters including documenta 14 Radio operated by SAVVY Berlin. They aim to dynamically adapt the site-specific circumstances of each venue in Basel, Berlin and Weimar into the exhibition, which will be supplemented by a diverse accompanying programme. www.experimentellesradio.de

Artistic director: Nathalie Singer, Experimentelles Radio, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar Head of the research group “Radiophonic Cultures” (Sinergia / SNF): Ute Holl, Media Studies Dept., University of Basel Curators, radio researchers and radio artists: Ulrich Bassenge, Ulrich Gerhardt, Gaby Hartel, artists’ collective k.a.a.l., Jochen Meißner, Chikashi Miyama (JP), Wolfram Wessels, and others

BLACK HOLES Why we forget “Black Holes” is one of the first temporary exhibitions to be presented at the newly constructed Historical Museum Frankfurt, completed in 2017. The exhibition sets the tone for the museum’s new orientation, i.e. to address the challenges of urban society of the 21st century and perform commemorative cultural work on a sustainable basis.

In this exhibition, the museum turns its attention to the subject of “forgetting” as an aspect of memory and as a major global issue of society and history.

Many have long believed that the primary responsibility of remembrance culture was to rescue historical events from succumbing to the “natural” process of forgetting. Now in the digital age and in light of the unforgiving memory of the Internet, many are appealing for the right to be forgotten. That being said, it is important to bear in mind that throughout history and in regions around the world, “forgetting” is a politically convenient way to suppress and silence inconvenient truths. Starting with the “memory crisis” of the digital age, the exhibition presents a wide array of issues dating back to the first memory crisis of the secularised and industrial modern age 200 years ago.

Since 1800, the study of the brain has developed in

lockstep with the establishment of our major institutions of remembrance: the museum, the archive and the library. Indeed, the formation of modern nations is inherently tied to collective remembering and forgetting. The 20th century bears the scars of horrendous crimes and genocide committed in the context of two world wars and colonialism—crimes which continue to inflame deep social and personal conflicts with regard to remembering and forgetting.

This exhibition presents the political manifestations of forgetting, as well as related life-scientific, neuroscientific and psychological aspects. It is divided into eleven sections: forgetfulness, renewal, forgetting in the brain, aids for preventing forgetting, deletion, devaluation, denial and silence, revising, curative forgetting, forgiving and the right to be forgotten. In addition to thematically relevant ensembles of works from the museum’s collection, the exhibition will present the different forms, strategies and motives of forgetting by highlighting selected case studies from various disciplines. Approximately 20 international works of contemporary art will explore the issue in further detail from alternative points of view.

Broadcasters, partners and participating research institutes: National and international public-law radio broadcasters (ARD, Austrian Broadcasting Corp., Swiss Broadcasting Company, Deutschlandradio, BBC and INA) as well as important radio art archives (Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv, Studienzentrum für Künstlerpublikationen Weserburg, Lautarchiv der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, archives of German-language broadcasting companies, New Radiophonic Workshop, INA / Groupe de Recherches Musicales and private archives), Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, ZKM, Musicology Dept.—University of Basel, Electronic Studio of the School of Music (ESB) in Basel Museum Tinguely, Basel: April / May 2018; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin: autumn 2018 (as part of the “100 Years of Now” project); University Library of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar: autumn 2019 (as part of Bauhaus 100)

International participants will be invited to an academic symposium on the topic of forgetting in spring 2019. www.historisches-­ museum-frankfurt.de

Artistic director: Kurt Wettengl Artists: Kader Attia (FR), Mark Dion (US), Jochen Gerz, Christina Kubisch, Adrian Paci (AL), Regis Perray (FR) , Maya Schweizer (FR), Sigrid Sigurdsson (NO), Fiona Tan (ID), Rachel Whiteread (GB) and others Historisches Museum Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main: 27 Feb.–14 Jul. 2019

AFRICAN MOBILITIES this is not a refugee camp exhibition The exhibition “African Mobilities” at the Architekturmuseum in Munich features the current state of architecture in Africa in the context of migration, displacement and digital technologies. Its focus is on the rapidly growing cities of Africa which have become central hubs of innovation. The question now is how architects and urban developers can react to the increasing mobility on the continent with innovative models of habitation, infrastructure and technology.

The exhibition investigates global migratory movements, as well as migration within the African continent as a result of rural exodus to urban centres or displacement due to mining operations.

The focus of the exhibition is not the refugee camps, but rather the mediumto large-sized cities and how they cope with migration.

Prototypes and innovative approaches, e.g. narrative texts, illustrations, films, 3D models, visualisations and interactive technologies, will be developed for the exhibition in preparatory workshops. In collaboration with Global Africa Lab (New York), the project organisers plan to create large-scale maps, developed in part using drone photography. Another theme of the exhibition is future scenarios of African cities as envisioned by artists and architects.

After its presentation in Munich, the exhibition will go on tour through several African countries. The Architekturmu-

seum hopes that the show will contribute to a broad, interdisciplinary transfer of knowledge in the field of architecture and design. The current project was preceded by two thematically related exhibitions. The first, “Francis Kéré. Radically Simple” (2016/2017), featured the works by the Burkina-Faso native architect who now lives in Berlin. The second, “Afritecture” (2013), gained widespread attention as the first comprehensive exhibition highlighting the situation of African contemporary architecture www.architekturmuseum.de

Artistic director: Mpho Matsipa (ZA) Architects: Mabel Wilson (US), Mario Gooden (US), Doreen Adengo (UG), the Cave Architects (KE), Paula Nasciemento (AO), Lesley Lokko (GB), Aisha Balde (ZA), Dana Wabhire (GB), Delphina Namata Musisi (GH), Olalekan Jeyfous (US) and others Architekturmuseum at the TU Munich, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich: 26 Apr.–9 Aug. 2018

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ÉCRASER L’INFÂME!

Since it was established, the Memorial and Museum Sachsenhausen has collected works of art by former prisoners from numerous European countries. In cooperation with the Zentrum für verfolgte Künste in Solingen, the Sachsenhausen Memorial plans to refurbish and publicly present a selection of works from its holdings. The exhibition will supplement works created by the artists during their imprisonment at the camp with loaned pieces produced by prisoners prior to and after their incarceration.

Not only do these serve as historical source material that documents everyday life at the concentration camp, but first and foremost as standalone works of art. The project also includes monographic displays featuring such artists as Leo Haas, Hans and Lea Grundig, and Rudolf Karl von Ripper. Video screen presentations and a smartphone app will provide visitors with information on the individual displays and their scientific classification. These can be integrated into the design of a walk-through depository at the Sachsenhausen Memorial, ensuring the long-term visibility of the project. www.stiftung-bg.de

Artistic director: Jürgen Kaumkötter Curators: Agnes Ohm, PeterWellach, Ruudi Beier Artists: Jan Budding (NL), Thorvald Davidsen (NO), Peter Edel (Peter Hirschweh), Leo Haas (CZ), Hans and Lea Grundig, Vladimir Matejka (CZ), Hubert Mauguoy (BE), Rudolf Karl (Charles) von Ripper (RO), Viktor Siminski, Karel Zahrádka (CZ) and others Memorial and Museum Sachsenhausen: May 2018; followed by presentations at the International Youth Centre, Oświęcim / Auschwitz, the Terezín Memorial and the Zentrum für verfolgte Künste Solingen

Elfi Mikesch, Self-portrait—© Elfi Mikesch

The artist and the concentration camp—The collection of the Memorial and Museum Sachsenhausen

pieces by Schroeter, who passed away in 2010, will be presented by his colleague and estate manager Christian Holzfuß.

This will be the first exhibition ever to present numerous photos, films, sound installations and documents which highlight the artists’ aesthetic and biographical relationships. Their mutual roots in the West Berlin art scene and their artistic friendship will be condensed into an overarching theme that connects the exhibition rooms and depicts their joint artistic production spanning five decades to the present. The accompanying programme will include film presentations, performances, talk shows and discussions with international participants who will describe the international impact these three artists have had on the artistic avant-garde and their respective political implications. www.adk.de

WASTE PRODUCTS OF LOVE An exhibition of works by Elfi Mikesch, Rosa von Praunheim and Werner Schroeter The self-image of the Akademie der Künste is starkly shaped by its conviction that art and politics are related, or more specifically, that art allows us to envision utopias of human coexistence in both the public and private sphere.

The exhibition of Elfi Mikesch, Rosa von Praunheim and Werner Schroeter will mark the re-opening of its exhibition rooms in 2018. The Academy sees the exhibition as a statement against intolerance and exclusion, in that it recalls the pioneering artists who first explored the issues of gender, body politics and otherness, and demonstrates their enor-

ACTING THROUGH IMAGES Exhibition project featuring Želimir Žilnik

“Acting through Images” is the world’s first exhibition of the renowned Yugoslavian-Serbian filmmaker Želimir Žilnik. Žilnik is a well-known director of numerous feature, essay and television

mous influence on German and foreign artists in the years that followed. As early as the 1960s, the protagonists of German literary cinema­—Mikesch as a photographer, camerawoman and director, Rosa von Praunheim as a filmmaker, painter, author and activist, and Werner Schroeter as a filmmaker and theatre / opera director—drew attention to emancipatory issues, argued for alternative lifestyles and applied unconventional means of expression, making all three artistic and social mavericks. Mikesch and von Praunheim will curate their own works displayed in separate rooms, and

films, and is regarded as one of the founders of the docudrama. His films have accompanied the political transformation of Yugoslavia since the 1960s—from the socialist state to Tito’s death, the disintegration of the Republic of Yugoslavia and the Balkans War in the 1990s, to the current refugee-related problems. In recent years his films have focused on such subjects as the situation of the Roma in Europe and migration. His docudramas are characterised by fictional elements and direct political involvement. In this regard, Žilnik’s cinematic strategies are comparable to those of contemporary fine artists. This project is the first to present Žilnik’s diverse array of film productions in the form of an exhibition and to introduce his virulent themes into art discourse.

The exhibition in Oldenburg will be supplemented by a group exhibition of Žilnik’s works, produced by the curator collective What, How & for Whom / WHW for the Galerija Nova in Zagreb.

The exhibitions in Oldenburg and Zagreb will be accompanied by a curated film programme, designed for presentation on tour. Not only does it include a number of Žilnik’s films, but also other works by artists from his circle of acquaintances.

Curator: Markus Tiarks Co-curators: Christian Holzfuß, Claudia Lenssen, Alberte Barsacq (FR) Project manager: Cornelia Klauß Event programme / participants: Ingrid Caven (FR), Mostéfa Djadjam (FR), Ulrich Gregor, Torsten Holzapfel, Peter Pankow, Dominik Bender, Isabelle Huppert (FR), Benno Ifland, Heinz-Norbert Jocks, Monika Keppler and others Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz, Berlin: Spring 2018; followed by a presentation at the gallery Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam

A special part of the film programme features Yugoslavian short films on guest workers in Germany—a chapter of German migration history told from a “foreigner’s” perspective. www.edith-russ-haus.de

Artistic directors: Edit Molnár & Marcel Schwierin Curators: What, How & for Whom / WHW (HR) Artist: Želimir Žilnik (RS) Exhibition Edith-Russ-Haus, Oldenburg: 19 Apr.–17 Jun. 2018; TV broadcast of the interview with the artist, oeins tv, Oldenburg: 27 Apr. 2018; exhibition Galerija Nova, Zagreb: 18 May–15 Jul. 2018; documentary film workshop, Edith-RussHaus, Oldenburg: 19–20 May 2018; film programme & book presentation, cine k, Oldenburg: 14–17 Jun. 2018; film programme & book presentation, Galerija Nova, Zagreb: 28 Jun.–1 Jul. 2018; film programme & book presentation, tensta konsthall, Stockholm: 14–17 Sep. 2018

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THE POLICEMAN’S ­BEARD IS HALF CONSTRUCTED Art in the age of artificial intelligence

This exhibition at the Bonn Kunstverein is named after the first book ever written by a computer in 1983. It offers an overview and retrospective on sculptures, paintings, illustrations and films produced in the age of artificial intelligence. The works by approximately 30 artists explore the subject of autonomous machine intelligence from various perspectives. Starting with the proto-pop images of automats from the 1950s and the first computer-generated artworks of the 1960s by artists like Stan VanDerBeek and Lillian Schwartz, the exhibition examines the influence of cybernetics on art production. The historic pieces will be displayed alongside numerous works by younger artists. These include, for example,

works by Agnieska Kurant, who developed an animated football, and Yuri Pattinson, who incorporates robotic pets into his installations. The exhibition will be supplemented by a discussion series and symposium at the University of Bonn. The University of Bonn is home to one of the oldest institutes of computer science in Germany where a research group investigates issues related to artificial intelligence. www.bonner-kunstverein.de

Artistic director: Michelle Cotton Artists: Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven (BE), John Whitney (US), Ed Atkins (UK), Thomas Bayrle, Aleksandra Domanović (SR), Frederick Hammersley (US), Camille Henrot (FR), Stan VanDerBeek (US), Lillian Schwartz (US), Agnieska Kurant (PL), Yuri Pattinson (IE) and others Bonn Kunstverein: 22 Sep.–19 Nov. 2017

PERVERSE ­ ECOLONIZATION D A (self-)critical research project by the Akademie der Künste der Welt in Cologne Opening of the Paul Gauguin exhibition, Berlin 1928—Photo: ZADIK

THE STATE OF THE ART ARCHIVES An international conference for archives documenting the history of modern and contemporary art Numerous art archives have been established around the world over the past 25 years. They contain the holdings and estates of influential galleries and art dealers, curators, art critics, collectors and art photographers. In this function, they play an integral role in conserving a repertory of pieces which would not normally be collected by traditional art-historical archives and libraries. Consequently, these institutions are becoming increasingly important for art scholarship, art market research and exhibition practice.

The three-day conference “State of the Art Archives” at the Max Liebermann Haus in Berlin wishes to bring leading international figures from this field together for the first time, examine the current state of the archives, and encourage the exchange of knowledge. The event is targeted at those directly involved as well as interested art scholars, archivists, journalists and the general public. Representatives from various archives will hold brief presentations about themselves, the distinguishing features of their collections and the research opportunities they offer. In various workshops, participants will have the opportunity to gain insights into traditional scientific archive-related activities, monographic case studies and quantitative art market research powered by big data. Audio and video recordings of the conference will be made available via a multilingual online publication.

www.zadik.info, www.basis-wien.at www.moderne-kunst.org

Artistic / research director: Günther Herzog, Zentralarchiv des internationalen Kunsthandels ZADIK Cooperation partners: basis wien—Archive and Documentation Centre of Contemporary Art, Institute of Modern Art Nuremberg Participating archives: Archives of American Art—Smithsonian Institution (US, Washington), Archives of the Finnish National Gallery (FI, Helsinki), Archivo del Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Barcelona (ES), Asia Art Archive (HK), Garage Archive Collection (RU, Moscow), Getty Research Institute (US, Los Angeles), Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (NL, The Hague), Museum of Modern Art Archives (US, New York), Zentralarchiv des internationalen Kunsthandels ZADIK (Cologne) and the Archives of the European Art Net EAN Max Liebermann Haus, international conference, Berlin: 21–23 Sep. 2017

This project consists of a working group of about 20 international artists, writers, researchers and curators. Their goal will be to engage in mutual discussion and research in order to gain a more precise understanding of the current crisis of identity politics and postcolonialism. All around the world, we are observing a resurgence of nationalistic and isolationist policies. In view of this phenomenon, artists and theorists wish to investigate the notion of “perverse decolonization” as a misguided emancipatory process. To what extent do new nationalistic approaches and movements make use of postcolonial rhetoric, and to what degree are they influenced by postcolonial thinking? In a second step, the participants will discuss how to confront isolationist and nationalistic tendencies and investigate what new forms of solidarity are possible today. Starting in summer 2017, the working group will meet on a regular basis for discussions in Cologne and partner institutions (e.g. in Stuttgart, Bishkek, Warsaw and Chicago) and present their findings on a joint platform. The project will culminate in an international symposium, targeted at a broad audience and comprised of discussions and numerous artistic and performative formats. In preparation of the symposium, the project will commission a number of artworks and award research grants to artists, writers and researchers. The project will conclude with a publication in German and English.

www.academycologne.org

Artistic directors: Ekaterina Degot (RU), David Riff (RU) Participants: Saddie Choua (BE), Cosmin Costinas (HK), Georgy Mamedov (KG), Joshua Simon (IL), Jan Sowa (PL), Mi You and others Discussions, artistic presentations, symposium, publication, staged in Cologne in cooperation with international partner institutions based in Stuttgart, Bishkek, Holon, Warsaw, Chicago, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Utrecht: 1 Sep. 2017–30 Apr. 2019

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RIEN NE VA PLUS?

What would happen if we won everything, only to lose it all again?

On Marienplatz in Stuttgart, several stalls are arranged in a circle around a stage with chandeliers and croupiers in green jackets and bow ties. They are taking a short break. The actors are listening to two divas in red sequined dresses, declaring lasciviously, “Forget about the right of the stronger—Forget about the right of the smarter—Remember your almighty luck—’Cause in the end, your life is random.” So in the end, does it really all come down to chance? Even if you go the full monty, chase after Lady Luck, are strong and smart and never give up? Not with us, promises the European House of Gambling , everybody is a winner. Really? Before the ball dropped and the cards were dealt and the players broke the bank, director Tanja Krone and sociologist Thomas Wagner discussed their view of gambling as a giant redistribution machine.

The European House of Gambling is a casino, circus, cabaret and social experiment. What are the stakes?

What can you win?

TANJA KRONE We invite the audience to spend an evening gambling with us and want to find out if gambling could serve to make society a fairer place. Could permanent gambling serve as a lever of compensation? We want to offer an alternative to capitalist society, a model that says: let’s play, let’s bet on luck, trust in chance, and by doing so, make fair redistribution possible. A utopia that counters the much lamented casino capitalism of our times with a humane casino.

Is that just naïve thinking or simply cynical? Take the Greek casino, for example. Europe rescued its high-roller banks, which unfortunately led to the forced privatisation of the public water works.

TANJA KRONE We’re not building barricades, but rather a stage. For us, it’s a utopian moment when all participants recognise that they’re players in a big game. How would status, power, influence change if subjected to the rules of gambling? It’s good that we are getting a very different audience than the typical theatre crowd. We’re seeing kids who normally hang out at Marienplatz and who learn the rules of the game in a flash.

We’ve got bottle collectors in search of diversion, theatre goers and residents who, when playing our tarot card roulette, stake everything on love.

I­ ndeed, it’s cynical in such an affluent society as ours to stage a game pitting poor against rich. I hope that many people notice this and think about it. If so, then the gamble has already paid off.

Thomas Wagner, the idea for the European House of Gambling is based on your essay “Casino Égalité”, in which you describe games of chance as a technique of dominion-free societies. Is there really such a thing?

THOMAS WAGNER We all live with institutions.

The family, for instance, is an archaic form of an institution. Even older than the state. And there are differences in power between people. You can see this in every group—one group can do one thing better, another group can do something else, sometimes one takes centre stage, other times, another comes out of the woodwork. The sociological concept of the institution describes forms of regulated cohabitation. So you could call “dominion-free” institutions those which level the playing field in terms of wealth and the wielding of power. Sometimes somebody gets ahead of the pack, and then there are mechanisms which pull him back so that someone else can take the lead.

In “Casino Égalité” you describe how gambling works to offset differences in primitive societies. Winning and losing as an equaliser?

Gambling is the glue that holds these societies together. People get together, spend time with one another and in the end, the rules ensure that everyone wins a little and everyone loses a little. In the Huayru dice game played by the Canelos natives in Equador, villagers throw dice at funerals to decide who inherits the property of the deceased—and they play until everyone leaves with something. And the men of the Hadza tribe in Africa are passionate gamblers who wage their valuable arrows. With over one hundred bets per day, even the luckiest winner never ends up keeping his new-found wealth for longer than a week. That way, everybody feels like a rich man once in a while.

THOMAS WAGNER

Winning for everyone. Is that the principle behind the European House of Gambling, as well? What are the rules of the casino?

First of all, everyone is free to move about and decide which games he or she would like to play. The guests receive a symbolic amount of starting capital, which is determined by a roll of the dice when they enter. Then they can get start playing, at the card tables, a roulette table, a betting office. There are also house bets which everyone participates in, and there are privileges which can be earned and then publicly claimed, such as a massage. Several times during the evening, the Wheel of Fortune is spun, and all of the money is redistributed. And yes—many people win and then lose everything very quickly because they bet on the wrong horse or are required to relinquish their winnings. It’s a constant up and down, nothing is certain, with every spin of the Wheel of Fortune chance decides who are the winners and who are the losers.

TANJA KRONE

THOMAS WAGNER Speaking of redistribution, egalitarian societies use mechanisms which generally prevent the accumulation of private property. We live in a capitalistic society. And no matter how much capital we redistribute, we aren’t redistributing property, but only income. Factories and machines, in which capital is invested, are not redistributed. But when they are, we give it a different name: revolution. Anyway, that’s how Marx would have described it.

The House of Gambling is a utopia. Where is it supposed to lead us?

TANJA KRONE The only thing for sure is that the Wheel will spin again soon—Belgrade and Berlin—and that, unfortunately, is not often the case in real life where the top stays at the top and the bottom stays at the bottom. If there is one important principle in our playing field, possibly it’s that we all have to be able to look each other in the eye on the next day, and that, despite gambling, or perhaps because of it.

The questions were asked by Tobias Asmuth

THE EUROPEAN HOUSE OF GAMBLING A “casino egalité” for public places in Europe Theater Rampe has gained an outstanding reputation in the Stuttgart region for its innovative playwriting and cross-genre approaches. Even off stage, the theatre explores contemporary aesthetic praxis with interventions in urban space, artistic research and participative formats. For its upcoming project “The European House of Gambling”, Theater Rampe is working together with the stage director and performer Tanja Krone and the game designer Daniel Boy to develop a mobile performance project in public space in Stuttgart.

“The European House of Gambling” is an experimental arrangement which sheds light on our views of ownership and capital. The project makes use of the casino principle with its dynamic interplay of chance and competition. At its core, it tests the hypothesis that traditions and rituals of gambling can advance social equality and even have an integrative influence. During each “performance”, a temporary gambling community is formed which determines the value of work and collectively decides on the rules of the game and the distribution of profits. In this way, the participants engage in a game in which winning and losing—and by extension, upward and downward social mobility—are constantly renegotiated and lose their disastrous consequences. Following its premiere in Stuttgart, the production will go on tour to several European cities. www.theaterrampe.de

Artistic director: Tanja Krone Artists: Daniel Boy, Olf Kreisel, Dragana Bulut (BA), Davis Freeman (BE), Bettina Grahs, Lajos Talamonti, Friedrich Greiling, Johanna Kluhs, Carolin Hochleichter Theater Rampe, Stuttgart: 11–16 Jul. 2017; zeitraumexit, Mannheim: 19–22 Sep. 2017; GRAD, Belgrade: June 2018; Sophiensaele, Berlin: June 2018

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PEITZ 55 Woodstock at Karpfenteich ­

Peitz is the oldest avant-garde jazz festival in Germany, remembered for its extraordinary concerts from 1973 to 1982. Until it was banned by the East German authorities, this “Woodstock at Karpfenteich” was a place of longing where music enthusiasts could quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) escape the cage of rigid cultural policies of the GDR. The festival tradition was revived in 2011 by the jazzwerkstatt Berlin-Brandenburg which continually strives to develop contemporary jazz music in innovative ways.

In 2018, the jazzwerkstatt wants to establish an exchange between Peitz and the Polish border city of Gubin in order to increase the visibility of the festival and promote artistic exchange with Germany’s neighbor. Gubin, the Polish part of the border city, will serve as the venue for a German-Polish saxophone summit. Some 100 international musicians will perform at “Peitz 55” in

2018 which spotlights the British jazz scene. The London jazz scene, like Berlin’s, has generated innovative and creative impulses in recent years. In the lead-up to the festival in Peitz, organisers will stage a concert in London to introduce the Berlin jazz scene to the British capital. The festival programme will also feature the organ and harp as instrumental focuses. www.jazzwerkstatt.eu

Artistic directors: Ulli Blobel, Marie Blobel Musicians: Julie Sassoon (GB), Alexander von Schlippenbach Globe Unity Orchestra (D/F/PL/ US/GB), Wolfgang Schmidtke Orchestra Blue Monk (D/I), Monks Mood, Silke Eberhard Potsa Lotsa, Jan Roder, Alan Skidmore Quartett (GB/D/US), Helmut “Joe” Sachse, Nils Wogram (CH), Vesna Pisarovic (HR), Tom Arthurs (GB), Ehwald-Schultze-Rainey (D/US), Roscoe Mitchell/Art Ensemble of Chicago (US), Kathrin Pechloff Trio, Lauer Large Concert “100 Years of Thelonious Monk”, Berlin: 11 Oct. 2017; guest performance of jazzwerkstatt in

Roscoe Mitchell—© Joseph Blough

London, Vortex, London: 25–26 Nov. 2017; jazzwerkstatt Peitz Nr. 55 in Gubin (PL), Cottbus, Peitz (castle, city hall, Stüler Church, Museum of Fishing and Smeltery): 8–10 Jun. 2018

MUSIK 21 FESTIVAL 2017 About the word The programme of this year’s Musik 21 festival is all “about the word”. In concerts, readings, installations and experimental formats, the festival aims to highlight the various types of encounter between music and text.

The regional spotlight of the 2017 festival will focus on the Scandinavian countries. Audiences can look forward to hearing works by Scandinavian composers, performed by the Norwegian ensemble ASAMISIMASA. A work by the Danish writer Inger Christensen will be presented at the Sprengel Museum. A recording of her long poem “Alphabet” will form the basis of a language sound chamber, in which 30 loudspeakers playing Christensen’s text will create a spoken fugue.

A large-scale participative project titled “Listen: Voices!” will present the numerous languages spoken by residents of Hanover. Young composers from the Hanover University of Music have been working together with migrants and foreignlanguage speakers living in the city to develop a live composition. The festival has also awarded twenty

commissions for new fanfares. Fanfares are the acoustic equivalents of calls or warnings. The new compositions will be performed as such at diverse and unexpected locations throughout the festival period. www.musik21niedersachsen.de

Artistic director: Matthias Kaul Artists: Das Neue Ensemble, Ensemble ASAMISIMASA (NO), Ensemble L’ART POUR L’ART, Ensemble Megaphon, Ensemble Schwerpunkt, Inger Christensen (DK), Mara Genschel, NomosQuartett, Pit Noack, Yoko Tawada (JP) and others Festival Hannover, Sprengel Museum, Kulturzentrum, Pavillon, Künstlerhaus, Kommunales Kino, Literaturhaus, Staatsoper Hannover, Stiftung Niedersachsen, Hanover: 17–20 Aug. 2017

Jean Hubert, Waiting for Sleep III, 2016, film still—© Jean Hubert

WAREHOUSE an ethnography of digital friction The technologies and interfaces that influence our daily lives in the digital world often appear smooth, sleek and impermeable.

Though technology promises a closer, more integrated world, we are witnessing an increasing level of ghettoisation caused by digital filters and personalised interfaces. Similar-minded people tend to keep company with one another, blocking out digital content which challenges them and causes friction. In artistic discourse, this absence of friction is described as “sleekness”. The warehouse festival wishes to address this discourse and the discomfort “sleekness” causes in order to illuminate our digital culture from various angles. How can we construct digital spaces differently? How can interfaces be “hacked”? How can resistance be integrated into apps whose inner workings are concealed from us? And how can we revive the utopian potential of the early net.art?

Based on these questions, the project will stage seminars in Witten / Herdecke and Dortmund accompanied by screenings, discussions with artists, presentations and performances. Warehouse will also announce an

open call for digital residency programmes targeted specifically at young artists. The central component of the project will be an online platform, on which academic and artistic texts, videos and web art will be posted every week between June and October 2017.

Additional events will take place in other European cities, such as Basel and London. www.super-filme.org

Curatorial team: Pujan Karambeigi, Shama Khanna (GB), Anneliese Ostertag, Tabea Rossol, Pierre Francis Schwarzer, Lukas Stolz Artists and researchers: Dirk Baecker, Filipa César (ES), Shu Lea Cheang (TW), Samira Elagoz (FI), Gabriele Gramelsberger, Louis Henderson (GB), Martina Leeker, Christian Sievers, Mårten Spångberg (DK), Terra0 University of Witten/Herdecke, “Virtual Desires”, seminar—part I, Witten: 30 Jun.–2 Jul. 2017; unternehmen Mitte, performance, Basel: 16.–17 Jun. 2017; University of Witten/Herdecke, “Virtual Desires” seminar—part II, Witten: 15–16 Jul. 2017; Naming Rights, “Exploring Entropy”“, screening and publication, London: 29 Jul. 2017

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BERLIN ATONAL 2017 Festival for sound and light experiments Berlin Atonal is widely renowned as one of the world’s most important festivals of experimental music, video art and media experimentation. It was re-established in 2013 at the so-called “Kraftwerk”, a decommissioned thermal power station located in the heart of Berlin.

The 2017 festival will feature works by more than 100 artists from the areas of music, sound art, film, animation, media technology, painting, installation and interactive media. The works include sculptures and installations, audio-visual performances, site-specific installations of architecture, light and sound, lectures and workshops.

The festival will kick off with a performance of two new pieces by the Ensemble Modern, in which the octyaophonic sound system, designed by the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, will be used in Berlin for the very first time. The composer Roly Porter has been invited to present a major production. He is known for using mathematic structures in music and has conducted pioneering work in modelling biological processes, e.g. cell growth, for compositional purposes. For the Atonal 2017, he is developing a musical work together with the Sri Lankan composer Paul Jebanasam which emphasises and connects the distinctive styles of both artists.

In cooperation with Japanese partners, the 2017 festival has put together a new programme entitled “New Assembly” which will introduce Berlin Atonal to Asian and especially Japanese audiences, and present individual Atonal productions in Tokyo. www.berlin-atonal.com

Artistic director: Laurens von Oswald Curators: Harry Class (AU), Paul Reachi (FR), Farahnaz Hatam (IR), Colin Hacklander (US) Kraftwerk Berlin: 16–20 Aug. 2017

HALLO FEST­SPIELE Auditory spatial research The Hallo Festspiele is a festival which scouts unused locations and their surroundings in order to create space for long-term projects. Following festivals in Lisbon and Paris, the organisers plan to stage their festival in the listed Bille power station, the oldest existing electric power plant in Hamburg. Most of the grounds are currently not being used, and the festival wishes to musically intervene in the transformation process taking place in the station’s “decommissioned” structures. Audiences will have the opportunity to listen and perceive the site-specific characteristics of the power station and the district of Hammerbrook. The focus will be on auditory interventions which activate the rooms and their architectural and social potential. Composers, sound artists and musicians will be invited to develop concerts, performances, DJ sets, sound installations and audio walks which explore and emphasise the individual venues. The festival will be preceded by a series of oneday events titled “Hallöchen” (Little Hellos), staged at various venues in the neighbourhood of the power station, e.g. a traditional pub and the municipal waste management facility. Selected artists will be on hand to present sketches of their works and personally describe their projects. The programme of the Hallo Festspiele is comprised of two parts. The first weekend of the festival will concentrate on the visitors’ subjective, personal moment of experience, e.g. in the musical theatre piece “zero decibels” by Daniel Dominguez Teruel featuring different sets through which the audience members, wearing radio headsets, can freely move about. At the second weekend, several performances will be staged in the two impressive factory halls, e.g. the installation “Long String Instrument” by the internationally acclaimed artist Ellen Fullmann, featuring 30-metre-long music strings which she will pluck and strum together with the musician Konrad Sprenger.

www.hallo-festspiele.de

Artistic director: Dorothee Halbrock Curators: Sérgio Hydalgo (PT), Daniel Dominguez Teruel (DE/ES) Artists: Frauke Aulbert, Gunnar Brandt-Sigurdsson, Daniel Dominguez Teruel (DE/ES), Gabriel Ferrandini (PT), Alexander Schubert, Ellen Fullman (US), Konrad Sprenger, Umschichten and others Venues in the vicinity of the Bille power station, Hallöchen (lead-up events), Hamburg: 12 Aug. 2017 and 9 Sep. 2017; Bille power station, festival weekends, Hamburg: 4–7 Oct. 2017 and 13–14 Oct. 2017

Hallo Festspiele—© Pelle Buys

ISM HEXADOME Immersive architecture for sound and video art

Digitalisation and technological advances over the past years have fundamentally changed electronic music and video art.

They have resulted in new spaces of reception, in which sound can be perceived three-dimensionally and viewers, surrounded by 360-degree video projections, can immerse themselves in works of art.

These immersive spaces of experience have provided sound and video artists with entirely new possibilities of expression.

The Klangdom at the ZKM represents one of the world’s leading instruments, custom-designed for sound spatialisation. As part of its ISM Hexadome project, the ZKM plans to develop a new immersive audio-visual structure which combines the loudspeaker system of the Klangdom with a hexagonal 360-degree video projection system. In cooperation with the Institute for Sound and Music, the ZKM will select ten international sound and video artists

for participation in a residency programme, during which they will develop works that tap the potential of this technically innovative system unlike any other.

In order to offer a platform to artists yet unknown to European audiences, the project partners will conduct collaborative research with the international network Norient.

The works will premiere as live performances, after which they will be staged as installations at the Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin, followed by presentations in Montreal, Belfast, London, Karlsruhe, Dresden and Hamburg. www.berlin-ism.com

Artistic director: Nicholas Brown Meehan Project team: Marie-Kristin Meier, Ben Fawkes, Brendan Power, Annika Weyhrich

Cooperation partners: ZKM—Centre for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Pfadfinderei, Berliner Festspiele, Norient—Network for Local and Global Sounds and Media Culture Martin Gropius Bau, ELEKTRA International Digital Art Biennial, ZKM—Centre for Art and Media, International Summer Festival at Kampnagel: spring 2018

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ORGAN FESTIVAL 2017

International festival to mark the inauguration of the new organ at St. Martin’s The new organ in the parish of St. Martin’s in Kassel is one of the world’s largest and most modern instruments for the production of New Music.

Known as “hyper organ”, it combines age-old traditions with ultra-new technology: a quarter-tone keyboard, flexible wind regulation, accordion reed tongues and possible integration of percussion in-

PRIVATE OPERAS

struments allow musicians to perform a broad spectrum of classical and contemporary music. The organ can even play tonal systems which exist outside of Western cultural circles.

The Organ Festival 2017 will celebrate the inauguration of this extraordinary instrument with a concert series, improvisations and performances. The participating performers are some of the best in the international organ scene, such as Bernhard Haas, Hans Fidom and Hampus Lindwall. The festival will also venture into new musical terrain with eight world premieres by such composers as Sergeji Newski (Russia), Christian Wolff (Canada) and Marco Stroppa (Italy). These commissioned works will hopefully provide new impulses for the organ scene

and lead to follow-up workshops and concert programmes. In other event formats featuring St. Martin’s organ in musical dialogue with school orchestras, big bands and percussion ensembles, the festival hopes to encourage exchange with viewers of the documenta 14, which will take place at the same time. The international conference “Society of Friends of the Organ” will address and discuss the topic of “hyper organs” in further depth. www.musik-martinskirche.de

Artistic director: Eckhard Manz Dramaturgy / artists: Frank Gerhardt, Bernhard Haas, Daniel Glaus (CH), Hans-Ola Ericsson (CA), Martin Sander, Hans Fidom (NL), Hampus Lindwall (SE) Festival Martinskirche, Kassel: 4 Jun.– 27 Aug. 2017

Five new chamber musical theatre pieces from two perspectives

www.mdjstuttgart.de

Artistic director: Christine Fischer Artists: Clara Iannotta, Kaj Duncan David, Truels Primdahl, Frederik Neyrinck (BE), Saskia Bladt and others Musiktheater Munich: 2–10 Jun. 2018; Musiktheater Stuttgart, Theaterhaus, Stuttgart: 7–10 Feb. 2019; Musiktheater Aarhus: 10–12 May 2019; Musiktheater Rotterdam: 20–26 May 2019

current state of research related to this subject, as well as explore possibilities of writing a history of the Holocaust that incorporates queer perspectives with respect to queer theory. Against this background, the conference will examine processes of stigmatisation and the power structures behind them.

Both parts of the project will be combined in a public podium discussion at the Gorki Theater. The discussion will focus on how the history of sexualities can contribute to honouring the forgotten stories of heavily marginalised individuals, and how artistic forms and academic research can mutually influence each other.

Mit Dolores habt ihr nicht gerechnet—© Esra Rotthoff

For reason of vanity, convenience or mere carelessness, digitally linked netizens post information online which had been considered private only a few years ago.

Private matters are now staged and publicised without a thought to protecting one’s privacy. At the same time, waves of digital information and public discourse are constantly permeating our private sphere. Against this background, the “Musik der Jahrhunderte” in Stuttgart and the Munich “Biennale für neues Musiktheater” have commissioned five international teams of artists and composers, such as Clara lannotta, Kaj Duncan David and Frederik Neyrinck, to illuminate the concept of privacy in works of musical theatre. The teams will produce five experimental, multimedia “private operas”, which will be initially performed in selected apartments in Munich.

The teams will then combine their individual projects for the ECLAT festival in 2019 for presentation on the big stage.

The model for this project is based on the film “Dogville” (Lars von Trier), in which privacy, or more precisely, its dissolution is radically revealed in full view. The set design disposes of the boundary separating the audience from the stage, allowing the viewer to assume and reflect on various positions such as identification, voyeurism and distance. In addition to privacy, the private operas will also probe such notions as self-determination and freedom, and illuminate today’s complex relationship between the individual and society. The project’s cooperation and guest-performance partners are the Operadagen Rotterdam, the Spor Festival Aarhus and the project Connecting Spaces Hong Kong-Zürich. Additional guest performances are planned in Italy, Austria and the United States.

QUEERING HOLO­ CAUST ­HISTORY Artistic-academic interventions in Holocaust remembrance policy (and politics) For years, researchers and historians of commemorative culture had marginalised the persecution of gay men during the Holocaust, as well as that of other gender-oriented or sexually transgressive people. It was only in the mid-1980s that the memorial sites of former concentration camps gradually turned their attention to these groups of victims. The continuity of stigmatisation following World War II

www.schwulesmuseum.de

not only resulted in silencing the survivors, but also produced a lasting legacy. In this two-part project, the Schwules Museum* wishes to not only honour these forgotten individuals and their history of persecution, but also to underscore their resilience.

Inspired by the life stories of queer resistance fighters, Tucké Royale’s presents a ‘revenge musical’ entitled “Mit Dolores habt ihr nicht gerechnet” (You didn’t count on Dolores), which tells the story of a fictitious hero/heroine in Yiddish, German and Russian. The protagonist of the play is a puppet, animated by four puppeteers and musically accompanied by a four-piece band. The play is a co-production by the Puppentheater Halle, the Gorki Theater Berlin and Kampnagel Hamburg, and will be performed at each of these locations. The project organisers will also hold an international research conference on the theme “Holocaust, Sexuality, Stigma”, headed by Anna Hájková and Birgit Bosold. The conference will review the

Project manager: Birgit Bosold Artistic director: Tucké Royale Participants: Ted Gaier, Yuriy Gurzhy (UA), Tobias Herzberg, Angy Lord, Josa David Marx, Oscar Olivo (US), Johannes Maria Schmit, Paula Sell Conference directors: Anna Hájková (GB), Birgit Bosold Keynote speaker: Elissa Mailänder (FR) Participants: Dagmar Herzog (US), Atina Grossmann (US), Laurie Marhoefer (US), Elissa Mailänder (FR), Regina Mühlhäuser, Cornelie Osborne (GB), Annette Timm (CA) Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin: 26–28 Oct. 2017 (additional performances planned); Kampnagel, Hamburg: 10–13 Jan. 2018 (three to four performances planned); Puppentheater Halle: 18–19 Jan. 2018; International working conference “Holocaust, Sexuality, Stigma”, Berlin: 6–8 Dec. 2017

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NEW GREEK WAVE Contemporary theatre from Greece

There is enormous ambiguity in the Greek theatre scene at present. More and more hybrid, post-dramatic formats have joined the ranks of traditional theatre forms based on models of classical antiquity. Impending theatre closures caused by economic constraints and worsening working conditions have—strangely enough—revitalised the Greek theatre scene by forcing artists to find alternative venues and seize opportunities to explore new artistic positions. Of course, the downside of this process of transformation has been that more Greek theatre artists are now working freelance under precarious financial circumstances. In a several-day festival, Theater Bremen will offer an inside look at the young creative Greek theatre scene which is breaking with conventional structures and is increasingly turning its attention to current issues, e.g. the growing xenophobia in Greece. An important dialogue and cooperation partner is the Experimental Stage 1 at the National Theatre of Greece in Athens, established in October 2016 as a venue for unconventional theatre experiments. Two Greek directors have been asked to develop performances for presentation in public spaces in Bremen. Theater Bremen also plans to create an installation which highlights the German view of Greece. The festival aims to promote exchange between Greek and German theatre artists, serve as a discussion forum and offer educational workshops to young people as part of the “Junge Akteure” programme at the Theatre Bremen. www.theaterbremen.de

Artistic director: Marthe Labes Project managers: Isabelle Becker, Caroline Anne Kapp Artistic assistant: Katerina Adamara (GR) Participants: Anestis Azas (GR), Katerina Giannopoulou (GR), Simos Kakalas (GR), Asteris Loutoulas (RO/GR), Grigoris Liakopoulos (GR), Vassilis Noulas (US/GR), Sandra von Ruffin, Martin Scharnhorst (AT), Prodomos Tsinikoris (DE/GR) Theater Bremen: 3–6 May 2018

Nova Melancholia—© Vassilis Noulas

RESISTANCE AND D ­ EVOTION 60th anniversary of FIDENA The festival “FIDENA—Puppet Theatre of the Nations” will be celebrating its 60th anniversary in 2018. FIDENA is known for its outstanding contemporary puppet, figure and object theatre pieces, and is regarded as a seismograph for current trends and innovative forms in this artistic genre.

On the occasion of its anniversary, FIDENA has commissioned various artists—including a number of promising newcomers—to develop new productions. The invited artists and companies are known for their artistic forays in experimental, interdisciplinary and intermedial areas. They adopt the latest trends in digital art, performance art and gaming. The focus of the 2018 festival will be the connection between fine art and performing art. Many of the invited artists orig-

X SHARED SPACES Theatrical excursions into the world of start-ups and digital natives The booming “sharing economy” represents a new philosophy of sharing and cooperation. But what began as an altruistic business model has become tainted by an egotistical desire for profit in recent years.

Is it possible to recapture the solidarity-based, utopian potential of the early sharing economy in order to envision the future of urban society and cohabitation?

In its project “X Shared Spaces“, the Munich Kammerspiele addresses the paradoxes, benefits and drawbacks of these new economies, exemplified by such start-ups as Airbnb, Uber and NeighborGoods. The project investigates how society and everyday life have been radically affected by the conditions of the digital age. The participating artists will explore the theme at venues in the city of Munich, including 24 private Airbnb flats, specially rented for this purpose. International

inally began in the fields of painting and sculpture, and later shifted to performance through their involvement in object and material theatre. The invited guests include the Needcompany from Belgium, in whose productions dance and the fine arts often play an essential role, and the French Cie. Trois-SixTrente, whose pieces combine elements of drama, puppet theatre and sound art. The productions will be presented at eight different venues in Bochum, Herne, Hattingen and Essen.

The commemorative festival will also feature a series of participative formats. In the tradition of the politically progressive Bread and Puppet Theater, a cast of protest puppets will be constructed for the festival. Together with participants from Bochum, some of Europe’s

best hand puppet performers will use these to develop a puppet theatre piece on the topic of resistance. www.fidena.de

Artistic director: Annette Dabs Performers: Marta Cuscuna (IT), Özlem Alkis (TR), Hofmann & Lindholm, Xavier Bobés (ES), Ainslie Henderson (UK) Company / ensemble / orchestra: Jan Lauwers / Marten Seghers (Needcompany) (BE), Puppentheater Halle, Worst Case Scenario (IL), Cie. Trois-Six-Trente (FR) Stage directors: Gisèle Vienne (FR), Bérangère Vantusso (FR), Ariel Doron (IL) Festival Bochum, Essen, Herne, Hattingen: 9–17 May 2018

artists, such as Susanne Kennedy, Alexander Giesche and Damian Rebgetz, will develop ten-minute pieces for these venues which aim to transfer the cultures of the digital realm into the physical world. Audience members will be paired up and directed on walking tours which will take them to the various performances, installations and plays. On these site-specific strolls through Munich, the viewers will become tourists in their own city, modern rental nomads, collectors of urban and virtual experiences. “X Shared Spaces” hopes to offer viewers an idea of what the future of urban societies could look like and what opportunities, contradictions and risks the economies of tomorrow might bring. . www.muenchner-kammerspiele.de

Developed by and featuring: Alexander Giesche, Susanne Kennedy, Damian Rebgetz (AU), Susanne Steinmassl, Britta Thie and others Munich (various venues): 15 Jun.–15 Jul. 2018

Matthew Min Rich / Cedar Lake Ballet in My Generation by Richard Siegal—© ShokoPhoto

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CROSSOVER AND DANCE REUNION Richard Siegal / Ballet of Difference & Schauspiel Cologne / Tanz Köln The Schauspiel Cologne and the dance company Richard Siegal / Ballet of Difference have initiated a two-season artistic collaboration, the purpose of which is to develop the project “Crossover and Dance Reunion”. For the project partners, this means integrating the independent dance company into the production and performance processes of the theatre and fostering equitable and open collaboration which explores and surpasses the boundaries of dance and spoken theatre, uniting both in aesthetic interaction.

Dance movement patterns and various texts will serve as the starting point and basic material for the “Crossover and Dance Reunion”. The participants will investigate, for example, the rhetorical strategies used in speeches and statements by American and European politicians, and convey their messages in relation to the speakers’ gestural repertory.

This vocal and choreographic study will focus on the broad range of interpretation and possible misinterpretation of situations and sentences. When words fail to convey what we wish to communicate, what possibilities of expression do bodies and movement possess?

The project will be accompanied by lectures, workshops, discussions, public rehearsals, a two-part think-tank titled “Dancing in the Dark—Body and Politics

in 21st-Century Europe”, and the symposium “Performing the Postdigital” with internationally renowned participants from the fields of science, art and philosophy. www.schauspiel.koeln.de

Artistic director: Richard Siegal (US) Choreography: Richard Siegal (US) Dramaturgy: Tobias Staab, Hanna Koller Artists: Claudia Ortiz Arraiza (PR), Léonhard Engel (FR), Katherina Markowskaja (RU), Matthew Rich (US), Margarida Neto (PT), Navarra NovyWilliams (US), Joaquim de Santana (US), Diego Tortelli (IT), Jin Young Won (KR), Zuzana Zahradnikova (CZ) and the acting ensemble of the Schauspiel Cologne Performance, discussion series, thinktank, workshops, symposium at the Schauspiel Cologne and Munich: 1 Jan. 2018–30 Jun. 2019 A production by Richard Siegal / The Bakery and ecotopia dance productions in co-production with the Schauspiel Cologne / Tanz Köln and the Muffatwerk Munich

31 THE MAGAZINE If you would like to receive this Magazine on a regular basis, you may sign up for a free ­subscription (German edition) on our website ↗ www.kulturstiftung-bund.de/­ magazinbestellung aufgeben.

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IMPRINT Publisher Kulturstiftung des Bundes Franckeplatz 2 06110 Halle an der Saale T +49 (0)345 2997 0 F +49 (0)345 2997 333 info@kulturstiftung-bund.de ↗ www.kulturstiftung-bund.de Executive Board Hortensia Völckers / Alexander Farenholtz responsible for the content Editor-in-chief Friederike Tappe-Hornbostel Editorial advisor Tobias Asmuth Final editing Therese Teutsch Translations Robert Brambeer Design Neue Gestaltung, Berlin Picture credit Courtesy Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb / Archive and Library Ivan Picelj, Zagreb Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders of material reproduced in this magazine.

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Trustees are appointed for a five-year term.

Chairwoman of the Board Prof. Monika Grütters Minister of State in the Federal Chancellery and Commissioner for Cultural and Media Affairs Representing the Federal Foreign Office Prof. Dr. Maria Böhmer Minister of State Representing the Federal Ministry of Finance Jens Spahn Parliamentary State Secretary Representing the German Bundestag Prof. Dr. Norbert Lammert President of the German Bundestag Burkhard Blienert Member of the German Bundestag Marco Wanderwitz Member of the German Bundestag

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Copy date 31 July 2017 Print run 26,000 (German edition) By-lined contributions do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editor. © Kulturstiftung des Bundes – All rights reserved. Reproduction in part or whole without prior written consent from the German Federal Cultural Foundation is strictly prohibited.

The German Federal Cultural Foundation is financed by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media by resolution of the German Bundestag.

N.N. Secretary General of the Cultural Foundation of German States Dr. Volker Rodekamp Director of the Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig Prof. Dr. Oliver Scheytt President of the Cultural Policy Society Regula Venske President of PEN Centre Germany Frank Werneke Deputy Chairman of the ver.di labour union Prof. Klaus Zehelein Former President of the German Theatre Association Olaf Zimmermann Managing Director of the German Cultural Council

JURIES AND CURATORIAL PANELS The Federal Cultural Foundation draws on the scientific and artistic expertise of about 50 jury and curatorial panel members who advise the Foundation on thematic and project-specific matters. For more information about these committees, please visit the corresponding projects posted on our website ↗ www.kulturstiftung-­bund.de

THE FOUNDATION

Representing the German Länder Rainer Robra Head of the State Chancellery and State Minister for Culture in Saxony-Anhalt Dr. Eva-Maria Stange State Minister of Science and the Arts in Saxony

Executive Board Hortensia Völckers Artistic Director

Representing the German Municipalities Klaus Hebborn Councillor, Association of German Cities Uwe Lübking Councillor, Association of German Towns and Municipalities

Secretarial offices Beatrix Kluge / Beate Ollesch (Berlin office) / Christine Werner

Chairperson of the Board of Trustees of the Cultural Foundation of German States Manuela Schwesig Minister-President of the Federal State of ­Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Representing the fields of art and culture Prof. Dr. Bénédicte Savoy Professor of Art History Dr. Hartwig Fischer Director of the British Museum Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Wolf Lepenies Sociologist

ADVISORY COMMITTEE

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COMMITTEES OF THE GERMAN FEDERAL CULTURAL FOUNDATION

The Advisory Committee makes recommendations on the thematic focus of the Foundation’s activities. The committee is comprised of leading figures in the arts, culture, business, academics and politics.

Prof. Dr. h.c. Klaus-Dieter Lehmann President of the Goethe-Institut, Chairman of the Advisory Committee Dr. Dorothea Rüland Secretary General of the DAAD, Vice Chairwoman of the Advisory Committee Dr. Franziska Nentwig Executive Director Kulturkreis der Deutschen Wirtschaft e.V. Jens Cording Commissioner of the Gesellschaft für Neue Musik Prof. Martin Maria Krüger President of the German Music Council

Alexander Farenholtz Administrative Director

Assistant to the Executive Board Dr. Lutz Nitsche Contract Department Christian Plodeck (legal advisor) / Katrin Gayda / Stefanie Jage / Anja Petzold Press and Public Relations Friederike Tappe-Hornbostel (dept. head) / Tinatin Eppmann / Antje Horn / Bijan Kafi / Juliane Köber / Julia Mai / Arite Studier / Therese Teutsch Programme Department Kirsten Haß (dept. head) / Dr. Marie Cathleen Haff (dept. head General Project Funding) / Dr. Sebastian Brünger / Teresa Darian / Anne Fleckstein / Michael Fürst / Marie Krämer / Antonia Lahmé / Carl Philipp Nies / Uta Schnell / Max Upravitelev / Karoline Weber / Friederike Zobel / Anna Zosik Programme Management and Evaluation Ursula Bongaerts (dept. head) / Marius Bunk / Marcel Gärtner / Bärbel Hejkal / Sarah Holstein / Constanze Kaplick / Steffi Khazhueva / Anja Lehmann / Frank Lehmann / Dörte Koch / Ilka Schattschneider / Kathleen Wismach Project Controlling Steffen Schille (dept. head) / Franziska Gollub / Fabian Märtin / Lina Schaper/ Antje Wagner Administration Andreas Heimann (dept. head) / Margit Ducke / Maik Jacob / Steffen Rothe

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