Kultur Magazine 26: 2015

kultur MAGAZINE OF THE GOETHE-INSTITUT IN AUSTRALIA 2015 EDITION 26

URBAN SUBCULTURES 02 : GENIALE DILLETANTEN : DIEDRICH DIEDERICHSEN 04 : AUTOMAT : JOCHEN ARBEIT 06 : BERLINALE & ANTENNA : WIELAND SPECK 08 : THE LOVE PARADE : DR MOTTE 10 : PHOTOGRAPHY : SVEN MARQUARDT 12 : HAUSCHKA : VOLKER BERTELMANN 14 : MONOLAKE : ROBERT HENKE 16 : CREATIVE SYDNEY : HUGH NICHOLS ART AND CULTURE 19 : MANIFESTO : JULIAN ROSEFELDT 22 : AUDI FESTIVAL OF GERMAN FILMS 2015 24 : WOYZECK: LIEVEN BERTELS, JETTE STECKEL, FELIX KNOPP 26 : NEW MEDIA : .MOVE ON FESTIVAL 28 : RL2000 : ABEL KORINSKI 30 : THE SALTY RIVER : JAN BAUER

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WILLKOMMEN 2015 has been an exciting year for the Goethe-Institut Australia.

In May we had a very successful edition of our annual Audi Festival of German Films, with more than 21,000 people attending screenings in ten cinemas across eight cities. Shortly after, my predecessor, Dr Arpad Sölter, moved on to Stockholm, while I took over as the new director in September. A big thank you to Dr Arpad Sölter for his five-year leadership.

URBAN SUBCULTURES

THE ENEMY WAS ARENA ROCK:

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GENIALE DILLETANTEN

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WE DON’T PRACTISE, WE RECORD: AUTOMAT

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THERE IS NO RECIPE: BERLINALE & ANTENNA

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AND THEN WE JUST DID IT: THE LOVE PARADE

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I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN A MAN WHO POLARISED PEOPLE

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THE CLOSENESS BETWEEN MUSIC AND ART: HAUSCHKA

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A VERY STRONG URGE FROM DEEP WITHIN: MONOLAKE

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NEW AVENUES FOR CREATIVE PARTICIPATION: CREATIVE SYDNEY

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As a born Berliner with 25 years of experience with the GoetheInstitut worldwide, I am very happy to start the new season with several events about the roaring 1980s in Berlin and beyond:

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URBAN SUBCULTURES

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The relationship between subcultures and their surroundings will be one of our main themes for the coming months. In this edition of kultur, interviews focus on key players and movements from this era and how the surroundings have (or have not) shaped the interviewees’ creative practice and career. Follow us on Twitter @GI_Australien#urbansub.

GENIALE DILLETANTEN The centrepiece of our subculture program is an exhibition that we will bring to Melbourne and Sydney. Geniale Dilletanten was an avant-garde festival and art movement in Berlin in the early 1980s.

It not only influenced artistic practice across the globe but can also be seen as the unlikely birthplace of many high-profile careers.

The exhibition will be accompanied by special events including live music, panel discussions, artist talks and eyewitness accounts.

WOYZECK AT SYDNEY FESTIVAL An absolute highlight to kick off the new year will be Thalia Theater Woyzeck at the Sydney Festival in January 2016. The Georg Büchner piece was re-invented by acclaimed director Robert Wilson with musicians Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, and directed by rising theatre star, Jette Steckel.

We hope you will enjoy this edition of kultur and we sincerely hope to see you at the related events!

Check out www.goethe.de/australia, sign up to our newsletter and follow us on social media — there are always interesting events coming up after the magazine’s print deadline.

Sonja Griegoschewski DIRECTOR, GOETHE-INSTITUT AUSTRALIA

kultur MAGAZINE OF THE GOETHE-INSTITUT IN AUSTRALIA 2015 EDITION 26

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DIEDRICH DIEDERICHSEN Ulrich Gutmair

JOCHEN ARBEIT Jochen Gutsch

WIELAND SPECK Jochen Gutsch

DR MOTTE Jochen Gutsch

SVEN MARQUARDT Jochen Gutsch

VOLKER BERTELMANN Jochen Gutsch

ROBERT HENKE Jochen Gutsch

HUGH NICHOLS Jochen Gutsch

ART AND CULTURE

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STURM UND DRANG REMASTERED: MANIFESTO JULIAN ROSEFELDT Gabriele Urban

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ROSES FOR THE AUDIENCE: AUDI FESTIVAL OF GERMAN FILMS 2015

Klaus-Peter Claus

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WHEN ALL THE KEY ARTISTIC ELEMENTS COME TOGETHER: WOYZECK

LIEVEN BERTELS, JETTE STECKEL, FELIX KNOPP

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NEW MEDIA: .MOVE ON FESTIVAL

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A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT BASED ON SCIENTIFIC THEORIES: RL2000

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Sonja Griegoschewski

ABEL KORINSKI Gabriele Urban

SOMEHOW FREER AND MORE HUMAN: THE SALTY RIVER JAN BAUER Gabriele Urban

OUTLOOK

UPCOMING EVENTS

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS PUBLISHER www.goethe.de/australia • Goethe-Institut Australia SYDNEY 90 Ocean Street, Woollahra NSW 2011 T 02 8356 8333 F 02 8356 8314 MELBOURNE Level 1, 448 St Kilda Road, Melbourne VIC 3004 T 03 9864 8999 F 03 9864 8988 EDITOR/DIRECTOR Sonja Griegoschewski, info@sydney.goethe.org COORDINATORS Jochen Gutsch, Gabriele Urban • Views expressed by the contributors are not necessarily endorsed by the Goethe-Institut. No responsibility is accepted by the publisher for the accuracy of information contained in the texts and advertisements. DESIGN AND ARTWORK Torkos Ploetz Design, Melbourne PRINTING Doran Printing Pty Ltd, Melbourne IMAGES The Goethe-Institut has taken every possible care to secure clear copyright permission for all images published here. FRONT COVER Thalia Theater Hamburg’s Woyzeck

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THE ENEMY WAS ARENA ROCK: GENIALE DILLETANTEN Diedrich Diederichsen interviewed by Ulrich Gutmair

THE EXHIBITION GENIALE DILLETANTEN (BRILLIANT DILLETANTES ) PRESENTS THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE SURVEY OF GERMAN SUBCULTURE OF THE 1980s.

CONCEIVED BY THE GOETHE-INSTITUT, THE EXHIBITION HAS ALREADY BEEN SHOWN AT MUNICH’S HAUS DER KUNST AND IS NOW TRAVELLING THE WORLD, SHOWING AT RMIT GALLERY IN MELBOURNE AND AT AMBUSH GALLERY IN SYDNEY.

GENIALE DILLETANTEN Exhibition about the Fluxus-inspired art/music movement and festival in the 1980s. Rare photos, record covers, multimedia content, and many special events.

12 November 2015 – 26 February 2016 Melbourne, RMIT Gallery 10 March 2016 – 14 April 2016 Sydney, Ambush Gallery @ GI_Australien#urbansub

DIEDRICH DIEDERICHSEN has made a name for himself since the 1980s as a versatile and astute theorist of pop, politics, and contemporary art. He is a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and a prolific writer who has published many books, articles and academic texts.

ULRICH GUTMAIR is culture editor of the tageszeitung. His book Die ersten Tage von Berlin. Der Sound der Wende (The First Days of Berlin. The Sound of the Wende ) was published in the summer of 2013.

Translation: Jonathan Uhlaner. Copyright: Goethe-Institut e. V., Internet-Redaktion. March 2015, first published on goethe.de

Urban Subcultures

The exhibition will be accompanied by special events including live music, panel discussions, eyewitness accounts, and other events featuring protagonists of German and Australian subculture of the 1980s.

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Anyone researching West German subculture of the 1980s will sooner or later encounter the key concept of the deliberately misspelt Geniale Dilletanten. Internationally renowned pop theorist Diedrich Diederichsen explains the role that amateurism and self-organisation played in cultural production.

ULRICH GUTMAIR: Mr Diederichsen, in 1981 Die große

Untergangsshow — Festival Genialer Dilletanten (The Great Downfall Show — Festival of the Brilliant Dilletantes ) took place in Berlin at the Tempodrom.

Soon after, an anthology appeared under the same title.

Who or what were the Geniale Dilletanten?

DIEDRICH DIEDERICHSEN: Under this heading you can designate the Berlin bands that appeared at the festival and are represented in the eponymous book published by Merve. But everybody at that time had long been talking about the productive component of amateurism. There are two very different interpretations of the term. First, praise of abstemiousness towards chords and the related hope that everyone would be creative. And secondly the idea that lack of ability could bring forth unforeseen and unplanable, greater complexity free of convention. So, either more creative or more and differently creative.

UG: The Geniale Dilletanten represented both ideas?

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INTERNATIONAL DILETTANTISM UG: The discovery of amateurism at this time wasn’t only a German phenomenon.

DD: Naturally a lot of other people also talked about the possibilities of unskilled creativity, also in other countries. My favourite example is Jad Fair, the co-founder of the band Half Japanese. A whole world of amateurism rose up that we owe, among others, to people like the American artist and musician Daniel Johnston. The phenomenon should be seen in global terms.

UG: Today attention falls particularly on the smooth transitions among art, music and film in the subculture of the 1980s. Is ‘interdisciplinary’ the right keyword?

DD: Back then, nobody would have suggested that the goal was to mix disciplines. In both areas, in art and in avant-garde pop music, resources were scarce. There weren’t any places where a young joker who wanted to question the avant-garde ideas of the 1970s could express himself. Staying in your own world wouldn’t have been sufficient, so you played at an art centre.

BOOED OFF THE STAGE UG: It’s not only part of amateurism that you make music and art yourself and establish venues for it, but also that you are your own producer and distributor.

DD: The scene organised itself and found headings such as Geniale Dilletanten. There were British models for self-organisation through labels. The British punk singles, with their thick record sleeves, had an incredible fetish value. It became clear that a record needn’t be a standardised product, but rather could be something that you could co-design. Very soon there were successful versions of shops and labels like Zensor in Berlin, Rip Off and ZickZack in Hamburg. Before, festivals were organised by artists like Martin Kippenberger; there were ZickZack festivals in every city.

DD: At the Berlin festival there were bands like Die Ichs and Sprung aus den Wolken that were incapable musicians who also didn’t develop anything, except an easily recognisable Berlin sound, which was simple and blunt yet had the advantage of not sounding like music. The same applied to the Einstürzende Neubauten in their early days.

UG: How important was the idea of performance, of the theatrical?

And then there were others like Die Tödliche Doris and Frieder Butzmann, who confronted the tonality with other parameters like performance. Whether those concerned were in fact amateurs (like Die Tödliche Doris ) or not (like Frieder Butzmann) wasn’t as important as their idea of artistic practice. They were more the second generation of the Fluxus movement than the first generation of amateurism.

DD: The only thing everyone could agree on was the fact that the enemy was called arena rock, which was very theatrical.

There were bands from punk circles which found any kind of performance arty, not realising that what they thought was terrific was also a performance. Punks used to boo people off the stage if they performed too much. My own band, Die Nachdenklichen Wehrpflichtigen, was actually taken off the stage on one occasion.

[LEFT TO RIGHT] Der Plan: Kubistischer Schlagzeuger, 1987 © Der Plan Einstürzende Neubauten at the Berlin Atonal Festival, SO36, West-Berlin, 1982 © Anno Dittmer; Alex Hacke (alias Alexander von Borsig) with Kiddy Citny (Sprung aus den Wolken ) , Risiko, WestBerlin, 1981 © Anno Dittmer; Ratinger Hof, Düsseldorf, 1981 © ar/gee gleim

kultur 2015

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WE DON’T PRACTISE, WE RECORD: AUTOMAT Jochen Arbeit interviewed by Jochen Gutsch

IN NOVEMBER 2015 JOCHEN ARBEIT IS VISITING AUSTRALIA AS A GUEST OF THE GOETHE-INSTITUT TO TOUR HIS NEW BAND, THE INSTRUMENTAL DUB-ROCK TRIO AUTOMAT AND TALK ABOUT 1980s BERLIN SUBCULTURE.

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Jochen Arbeit has lived in Berlin since 1980 and was part of the artist movement Geniale Dilletanen. In 1983 he joined the influential band Die Haut, and since 1997 he has been an official member of well-known avant-garde noise band Einstürzende Neubauten.

JOCHEN GUTSCH: Tell us about Automat. Who is in the band, what made you start it, and how do you approach composition and production?

JOCHEN ARBEIT: Automat is a Berlin-based trio with the members Arbeit/Färber/Zeitblom. We started doing recordings for radioplays. Our approach to recording and producing is to play live in the studio to electronic backings, which results in spontaneous composing, also called improvisation. We don’t practise, we record.

And we mostly use first takes for the production. The last record Plus-Minus was recorded in three days, then a day of overdubs and then our producer shaped the whole thing together.

JG: One of the main influences in the music of

Automat is dub. Some say it is hard to ‘feel’ this kind of music for artists who do not have a reggae background. What is it about dub that attracts you?

JA: Dub and reggae was always around me from early on. In my hometown I had a friend my age, 11–12, early 1970s, who got dubplates via mail from London. This is where I heard dub for the first time. It was something completely different from what I had heard before. In the 1980s in Berlin punk and dub and old school reggae were always close, you heard it in all clubs and bars combined with all the other stuff what was happening. So it follows me in life and through the work with Automat my interest in it is still growing.

JG: Automat is primarily an instrumental band. However,

your first album features three famous guest vocalists: Blixa Bargeld, Lydia Lunch and Genesis P-Orridge. In some publications these collaborations were summed up as

‘a real Berlin affair’. Is Berlin still a fertile ground for artistic experiments, like in the 1980s?

JA: No. It is a different city now. That Berlin does not exit any more. Although I think when you are young now you can still find this special dynamic of the city somewhere. But it is not so easy anymore to find places to try yourself and explore things. It is all commercialised now. In the 1980s nobody thought about making money from what you did, it was impossible. There was no market or playground for our art. Galleries were closed to us. We really had to invent everything on our own. I know for my work that this attitude of self-organisation is still the driving-force behind what I do and I hope it is still around to this day. It was always an artistic attitude and also became somewhat of a philosophy for me.

Urban Subcultures

JG: What Geniale Dilletanten did was perceived as bizarre and strange by your contemporaries. Many years later the Goethe-Institut is curating an exhibition and touring it around the world. How do audiences know if they are witnessing something that will still be relevant many years later?

JA: I do not know. It is impossible to say what stays or not at the time you do it, especially when you are young, and we were all very young at the time. Also you never think about these things when you are doing them, you just have to give it a go and try your best. To think about the reception of an audience is not helpful at all in a creative process from my experience. But I have to admit that it feels a bit strange to become a historically relevant part of culture with the stuff I did a long time ago which was indeed strange and bizarre. Maybe you could say that we really were ahead of our time, which is always an important approach for music, art and everything.

JG: Apart from your musical endeavors, you have been

involved in experimental artistic practices such as dance and performance for a long time. Please tell us about these projects.

JA: I have a production company called AADK with two performers/ dancers. Abraham Hurtado is from Spain, Vania Rovisco from

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Portugal. They were members of the Meg Stuart Dance Company who started a residency at Volkbühne in 2005. We met at night in bars and started asking questions about our work and soon found out that we share a common process in dance and music called improvisation. So we started to perform for hours in galleries and organised festivals over a period of seven years, without any support from anybody. This dynamic, the energy, the intensiveness of it reminded me a lot of what we did in the 1980s. It was really refreshing for me to find a different way of expression and work.

They moved back to their home countries in 2012 — Abraham runs an art center in Blanca, Spain; Vania curates and works in Lisbon, Portugal. We still meet often and work together. Apart from that, in the last ten years, I have written music for dance and performances whenever possible.

AUTOMAT Berlin-based instrumental band featuring Jochen Arbeit (Einstürzende Neubauten, Die Haut ), Achim Färber (Project Pitchfork, Prag ) and Georg Zeitblom (Sovetskoe Foto ).

Friday 13 November 2015 Canberra, ANU Bar, with My Disco, Agency Sunday 15 November 2015 Sydney, Glebe Town Hall with Hinterlandt Friday 20 November 2015 Melbourne, John Curtin Hotel, with Shocking Pinks, NUN

JOCHEN ARBEIT Jochen Arbeit of Automat and Einstürzende Neubauten will also appear as guest speaker at these events: Thursday 12 November 2015 Melbourne, RMIT Gallery: Geniale Dilletanten exhibition opening Saturday 14 November 2015 Melbourne, Face the Music conference

© Martin Walz

Wednesday 18 November 2015 Sydney, Goethe-Institut: Panel discussion and improvised music session

[LEFT TO RIGHT] AUTOMAT: Georg Zeitblom, Jochen Arbeit, Achim Färber

Friday 20 November 2015 Melbourne, RMIT Gallery: Panel discussion @GI_Australien#urbansub

kultur 2015

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THERE IS NO RECIPE: BERLINALE & ANTENNA Wieland Speck interviewed by Jochen Gutsch

WIELAND SPECK OPENS UP ABOUT THE BERLINALE AND THE ANTENNA FESTIVAL, AS WELL AS GENIALE DILLETANTEN, MARLENE DIETRICH AND MORE.

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Wieland Speck is the head of the Panorama program of Berlinale. He has lived in Berlin since 1972 and he moderated the Geniale Dilletanten festival in 1981. Openly gay and never shy of addressing queer issues in his art, Wieland Speck has been involved in countless films dealing with matters surrounding men’s emancipation and homosexuality. In 2015 he will be attending Sydney’s Antenna Documentary Film Festival as a jury member and special guest of honour.

JOCHEN GUTSCH: The Antenna Festival sticks out among

the many other Sydney film festivals, and it has been supported by the Goethe-Institut since its beginnings.

What is it that makes Antenna an event that you consider travelling half way around the world for?

WIELAND SPECK: When we decided to bring documentaries to the foreground in our Berlinale Panorama program it was the early 1990s: cinematically and business-wise interest in them was low. But concerning content we found the films were often more exciting than fiction. With lesser means but ultimately high motivation these filmmakers dealt with burning issues like AIDS, the environment, emancipation on all fronts, racism and of course the fall of the Berlin wall and its aftermath. So we opened a new sub-section called Dokumente in order to attract attention and to provide space for various forms of non-fiction.

We set the premiere to 5 pm every day — between the film market’s day business and the fiction dominated evening program.

That led to great successes over the years; cinemas took over the pattern and introduced this new slot to their audiences — and today a third of Panorama is documentaries, half of them showing in prime time slots. When I heard of Antenna and saw the program I knew: that’s a good thing. We need to make documentaries more cinematic and television more daring. Not to mention to tackle the phalanx of conventionality in the internet. Who else if not a festival with filmmakers and audience present can lead the way!

JG: As a young man you acted in Marlene Dietrich’s last

film, Schöner Gigolo, armer Gigolo. In later years you are mostly credited as a director, scriptwriter, editor, producer or festival curator. Are you tempted to go back in front of the camera?

WS: The question makes me smile — that ‘incident’ was the high point of my acting career even though I was a mere ‘noble extra’ in that lousy movie — but next to David Bowie whom I still adore and, yes, opposite the most fabulous German lady ever! Well, I acted once in a while again, for films and filmmakers I believed in, but it’s not really my main goal anymore. In the 1970s I thought I would become an actor, but it turned out that I had too much to say myself in those intense times — so I moved behind the camera.

JG: As part of your work for the Berlinale and as a jury member for other film festivals you often come across young, aspiring or emerging film makers.

Are there lessons learned in Geniale Dilletanten times that you would formulate into advice for aspiring or emerging artists?

WS: Absolutely! In those times, there were hardly any role models because everything existing felt so yesteryear. So whatever ‘we’ did there was no comparison, the moment of astonishment was working for us. You can imagine the amount of freedom available in a setting like this — for those who did not shit their pants… so I would advise: First, there is no recipe. Second, if you don’t know what it is all about, no one will tell you: do your own maths. And third, learn to trust yourself by being as truthful as possible. The rest is talent, effort and luck.

JG: In this issue of kultur magazine, we are talking to a

number of Geniale Dilletanten participants, all of which have moved on to lead unusual and creative lives.

Are you still in touch with other artists from those days?

Urban Subcultures

WS: Oh yes. Especially the gay underground of the late 1960s, the decade leading up to punk, was, despite being a small fraternity, very diverse, and very influential to the zeitgeist. My age group experienced one imprint phase after the other — if you were unconventional enough to let that happen of course. That led to rather deep relationships between players — and the exodus that AIDS marked was extremely painful. But those who survived plus the many great heteros remained friends, colleagues, or at least sort of benchmarks until today.

From Blixa Bargeld and Wolfgang Müller to Bettina Köster, legendary singer/writer of the bands Mania D and Malaria!.

I just heard she will soon perform in Berlin again, and I wouldn’t miss it for the world…

JG: Every year, movie lovers and film industry

heavyweights travel to the Berlinale. Thanks to its name, it is per definition a Berlin-based festival. Could the same festival happen in another European city?

WS: Well, I don’t think so. Berlin has this uniqueness on top of and in contradiction to any other unique metropole. The money of the country is not based here — it moved to Frankfurt during the Cold War, and never returned. And Germany is a federal republic, thus featuring many ‘capitals’, including for culture and politics. That gives Berlin far more flexibility than your regular centralised capital where everything has to happen to the max, marginalising initiatives or talents on the way to ‘victory’.

In addition, the political past of Berlin has sharpened an ethical attitude that demands clear positioning: for example, without being just politically correct you don’t get away with laxness when it comes to human rights of any sort. The festival audience wants something to chew on, politically, aesthetically, with innovation, low in convention, low in cliché — something helpful on the way to a less annoying world than the one we have to experience on a daily basis… and that has formed the expectations including those of the film industry representatives that are attending. The alldominant term is ALTERNATIVE. Doesn’t that sound promising?

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[ABOVE] German contributions at this year’s Antenna Documentary Film Festival include B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West-Berlin 1979–1989, a fastpaced documentary that seeks to capture the atmosphere in 1980s Berlin.

ANTENNA FESTIVAL Berlinale Panorama curator Wieland Speck visits Sydney’s Antenna Documentary Film Festival.

German contributions include B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West-Berlin 1979–1989 and No Land’s Song Festival runs from 13–18 October 2015 Wednesday 14 October 2015 Sydney, Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA): Wieland Speck DocTalk Saturday 17 October 2015 Sydney, Goethe-Institut: Wieland Speck Artist Talk @GI_Australien#urbansub

WIELAND SPECK has been an influential person in the film industry for more than three decades. As director of the Panorama section at the Berlinale since 1992, he has presided over the selection of a series of international films remarkable for their artistic vision. He has thus played a vital role in shifting quality independent films beyond a niche audience and into the spotlight of the international market.

kultur 2015

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AND THEN WE JUST DID IT: THE LOVE PARADE Dr Motte interviewed by Jochen Gutsch

DR MOTTE WAS BORN IN SPANDAU, BERLIN AS MATTHIAS ROEINGH. IN THE EARLY 1980s HE WAS A MEMBER OF VARIOUS BANDS WITH COLOURFUL NAMES SUCH AS DEUTSCH-POLNISCHE AGGRESSION (DPA ). IT WAS DURING THIS TIME WITH DPA THAT HE CO-AUTHORED THE BOOK GENIALE DILLETANTEN.

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Urban Subcultures

Matthias Roeingh soon discovered dance music, and in 1989 he founded what later became the world’s most important dance music festival: The Love Parade. This first edition of the festival was attended by 150 people. By 1999, attendance had climbed to 1.5 million people.

DR MOTTE: It is the repetition of the Love Parade. The festival was the birth of the young electronic music culture and as common as Christmas or Easter to the many people who grew up with it. Berlin after the Wall came down wanted to send a message to the world: ‘We are a young and creative city’.

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JG: Your involvement in Geniale Dilletanten is a littleknown fact compared to your activities as a hugely successful DJ and festival organiser. It’s a similar story for WestBam and other participants who went on to become famous in later years. Did the philosophy behind Geniale Dilletanten affect decisions you made later in your career?

JOCHEN GUTSCH: When you started The Love Parade with your then-partner Danielle de Picciotto, did you already have a vision of turning this project into a mass movement?

DR MOTTE: ‘This Year & Forever’ was printed on the first Love Parade poster. I’d had the vision that if we did the Love Parade in Berlin every year it would inspire many others in other countries to do so too like the Street Parade in Zurich in 1992. It would bring all these people together as one and bring world peace by people befriending everyone everywhere.

JG: You later distanced yourself from The Love Parade, citing its change of values and commercial approach.

Was it hard to give something up that you had initiated?

DR MOTTE: Yes of course! Love Parade ran out of money after two years of not doing it in Berlin and in 2005 got sold 100% to Rainer Schaller, owner of the German fitness company McFit. Four out of the five business partners were in favour of selling off, while I was against it. Schaller used the Love Parade as a tax deduction tool and declared the Love Parade as a marketing event for his company to the German tax office. A no-go for me and a sellout of electronic music culture. That was a big mistake. I regret that deeply.

JG: Initially The Love Parade was conceived as a political

demonstration for peace and international understanding.

These days, the public image of dance music is often associated with drugs and partying. Can festivals and cultural events still have a political impact on people? © Tom Novy [2000] / Danielle de Picciotto [1990] / Petra Gall [1983]

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DR MOTTE: Yes, they can. If you look at the content you will see if it is about a vision or just having some fun. We as the Love Parade had the motivation to bring people together to dance under the umbrella of electronic music: a non-verbal culture that is aware that many countries only communicate with each other using weapons. We’ve been an open space of no rules, enjoying life and sharing this with everyone during Love Parade. To understand this music culture, it takes some time to investigate.

JG: The Love Parade was traditionally held in Berlin, and it has found its way into countless tourist brochures and inflight magazines. Arguably the city shaped the festival as much as the festival shaped the city. To what extent does culture form an image of a city?

DR MOTTE: We had a very special situation during the Cold War: there was no federal defence force in Berlin. Many creative people escaped being forced into something they didn’t want to do.

It was easy living and very cheap. It was easy to do something.

We had time to think about our ideas and then we just did it.

It wasn’t about money and profit. We didn’t need much money to live a comfortable life. It was about creating art — right here, right now. Spontaneously brilliant. So when I had the idea of organising a demonstration called Love Parade, everyone was full of enthusiasm and only six weeks later it happened.

JG: In 2011 you co-founded the Electrocult association

at the legendary Kunsthaus Tacheles . Tell us a little more about this project.

DR MOTTE: We have done two music support events for and at the Tacheles. The idea was to give birth to a lobby for the electronic music culture. We started a public foundation for it which completely changed the way we wanted to rule the association. In the end it involved too many trolls, discussions and proper administration and with it a distraction from the goal.

Too bad.

DR MOTTE The founder of The Love Parade will appear as a speaker at the following events: Thursday 12 November 2015 Melbourne, RMIT Gallery: Geniale Dilletanten exhibition opening Saturday 14 November 2015 Melbourne, Face the Music conference Sunday 15 November 2015 Sydney, Glebe Street Fair: Talk and DJ set Wednesday 18 November 2015 Sydney, Goethe-Institut: Panel discussion Friday 20 November 2015 Melbourne, RMIT Gallery: Panel discussion @GI_Australien#urbansub

kultur 2015

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I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN A MAN WHO POLARISED PEOPLE Sven Marquardt interviewed by Jochen Gutsch

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Over the last few years, Berlin photographer Sven Marquardt and his works have risen to fame nationally and internationally.

In 2016, the Goethe-Institut presents his work as part of Head On Festival at Ambush Gallery in Sydney, and another selection of works in Melbourne. In addition to his work as an artist, Sven Marquardt is also closely connected to the city’s techno scene through his work at the infamous club, Berghain.

JOCHEN GUTSCH: You are known for two separate things: there is your career as a photographer on the one hand and your involvement with Berghain on the other. Which of the two takes up more time, and do you prefer either of these two professions over the other?

SVEN MARQUARDT: I’ve been a photographer for more than thirty years. In the early 1990s I put away my camera for a few years, but still photography was my entry into Berlin’s club scene.

In a city where everything was possible, I didn’t need more than a camera. These days, projects related to my photos keep me occupied almost every day. To this day, I am strongly connected to the club scene.

JG: For your photography you use analogue equipment, shoot in black and white, and exclusively work with natural light. How did you come to this decision in the digital age?

SM: Apart from other things, the digital age stands for fast-pace, interchangeability and a flood of images. Anyone can capture every moment of their lives with their smartphones.

As for me — I’m leaving a shoot after a day’s work, with the exposed films in my pocket. This way, the anticipation before seeing the results lasts for a few days — almost a luxury these days. To view 5,000 digital images during the shooting and to delete 4,999 because they’re crap, that’s not my cup of tea.

JG: Your memoir Die Nacht ist Leben (The Night is Life )

was conceived in a creative partnership with journalist and author Judka Strittmatter, granddaughter of legendary Eastern German novelist, Erwin Strittmacher.

Please describe this collaboration.

SM: I already got to know Judka Strittmatter a few years ago.

At the time, she wrote a biographic article about me for a large Berlin daily. We got along well, and I didn’t care about her family background.

For Die Nacht ist Leben, we engaged in an intense journey lasting nine months, which brought up a lot of emotions and memories.

From the very start, it was my desire to work with an author from Eastern Germany. Somehow, we speak the same language. Judka Strittmatter was the right choice.

JG: You have been portrayed extensively by the media

in Germany and all over the world. Among others, the influential yellow press paper BILD published a lot of information about your professional and private life.

Has your life changed since these public revelations?

SM: Shortly before the publishing date of my autobiography I was pretty nervous. How was the public going to react to my story? What if nobody is interested in what was written?

Now, if complete strangers approach me in some international location, and they ask me about my photos or my story — that’s a good feeling. Nevertheless, I’ve always been a man who polarised people. I can live with that quite well.

JG: In articles about you, The New York Times states that “Berghain is to electronic music fans in Germany what Bayreuth is to opera lovers” while The Guardian mentions an app called ‘How to get into Berghain ’. On the door you see every type of person who hopes to get into the venue.

How has the clientele changed since the club’s beginnings?

SM: Punters in the clubs have of course long moved on to be ‘The Next Generation’, and naturally they reflect a new zeitgeist.

The club scene has an element of autonomy and independence, so it’s not surprising that it’s mostly youthful audiences who are attracted. At some point, new ways of life and new paths follow.

I find the way of life of current generations always very inspiring.

JG: We are excited to present your work and

yourself to an Australian audience. Have you been to Australia before? What do you expect to find in its two metropolitan cities, Sydney and Melbourne?

SM: It feels like an adventure! This will be my first visit to Australia, and most likely the furthest I’ve travelled. The decision to put on the show in two metropolitan cities, that’s a challenge!

But I love challenges and am very happy about the invitation.

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EVERY CITY HAS ITS INDIVIDUALS WHO COULD BE CLASSIFIED AS CULTURAL ICONS. IN BERLIN, ONE SUCH INDIVIDUAL IS THE EXCENTRIC AND WELL-KNOWN PHOTOGRAPHER, SVEN MARQUARDT.

SVEN MARQUARDT Photography exhibition by exceptional artist and illustrious media personality Sven Marquardt.

May 2016 Sydney, Ambush Gallery in cooperation with Head On Festival April – May 2016 Melbourne @GI_Australien#urbansub

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THE CLOSENESS BETWEEN MUSIC AND ART: HAUSCHKA

HAUSCHKA Post-classical composer who uses prepared piano to create percussive patterns and other sounds akin to contemporary electronic music.

Tuesday 17 November 2015 Melbourne, Recital Centre Thursday 19 November 2015 Sydney, The Basement with Hinterlandt Ensemble Friday 20 November 2015 Brisbane, Old Museum Building Saturday 21 + Sunday 22 November 2015 Mullumbimby, Mullum Festival with Trinity Roots, Ron Sexsmith

VOLKER BERTELMANN Volker Bertelmann (Hauschka) also appears as a speaker at the following event: Wednesday 18 November 2015 Sydney, Goethe-Institut: Panel discussion and improvised music session @GI_Australien#urbansub

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HAUSCHKA — REAL NAME VOLKER BERTELMANN — IS A CLASSICALLY TRAINED PIANIST WHO COMBINES CHAMBER MUSIC SENSIBILITIES WITH POP-CULTURAL INTERESTS AND A STRONG AFFILIATION FOR ELECTRONIC MUSIC. Volker Bertelmann interviewed by Jochen Gutsch

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In addition to his prolific solo work, Volker Bertelmann has collaborated with other artists in the fields of music, film, theatre, dance and art. For example, he worked with Stefan Schneider (To Rococo Rot, Kreidler) who performed at the Goethe-Institut in Sydney in 2015 with Sven Kacirek, and Volker’s music can be heard in the Doris Dörrie film Bliss, which was shown in our 2013 Audi Festival of German Films.

JOCHEN GUTSCH: Düsseldorf is usually associated with the

Kling Klang Studio, Kraftwerk and Neu!. Bands such as To Rococo Rot and Mouse on Mars picked up on this aesthetic.

Your work is more acoustic but also explores repetition.

Do you see yourself as part of a ‘Düsseldorf tradition’?

VOLKER BERTELMANN: I quite like the idea of following the tradition of Düsseldorf electronic music. I think that there is a sense of minimalism and reduction, which I like. When I compose music I think it is great to play with association and abstraction, and using these formats it enables you to avoid clichés. Very important in Düsseldorf is the closeness between music and art which I think is very inspiring. I love going to exhibitions and I think it helps to find new perspectives.

JG: You have been influenced by other artists using

prepared pianos, and you openly explain your own practice. Other artists are more secretive. Do you ever fear that your ideas may be copied?

VB: They are already copied and they will be copied more. I think by letting the protection go, I am able to grow without building my career on gadgets. It is also nice to see that my way of working is influencing people. One thing I feel is that people should ask me when they use an idea that is very strongly identified with my style, out of respect. But some artists think that everything they see is theirs and they can use it without any communication.

I don’t like that attitude. But in general I am very open to share.

JG: You used to play in bands and have used the artist

name Hauschka for your solo work. Have you considered dropping this artist name to perform under the name Volker Bertelmann?

VB: No, not really, as it gives me some freedom. I think in combination with the piano my real name would appear like I am a solo pianist… but I don’t consider myself a solo artist only. I rather think that I am working on many different levels to perform and compose music that I like.

JG: A version of Kraftwerk is still touring and

JG: You have collaborated with many very diverse artists,

the Düsseldorf band DAF (Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft ), which features in the Geniale Dilletanten exhibition, have reformed several times. Are there connections between the ‘older’ and the ‘younger’ local music scene?

and constantly explore projects in the world of film, theatre, and visual art. What have you got lined up next?

VB: No, not really because once you are touring you are out of town a lot, and it is hard to keep in touch, simply for practical reasons. But I think this is probably similar in other cities as well. I think there is a lot of myth about scenes. I think in a lot of cases styles are starting simultaneously all over the world, including some of these cities… in a way, the fact that the bands you mentioned might know each other doesn’t mean that they’re connected. Maybe the most common denominator is that they all have their roots in electronic music.

VB: I am working on a dance piece right now called A City is Seeking its Bodies by the choreographer Alexandra Waierstall and I am preparing a dance piece with a Korean dance company that will be performed in the hometown of Sibelius. This piece is based on the Swan of Tumula, which is a very old Finnish story. I will perform the music with Samuli Kosminen, drummer of the band MUM from Iceland. In addition, there are new films coming up, and I want to focus a little bit more on that in 2016. Besides that I am writing pieces for classical ensembles at the moment.

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A VERY STRONG URGE FROM DEEP WITHIN: MONOLAKE MONOLAKE — real name Robert Henke — is one of the key icons of contemporary electronic club music in Berlin. In addition, Robert Henke is one of the main creators of the hugely successful music software Ableton Live, which was invented in 1999 and has since then redefined performance practice in electronic music worldwide. Robert Henke never stops experimenting with music, surround sound concerts, photography, audio-visual installations, sound art and publicly available software. He writes and lectures about sound and the creative use of computers, and has held teaching positions in Germany, USA and France.

small minority of potentially creative people is a historic anomaly, nothing more. If anyone is to blame for music that sounds exactly the same as millions of other pieces before, it is not the tools, it is actually the audiences.

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Robert Henke interviewed by Jochen Gutsch

JG: You have taught at prestigious institutions such as Stanford University. Is there one key message you have for students and emerging artists?

JOCHEN GUTSCH: At Melbourne Recital Centre, you will

be performing Lumière II.2. Please tell us more about this work.

ROBERT HENKE: Lumière II.2 is an audio-visual composition for lasers and sound. The lasers project from different angles on a large screen, partially obscured by a wall of fog. The fog makes the intensive beams of light visible in the air and expands the shapes from the screen into the whole auditorium. Overall, it is a highly synchronised immersive experience, with surround sound and fragile temporary objects above the audience. The special quality of the laser light allows combining complete darkness with moments of extreme brightness, pure white with intense saturated colours and precise movements with complex organic shapes..

JG: Music software such as Ableton Live has made it easier

and more affordable to produce music of a high technical standard. While some see a democratisation of production materials, others claim it has resulted in a mass of recordings that all sound the same. Where do you stand?

As long as people are willing to dance to or buy such things, people will keep making them. As long as people are watching cheesy soap operas on TV they will be produced. It is a simple as this. From an artist’s perspective I could not care less about it. I do what I want to do, and as long as there are enough people who are interested in what I am doing, I have a motivation to move on.

RH: Success in the arts has to do with many factors, and a big one is simply luck. Which means: being at the right time at the right place, meeting the right people, and so on. And, that’s something which only becomes clear after the fact and is hard to plan, if at all. The rest is patience, persistence and actually a huge tolerance for frustration. Because a lot of development is the result of overcoming failure, of continuing what you do despite a hostile environment. And to survive in that, one has to have a very strong urge from deep within to do those things.

The whole point of the arts is to be innovative, to attempt to go your own personal — and hopefully new — route. And that certainly will alienate people. Everything else is just repeating what has already been done millions of times before. It does not harm but it will be soon forgotten.

JG: Your professional career includes many

international performances, music production, audio-visual installations, your academic career, and software development. Does this kind of schedule demand compromise in your private life?

RH: It is a common misconception about the nature of creativity.

It has nothing to do with the difficulty of the production process; it is all about the intention and the idea behind it. A guitar makes it much easier to play a simple chord progression than a violin, but no one keeps a guitar player from inventing fantastic melodies or complex harmonic progressions. A computer based text editor makes it much easier to write a novel, but is certainly not to blame for bad results either.

RH: If one sees a contradiction between such a schedule and a private life, one will probably never make it as an artist. I cannot separate my artistic life from the rest, and as everything in life it is about finding the right people and accepting compromises to achieve what I want to achieve.

Most tools for artistic expression are inexpensive and available for most people on this planet. Think of a pen and a piece of paper.

The fact that creating electronic music had been the privilege of a

The key issue is the same as for every self-employed person: the only one who can decide whether a job is important enough to skip a planned holiday or not is me. And, if there are three job offers at the

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same time, I have to figure out which one is the best. But that’s part of the game. Most artists I know are very absorbed by their work.

It is a challenge to stay a social person under such conditions, but I feel I have managed quite well so far.

JG: You are based in Berlin. Much of your work appears to

be either studio-based or connected to travelling. Could you do the same kind of work elsewhere, or do you feel the need to have this particular city around you?

RH: In theory I could do most of my work anywhere on the planet, but there are quite a lot of practical considerations which keep me in Berlin, although I would not say it is my dream city. It was extremely important to be in Berlin in the 1990s, because the environment shaped a lot of my ideas, I was part of an emerging group of artists who defined whole new genres and that was special and amazing.

However, now I do not really need that input anymore, and I could work anywhere. But of course I have lots of personal ties and a nice affordable flat. Those things are important, too.

MONOLAKE/ROBERT HENKE Electronic music pioneer, academic and Ableton Live software developer. Lumière II.2 is an audio-visual composition for lasers and sound, while Monolake is modern techno music.

Wednesday 18 November 2015 Melbourne, MWW Festival Hub: Monolake with Electric Indigo Thursday 19 November 2015 Melbourne, Recital Centre: Robert Henke presents Lumière II.2 Friday 20 November 2015 Melbourne, Recital Centre: Robert Henke masterclass @GI_Australien#urbansub

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NEW AVENUES FOR CREATIVE PARTICIPATION: CREATIVE SYDNEY Hugh Nichols, Cultural Strategy Manager, City of Sydney interviewed by Jochen Gutsch

UNDER THE BANNER CREATIVE CITY, THE CITY OF SYDNEY HAS DEVELOPED AN EXTENSIVE CULTURAL POLICY AND ACTION PLAN THAT SEEKS TO REVIVE THE INNER CITY WITH CREATIVE SPACES AND OPPORTUNITIES.

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The City of Sydney provides grants, sponsorships and support for cultural and creative activity. Furthermore, public art is actively encouraged and local artists are commissioned to create permanent and temporary projects. The Goethe-Institut is among the institutions that have benefited from the street flags program during the Festival of German Films.

JOCHEN GUTSCH: The City of Sydney actively supports

festivals such as the Sydney Writers’ Festival or the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. We would also be interested to hear about initiatives for individual artists or small teams operating at a grass-roots level.

HUGH NICHOLS: The City’s Grants and Sponsorship Program includes a range of programs allocating funding to individuals, not-for-profit organisations and local businesses. This includes support for small to medium scale cultural activity through the Cultural and Creative Grants, as well as our Matching Grants and Quick Response Grants.

Some of the organisations we’ve supported through these programs include Big hART’s ‘The Secret Life of Seafarers’ community development project sharing the untold stories of Sydney’s seafaring families through film, performance and exhibitions; the BEAMS Arts Festival which showcases sound and projection work developed by local artists and students; and Newtown Neighbourhood Centre’s ‘Sydney Vision Song Contest’ — an annual music video contest celebrating the local Newtown community.

We also provide support for the small to medium cultural sector through our creative space programs. Our Accommodation Grants Program provides accommodation for 25 cultural organisations, including Object Australian Design Centre, Darlinghurst Theatre Company, Music Australia, Metro Screen, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Milk Crate Theatre and First Draft, and we also support a range of creative organisations through our creative space programs on Oxford Street and William Street.

We support individual artists through our Creative Live/Work Space program, which provides affordable housing for artists

and creative workers and the Art Money program, which provides interest free loans for the purchase of artwork through commercial galleries.

The City also runs a range of more targeted programs, such as our Student Rehearsal Program. This project provides free rehearsal space for individual students or student collectives in 17 of the City’s community facilities. This project is being piloted at the moment and unsurprisingly, it’s been really popular so far.

We’re also investigating a musical instrument lending scheme.

JG: In November 2015 the Berlin-based band Automat is

playing at Glebe Town Hall, a beautiful heritage building that has lately been used for the monthly Common Eclectic live music events. Are there other buildings that are (or could be) used for live performances?

HN: Absolutely. Glebe Town Hall has proven to be one of the most popular, and many of our other community venues are regularly used for live performance in one way or another — it just depends on what you want to do. Redfern Town Hall is a beautiful building, and so is the Abraham Mott Hall in Millers Point as well. There is a full list on our website, with specifications.

Of course there’s also the larger venues — Town Hall, City Recital Hall Angel Place and Capitol Theatre.

One focus of the Cultural Policy is making sure we’re using our assets to address priority cultural infrastructure needs in the inner city — not just providing cash funding for projects. For example, we know there is a definite need for more hireable theatre and performance space in Sydney, and over time we will be working on our own community properties to increase their usability for the cultural sector, and the broader community as well.

JG: The City of Sydney invests A$36.5 million each year

on culture. For ordinary people, such figures are hard to grasp. How does a sum like this compare to the cultural budgets of other urban centres in similar size?

HN: It’s a good question, and something that we only really quantified through the development of Creative City. It’s not

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[CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT] Glebe Town Hall exterior; Glebe Town Hall interior; Eternity Playhouse; Eternity Playhouse Launch

always broadly recognised that local government in Australia makes a huge investment in our cultural life. The most common and visible aspects of this are things like providing grants, library services, public art, producing events or accommodation and event space for organisations.

Whilst the City is one of the biggest contributors in Australia, there haven’t been any audits of cultural spending nationally that allow us to officially confirm that. The City is currently participating in data gathering exercises to try and address this, domestically with the Cultural Development Network and internationally with the World Cities Culture Forum. These projects will provide us with reliable, consistent information about the financial investments made by other Australian and international cities.

It’s important to remember though that local government’s relationship to the cultural life of Australia is not just about how much money is invested. Beyond financial investment there are a range of other really significant roles that we play in relation to the cultural sector — as a regulator, a customer, producer of research and data, connector and advocate. These are all equally important contributions.

JG: Sydney is regularly listed as one of the world’s most

© City of Sydney / Tonkin Zulaikha Greer

liveable cities — but also as one of the most expensive places to live. Is there a link between a community’s level of creativity and the financial pressure it experiences?

HN: Whether there is a causal relationship between financial pressure and creativity is perhaps less relevant than considering the barriers preventing creativity. These are often financial, but also relate to education, concentration of activities and spaces, regulation, funding opportunities, market forces and a host of other factors. The City has the ability to address some of these barriers, which is the focus of the Creative City, but certainly not all of them.

Some examples of what we do: We provide spaces and places for the community to find new avenues for creative participation — through our libraries, theatres, by turning our community venues into rehearsal spaces, or the new $25 million creative hub that will provide music and dance rehearsal spaces as part of a new residential development

by Greenland Australia.

We support initiatives that reduce cost or other barriers to participation such as the ‘theatre passport’ scheme we’re working on to make affordable tickets available for high school students or the ‘gig buddies’ pilot program to give people with a disability the opportunity to participate in Sydney’s live music scheme.

JG: The City of Sydney is committed to supporting cultural and creative life and increasing cultural participation.

Some ‘nightlife’ venues complain about tough regulations such as lockout laws. Is this criticism justified?

HN: Certainly the regulatory framework has a direct impact on cultural and creative spaces. This includes both the night time economy, such as live music and performance venues, and the day time cultural economy, such as galleries, artist run spaces and so on. The City’s Live Music and Performance Action Plan addresses impacts caused by licensing, building and planning regulations and aims to identify and utilise the policy levers available to the City to support that sector. This includes research and advocacy to relevant state government agencies.

We are very engaged with our community on this issue. The City supports the NSW Government’s efforts to reduce alcohol related anti-social behaviour and has maintained since they were introduced that measures need to be well researched, evidence based and flexible enough to support initiatives that contribute positively to Sydney’s night time economy and cultural life. We have received feedback from venues and the music industry more broadly about the challenges they’re facing, and are waiting on the results of the NSW Government‘s preliminary evaluation of the measures. If the evidence shows there has been significant and ongoing negative impact on cultural businesses, loss of employment opportunities for musicians (already among Australia’s lowest paid workers) or reduced opportunities to develop a diverse night time economy in Sydney, then policy responses should be explored which provide for more nuanced regulatory conditions. We have been strongly encouraging the NSW Government to ensure that, when the measures are evaluated, the cultural impacts are closely considered.

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[ABOVE] ‘No Lockouts’ at the Keg & Brew in Surry Hills

JG: In March 2014, the City of Sydney published the

JG: One of the reasons why artists have been attracted to

Live Music and Performance Action Plan. Please outline what is involved and what the desired effect is.

Berlin is the fact that life there has been comparatively affordable. This situation is currently changing, but there is a public debate about policies such as rent-rise caps on inner-city properties. Are we discussing such initiatives actively enough in Sydney?

HN: The Action Plan arose from the recognition that the City has the ability to influence the growth of the live music and performance industry, and that we have a responsibility to ensure that we are balancing our role as a regulator with our desire to see this growth occur. As a first step, the City engaged experts from across the country as part of a taskforce to review and make recommendations on regulatory barriers, audience development strategies and industry support mechanisms for the live music and performance sector. The outcome of this taskforce forms the basis of the Action Plan.

While it’s a little recognised fact that Sydney and NSW are the biggest contributors to the national live music and performance industry, there are some significant opportunities for improvement.

For example, during the preliminary research stage of the Action Plan we identified that in 2013 just over 6% of licensed premises in the City of Sydney held a live music licence from APRA. The Action Plan is about ensuring the City is using all its resources to support industry’s efforts to capitalise on these opportunities.

It focuses on four main areas: development controls and noise, Building Code of Australia, liquor licensing and audience & sector development. Across these four areas the City has committed to delivering 60 actions over five years. These include internal policy reform, research, advocacy and new programs or services.

HN: We know that Sydney is an expensive place to live and we recognise the challenges that artists face in finding affordable inner city housing. The Action plan commits the City to a range of strategic initiatives to advocate to developers and the NSW Government for affordable housing for artists and creative workers.

We have also been able to lead by example in making our own property portfolio serve this community need. Creative Live/Work Spaces is our first program to offer affordable housing for artists: six one-bedroom apartments in William Street are offered at below market rental for a period of one year residency.

The City of Sydney does have commitments to make more residential property available for artists’ housing, with property on Oxford Street awaiting capital works scheduled for 2017–18, to make them available.

CITY OF SYDNEY Hugh Nichols, Cultural Strategy Manager, City of Sydney will participate in the following event discussing urban subcultures: Wednesday 18 November 2015 Sydney, Goethe-Institut: Panel discussion

AUTOMAT The Berlin-based trio plays at Glebe Town Hall as part of the Common Eclectic concert series Sunday 15 November 2015 Sydney, Glebe Town Hall: Concert @GI_Australien#urbansub

© Jochen Gutsch

WE PROVIDE SPACES AND PLACES FOR THE COMMUNITY TO FIND NEW AVENUES FOR CREATIVE PARTICIPATION — THROUGH OUR LIBRARIES, THEATRES, OUR COMMUNITY VENUES, OR THE NEW $25 MILLION CREATIVE HUB THAT WILL PROVIDE MUSIC AND DANCE REHEARSAL SPACES.

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STURM UND DRANG REMASTERED : MANIFESTO Julian Rosefeldt interviewed by Gabriele Urban

AS PART OF THE SUMMER ART SERIES, JULIAN ROSEFELDT’S MANIFESTO PREMIERES AT ACMI. THE GERMAN ARTIST’S EXCEPTIONAL NEW WORK WILL BE THE THIRD EVOCATIVE EXHIBITION IN THIS SERIES, OPENING IN DECEMBER 2015.

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Manifesto not only continues Rosefeldt’s long-term investigations into the language and conventions of cinema as allegory for societal and individual behaviours, but also explores the role of cinema in contemporary mythmaking.

GABRIELE URBAN: We are looking forward to the world premiere of your newest project Manifesto which will be exhibited at the Australian Centre of the Moving Image (ACMI) in Melbourne. The project features Cate Blanchett who can be seen in thirteen very diverse roles. How did this collaboration emerge and how did you manage to maintain it, considering the distance between Germany and Australia?

JULIAN ROSEFELDT: Our collaboration was due to a very lucky coincidence. A mutual friend of ours invited Cate to the opening of my exhibition Living in Oblivion in the Berlinische Galerie and introduced us. At the time she was staying in Berlin for a shooting.

Later that evening we had a very inspiring conversation. Cate is a true master in helping her stammering counterparts to get into a conversation with her. I think I was just complimenting her in regards to her fantastic transformation into Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes great movie I’m not there, when she suddenly succinctly said something like “If you ever need me let me know”.

I don’t remember anything else that happened after responding “Seriously?”. I was rather overwhelmed by her offer but I took her at her word and a few months later we met up again. However this was a long time before my idea for Manifesto emerged.

For a long time I was unsure what to make out of her wonderful offer. I just knew that I wanted to give her several different roles because of her ability to transform herself and her gift to create strong personalities by emphasising very small but also very thoughtful and precise accentuations, which has always fascinated me. In the following years we met a few more times to discuss different ideas. Finally she came to Berlin last December — together with her family, who then also took part in one scene.

GU: Your project deals with manifestos, namely statements by artists, writers, architects and performers that are recited and performed by Cate. How did your idea for this emerge?

JR: I will have to go back a while to answer that: the idea for Manifesto came to me indirectly. During the preparation for my previous project Deep Gold, I had dealt with feminist positions on art history and in doing so also read feminist manifestos. This led to a more intense research on the manifestos of artists, of which Until then I had only read those of the Futurists, the Dadaists, Breton and Maciunas. Then one thing led to another: once I had read everything concerning the manifestos of artists I could find including manifestos from theatre, film and architecture, I was captured by their ductus. I noticed that these weren’t only art historical documents — they were lively texts that could be spoken out loud and performed by actors. This was to be my project for Cate.

When I told a curator friend about my idea, he was almost in pain at the thought of committing the sacrilege of a contemporary staging of the famous manifestos of artists — the shrines of every

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MANIFESTO IS AN EXPANSIVE THIRTEEN CHANNEL FILM INSTALLATION. TWELVE DIFFERENT MANIFESTO SCENES AND AN INTRO WILL PLAY SYNCHRONOUSLY ON JUST AS MANY SCREENS. widely read art historian — and letting them speak again. For him this was comparable to slaughtering a holy cow. Art historians generally tend to declare everything which was created and written by artists who later became famous, as something that was always meant by them to end up in museums and become art history. But that is only very rarely the case: for example many manifestos of artists were written by extremely young people who may have just moved out from their parents’ home when they put pen to paper. So these are texts that were not only trying to change and revolutionise the art scene and by doing so possibly even the whole world, but also testimonials of screamed-out self-discovery and very personal insecurity. ‘Sturm und Drang’ remastered.

While reading the manifestos, I barely traced back the art history but rather saw the personification of young searchers and fevering adolescents who were completely unsure as to where this all might lead, instead they tried to explain to themselves where they were at the time. If you read the texts with that in mind they turn into theatre or film monologues that can be spoken out loud and which partly bring Frank Wedekind or Sarah Kane to mind. I then imagined suitable modern figures speaking or thinking the texts of the manifestos either in a public monologue situation or by talking to themselves, lost in thought.

Given the fact that most manifestos were written by men and are brimming with testosterone — by the last third of the 20th century there were very few manifestos written by female artists — I thought it was very exciting to let a woman read them.

GU: What criteria did you use to chose the manifestos?

JR: With the exception of the quote “All that is solid melts into air” from Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto from 1848 (next to the Ten Commandments and Luther’s theses, this may be something like the mother of all manifestos), my selection begins at the beginning of the 20th century with the legendary Futurist Manifesto from 1909 by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and ends shortly after the turn of the millennium: the most recent manifesto I used comes from the pen of the film director Jim Jarmush. From all the manifestos I read, I very sentimentally chose about sixty that I found the most fascinating but also the best to say out loud.

GU: You took the liberty of putting these manifestos together into collages. In one interview you talk about a ‘manifesto of manifestos’. Could you explain this more closely? Do you create your own new manifesto and is this the message of Manifesto?

JR: By reading more precisely I noticed that some main ideas of the manifestos recurred and matched each other perfectly.

For example remarks of Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc fitted perfectly with the thoughts of Barnett Newman. And texts from André Breton and Lucio Fontana could be connected to one another. In other artistic movements like Dada or Fluxus, so many authors of manifestos expressed themselves that it became obvious to arrange a summary, like for instance a kind of superDada-manifesto. Through shortening and combining original texts from several manifestos, twelve manifesto collages arose.

And in each collage these could be read so fluently that, without hints of who the authors were, it wasn’t possible to even notice the boundary between the fragments anymore. So altogether Manifesto is a kind of overall manifesto, a manifesto of manifestos.

GU: Cate reads out the manifestos in very different roles and situations. How did you choose the scenes?

JR: Initially I had written many more scenes or situations within various contemporary settings from which I, to match the number of manifesto collages, picked twelve in the end. All scene drafts had in common that they took place in the present day and that a woman delivered a monologue, e.g. giving a speech in a graveyard or as a choreographer of a dance ensemble, as a primary school teacher in front of her class or as a homeless person on the street.

The allocation happened intuitively. The main idea was not to illustrate the respective manifesto text but to have Cate rather embody the manifesto.

Sometimes I was looking for a contemporary picture for a mood which would have inspired a manifesto author if he had lived today to speak out today. In the scene of the Futurist Manifesto, for example, Cate is an online-broker sitting in a giant trading pit. Today speed is not just connected to railways or racing cars anymore. Sometimes it made more sense to work ‘ex negativo’.

For example, it would have been rather dull to stage Claes Oldenburg’s Pop Art Manifesto in a trendy way. In my scenario

Art and Culture

a deeply conservative Southern mother speaks the text as grace before a Sunday lunch with the family. I rather point out societal narrow-mindedness and anxiety that Pop Art tried to work against back then and which continues to live in every Tea Party household today. And when Cate interviews herself as a news reporter à la CNN, reading Sol LeWitt’s texts on conceptual art, the scene itself turns into a conceptual artwork.

Some texts also needed a rather senseless scene as a background to be able to be newly received in their linguistic beauty.

The Dada-collage, spoken by Cate at a graveside, turns into an appeal to us artists to fully commit ourselves to our work: “To sit in a chair for a single moment is to risk one’s life”, as Richard Huelsenbeck wrote.

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GU: Will any other of your works be presented?

What are they?

JR: Yes, Manifesto will only cover half of the exhibition space at ACMI. The remaining part will be used to show three different older film installations, including the already mentioned film Deep Gold.

All of them are characterised by deconstructing mechanisms of filmmaking and the magic of cinema but simultaneously praising it.

GU: What happens after the premiere?

Will there be Manifesto 2?

JR: I don’t think so. I would have loved to shoot more manifesto scenes with Cate but my urge to work on artist manifestos has come to an end and there are already new projects in the making.

But that’s for later…

© Till RD Cremer [portrait] / Julian Rosefeldt, Manifeso, Courtesy Arndt Berlin/Singapore and the artist, VG Bild-Kunst

GU: What was the biggest challenge on set?

JR: The shoot was a wonderful but also very exhausting journey. Cate was incredible. To embody thirteen characters over twelve days and to continuously act at such a high professional level — I don’t know anybody else who would have been able to do it with such concentration and focus, completely relentlessly but always in a great mood as she did.

The biggest challenge was to finish one complete manifesto scene a day within a short shooting time. Due to logistic reasons we sometimes had to shoot two half scenes on one day, which meant that Cate had to be changed into two different characters, including make-up and costumes, on one day, which cost a lot of time. So on top of everything Cate did not only have to switch characters from one day to another but sometimes multiple times a day.

GU: How is Manifesto going to be presented?

JR: Manifesto is an expansive thirteen channel film installation.

Twelve different manifesto scenes and an intro will play synchronously on just as many screens. There will be one moment when all spoken manifestos meld, you will see in the installation how. Plus, there is going to be a linear movie version of Manifesto which may be viewed at film festivals later on and which definitely will be shown within a new Kunst-im-TV-Format of the broadcaster Bayrischer Rundfunk (Bavarian Radio).

MANIFESTO 3 December 2015 – 26 April 2016 Melbourne, ACMI

German artist JULIAN ROSEFELDT was born in Munich in 1965 and lives and works in Berlin since 1999. He first studied architecture in Munich and Barcelona but later on turned to the arts, starting with a guest professorship at the Bauhaus-University Weimar, Faculty of Media Art, resulting in a professorship for Digital and Time-based Media at the Art Academy (Akademie der Bildenden Künste) in Munich in 2011. Since the mid-1990s Rosefeldt has been producing complex film and video installations, as well as photographs. His work has been shown in major solo and group exhibitions across the world.

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ROSES FOR THE AUDIENCE: AUDI FESTIVAL OF GERMAN FILMS 2015 Klaus-Peter Claus

IN MAY 2015, WE CELEBRATED THE 14TH EDITION OF OUR ACCLAIMED FESTIVAL OF GERMAN FILMS. JOURNALIST KLAUS-PETER CLAUS ATTENDED THE FESTIVAL TO REPORT FOR GERMAN MEDIA.

Art and Culture

More than 21,000 visitors joined us this year, choosing from fifty different films. Q&A sessions, panel discussions, live soundtrack performances and other events added a special feel to the screenings in ten cinemas across eight cities.

Auditorium over red carpet: the audience is the focus of the German film festival in Australia and appreciates it, too.

The festival was also a great success for its organiser, the Goethe-Institut, even though Schiller nearly stole Goethe’s show.

“Walled in fast within the earth…” — Schiller’s Song of the Bell is heard in Melbourne. Ruth, assumedly in her upper eighties, a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth, recites the poem following the screening of Dominik Graf’s Schiller film Beloved Sisters. She is standing on the stairs to one of the cinemas in which the Goethe-Institut in Australia is holding the 14th Festival of German Film.

Showing fifty films at ten cinemas in eight cities across the continent, the inflow of viewers testifies to their enormous interest.

© Wesley Nel [Sydney photos] / Phillip Gao [Melbourne photos]

German films are not an everyday sight in Australian cinemas.

Only one or two a year make it into regular distribution. Ruth stands for one part of the audience: Germans who came here, often for political reasons, during or after the Nazi dictatorship. She is driven by a yearning for her homeland. The second chief group of audience members is represented by thirty-something Shawn.

The IT technician learned German at the Goethe-Institut and now wants to find out more about the country, which he knows is one of the most economically stable in the world.

Shawn takes advantage of the festival to “get a feel of everyday life in Germany” from the films, he says, for the tangible reason, “I may go to Germany for a few years.” These are only two examples of the festival’s charisma. The fact that it is a hit is not surprising since cinema is one of the chief recreational activities in Australia. Also, Germany is one of the few countries that is discussed in detail in Australia, mainly due to its high standard of living and cultural diversity.

Sparks really fly at the many panels and discussions organised by the Goethe-Institut during the festival, particularly when they centre on questions of identity. When a German journalist deliberates that it is still hard for his generation to develop something akin to national pride, it leads to a lovely exchange

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between the generations, between Germans and Australians, between people from diverse social milieus.

People like Ruth admit, “Looking back, one glorifies the country of one’s childhood, of course.” Younger people like Shawn are bewildered to learn that Germans born after 1945 still feel the burden of history on their shoulders. The conversations become astonishingly deep and intense among the artists, business experts and journalists invited by the Goethe-Institut from Germanspeaking countries as well as from within Australia.

One of the principle foundations of the festival’s success is that the audience truly plays the lead role. It is allowed and bidden to get involved and ask questions. Unlike many other festivals, this one does not focus on presenting the organisers, but on satisfying audience needs. So, the head of the Goethe-Institut Australia may well fetch a coffee for an elderly festival visitor, a staff member may make sure that the young fans of actor Florian Stetter not only get to venerate him from afar, but can talk with him and have their picture taken with him.

Late at night the Goethe crew then also sends the eloquent leading man of a number of the films shown here, like Nanga Parbat and Beloved Sisters, off to bed so that he’ll be wide awake the next morning for the continuing festival carousel.

Naturally, the festival is plagued by a number of minor disasters and amusing fringe episodes. Hotel rooms are flooded, suits are forgotten at the airport, the Goethe-Institut becomes the post office for fan letters to the Schiller portrayer Florian Stetter, et cetera.

All of this and more are gotten under control on the sidelines.

On the opening night in Sydney, every visitor is handed a rose.

Ruth puts the blossom on the lapel of her suit jacket, saying “A smile from Germany.” Ruth has experienced worse and tells the young people, like Shawn, about it.

PETER CLAUS is a renowned German journalist who has worked throughout different forms of media. In the 1980s, Claus was working as a journalist in the GDR. After the reunification he established himself as a film and theatre critic. Today he freelances for media outlets such as DeutschlandRadio Kultur, WDR and dpa (the German Press Agency).

As a guest of the 2015 Audi Festival of German Films, Peter Claus reported for DeutschlandRadio Kultur and www.getidan.de

[MAIN IMAGE] Panel discussion with David Rokach (Antenna Festival ), Nashen Moodley (Sydney Film Festival ), Eddie Cockrell (moderator), Dr Michelle Langford (UNSW), Klaus-Peter Claus (German journalist) [INSET IMAGES, LEFT TO RIGHT] Palace Cinema Norton Street (exterior); Beloved Sisters at the Melbourne Opening Night; Australian journalist Eddie Cockrell with German actor Florian Stetter and German journalist Klaus-Peter Claus; Gaby Urban with festival guest in Melbourne; Sydney Opening Speech; Dr Arpad Sölter, Director of the Goethe-Institut Australia 2011–2015 with German actor Florian Stetter; Sydney Opening Night at Palace Cinema Norton Street

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WHEN ALL THE KEY ARTISTIC ELEMENTS COME TOGETHER: WOYZECK THE GOETHE-INSTITUT IS VERY EXCITED ABOUT ANOTHER MASSIVE COLLABORATION WITH SYDNEY FESTIVAL: IN JANUARY 2016, THALIA THEATER HAMBURG WILL MAKE THEIR LONG-AWAITED AUSTRALIAN DEBUT WITH THE STAGE ADAPTATION OF GEORG BÜCHNER’S PLAY, WOYZECK. THE PIECE WAS LEFT AS A FRAGMENT AFTER BÜCHNER PASSED AWAY IN 1837.

ROBERT WILSON, TOM WAITS AND KATHLEEN BRENNAN CREATED A MUSICAL REWORKING OF THE PLAY WITH THE ORIGINAL SONGS LATER RELEASED AS THE TOM WAITS ALBUM BLOOD MONEY.

KULTUR SPEAKS TO SYDNEY FESTIVAL DIRECTOR, LIEVEN BERTELS, THALIA THEATER HAMBURG’S AWARDWINNING DIRECTOR, JETTE STECKEL, AND WOYZECK STAGE ACTOR, FELIX KNOPP.

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kultur: Lieven, bringing such a large production from Germany to Australia is not an easy task.

What fascinated you about this particular piece?

LIEVEN BERTELS: I think what charmed me most is the universal quality of the storytelling in this production: as often with theatre, it really starts to shine when all the key artistic elements come together. Thalia Theater Hamburg achieves this in its Woyzeck production. There’s the strong original story, the masterful adaptation by Robert Wilson, Kathleen Brennan and Tom Waits, and the beautiful directional insight of Jette Steckel. kultur: Jette, Thalia’s Woyzeck could be described as a collaboration across time and space. How did you attune the work of Georg Büchner, Robert Wilson, Tom Waits, Kathleen Brennan with your own?

JETTE STECKEL: In the rehearsals, you have to find the sound of the text and the music, and work closely together with all the people who will present the piece later on, night after night.

Everybody needs to find out what he or she wants to say. And you need to have the time together to wait until everybody has found it and can hear it. The above mentioned collaborators inspire every one of us, but they don’t need to be physically present. They are in us… we can find them within us. In this case, they are where the texts and the melodies of Büchner and Waits are. kultur: Felix, as an actor it must be challenging to play

such a tormented character. What is your opinion of the physical and psychological struggles Woyzeck faces?

FELIX KNOPP: For me it was very important not to be stuck in the traditional perspective of Woyzeck as a poor victim. There is still vitality; there is a kind of revolutionary energy inside him. His hallucinations also have a clear, prophetical element. He sees that something is going wrong with mankind, which is ignoring moral rules, and that this creates troubling effects. Nature will answer.

Mankind will answer. And so Woyzeck answers, unfortunately in a very cruel way. He can’t see any other option, which is pure tragedy. kultur: Lieven, you have shown great commitment to German theatre, opera and dance in your time as Sydney Festival Director. Is the selection of German pieces coincidental?

LIEVEN BERTELS: No it’s not just coincidental! We see Germany as a cultural beacon and feel privileged to be able to invite German talent to perform here in Australia. The diversity and richness of Germany’s theatre, opera and dance culture is extraordinary. We have been lucky enough to work with emerging artists as well as very established companies, and to source talent from several places across Germany — not just from Berlin.

time, it is quite normal. So it is somehow logical that the characters sing in English. It is no problem for most of us to understand what the songs are about. But while English is the most suitable language for the Tom Waits lyrics, the appropriate language for the Georg Büchner texts is German. I think the combination is an organic one. kultur: Felix, what is the crucial element that drew

you to this piece?

FELIX KNOPP: For me the most important part of this adaptation was the encounter of theatre and music. My background is very musical: both my parents are classical musicians. So the combination of music and theatre is my deepest yearning.

Woyzeck was a chance for me to perform in a musical for the first time, and a most profound one. kultur: Jette, you are using an impressive, oversized

grid designed by Florian Lösch for this work.

Does this grid stand for anything in particular?

JETTE STECKEL: It stands for everything a grid, or a net, can stand for in your imagination. For example, it can catch you, and it can hold you. You can fall through it and it can save you. Society is a net, love can be a net, human beings are networking all the time — and maybe reality is just a net of information. kultur: Lieven, the Sydney Festival has collaborated with the Goethe-Institut on a number of extraordinary projects in recent years. What was your highlight so far?

LIEVEN BERTELS: That’s right — in 2013, Semele Walk combined Ludger Engels with Vivienne Westwood and Georg Friedrich Händel, while in 2014, Dido & Aeneas showed Sasha Waltz’s dance version of the Henry Purcell opera. And in 2016, we are happy to present Woyzeck as another festival highlight. All of these projects are cooperative projects with the Goethe-Institut, and all of them were or are centerpieces of our festival. So it’s easy to see that the relationship between Sydney Festival and German culture is a very healthy one — and it’s easy to see that among such great talent, one cannot pick a favourite!

WOYZECK Thalia Theater Hamburg make their Australian debut performance with the stage adaptation of Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck. Robert Wilson, Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan reinvented Woyzeck as a musical. Directed by Jette Steckel.

kultur: Jette, one of the challenges you faced was language. How did you approach the mix of English and German?

Thursday 07 January 2016 Friday 08 January 2016 Saturday 09 January 2016 Monday 11 January 2016 Tuesday 12 January 2016 Sydney, Carriageworks Bay 17 Tickets: Premium $89 / A Reserve $79/$71 Bookings: Sydney Festival, 1300 856 876 www.sydneyfestival.org.au/woyzeck

JETTE STECKEL: I decided to leave the texts in their respective original language. In Germany we listen to songs in English all the

January 2016 Sydney, Goethe-Institut: Artist talk with Jette Steckel

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© Anaisa Franco / Gail Priest / Lauren Moffat

CONTEMPORARY AND HISTORICAL TECHNOLOGIES AND THEIR SOCIETAL RELEVANCE: .MOVE ON FESTIVAL

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.MOVE ON IS A NEW MEDIA ART FESTIVAL IN THE GERMAN CITY OF HALLE (SAALE) HAPPENING IN OCTOBER 2015. THE FESTIVAL PRESENTS SIXTEEN NEW WORKS BY ARTISTS FROM AUSTRALIA, CANADA AND EUROPE. THE PROGRAM INCLUDES NOT ONLY AN EXHIBITION AND A STRING OF PERFORMANCES, BUT ALSO A CONFERENCE.

The Goethe-Institut Australia is excited by the international collaborative project, which included a number of residencies for emerging as well as more established artists. One of the beneficiaries of the residency program is German sound artist Abel Korinsky who talks about his work in a separate interview.

Australian artists who are involved in the festival include Matthew Gingold, Soda_Jerk, Gail Priest, Lauren Moffatt, alongside artists from Germany, Canada, USA, Italy, Portugal, UK, Spain, and several other countries.

In addition, Australians Lubi Thomas, Rachael Parsons and Andrew Johnston are among the participants who travel to Halle. These artists and organisers have been involved in the project through their roles in the Australian new media scene and their positions at Brisbane’s Queensland University of Technology (QUT), University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and the Melbourne-based international biennial of media art, Experimenta.

For .move ON, Werkleitz will open the workshop and offices of a historical printing and publishing house in Halle — a striking remnant of the first golden age of the media industry. Over five stories of the building complex, the festival will present video and sound installations, interactive sculptures, films and lecture performances.

The works feature experimental, user-oriented and theoretical approaches to examine contemporary and historical technologies and their societal relevance — virtual reality and fiction, physiological and media perception, alternative historical historiography and future scenarios and the conditions of life in a globalised and neoliberal world order.

To kick off the .move ON festival, a three-day international conference on the present and future of audio-visual media will be held, during which new interactive, participatory and multimedia approaches in film, television and art will be discussed.

[LEFT TO RIGHT] Anaisa_Franco, On_Shame; Gail Priest, videostill blue; Lauren Moffat, The Oculist Reason

.MOVE ON FESTIVAL 2015 New media art from Australia, Canada and Europe presented through an exhibition, performances and conference program 09 – 25 October 2015 Halle (Saale), Germany www.moveon.werkleitz.de

THE PROJECT WAS MADE POSSIBLE THROUGH AN INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATIVE APPROACH BY GERMANY’S WERKLEITZ GESELLSCHAFT WITH THE INTERNATIONAL GRANT PROGRAM EUROPEAN MEDIA ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE EXCHANGE (EMARE) AND THE GOETHE-INSTITUT IN AUSTRALIA AND CANADA.

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A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT BASED ON SCIENTIFIC THEORIES: RL2000 Abel Korinski interviewed by Gabriele Urban

GERMAN SOUND ARTIST ABEL KORINSKY IS PRESENTED BY THE GOETHE-INSTITUT IN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE EUROPEAN MEDIA ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE EXCHANGE (EMARE). HE WAS PART OF THE EXPERIMENTA FESTIVAL 2014 IN MELBOURNE. HE WILL ALSO PARTICIPATE IN THE WERKLEITZ EXHIBITION, FESTIVAL AND CONFERENCE .MOVE ON — NEW MEDIA ART FROM AUSTRALIA, CANADA AND EUROPE IN OCTOBER 2015 IN HALLE (SAALE), GERMANY.

ABEL KORINSKY: The sound installation RL2000 is a co-production with my brothers Carlo and Max. We work together as the collective Korinsky. As regards content, the starting point for this work was the following thesis: acoustic sound is infinite. We know from physics that sound propagation is not without loss. Loss from friction develops when air molecules swing each other back and forth and sound reductions develop because the sound energy is spread over ever increasing space as it travels away from its source. This means: the better the ear, the further away sound waves can be heard. When the human ear isn’t sensitive enough, many animals with a very good sense of hearing can still perceive a sound, but at some point only equipment can record the sound until not even they are sensitive enough. By this point in time the sound will turn into a global noise and mix with all the other sounds and turn into an inaudible but still existing noise.

Even the first sound of our universe, the Big Bang, is still there today. We are surrounded by the sounds of our past every single day. The idea that every historic sound is still around changes one’s whole view of the world. It influences our concept of life and death and calls our Western, linear concept of time into question. It scrutinises the general idea of infinity.

GU: What inspired you to create this installation?

AK: One of us, I don’t really remember who it was, read about the theory that noise is infinite but that sound gets less and less even though it never ends. This idea was so fascinating and made us aware of the fact that this influences many areas of life and changes many of our traditional Western ideas of life and time. Still, it took almost three years to get from this idea and our fascination with it to the beginning of our project. The bigger and more impressive

© Mark Ashkansy, courtesy of Experimenta Recharge / Abel Korinsky [portrait]

GABRIELE URBAN: What is your sound installation for Experimenta Recharge about?

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EVEN THE FIRST SOUND OF OUR UNIVERSE, THE BIG BANG, IS STILL THERE TODAY. WE ARE SURROUNDED BY THE SOUNDS OF OUR PAST EVERY SINGLE DAY.

the concept or theory, the more complicated and difficult the development of an artistic work based on it because there needs to be an adequate artistic translation. There is always a question of necessity when it comes to artistic realisations and the theoretical question of how to aesthetically, visually and audibly realise it.

GU: The installation looks at the first sounds of the universe. How have you dealt with it artistically?

AK: In terms of preparation, it was necessary to do some research in the field of astrophysics. Most important were the two scientists John G Cramer and Mark Whittle who had already tried to turn the Big Bang into a sound on the basis of measured data. Our artistic intention was to develop an audiovisual atmosphere to make the physical experience of the power of the beginning of the universe perceptible. Astrophysical theories are the basis upon which our work relies to formulate a discrete artistic view.

GU: Why did you choose exactly this topic

for your work in Melbourne?

AK: The theme of this Experimenta Biennale is ‘recharge’ — all projects focus on the past but use the most modern media for their realisation. Our work also deals with the past, the origin of our universe, which is for us humans the starting point of time.

GU: Why is the medium of sound particularly well suited for your research?

AK: It’s not primarily the medium of sound that we focused on in the beginning. First we had an idea and then there were multiple possibilities of how to realise it artistically. In this case the medium of sound seemed well suited since it has a great physical impact on the listener who can’t really withdraw from it. Our work touches many senses at the same time.

GU: What does the installation in Melbourne mean for your work as a whole?

AK: RL2000 is the beginning of a new series focusing on astrophysical themes. Overall our work is based on scientific knowledge including peoples’ listening habits and the localisation of sound sources. So to us the connection between scientific knowledge and art is very important. Our installation is a thought experiment based on scientific theories but intuitively accessible for the audience. It offers the possibility to experience a changed view of the world like, for example, our Western theory of time.

GU: How was your residency in Melbourne?

What are you taking with you?

AK: It was my first time in Melbourne and the city really impressed me. The audience was very interested in current art forms and also critically discussed artistic works. Within the two months of my residency I had the opportunity to take part in many cultural events and they were always well attended. It’s great that people in Melbourne are interested in different art forms and that these are actively debated. I guess during my stay in Melbourne it was quite the time for cultural activities — the Liquid Architecture Festival, the Fringe Festival, Melbourne Festival, Melbourne Music Week and of course Experimenta. So I experienced Melbourne as a culturally diverse, open and, in the best sense of the word, critical city. It was fantastic collaborating with the Goethe-Institut and the festival. An amazing network enabled me to do artistic research on the topic and I found myself working under outstanding conditions.

Also getting in touch with many other artists was a great experience. I was able to exchange ideas and positions.

ABEL KORINSKY first studied music in Wuppertal in Germany and completed a Master in Sound Studies at Universität der Künste Berlin.

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SOMEHOW FREER AND MORE HUMAN: THE SALTY RIVER Jan Bauer interviewed by Gabriele Urban

He will present his novel at writers’ festivals in Melbourne, Brisbane, and Alice Springs, where this once-in-a-ifetime experience began.

GU: What meaning does this novel have for you personally?

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IN HIS GRAPHIC NOVEL DEBUT THE SALTY RIVER, JAN BAUER, GERMAN AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR, TELLS HIS STORY OF AN ADVENTUROUS 450 KM WALKING TOUR FROM ALICE SPRINGS TO THE ABORIGINAL SETTLEMENT YUENDUMU IN THE MIDDLE OF THE AUSTRALIAN OUTBACK.

JB: To me the novel is about dealing with the past. When I first started working on it I didn’t really care if the story was interesting to other people but I focused on what I wanted to express or even on what I needed to get rid of. While illustrating the novel I relived everything which was quite moving at times.

It was also a form of confrontation with my aspirations. That’s what I think is the most difficult part of love relationships: looked at rationally being in love is something pathological and the complete opposite of self-discovery which is what actually drove me into the desert. Being in love you move away from reality and become emotionally dependent. Ideals, which in most cases have nothing to do with your partner but with what you need, get projected onto the person you love.

GABRIELE URBAN: How did the idea for your book develop?

JB: It arose from a crisis. A few years ago my long-term partner left me. I gathered all my courage back then and faced my feelings by taking our long planned canoe trip in Finland by myself. I was really surprised by the impact it had on my state of mind. It felt like I was mobilising powers I had never felt before and which helped me to get through this time of crisis. This feeling continued quite a while after my return but faded with time.

I wanted more, so I decided to visit an Aboriginal settlement in the Tanami desert, which a friend of mine had told me about. In central Australia I went on a long walking tour.

In advance of my departure I had already decided that I would process everything that I was going to experience in Yuendumu and on the way there in a graphic novel. I realised that the walking tour itself would result in enough material for a whole novel.

This is how The Salty River emerged. My stay in Yuendumu will be the subject of a second novel, for which I am still researching.

GU: Is The Salty River therefore a realistic portrayal

Looking at it like that, you would have to ask: what is the actual core of it? To what extent am I lying to myself and why?

In what ways do I actually connect with the person I’m in love with? On the other hand we all feel the need to let ourselves drift in this kind of frenzy. It’s part of who we are. I think it’s important to question it and it helped me, but I’m also glad that we are who we are.

of the actual events?

GU: You are back in Australia for eight months this time.

JB: Yes. Of course as an author you recreate reality and sometimes you might drift away from reality — if there is such a thing as reality. But apart from a few marginal corrections here and there I stuck to the actual events.

What do you expect from your time here?

GU: In the novel you describe a love story with a

French woman. May I ask if there has been a reunion?

JB: Yes, there was a short, friendly reunion in Germany — but nothing more. But we keep in touch by email. Morgane is of course very excited about the fact that there is a novel about our encounter.

JB: This time I’m not only here to gather material for my next novel, but also to finally meet my Australian publishers in person and to present The Salty River at different festivals.

Graphic novelists and publishers all over the world are pretty unpretentious. They always have a relaxed and warm way of handling things. Probably because the medium is still being discovered and it’s not all about money, influence and status, but about the material itself. Before I left, I had already received several invitations to events here, which I was very happy about.

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GU: Will you go back to the outback?

JAN BAUER

JB: Definitely! I’ll spend most of my time in Yuendumu. I hope to see familiar faces there, to pick up interesting stories and to get to understand a few things a little better.

German author Jan Bauer presents his graphic novel The Salty River at the Melbourne Writers Festival 2015, Brisbane Writers Festival 2015, and the Eye of the Storm Festival in Alice Springs. Following these events, he will live in an Aboriginal desert community to source material and inspiration for his second book.

GU: What kind of things?

JB: For example, why the attempts to get a grip on the sanitary, economic, and social problems have failed. But also the attitude towards life. It’s quite different there and incomparable to anywhere else. Somehow freer and more human. There are many things which can’t be explained with words because they’re of emotional origin. Maybe I’ll succeed in capturing some of it in my next graphic novel. That would be a huge success for me.

JAN BAUER has worked as an illustrator, designer, director and author since 2002, contributing to numerous short and long films and animated advertisements. He continued studying in Erfurt to become a professional scriptwriter and worked as a lecturer for animation and illustration. His graphic novel debut The Salty River was inspired by his passion for traveling and processes his adventurous walking tour in the Australian Outback after fate dealt him some blows in Germany.

27 + 28 August 2015 Melbourne Writers Festival 05 + 06 September 2015 Brisbane Writers Festival 18–20 September 2015 Alice Springs, Eye of the Storm Festival

The Salty River, published

by Twelve Panels Press, ISBN 978–0–9805937–2–3

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Goethe-Institut Australia Upcoming Events For more information and program updates please visit goethe.de/australia KEEP IN TOUCH: www.facebook.com/goetheinstitut.australien TWITTER: www.twitter.com/GI_Australien OUR NEWSLETTERS: www.goethe.de/ins/au/lp/knt/mll/enindex.htm Information correct at time of printing.

OUTLOOK 2015–2016 SO… WHAT DOES GOETHE-INSTITUT AUSTRALIA HAVE IN STORE OVER THE COMING MONTHS? …PLENTY!

Die Tödliche Doris 1981 © H. Blohm

There’s language, literature, music, visual art, politics, and so much more on our schedule.

In the coming months, we will be presenting the following highlights in cooperation with our friends and partners:

GENIALE DILLETANTEN Exhibition about the Fluxusinspired art/music movement and festival in the 1980s. Rare photos, record covers, multimedia content, and many special events.

12 November 2015 – 26 February 2016 Melbourne, RMIT Gallery 10 March 2016 – 14 April 2016 Sydney, Ambush Gallery

AUTOMAT Berlin-based instrumental band featuring Jochen Arbeit, Achim Färber and Georg Zeitblom.

13 November 2015 Canberra, ANU Bar 15 November 2015 Sydney, Glebe Town Hall 20 November 2015 Melbourne, John Curtin Hotel

JOCHEN ARBEIT Jochen Arbeit of Automat and Einstürzende Neubauten will appear as guest speaker at these events: 12 November 2015 Melbourne, RMIT Gallery: Geniale Dilletanten exhibition opening 14 November 2015 Melbourne, Face the Music conference 18 November 2015 Sydney, Goethe-Institut: Panel discussion and improvised music session 20 November 2015 Melbourne, RMIT Gallery: Panel discussion

ANTENNA FESTIVAL

JAN BAUER

13–18 October 2015 Berlinale Panorama curator Wieland Speck visits Sydney’s Antenna Documentary Film Festival.

German contributions include B-Movie: Lust & Sound in WestBerlin 1979–1989, No Land’s Song

German author Jan Bauer presents his graphic novel The Salty River at the following writers’ festivals:

14 October 2015 Sydney, Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA): Wieland Speck DocTalk

18–20 September 2015 Alice Springs, Eye of the Storm Festival

17 October 2015 Sydney, Goethe-Institut: Wieland Speck Artist Talk

HAUSCHKA

DR MOTTE The founder of The Love Parade appears as a speaker at the following events: 12 November 2015 Melbourne, RMIT Gallery: Geniale Dilletanten exhibition opening 14 November 2015 Melbourne, Face the Music conference 15 November 2015 Sydney, Glebe Street Fair: Talk and DJ set 18 November 2015 Sydney, Goethe-Institut: Panel discussion 20 November 2015 Melbourne, RMIT Gallery: Panel discussion

SVEN MARQUARDT Photography exhibition by exceptional artist and illustrious media personality Sven Marquardt.

May 2016 Sydney, Ambush Gallery in cooperation with Head On Festival April–May 2016 Melbourne

27 + 28 August 2015 Melbourne Writers Festival 05 + 06 September 2015 Brisbane Writers Festival

Post-classical composer who uses prepared piano to create percussive patterns and other sounds akin to contemporary electronic music.

17 November 2015 Melbourne, Recital Centre 19 November 2015 Sydney, The Basement 20 November 2015 Brisbane, Old Museum Building 21 + 22 November 2015 Mullumbimby, Mullum Festival

VOLKER BERTELMANN Volker Bertelmann (Hauschka) appears as guest speaker: 18 November 2015 Sydney, Goethe-Institut: Panel discussion and improvised music session

WOYZECK Thalia Theater Hamburg make their Australian debut with the stage adaptation of Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck, re-invented

by Robert Wilson, Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, and directed by Jette Steckel.

07–09 January 2016 11–12 January 2016 Sydney, Carriageworks www.sydneyfestival.org.au/ woyzeck January 2016 Sydney, Goethe-Institut: Artist talk with Jette Steckel

GERMAN SUMMER SCHOOL

MONOLAKE/ ROBERT HENKE

The German Summer School is a residential course designed to rapidly improve your German language skills and increase your understanding of the cultural life of German speaking countries.

Lumière II.2 is an audio-visual composition for lasers and sound, while Monolake is techno music.

8–15 January 2016 Sydney, Sancta Sophia College, University of Sydney

18 November 2015 Melbourne MWW Festival Hub: Monolake with Electric Indigo

2016 FESTIVAL OF GERMAN FILMS

19 November 2015 Melbourne, Recital Centre: Robert Henke presents Lumière II.2 20 November 2015 Melbourne, Recital Centre: Robert Henke workshop

MANIFESTO A 13-channel film installation

by Julian Rosefeldt, featuring Australian actress, Cate Blanchett.

3 December 2015 – 26 April 2016 Melbourne, ACMI

Like every year, we will again organise and curate our Festival of German Films. More details will be revealed closer to the date.

November 2016 Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra www.goethe.de/ozfilmfest

Bigcitybuzz Experience the buzz of the big city. Take in the cultural highlights and then launch yourself into the pulsating nightlife. Captivating contrasts and a magical appeal. Germany’s cities have all this and more.

In cooperation with

Š dpa

Discover the ultimate in urban destinations: www.germany.travel/cities

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