Mobile Academy Berlín 2004

Mobile Academy: Berlin 2004
August 30th – September 19th, Hebbel am Ufer

Mobile Academy: Berlin 2004 combines an interdisciplinary course offer with fieldwork, theory and activism. It is the succeeding event of the international Theatre Academy Ruhr that took place in Bochum in 1999.

Under the label Fakelore – Constructions and Inventions of Urban Folklore six courses will be offered in acting/singing, film, dance, puppetry, city as stage and lighting design.

Several guest lecturers will accompany the courses with lectures and work demonstrations.

Folklore tends to have negative connotations in our artistic and cultural context. It is seen as a backward ideology that contains transfigured ideas of traditional social structures infiltrated with obsolete models such as the finding of a home, religious dominance and kitsch. In short, not actually art but all the more reactionary. The concept of Fakelore thus deals with synthetic traditions that are simply made up and often only last for a short time. In Fakelore, improper concepts like authenticity, nationality and craft as travesty become interesting and functional again.

Guided city tours conceived especially for the Mobile Academy will follow the tracks of refugees and migrants in Berlin and trace their historical, architectonic and socio-political paths and pasts.

The lecturers for the individual courses are:
Acting/Singing

Chen Shi-Zheng, China/USA
trained at the Chinese Music Academy in Peking, the University of Art in Hunan and the NYU/Tisch School of the Arts. He has studied with the great masters of Chinese opera and was a famous protagonist of numerous productions. Since he immigrated to the USA in 1988 he has been working as a director. He obtained worldwide fame in 1999 with his production of the Chinese Kunju Opera Peony Pavillion in New York, Paris, Vienna, Sydney and Berlin. He also appeared as the male lead in Meredith Monk’s Atlas at the Houston Grand Opera amongst other production. He is coming to Berlin together with the female lead from Peony Pavilion, Qian Yi.

Jossi Wieler, Switzerland
born in 1951 in Kreuzlingen, lived and studied from 1972 to 1980 in Israel and worked as a director at the Habima National Theatre there. Since 1982 he has worked as a director in Germany and Switzerland. He was at Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg from 1993 to 2000, where Wolken.Heim. (1993) and the first production of Elfriede Jelinek´s er nicht als er (1998) counted as some of his most important work there. Since 1994 he has also directed opera, including Cenerentola and Alcina in Stuttgart, as well as the highly famous production of Moses und Aaron (2003). He is currently following his past productions of Alkestis (2001) and Das Fest des Lamms at the Munich Kammerspiele with Paul Claudel´s Mittagswende.

Grzegorz Jarzyna, Poland
studied at the Theatre Academy and completed a university degree in philosophy. He became the artistic director of the Rozmaitosci Theatre in 1998 at the age of 30, which has since gone from strength to strength. His work has been influenced by numerous trips to Nepal, Tibet and China, following the tracks of Peter Brook and Jerzy Grotowski. He adopts a new pseudonym for each production and has already become a woman for one directing job.
http://www.rozmaitosci.pl

Film

Johannes M. Hedinger, Com&Com, Switzerland
Johannes M. Hedinger and Marcus Gossolt founded the label Com&Com (Commercial Communication) in 1997. They produce films, plays, art, music and books that straddle the border between high art and low culture. Like parasites, they use the existing communication channels provided by advertising and the mass media for their purposes. Most recently, Com&Com caused a sensation with their development of the Mocmoc legend and monument for the small town of Romanshorn on Lake Constance. Their Wilhelm Tell adaptation, the film C-Files:Tell Saga, was invited to the Venice Biennale in 2001, which brought them international recognition. There were also in the top ten of the Swiss charts with the song and video Side by Side. At the moment Com&Com are working on a road movie in the desert around Las Vegas.
http://www.com-com.ch

Harun Farocki, Germany
Filmmaker, author, producer und actor. Farocki´s cinematic language and theory moves between political agitation, documentation, auteur film and cinematic essay. The documenta X produced Faroki´s 60 minute essay film Still Life. His seminars on film analysis are legendary and have achieved cult status.
http://www.farocki-film.de

Hartmut Bitomsky, USA
A director, author and documentary film producer from Berlin. He has been Dean of the School of Film and Video at the California Institute of the Arts since 1993. He has worked on over 40 films, many of which have received prizes. Thematically, he has been engaged with an ideological critique of Germany and with the medium of cinema itself in his Cinema Anthology. One of his own works is entirely dedicated to the architect Hans Scharoun. Most recently, he created his masterpiece about the transcontinental US B52 Bomber.

Puppetry

Neville Tranter, Stuffed Puppet Theatre, Australia/The Netherlands
Tranter founded the legendary Stuffed Puppet Theatre in Australia in 1976. In his pieces, he creates an ever-changing image of evil using the concentration of a Noh or Bunraku game and the burlesque of the Punch and Judy show. With Hitler, Göring und Eva Braun in his bag, Neville Tranter plays with the folklore of the totalitarian. The magical part of his work is his ability to imbue lifeless figures with the evil side of the human spirit. The Stuffed Puppet Theatre has toured throughout the world.
http://www.stuffedpuppet.nl

Joao Paulo Seara Cardoso / Isabel Barros, Teatro de Marionetas do Porto, Portugal
The border between dance, performance and puppet theatre becomes blurred in their work. This crossing of borders is then reflected and doubled by the use of multimedia technology. The players do not vanish behind the puppets, but rather appear with them in a performance dialogue. Cardoso studied puppetry and theatre in France at the Institut International de la Marionette. In the last few years his group Teatro de Marionetas do Porto has been examining the actors and figures that are produced by the ecology of the city.
http://www.marionetasdoporto.pt

Puppetmastaz, Germany
Humans get all credits is one of the raps from this group of toys, that is comprised of puppets. The machines are the ones not coming to power – it’s the puppets that are forming a new hegemony. A bunch of hand puppets from Berlin are advancing inexorably – their plan is to topple the humans from the throne of the earth once and for all. Their crazy electro beats and fresh MCS are employed as weapons to teach all the embarrassing humanoid gold chain wearers the real meaning of fear. The Puppetmastaz are the interface between the Muppet Show and Peter Jackson’s film Meet the Feebles.
http://www.puppetmastaz.de

Dance

Bruno Beltrao and Eduardo Hermanson, Grupo de Rua de Niteroi, Brasilien
As a child in a suburb of Rio de Janeiro, Bruno Beltrao was already a famous break and street dancer. He founded his own company, the Grupo de Rua de Niteroi, at the age of 16. In his choreographies, the virtuosity of break dance meets the slowness of thought and the philosophical reflection on time and space. Within three years, he had advanced to become the new shooting star of the dance scene. After having been invited to various noteworthy festivals in Brazil, he followed this with numerous international appearances in the last few years.
http://www.grupoderua.com.br

Constanza Macras, Dorky Park, Argentina/Germany
develops her pieces as a catapult of associations between social realities, MTV clips, Ikea advertising as well as local street dance and slang. Macras completed a dance apprenticeship and a degree in fashion design in her hometown of Buenos Aires and was taught later by Merce Cunningham and Amanda Miller in NY. With her Berlin company Dorky Park she is touring the major festivals. Most recently, she worked in an empty shopping centre for Back to the Present and with kids from Berlin Neukölln for her successful piece Scratch Neukölln which premiered at Hebbel am Ufer in December 2003.
http://www.dorkypark.org

City as Stage

Stefan Kaegi, Switzerland
There is a true life in the false one: Stefan Kaegi directs the theatre of normal life in various formats without using actors. Kaegi studied art in Zurich and applied theatre studies in Gießen. He founded the label Hygiene Today with Berdt Ernst to get ready mades on to the stage. In Kaegi´s audio tour Kirchner and the paper chase Skrot. The Krakow Files the towns of Frankfurt, Giessen, Munich and Krakow became a desirable stage set. Under the label Rimini Protokoll he works with Helgard Haug and Daniel Wetzel alongside various experts on themes such as ways of dying and court hearings. With their piece Deadline they are invited to Theatertreffen 2004 in Berlin.
http://www.rimini-protokoll.de
http://www.hygieneheute.de

SubREAL, Romania
Calin Dan and Iosif Király founded SubREAL in Bucharest in 1990. Before this, Dan studied aesthetics and art history and worked as an art critic and curator. Király completed an apprenticeship as a photographer. In works such as the Arta Archive and Interviewing the Cities, the duo establishes social and urban archives that are subsequently adapted for performance. SubREAL were guests at many pioneering group exhibitions including the Istanbul Biennale (1992), The Venice Biennale (1993, 1999), Manifesta 1 (1996), the Berlin Biennale (1998). Individual exhibitions of their work were also shown at Künstlerhaus Bethanien (1995), at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (1996) and at Akademie Schloss Solitude.

Course for Conceptual Use of Light

Mischa Kuball, Germany
Kuball combines his interests in architecture, urban structures and psychology with the options and strategies provided by the visual arts. His light installations are both interventionist strategies and temporary intrusions into the existing organism of the city. Current and functional light resources are analysed and combined with research on the history of the site and interviews with residents and other local people to form sculptural projects. Examples of this include his project for an office high-rise in Düsseldorf, the Synagogue in Stommeln (near Cologne) and the Gauleiter bunker in Lüneburg. His project for Berlin deals with the area of the former Kulturforum at Potsdamer Platz.
http://www.kuball-art.de

The complete course programme with information on all lecturers, guests and speakers will be published in the beginning of April.

A written application should be submitted by 1st of June (Date of Postmark):

Mobile Akademie: Berlin 2004 - Application -
c/o Hebbel am Ufer – HAU 1
Stresemannstr. 29
10963 Berlin

or via e-mail:
info@mobileacademy-berlin.com

Enrolment is only possible for one of the courses offered and for the whole duration of the Academy.
The course fee for the entire three weeks is 420,- € including a warm evening meal each day.

The Jury is made up of
- Hannah Hurtzig, (Artistic Director of Mobile Academy: Berlin 2004),
- Nele Hertling (Akademie der Künste, DAAD)
- Dessy Gavrilova (Redhouse, Sofia)
- Carena Schlewitt (Curator for Theatre, Hebbel am Ufer)
- N.N.

Successful Applicants will be informed by June 15th

Mobile Academy: Berlin 2004
A project by Hannah Hurtzig and Hebbel am Ufer Supported by Hauptstadtkulturfond.
In cooperation with Akademie der Künste, Fidena Bochum and Technische Fachhochschule Berlin (Department of Audiovisual Media and Camera Work)
Scholarships: THEOREM (European association supported by the program Culture 2000 of the European Union)
http://www.mobileacademy-berlin.com