Mona Lisa @ Strychnin Gallery

Vladimir Malakhov

DEAR FRIENDS OF DANCE AND THE BALLET!

What constitutes quality? What do we want to be judged against? In my opinion, quality finds expression in an interesting and wide-ranging repertoire: although our company is extensively based on the classics, we also want to explore new avenues involving a certain amount of risk. In addition, quality is based on a responsible ensemble policy which allows young talented dancers to grow. And, finally, quality makes itself felt at the most important time, namely during the performance, in which you are directly involved, hopefully as an enthusiastic audience reflecting the energy coming from the stage.

In order to achieve our objective and ensure that we have the best possible working conditions, we are increasingly linking up with other Berlin institutions. We have secured support and patronage from experienced partners from the worlds of commerce and science.

I am also particularly proud of the growing popularity of the Staatsballett Berlin’s education programme, which is also being supported by the “Tanz ist KLASSE” [“Dance is GREAT”] Association. It is, after all, important to not only attract tomorrow’s audience members, but also to appeal to them in their own world of experience.

Four premieres and one revival are scheduled for the 2007|2008 season. We are showing a production on the Berlin Comic Opera’s stage for the first time: “Alice’s Wonderland” is a dance piece for children aged 12 and over and adults. With our production of “La Sylphide” we are remembering one of our roots as a classic company, since this ballet marks the birth of dance on points and romantic ballet. The production “With/out Tutu” sees the works of three contemporary choreographers, who work against a classical background, coming up against one another and, finally we will dedicate ourselves to the romantic ballet: with “La Sylphide” and “Glories of the Romantic Ballet” we will be returning to one of the most glorious eras of our history. In addition, John Cranko’s “Onegin” is returning to our programme. This is an important piece for our repertoire, as the company grows with this dramatic challenge.

The Staatsballett Berlin is thus remaining true to its guiding principle: “Preserve tradition – show the present – promote the future”.

Kind regards,
Vladimir Malakhov

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"Wanted" @ Helmut Newton Foundation

After the outstanding success of the three-part exhibition, “Men, War & Peace”, the Helmut Newton Foundation presents the work of its founder alongside that of two of his friends and contemporaries, Larry Clark & Ralph Gibson. ‘WANTED’ will be shown at the Helmut Newton Foundation, Jebensstrasse 2, D-10623 Berlin, from June 3rd until February 3rd, 2008. EXTENDED!

A selection of pictures that Helmut Newton published in his own magazine “Helmut Newton’s Illustrated” between 1987 and 1995 are presented for the first time as a complete exhibition in the front three rooms of the foundation.

The central exhibition room is dedicated to two (in)famous bodies of work, “Tulsa” and “Teenage Lust”, by the photographer and film-maker, Larry Clark. Created in the sixties and seventies, Clark revealed to us the world of teenage sex and drug use in a way that had been taboo up until that time. In this he was the most influential predecessor of photographers like Nan Goldin and Richard Billingham.

Clark’s provocative book “Tulsa”, was published in 1971 by Lustrum Press. This publishing company was founded by Ralph Gibson and through it he distributed his own photography books, “The Somnambulist”, “Déjà-vu” and “Days at Sea”, amongst others, as well as books by leading photographers of the day. A representative selection of B/W & Colour images from these and later projects by Gibson, are presented in the remaining exhibition rooms. His timeless, subjective imagery is known for its formal and abstract composition.

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Vom Funken Zum Pixel

From Spark to Pixel. Art + New Media

Exhibition Venue: Martin-Gropius-Bau
28 October 2007 to 14 January 2008

Organizer
Berliner Festspiele

Supported by the Federal Cultural Foundation
Curator Richard Castelli

Media partners RBB Inforadio, RBB Kulturradio

The “From Spark to Pixel” exhibition will present developments in contemporary art involving the large-scale use of digital and interactive media. The technical possibilities in this field have given this area of art a more international dimension than that of almost any other. Thus the exhibition will feature works both by renowned and as yet unknown artists and groups of artists from all over the world. Works by pioneers and works that are being shown in Europe or Germany for the first time or have been specially developed for the Martin-Gropius-Bau, will enable visitors to discover spectacular forms of artistic expression and radical changes in perception in the relation between the observer and the moving image. Immersive and interactive approaches feature frequently in the artists’ strategies.

Installations by:
Romy Achituv (Israel): BeNowHere Interactive, 1997 (German premiere)
Gregory Barsamian (USA): The Scream, 1998. No, Never Alone, 1998
(German premieres)
Jean Michel Bruyère (France): Si Poteris Narrare, Licet, 2002
Jean Michel Bruyère (France): CaMg(CO3)2 (Dolomit), 2007 (world premiere)
Du Zhenjun (China): Presumption, 2000 (German premiere)
Dumb Type (Japan): Voyages, 2002 (European premiere)
Brad Hwang (Korea/Germany): Time May Change Me /
I Can’t Change Time, 2007 (world premiere)
KAI (Germany): Feuerkasten, 1991/2007
Ulf Langheinrich (Germany/Austria): Hemisphere, 2006–2007
(German premiere)
Dirk Lüsebrink / Joachim Sauter (Art+Com) (Germany): Invisible Shape of
Things Past, 1996/2007 (premiere at the Martin-Gropius-Bau)
Marie Maquaire (France), Tentative d’épuisement d’un lieu, Berlin, 2003 (German premiere)
Thomas McIntosh (Canada): Ondulation, 2002 (German premiere)
David Moises (Austria): Hanoscope, 2002 (German premiere)
Nam June Paik (Korea/USA): Candle TV, 1975
Christian Partos (Sweden): Visp, 2000. Striptease, 1998. (German premiere)
M.O.M, 2003.
Erwin Redl (Austria/USA): FLOW Berlin, 2007 (world premiere)
Jeffrey Shaw (Australia) / Sarah Kenderdine (New Zealand):
PLACE Hampi, 2006 (German premiere)
Pierrick Sorin (France): Quelques inventions remarquables, 2003
Shiro Takatani (Japan): Chrono, 2007
Shiro Takatani (Japan): Camera Lucida, 2005 (European premiere)
Saburo Teshigawara (Japan): Light Behind Light, 2004 (German premiere)

Nearly all the works will be on view in Berlin for the first time.

The exhibition has been designed by Richard Castelli (Paris) for the Martin-Gropius-Bau and shows the interactions and connections between art and electronic media. The four central concepts of the exhibition – fire and electricity, light and pixel – act as paradigms for this development and for “immaterial states”. Starting with fire, the first form of energy to be mastered by man, the exhibition passes, in parallel to human evolution, through the stages of electricity, light and the pixel, which, as the spark is in the case of fire, is the “nucleus” of the electronic image. The electronic image is the source of another form of energy that is free of all fossil properties: information of which we cannot be quite sure if it really has been mastered by man.

The magnificent Lichthof of the Martin-Gropius-Bau will be dominated by particularly impressive installations, including one by Erwin Redl, who redesigned the façade of the Whitney Museums in New York. He is creating a work expressly commissioned for the Lichthof of the Martin-Gropius-Bau and called FLOW Berlin 2007. It consists of a large light wave made of 30.000 light-emitting diodes, which seeks to “de-realize” the horizon of human perception.

Other examples of premieres or spectacular installations include:

A new electrostatic creation Time May Change Me / I Can’t Change Time by Brad Hwang. On the subject of light the choreographer and performance artist Saburo Teshigawara will be showing a fascinating work involving mirrors and entitled Light Behind Light.
Thomas McIntosh’s Ondulation, an environment of flowing waves of light, is a game with reflected light, which shows how one can play with music and tones.

Jean Michel Bruyère is represented with two interactive artworks: the “ifilm” (for Jeffrey Shaw’s EVE Interactive Cinema) Si Poteris Narrare, Licet, an interactive film journey in which the time of the finished film, registered and fixed in advance, harmonizes with the real-time sequence of its geography. In the world premiere of CaMg(CO3)2 visitors will find themselves in the lounge of a shaman, as in an extreme mixture of the most primitive technology and the highest of high-tech.
The entry of Jeffrey Shaw, a pioneer of digital cinematography, and Sarah Kenderdine in the exhibition will be PLACE-Hampi, interactive stereoscopic panoramas of the ruins of Hampi, the “Angkor of India”.
Making its European premiere is the artists’ collective Dumb Types with Voyages, a monolith of horizontally arranged images as impressive as those in Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey”. Joachim Sauter and Dirk Lüsebrink (Art + Com) present works of architecture such as the art museum Shanghai’ or Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz in the form of digital film sculptures which they call The Invisible Shapes of Things Past.

In Ulf Langheinrich’s aesthetic plasma Hemisphere, the viewer finds himself dominated, protected and at the same time attracted by a constantly changing granular virtual world, which seems just about to implode.

Although “From Spark to Pixel” will show aspects of the evolution of our notions of energy in its various phases, the exhibition will surprisingly enough be one of contemporary art and hence offer a poetic platform for contemplation and meditation.

Catalogue
The exhibition catalogue will be published by Nicolai Verlag. (in German)

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