01. – 12.2008
Sophiensaele Berlin
“What connects us” was a series of five projects that turned to the history of the Handwerkervereinshaus at Sophienstraße 18, where the Sophiensaele have been located since 1996. In installations and performances, five artists and artistic teams showed their approach to the more than one hundred year old history of the building and its longstanding theatrical use.
with
Christian von Borries, Stefan Shankland, Heike Geißler/Adrian Sauer, Alexander Schellow/David Weber-Krebs, Sylvi Kretzschmar/Camilla Feher/Oliver Augst
“New Year’s Concert” kicked off the series in 2008 and referred both to the tradition of the workers’ movement here and to the “Music Abuse” series started ten years ago by Christian von Borries.
Concept: Christian von Borries
For “Basic Bill”, Stefan Shankland constructed a twelve-metre-high sculpture together with students from the Stage Design_Scenic Space course at the Technical University of Berlin: from materials that had become useless, such as old stage sets and props, discarded furniture, posters and scrap metal – the materialised traces of the venue’s complex history – the Sophiensaele lettering was created as an expression of the venue’s constantly changing identity.
Visual artist Stefan Shankland collects freely available objects, symbols and images in order to develop monumental sculptures that reflect their respective environments of origin.
Concept: Stefan Shankland in collaboration with students of the Master’s programme Stage Design Scenic Space at the TU Berlin under the direction of Prof. Kerstin Laube: Eva Veronica Born, Sebastian Domula, Anke Gänz, Paul Lambeck, Lara Nobel, Lukas De Pellegrin, Florian Schwinger.
Assistance: Werner Kernebeck.
In “Ein Raum für sich allein”, the author Heike Geißler and the visual artist Adrian Sauer created an installation consisting of a radio play and a video work. The starting point of the work was the various political, private and social alliances that were formed in the Sophiensaele. The question was why alliances are formed or why they are not formed. It was examined to what extent the private can only be created, conquered or defended publicly and whether a fictitious space could suffice as a private room.
Concept and realisation: Heike Geißler and Adrian Sauer
Speaker/Actor: Johannes Lehmann
Recording/sound engineering: Norman Nitzsche
Projection room: Kuehn Malvezzi
“Theaterminiatur” reveals its spaces like a Russian doll: in the performance space is the film space and in it the text space. The latter is formed by the text versions of six different authors. The spectator can choose one of the text versions and thus influence all the other spaces. He creates a short circuit. A spectator finds himself in the exclusive situation that a performance is taking place only for him. The oscillation between different “live” situations plays with her expectations: Is she watching a film in the cinema, alone in front of the screen? Or is she experiencing a theatre performance without performers?
Concept: Alexander Schellow and David Weber-Krebs
Film: David Weber-Krebs
Animation/Film: Alexander Schellow
Texts: Régis-Marie Berrek, Lars Frers, Friederike Jehn, Hannes Schneickert, Monika Rinck, Magne van den Berg, Robert Woelfl
Technology and software: Martin Schneebacher
Thanks to: Joyce Dietrich, Katarina Eckold, Sandra Herrklotsch, Dorothea Herrmann, Sophia Mühling, Eva Priyanka Wegener.
MEGAFON – a documentary séance for the Virchowsaal. Songs, workers’ chants and pop lyrics from the time of the Weimar Republic overlapped to form a gigantic feedback loop. Siren song, pseudo-industrial music and mechanical turbo ballet amplified and distorted what resonated in the Virchowsaal, what still echoes very quietly in this place of the German workers’ movement. Is it possible to make the resonance of the walls of this space audible?
A concert performance and installation by Sylvi Kretzschmar, Camilla Feher and Oliver Augst.
—
Artistic director Heike Albrecht
Artistic collaboration Jan Philipp Possmann
Organiser Sophiensaele
Supported by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds
Design milchhof.net