Fake-Folk-Academy

Lectures and Presentations
HAU 1, Start: 6:30 pm
Admission: 1 Euro for each lecture

Opening, Blind Dates, 30th of August
Photo: Jürgen Baumann

LECTURE: FAKELORE.DEFINITION 1

Fakelore - Who's that Girl?
Regina Bendix, professor for cultural anthropology and European ethnology in Göttingen. Her current areas of research include communication and narrative research, tourism and culture as well as research on customs and rituals.
Tuesday, 31.8., 18:30

Bendix collects the students' ideas and prejudices and arranges them in a new way. Fakelore was a term invented by American folklorists who were disgusted by the commercial use of their subject ("the real stuff") - folklore. While American scholars got excited about "fakelore" in the 1960s, their German colleagues became embroiled in a debate about "Folklorismus" at the same time. Although there has been increasing interest in the discoveries and politics of folk culture, there are now actually more studies concerned with fakelore and folklorismus than the real thing. The questions seem to be: what is the "real stuff" anyway? And what is authentic culture?

Work presentation: A Night with Com&Com
(in German with English translation)
Johannes M. Hedinger and Marcus Gossolt, Com&Com (Commercial Communication), Zurich
Wednesday, 1.9., 18:30 location: Residence of the Embassy of Switzerland, Otto von Bismarck Allee 4a

Com&Com produces films, plays, art, memorials, music and books that take the border between high art and low culture as their theme.

Work presentation: Pieces of Cities
Videoclips of the Interventions by Stefan Kaegi, Rimini Protokoll, Hygiene Heute and some ants.
Thursday, 2.9., 18:30

Stefan Kaegi brings theatrical ready-mades on stage and chooses various themes such as Central European ways of dying and the administration of justice for his documentary theatre presentations.

LECTURE: OLD AND NEW MYTHS
Angels and Engines: The Apocalypse for Real
Marina Warner, author, critic and art historian. Author of numerous fiction and academic books that focus on the theme of magic, folklore and femininity. She is currently working on a study about spirits and their embodiment: Figuring the Soul, London.
Saturday, 4.9., 18:30

Media of representation have instituted a dimension of reality which interfuses and shapes material events. In the spirit of Foucauldian archaeology, this talk will explore the genealogy of images that inform today's visual representation of conflict. Looking at the interaction of Biblical dreams of catastrophe with the war on Terror on one hand, and on battles staged for real in the movies on the other; Marina Warner will then consider the response of the artist Pierre Huyghe and others to the power of movie truth and the reality of 'image-flesh'.

Presentation: ETHIC STERILISATION
Folklore of poverty. Film Analysis
Harun Farocki, film producer, author, producer, Berlin [selected films: Etwas wird sichtbar (1981), Wie man sieht (1986), Stilleben (1997), Auge und Maschine (2001), Erkennen und Verfolgen (2003),] and Hartmut Bitomsky, director, author and documentary film producer, dean of the School of Film/Video at the California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles [selected films: Deutschlandbilder, Reichsautobahn, Der VW-Komplex (1983-1989), Das Kino und der Tod (1988), Playback (1991)]
Saturday, 4.9., 19.30

Today, the ghetto is a cultural model that affects the whole world. It is not only in pop culture that African Americans from US ghettos are seen as heroes and fashion items. Tattoos and piercings originated in prisons and have reached social acceptance; the trend for sports clothing trends comes from pimp culture. People from the ghetto always seem active and trendy - the ideal economic subject. It is as if they have internalised the demands of hyper capitalism. Farocki and Bitomsky will present and discuss films around these ideas.

LECTURE: THE OTHER
Amongst the Others - Cultural Translation in the Arena of Visual Arts and Knowledge Production
Sarat Maharaj, professor of history of art and art theory at Goldsmith College, University of London, cultural theorist and curator and worked as a co-curator at the Dokumenta XI in 2002 in Kassel and as the curator of Optical.Retinal.Visual.Conceptual at the Museum Boijmanns van Beuningen in Rotterdam in 2001.
Sunday, 5.9. 18.30

How do contemporary visual artists and popular culture elements treat the "other" people in our midst? The focus of the presentation will deal with the experiences of genuine "other" people today - migrants, outsiders, asylum seekers, "illegal" people, clandestini, sans papiers. Globalisation has increasingly made the cultural translation between us and "the others" into a common, everyday experience. †Translation is always concerned with how differences are produced - an inescapable condition of the contemporary. How does art treat these ideas and to what extent can it contribute towards a contemporary †"difference ethic"?

LECTURE: FAKELORE - DEFINITION II
From Volk to Lore and Back or: When do we stop making sense
In the 1960s, Warren Niesluchowski toured with the Bread and Puppet Theatre. He studied social science and linguistics at Harvard and works today as a writer, translator and curator in New York.
Sunday, 5.9., 19.30

All culture is an act of making sense, in and of the world, whether it is ruled by techne or mythos. 'Contemporary art,' originally born of an iconoclasm a half-century ago, is now a fully formed and consolidated practice within an already hyper-sensualized culture, increasingly renouncing 'forms' for 'events.' Perhaps because artists continue to work over and around the ruins of sacred sites of the past - Theatron, Akademeia, Mouseion - we do not yet have an adequate ethnography of our own emerging 'micro-cultures' of art. Our lore, the stories we tell rather than the histories that have been written, as in any responsive, and responsible, field-work, should be a prima materia for a genealogy of these new poetics, and of their mutating figures and agents - the Designer, the Producer, the Nomad, all displacing the Artisan.

PRESENTATION : RITUALS
The Vodoo Aesthetic in American Popular Culture
Darius James, cult author from the USA. Publications: Negrophobia (1992), That's Blaxploitation! (1995) and Voodoo Stew (2003), New York/ Berlin
Monday, 6.9., 18:30

To most people, Voodoo is linked to the sacrifice of children and white people. Who would believe that it has anything to do with a Charlie Parker solo?
The lecture will describe magic as a technique that enable a radical transformation of consciousness and thus is comparable to artistic techniques and goals.

Work presentation: Guerilla Lighting - Interventions in Urban Spaces
Mischa Kuball, Conceptual artist, D¸sseldorf
Tuesday, 7.9., 18:30 Place: The Foyer of the Kulturforum at Potsdamer Platz / Matthäikirchplatz

Mischa Kuball combines his interests in architecture, urban structures and psychology with the options provided by the visual arts. In his work, existing and functional light resources are used and combined with research on the history of the site and interviews with residents and other local people to form sculptural projects.

PRESENTATION: COLLECTIVE PRODUCTIONS
Storytelling in the Video Industry in Nigeria
Francis K. Onwochei, actor, film producer. He has directed numerous TV series, film reports and adverts. He is currently general secretary of Independent Television Producers Association of Nigeria (ITPAN), Lagos
Wednesday , 8.9., 18:30

Nigerian traditions and folklore are both disappearing from daily life and appearing in a recycled form in the soaps of the mass video industry at the same time. A lecture about cultural hybrids in various customs such as: re-incarnation, killing of twins, oral tradition, the Osu Cast System and the New Yam Festival.

LECTURE: Ethic Self-Sterilisation
Partisan Folklore in Music, Film and Football (German)
Helmut Höge, journalist and author who writes for Pflasterstrand, ID, Frankfurter Rundschau, Transantlantik and the taz. He has also worked for Neues Deutschland, Junge Welt, Freitag and is the ghost editor for about a dozen foreign authors, Berlin.
Thursday, 9.9., 18:30, location: VHS Kreuzberg, Wassertorstr. 4

The folklore associated with partisans begins with cooperation of partisan groups in the rebuilding of states. The most famous football club in Belgrade is still called "Partisan Belgrade" today, Richard Burton played Marshall Tito in Hollywood and Tito invited Sophia Loren to his island. Contemporary patriotic folklore is sustained and nourished by partisan myths. In collaboration with the PUB (Partisan University Berlin.

Work presentation: San Keller Show.
Thursday, 9.9., 21:00

San Keller, action and conceptual artist, will open his work archive to the public. They will determine the rhythm and length of the show.

PRESENTATION: WAYS OF NARRATION
Only the Clouds Remained the Same. A Lecture on Methods and Recent Projects.
Matthew Buckingham, artist. His installations question the role of collective memory, using photography, film and video and audio technology, New York/ Berlin.
Saturday, 11.9., 18.30

Narration depends on selecting and sequencing information. Stories are
always told in relation to the silence that surrounds them - a silence that can also overwhelm. Artist Matthew Buckingham will present several recent projects that investigate the constitutive paradoxes of particular places such as Mount Rushmore, the Hudson River Valley and downtown Los Angeles. He will discuss these projects in light of their respective methodologies. The familiar will be manipulated in order to look for new and often contradictory connections that will then allow new narrative opportunities.

LECTURE: MIGRATION AND CONSTRUCTIVIST IDENTITY
Multiple Authenticity. Russian / Jewish Immigrants 1989 / Sorben and Non-Sorben (German).
Franziska Becker, cultural scientist and ethnologist. Her other areas of focus include ethnicity, cultural performance and regional research (the German-Polish border), Berlin
Monday, 13.9., 18:30, cancelled because of illness

1."Russian or Jewish?" was the question asked by the media when the first Russian Jews came to Germany as "Jewish Contingent Refugees" at the beginning of the 1990s. A discourse about authenticity developed, which naturally had an effect on the immigrations themselves. Diverse strategies for the construction of a biographical sense are need in order that social recognition is achieved in the country receiving the immigrants.
2. Sorbish authenticity has normally been demonstrated by fixed features such as language, customs, heritage and traditional dress. Who are the "ethnicisation agencies" of the Sorbish people who have set the standards for authenticity in both the past and present?

Work presentation: Interviewing the Cities
SubREAL, Künstlerduo Calin Dan, Amsterdam / Iosif Kiraly, Bukarest
Tuesday, 14.9., 18:30

With works such as the Arta Archiv and Interviewing the Cities the duo establishes social and urban archives that are subsequently adapted for performance.

Work presenation: Music and Words
Ulrike Haage, musician, composter, Berlin.
Wednesday, 15.9., 18:30

Ulrike Haage formed the Rainbirds together with Katharina Franck, developed the Bomb Song with Thea Dorn and created soundtracks for the William S. Burrough¥s last words and the written reports of the sculptor Louise Bourgeois.

SLIDE PRESENATION: NATIONAL PRODUCTS AND GLOBALISATION
Folktales from Mercedes Country
Dorothee Wenner, freelance filmmaker, journalist, member of the selection committee for the International Forum of New Cinema at the Berlin Film Festival. Her last films were: Die Polen vom Potsdamer Platz (1998), Ladies Special - Der Frauenzug aus Bombay (1999) and Happy End in Switzerland (2001), Berlin
Merle Kröger (www.pong-berlin.de), artist, filmmaker, co-founder and member of the Botschaft e.V. and dogfilm and of the platform pong, with brings together a publishing house and a production company. Her first crime thriller: Cut! (Argument Verlag Hamburg 2003), Berlin
Thursday, 16.9., 18:30

A worldwide folklore has developed around the car with the star: it has become the Germany's number one export - despite the fact that Germany was once seen a nation of culture. A lecture containing light and video elements will show how Daimler Chrsyler nurtures and commercially exploits the Mercedes myth as far as it is able to.

This series of lectures came about in cooperation with the author/ curator Bettina Funcke, who works as an editor at Dia Art Foundation, New York.

III.

The entire Academy collectively performs a folklore of feelings in three steps:

1.Blind dates.
On the opening day (Monday, August 30), you are invited to attend a mass blind date in order to get to know the members of the Academy.
Monday, 30th of August, 7 p.m.

2. Love Songs Competition
On Saturday, September 11, the best originally written and composed love songs will be chosen in the Grand Prix d'Amour, a project by Nicholas Bussmann. (If you are interested in applying, some starting positions will be auctioned on Ebay.)
Saturday, 11th of September, 9 p.m.

3. Farewell
Last supper & Party.
Sunday, 19th of September, 8 p.m.

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http://www.simdi-now.info

Hebbel am Ufer presents the following events in co-operation with the Sindi Now festival, staged by the Istanbul Foundation.

Freitag, September 3, 2004, HAU 2
Orient Expressions
The group Orient Expressions, which consists of DJ Yakuza (Can Utkan), Cem Yildiz and Richard Hamer, present their new album Divan. Traditional Turkish folk music and electronic sounds are fused in their tracks and combined with strong vocal elements. DJ Yakuza will keep the party going once the concert has finished.

Saturday, September 4, 2004, HAU 2
Baba Zula & Mad Professor
The Turkish group Baba Zula pull off a crossover of current beats with traditional Turkish music. Shepherd's pipes and lutes are combined with electronic elements to create a new version of folk music.
Mercan Dede, a pioneer in connecting Oriental Groove with electronic beats, will be at the turntables afterwards.