Immersion 2019 - Berliner Festspiele
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Berliner Festspiele IMMERSION 2019 Table of contents
Immersion 2019
— Greeting
— Palast der Republik
— Uncanny Valley
— TheNew Infinity 2019
— Taylor
Mac — A 24-Decade History of Popular Music
— Diamante
— IMMERSION 2016 | 2017 | 2018
— Sponsors and Partners
Berliner Festspiele
Berliner Festspiele
Press office, Schaperstraße 24, 10719 Berlin, T +49 (0)30 254 89–269, F +49 (0)30 254 89–155
presse@berlinerfestspiele.de, www.berlinerfestspiele.de
1/23Berliner Festspiele IMMERSION 2019 Greeting
Greeting: IMMERSION 2019
Border-dissolving processes in the political as well as in the
social field mark the third year of our programme series, in which we
try to rethink and expand the concept of immersion and its spheres of
influence. So far, we have seen five exhibitions and major theatre pro-
ductions, two symposia on the limits of the knowable and the phenome-
non of worldbuilding, the launch of the project series “The New Infinity”
and of our 360-degree film productions with Arte. In 2019, we want to
direct our attention beyond the artistic and aesthetic framework to the
field of political and activist processes. Immersion is a strategy of poli-
tical action, a search tool for utopian communities, and a practice of
dissolving solidified thought patterns and identity concepts. This year,
starting from the “Palast der Republik” – which opens a space of possi-
bilities between art, discourse and parliament that will be carried fur-
ther beyond the festival in concrete ideas and flowing movements – we
will primarily work with artists and in formats that get involved, create
situations in other ways, design new social environments or even model
new forms of society.
Palast der Republik
Love, says artist Ed Atkins, is total immersion; it is merging
with the desired, the doubling of the ego, the blossoming in the other,
or it can even be a virus. Much of the German reunification can be
conceived of as an immersive event, as getting carried away by events
that have unfolded their own dynamics. “The Turn” in the East did not
allow for any distance, waiting or hesitation. The merging of the two
German states since 1989 has been a process that washed away the
border and for a few months produced an all-German smile, a feeling
of great openness and a mutual rediscovery. The concepts of the dissi-
dents in the East of a new, radically different society continued to have
an effect until the spring of 1990. But what was also immersive is the
subcutaneous process, which since the opening of the Wall had become
perceptible as a sweet pull of comfort, as solutions at hand and as an
energy in the old West, for which reunification was conceivable only as
an accession.
With the symbolically re-edified “Palace of the Republic” in
the middle of the former West Berlin, we have taken up the progressive
impulses of the revolution in the East and brought them in dialogue with
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Immersion 2019
2/23Berliner Festspiele IMMERSION 2019 Greeting
the activist, democracy-defending forces of today. The historical image
of the “fall of the Berlin Wall” – a seemingly overripe, almost inevitable
and self-occurring implosion of the East – was juxtaposed with a diffe-
rent kind of remembrance: one that takes a closer look at the events
of the Turn and the post-reunification years. It uncovers their active
and prospective potential, appreciates them as a resource of ideas and
alternative concepts for social change, and it proves that they are still
compatible today.
New concepts of community:
Taylor Mac und Mariano Pensotti
This revision of a historiography experienced as repressive
also shapes the projects of the Immersion Programme in the second
half of 2019. The work of the American actor, playwright, performer
and producer Taylor Mac is a struggle against conformism and against
heteronormative, patriarchal conditions. In October, we will be showing
the European premiere of the unabridged and by now infamous produc-
tion “A 24-Decade History of Popular Music” – a show like a trip that tells
240 years of American history in 24 hours with newly interpreted folk
and pop songs. In this shrill revue, Taylor Mac recounts the story of the
USA from the point of view of blacks, native Americans, homosexuals,
workers, nameless people – all those whose voices do not echo from the
history books. The large-scale orchestrated production from New York
will be completed in Berlin by a group of “Dandy Minions”: performers
of all kinds from the most diverse milieus of the city.
For the work “Diamante” by Mariano Pensotti – co-produ-
ced by Berliner Festspiele, Ruhrtriennale and Wiener Festwochen – a
small village will be built at the Festspielhaus. It is reminiscent of those
utopian factory housing estates in Argentina of the last century, in
which modern entrepreneurs wanted to create a better world for their
employees. At the same time, it refers to corporate cities like those built
today by large corporations such as Google and Facebook. In Pensotti's
staging, which formally oscillates between reality show, concert and
exhibition course, each guest assembles the course of history for him/
herself by strolling through the city and, thus, getting deeper and dee-
per into the subtle and barely perceptible self-destruction dynamics of
this artificial society and its various families. Over a period of six hours,
an expansive narrative theatre enfolds that makes it possible to expe-
rience the disintegration of this social-capitalist utopia.
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3/23Berliner Festspiele IMMERSION 2019 Greeting
For us, immersion above all means a process that libe-
rates our experience and thinking from the dialectic scheme of here
and there, of subject and object, of juxtaposition and strict rationality,
because we tend to see ourselves involved in processes and a shifting
of relationships that we consume and produce ourselves at the same
time. In three major productions at the Festspielhaus, we trace the
sociopolitical component of this development. In addition, we explore
new media and attempt to complement immersive situations, which
are becoming more and more effective and complex through new tech-
nologies, with alternative offers that are not entertainment, but rather
provide contemporary arts with new instruments.
The New Infinity. New art for planetariums
The project series "The New Infinity" brings new art to pla-
netariums and will continue its collaboration with the Hamburg Pla-
netarium in 2019. Equipped with digital audio and video technology,
we provide visual artists, musicians and game developers with the
hardware and know-how of state-of-the-art planetariums. As part of
“Wunderbar Together”, the Germany Year in the USA, realized by the
Goethe-Institut, the works of “The New Infinity” will tour three cities
in the USA in summer 2019. In addition to the works from 2018, a new
work by Agnieszka Polska will be presented. Subsequently, in Septem-
ber 2019, the new edition of “The New Infinity” will again take place at
Mariannenplatz in the Mobile Dome, among others with the internatio-
nal artists’ collective Metahaven.
According to Boris Goesel, planetariums were the spaces
where technology, nature and people entered a new – ecological – con-
stellation for the first time about 100 years ago. Instead of seeing the
world through a hole, as with the camera obscura, planetariums are
based on “ecological vision”, according to James Gibson, the appea-
rance of an environment whose light-reflecting surfaces and objects
surround the viewers and shine from everywhere. The lively aesthetic
immersion in our mobile dome allows for a new way of experiencing
film, music and tranquillity amid the hustle and bustle of the big city
– another experience of space and movement. Certainly, this is only a
prelude to aesthetic and media developments that involve new forms of
art works and experiences.
Thomas Oberender
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4/23Berliner Festspiele IMMERSION 2019 Palast der Republik
Palast der Republik
8 to 10 March 2019, Haus der Berliner Festspiele
Tickets
3-day-ticket: € 27 / reduced € 18
Opening: € 9 / reduced € 6
Saturday: € 14 / reduced € 8
Sunday: 15:00 until 18:00 free admission
Concert “Musikpalast” (19:00) € 14 / reduced € 8
A symbolic reconstruction of the Palast der Republik will be
held at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele from 8 to 10 March 2019. Artists,
philosophers, activists, musicians and theatremakers will perform
throughout the building for three days. Combined with critical reflec-
tion on the ambivalent significance of the original Palast der Republik,
a ‘Palace of Counter-Narratives’ will take shape with fresh observations
on the events of the years during and after the fall of the wall and
reunification
In the midst of the universal crisis that so many people are
currently feeling, but which can also be an opportunity for a major
transition, and inspired by the interim period between October 1989
and October 1990 the Berliner Festspiele / Immersion will open a ‘win-
dow of opportunity’: a space for visions of the future transcending the
polarisations of past and present. The public can roam freely between a
revue of propositions and a parliament of the future, a circus ideas and
a ‘music palace’, between theatre and films.
In the symbolically reconstructed Palast der Republik the
ambivalent significance of this building will be critically examined and
the events of the years during and after reunification will be reconsi-
dered. In the course of this three day festival the notion of the palace
will undergo a series of transformations, morphing from a place of
memory through a working forum and into a space for art. Two draft
constitutions will bracket the beginning and end: on Friday, 8 March the
opening will be a keynote address by the American philosopher Susan
Buck-Morss. Following this, the progressive proposals of the 1989 civil
movement of the DDR will be recalled, including the draft constitution
put forward at the time – on which Bernhard Schlink worked as a legal
adviser. On Saturday, 9 March individual aspects of reform advocated in
1989 will come into contact with today’s activists in a range of working
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5/23Berliner Festspiele IMMERSION 2019 Palast der Republik
parties and ultimately come together on Sunday, 10 March as contribu-
tions to a transnational European constitution that will help in times of
increasing populism and nationalism to carry visionary social ideas into
the future
The artistic works that will be on display in the “Palast der
Republik” behave differently in relation to the discursive programme.
Some prolong the echo of an unredeemed rebellion: they preserve the
latency of an alternative course of history and the hope for a different
world, which may remain unheard in daily political reality, and pour it
into atmospheric, ephemeral spaces and images (Trajal Harrell, Ale-
xander Giesche, Augusto Corrieri). Others repeat the horrors of the
totalitarian regime of the GDR and banish them to images and rituals
(Thomas Demand, Technosekte + Henrike Naumann) or shed light on
parapolitical aspects of history and create their own public spheres –
subcutaneous and subversive (Anna Zett, Bojana Kunst, Jeremy Wade,
CHEAP). They offer themselves as resonating spaces and disturbances
of what is said, sometimes quietly and sometimes loud. In the egali-
tarian juxtaposition of art and discourse, the idea of an interim use of
the Palast der Republik also resonates, which in turn was based on the
architectural concepts of a “University of the Street” by Cedric Price.
Friday, 08 Mar 2019:
On the opening night, we want to resurrect the Palast der Repu-
blik without glorifying it. A revue of ideas reminds us of the
progressive impulses of the new constitution that was develo-
ped at the GDR’s Central Round Table in the winter of 1989/90.
With: Almuth Berger, Tatjana Böhm, Susan Buck-Morss, Boris Buden,
Augusto Corrieri, Bernd Gehrke, Trajal Harrell, Max Hertzberg, Sanja
Horvatinčić, Gal Kirn, Kerstin Meyer, Ana Ofak, Pan Daijing, Elske
Rosenfeld, Bénédicte Savoy, Bernhard Schlink & Technosekte + Henrike
Naumann, Ana Ofak, Pan Daijing, Elske Rosenfeld, Bénédicte Savoy,
Bernhard Schlink
Saturday, 09 Mar 2019:
On Saturday, contemporary political conflicts that are connected
to the events of the German reunification years will be investiga-
ted in “parliamentary committees”. On the other hand, there will be
a “para-parliament” which opens a space for other forms of poli-
tical practices, far beyond the big stage of representational politics.
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6/23Berliner Festspiele IMMERSION 2019 Palast der Republik
With: Matthias Baerens, Boris Buden, Aris Chatzistefanou, Gabriele
Dolff-Bonekämper, Naika Foroutan, Anastasia Frantzeskaki, Bernd
Gehrke, Alexander Giesche, Andrej Holm, Srećko Horvat, Anetta
Kahane, Gal Kirn, Inge Kloepfer, Thomas Krüger, Bojana Kunst, Anto-
nia Majaca, Irene Misselwitz, The Performance Bar, Vijay Prashad, Jörg
Roesler, Andreas Siekmann, Jan Sowa, Gabriele Stötzer, Margarita Tso-
mou (HAU – Hebbel am Ufer), Jeremy Wade, Samia Zennadi & Anna Zett
in the evening: CHEAP
with Susanne Sachsse, Marc Siegel, Vaginal Davis, John Blue, Maurice de
Martin, Şenol Şentürk, Martin Siemann, Richard Gabriel, Akira Knightly,
Ruth Schönegge, Pola Sieverding, Ligia Lewis, Pamela Schlewinski & sur-
prise guests
Sunday, 10 Mar 2019:
After remembering the progressive ideas of the transforma-
tive year 1989, the “Palast der Republik” will end with conside-
rations on how to renew the social contract and close in the
evening with the “Musikpalast”, a live mixtape that represents
both a laboratory and a live seminar for the very latest in music.
With: Boris Buden, Naika Foroutan, Srećko Horvat, Lorenzo Marsili,
Helge Peters, Vijay Prashad, Bénédicte Savoy, Anna Stiede, Margarita
Tsomou & Yanis Varoufakis
in the evening: Musikpalast: stargaze live mixtape for the PEOPLE
(Curator: André de Ridder)
with Astronautalis, Tyondai Braxton, Buke and Gase, Cantus Domus,
Arone Dyer, Andi Haberl (The Notwist) & Kaj Duncan David, Anja Plaschg
(Soap&Skin), stargaze
Installations & films by Bini Adamczak, Cynthia Beatt, Georgi Bogdanov
& Boris Missirkov, Can Candan, Gesine Danckwart & Sven Düfer, Thomas
Demand, Gabriele Dolff-Bonekämper, Igor Grubić, Felix Grütsch, Bur-
khard von Harder, Sylvain L'Espérance, Neša Paripović, Klaus Pobitzer,
Elske Rosenfeld, Christoph Rüter, Dirk Schneider & Hubertus Siegert
Curators Maximilian Haas, Sebastian Kaiser,
Thomas Oberender, Elske Rosenfeld, Joshua Wicke
Music Curator André de Ridder
Film Curator: Jochen Werner
Architectural design Dominic Huber
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7/23Berliner Festspiele IMMERSION 2019 Uncanny Valley
Uncanny Valley
Rimini Protokoll (Stefan Kaegi) & Thomas Melle
8 to 17 March, Haus der Berliner Festspiele
Dates
08.03.2019: 16:30, 19:00 und 22:00
09.03.2019: 19:30
10.03.2019: 15:00 & 17:00
11./12.03.2019: 18:00 & 21:00
13.–16.03.2019: 18:30
17.03.2019: 16:30
Tickets
€ 12 / reduced € 8
We are familiar with robots principally as working machines.
Those used in German industry bear little resemblance to human beings
in order to avoid emotional complications. In Asia, on the other hand,
humanoid robots have already been in production for some time, used
to care for the elderly or as sexual partners. These machines’ external
resemblance to human beings is intended to make them be accepted
more easily. However, it arouses our mistrust: what is human and what
is machine? The Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori has discovered that
humanoid robots do not achieve greater acceptance the more they
resemble human beings, instead their acceptance declines rapidly and
it only increases again much later, once the artificial machine is barely
distinguishable from a human being. This gap in acceptance that mani-
fests itself in the disturbing zone between “real” and “artificial” is what
Japanese roboticists call the “Uncanny Valley”.
To present the play “Uncanny Valley” an animatronic dou-
ble of the writer Thomas Melle has been created – a deceptively real
robot that stands on stage instead of the author. The machine as actor
– how far will the illusion go? Can a robot move us like a human does?
Can we even tell the difference? The real Thomas Melle observed and
Stefan Kaegi documented how engineers reconstructed his body out of
servomotors and silicon and programmed it so that the motors would
copy even the smallest details of his repertoire of movements. Using
fine mechanics, make-up and costumes, the humanoid robot became a
performer whose mimicry, gestures and language might inspire empa-
thy – but empathy with who? With Melle himself, who’s no longer pre-
sent, or with the robot? Who is it who’s talking in the uncanny valley?
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8/23Berliner Festspiele IMMERSION 2019 Uncanny Valley
In this play by Rimini Protokoll a future is projected onto the
machine in which the human original is just as real as its technological
double. Thomas Melle hands control to a double that takes his place,
reflects on the relationship between them and enables this thinking to
be repeated identically as a highly polarised course of events night after
night. The original and the copy elide into each other in a fascinating
way, a surprising example of the interpenetration of nature and tech-
nology: how much of the human Melle is in this technology and how
much technology is already there in the human version?
Concept, text, direction Stefan Kaegi
Text, body, voice Thomas Melle
Design Evi Bauer
Animatronics Chriscreatures Filmeffects GmbH
anufacture & art finish of the silicon head / colouration &
hair Tommy Opatz
Dramaturgy Martin Valdés-Stauber
Video Design Mikko Gaestel
Music Nicolas Neecke
Uraufführung am 4. Oktober 2018, Münchner Kammerspiele.
Produced by Münchner Kammerspiele
In co-production with Berliner Festspiele / Immersion,
donaufestival (Krems), Feodor Elutine (Moscow),
FOG Triennale Milano Performing Arts (Milan),
Temporada Alta – Festival de Tador de Catalunya (Girona),
SPRING Utrecht
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9/23Berliner Festspiele IMMERSION 2019 The New Infinity 2019
The New Infinity
New art for planetariums
The New Infinity on Tour
28. – 30.06., Wisdome Immersive Art Park, Los Angeles, California
12. – 14.07., Sudekum Planetarium, Nashville, Tennessee
25. – 27.07., Arvin Gottlieb Planetarium, Kansas City, Missouri
August & September 2019
„The New Infinity“ with new productions in Hamburg & Berlin
Recent developments in the digital world are presenting
the analogue era’s infrastructures with new challenges. And this also
applies to planetariums, which have served as gateways into the infi-
nity of starry skies, and thus, a space for unbounded, communal expe-
riences of immersion, for a hundred years. In combination with digital
technology and mobile architecture, the planetarium can enable new
experiences, create new communities and facilitate events, also for an
audience that the arts often find hard to reach. Itself a globally preva-
lent kind of hardware, the planetarium is an ideal device to democratise
and spread experiences of technology and contemporary art. It allows
for a very timely form of global simultaneity.
In their programme series “The New Infinity”, Berliner Fest-
spiele and Planetarium Hamburg will present new artistic fulldome pro-
ductions from the autumn of 2018. Fulldome describes the technically
maximum image impression of our time, to be shared and experienced
as a group. Planetarium Hamburg is one of the leading institutions of
its kind. It has the highest numbers of visitors in the German-speaking
region and is an important protagonist within the International Plane-
tarium Society. The planetarium would like to continue along the path
of opening itself to artistic content and propagating it via its network.
With its state-of-the-art technical equipment, it holds undreamed-of
potential for immersive encounters.
For “The New Infinity”, we would like to place the planeta-
rium dome at the disposal of artists as a space of facilitation, where
they can use digital audio and video equipment to attempt something
that humankind has tried through the ages and various states of deve-
lopment: to create moments of unboundedness and intimations of
something that transcends the boundaries of our perception – infinity.
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10/23Berliner Festspiele IMMERSION 2019 The New Infinity 2019
From 2018 to 2020, we will invite visual artists, sound artists, film makers
and game developers to develop new artistic works for the dome. The
series has been launched as part of Berlin Art Week on 26 September
2018 with a mobile dome located on Mariannenplatz, featuring new
works by David OReilly, Holly Herndon & Mathew Dryhurst and Fatima
Al Qadiri & Transforma as well as a closing night concert with William
Basinski, Evelina Domnitch & Dmitry Gelfand. Following this premiere,
the works have been presented at Planetarium Hamburg and numerous
international festivals.
As part of “Wunderbar Together”, the Germany Year in the
USA, realized by the Goethe-Institut, the works of “The New Infinity”
will tour three cities in the USA in summer 2019. In addition to the works
from 2018, a new work by Agnieszka Polska will be presented. Subse-
quently, in September 2019, the new edition of “The New Infinity” will
again take place at Mariannenplatz in the Mobile Dome, among others
with the international artists’ collective Metahaven.
The project “The New Infinity on Tour” is part of the initiative “Germany Year USA
2018/19”, which is sponsored by the German Foreign Office (AA), realized by the Goethe-
Institut and supported by the Federation of German Industries (BDI).
Berliner Festspiele
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Immersion 2019
11/23Berliner Festspiele IMMERSION 2019 Taylor Mac
Taylor Mac — A 24-Decade History of Popular Music
October 2019, Haus der Berliner Festspiele
Dates
10, 12, 18, 20 October, 18:00 – 00:00
Tickets
The pre-sale starts in May 2019
With 240 pop songs through 240 years of American history:
Taylor Mac’s monumental show “A 24-Decade History of Popular Music”
tells an alternative story of the USA. The award-winning work of the
American playwright, director and performer celebrates its European
premiere in the unabridged version at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele
and takes on the struggle against oppression, conformism, racism and
patriarchal conditions. The 24-hour work can be experienced over four
evenings at the Festspielhaus and, with around 100 performers, deve-
lops a dazzling, opulent revue in which all those have their say whose
voices do not reverberate in the history books.
“‘A 24-Decade History of Popular Music’ is a reenactment
of how the individual(s) may lose the long game but communities
and movements, if continually brought together, have the potential to
thrive and bend toward justice,” says Taylor Mac. “I’m not a teacher.
My job is to be a reminder. I’m reminding the audience of the things
they’ve forgotten, dismissed or buried – or that others have buried for
them.” judy – Taylor Mac's preferred gender pronoun – performs with
this empowering gesture and enters into an unbridled game in which
the boundaries between auditorium and stage show, between inside
and outside, between supposed reality and desired fiction increasin-
gly dissolve. The large-scale orchestrated production from New York is
completed by Berlin musicians, special guests and a group of “Dandy
Minions”: performers of all kinds from the most diverse milieus of the
city.
Creator, writer, performer Taylor Mac
Dramaturg Jocelyn Clarke
Costumes Machine Dazzle
Musical director, arranger Matt Ray
Co-director Niegel Smith
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12/23Berliner Festspiele IMMERSION 2019 Taylor Mac
Scenic designer Mimi Lien
Lighting designer John Torres
Sound designer Jimin Brelsford
Choreographic consultant Jawole Zollar
Creative producers Pomegranate Arts
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13/23Berliner Festspiele IMMERSION 2019 Diamante
Diamante
Mariano Pensotti / Grupo Marea
November 2019, Haus der Berliner Festspiele
Dates
16.11.19, 17:00–23:00
17.11.19, 15:00–21:00
20.11.19, 17:00–23:00
22.11.19, 17:00–23:00
23.11.19, 17:00–23:00
24.11.19, 15:00–21:00
Tickets
The pre-sale starts in May 2019.
A unique form of Gesamtkunstwerk combining acting,
lighting and film: Mariano Pensotti builds a village into the Haus der
Berliner Festspiele. On the stage and in the hall, there are wooden
houses, between which the guests move from one place to the next in
many small groups and observe life in the village. This settlement at the
edge of the jungle is a special place: It is privately owned by one of the
companies that exist not only in Latin America. In the fiction of author,
film director and theatre maker Mariano Pensotti, the German indus-
trialist Emil Hügel built it well over 100 years ago in northern Argentina
to house the workers of his coal and steel company “Goodwind”. Today
Diamante is like a jungle version of Silicon Valley specializing in soft-
ware programming.
In Pensotti's production, the visitors will experience toge-
ther with the inhabitants – played by a cast of Argentinian and German
performers – how the town is transformed over the course of a year from
a flourishing social-capitalist utopia into a horror scenario: communal
physical exercises every morning and communal music-making every
evening give way to violent robberies and fear of the other people living
in the surrounding Argentinian villages. Proud factory workers gradually
turn into insecure service providers living in precarious conditions.
Mariano Pensotti puts big stories on stage in a mixture of
fiction and reality that becomes a unique form of Gesamtkunstwerk
combining acting, lighting and film. In this six-hour theatrical event,
the visitors are invited not only to look through the windows of the
houses in Diamante but also to seek their own path through the various
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lives of the residents. Mariano Pensotti doesn’t just tell the story of the
private town of Diamante in Argentina but enables us to experience
the scenario of a company town or so-called Free Private City, in which
access to public goods and services is dependent on a company stra-
tegy – a phenomenon that in the 21st century is no longer as futuristic
or utopian as it sounds.
Text, direction Mariano Pensotti
Stage, costumes Mariana Tirantte
Music Diego Vainer
Lighting Alejandro Le Roux
Artistic production Florencia Wasser
A premiere of the Ruhrtriennale 2018.
The performances in Berlin are a co-production of
Berliner Festspiele / Immersion, Wiener Festwochen and the
Grand Theatre Groningen.
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15/23Berliner Festspiele IMMERSION 2019 IMMERSION 2016 | 2017 | 2018
Review IMMERSION 2016
Mona el Gammal
RHIZOMAT
NARRATIVE SPACE AT THE FORMER TELEPHONE EXCHANGE, PALISADENSTRASSE
Stage designer Mona el Gammal transformed three storeys
of the former GDR-telephone exchange into a building in the year 2060
and performed a play for one spectator for twelve hours every day over
a period of three months.
Funded by the Capital Cultural Fund,
the federal Agency for Civic Education and the Rudolf Augstein Stiftung
Lundahl & Seitl
Symphony of a Missing Room
IMMERSIVE GUIDED MUSEUM TOUR AT GROPIUS BAU
Removed from the external world by opaque goggles and
headphones, the visitors moved through real and imagined rooms at
Gropius Bau, aided by a combination of audio directions and the touch
of trained guides. The guest book was full of euphoric comments; most
visitors felt in the midst of things and yet totally outside.
Omer Fast
»Talking is not always the Solution«
EXHIBITION AT GROPIUS BAU
The video artist broke through the classic exhibition format
by creating three waiting areas next to the projection venues for his
films, and staging unannounced performances in them.
Schule der Distanz
LECTURES, PERFORMANCES, INSTALLATIONS AT GROPIUS BAU
One central topic of immersive experiences is the distance
between art work and audience, which is re-measured and often made
to disappear. The discursiveperformative weekend entitled “Schule der
Distanz” brought together experts of immersion into and emergence
from artificial worlds.
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IMMERSION 2019
16/23Berliner Festspiele IMMERSION 2019 IMMERSION 2016 | 2017 | 2018
Review IMMERSION 2017
Vegard Vinge / Ida Müller
Nationaltheater Reinickendorf
Over the period of six months, Vegard Vinge and Ida Müller
built their total theatre into the halls of a former ammunitions factory
and staged their twelve-hour live sets between performance, concert,
exhibition and walk-in installation, featuring the sequel of their “Ibsen
Saga”, a Hamlet-musical, the Panini cathedral and a submarine,
among others, on ten evenings. The production was invited to the
Theatertreffen in 2018.
With the support of Norsk Kulturråd
Ed Atkins
Old Food
EXHIBITION AT GROPIUS BAU
For Gropius Bau, Ed Atkins confronted his new video
works, presented on largescale monitor walls and flat-screens, with a
presentation of around 6000 costumes from the storage of Deutsche
Oper Berlin. For the artist, this exhibition was a modern chamber drama,
choreographed by means of a composition by Jürg Frey.
Jonathan Meese / Bernhard Lang / Simone Young
MONDPARSIFAL BETA 9–23
(VON EINEM, DER AUSZOG DEN „WAGNERIANERN DES
GRAUENS“ DAS „GEILSTGRUSELN“ ZU ERZLEHREN…)
OPERA BY BERNHARD LANG
BASED ON RICHARD WAGNER‘S “PARSIFAL”
AT HAUS DER BERLINER FESTSPIELE
Jonathan Meese designed the set and costumes for Bernhard
Lang’s Wagner-adaptation and made his debut as an opera director,
commenting on an artistic surtitle track. His installation orchestrated
the foyers and understage of the Festspielhaus. A small step on the
path towards a dictatorship of art, a huge step for the artist.
Commissioned and produced by Wiener Festwochen.
Coproduction Berliner Festspiele / Immersion
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LIMITS OF KNOWING
Interdisciplinary Programme
Arrival of Time
AUSSTELLUNG IM GROPIUS BAU
In cooperation with artists and the scientists of LIGO CalTech
who received the 2017 Nobel Prize for Physics for their measurements of
gravitational waves, this exhibition explored a new understanding of
time.
Mona el Gammal
RHIZOMAT VR
360°-FILM
VR EXPERIENCE
This 360°-film, produced with ARTE and INVR.SPACE,
extends the world of Mona el Gammal’s narrative space into the digital
realm. It can be seen free of charge on the ARTE 360VR-app.
A production by INVR.SPACE GmbH in co-production with Berliner
Festspiele/Immersion and ZDF in collaboration with ARTE.
Supported by the Fraunhofer Institut
Lundahl & Seitl
Unknown Cloud on Its Way to Berlin
DIGITAL ARTWORK ON TEMPELHOFER FELD
Guided by a smart-phone app, people gathered on
Tempelhofer Feld to experience the cosmic phenomenon of the “Cloud”
that allows a new form of community.
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Rimini Protokoll
Nachlass – Pièces sans personnes
SCENIC INSTALLATION AT GROPIUS BAU
Stefan Kaegi and Dominic Huber created an installation
consisting of eight spaces which, in the absence of their protagonists,
talk about what is left of a person when they are no longer there
– mausoleums of the 21st century, designed by their later owners
themselves.
Production Théâtre de Vidy, Lausanne
Chris Salter + TeZ
Haptic Field (v2.0)
MULTISENSORY INSTALLATION AT GROPIUS BAU
Touch, sight, hearing and smell merged into one holistic
experience in this multisensory parcours. Visitors were only guided
through these hallucinatory rooms by vibrations, lights and darkness.
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INTO WORLDS. The Craft of Blurring Boundaries
CONFERENCE AND EXHIBITION
In co-operation with the Federal Agency for Civic Education
Gropius Bau
19 to 21 January 2018
For a long weekend in January 2018, artists and scientists
engaged in an open exchange with the public at a 110-meter-long table
in the atrium of the Gropius Bau. The focus was not only on mechanisms
of immersion, but also on the ability to emerge and on a reflective
outside perspective on worlds that no longer sanction any outside.
Brigitte & Jonathan Meese
Mutter und Sohn = Realität trifft Kunst
(Z.U.K.U.N.F.T. der Unendlichkeit)
360°-FILM AND INSTALLATION
In the first virtual reality production by Jonathan Meese and
his mother Brigitte Meese the spectators enter into artist’s virtual studio
and witness the emergence of a 360°-Gesamtkunstwerk of the future.
For the initial presentation from 21 to 29 April 2018, the room designed
by Jonathan Meese was reconstructed at Gropius Bau. After the first
joint project “RHIZOMAT VR“, the film continues the collaboration of
the Berliner Festspiele / Immersion with ARTE. It can be seen free of
charge on the ARTE 360VR-app.
A production by KOBALT Kreation in co-production with Berliner
Festspiele/Immersion and ZDF in collaboration with ARTE.
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Philippe Parreno
EXHIBITION
Gropius Bau
25 May to 5 August 2018
French artist Philippe Parreno sees the medium of exhibi-
tion as a living organism that can be set in motion by light, sounds
and images. He controls his staged spaces with the help of algorithms
that synchronise the behaviour of the objects contained in the room.
The focus is less on the individual object, but rather on the interaction
between the various components. The application of chance principles
allows the exhibition to develop and change over a certain period of
time, so that the work comes to life and generates an eerie presence.
Performative moments ensue; the objects produce something more
than the sum of their parts – a choreography of absence and presence
that challenges our knowledge of the simultaneity of things and their
control. The exhibition was awarded “Best Exhibition 2018” at the “Lea-
ding Culture Destinations Awards” in London in October 2018.
Welt ohne Außen
Immersive Räume seit den 60er Jahren
EXHIBITION, LIVE WORKS, WORKSHOPS
Gropius Bau
8 June to 5 August 2018
Departing from the Light and Space Movement of the late
1960s, via works by contemporary artists like Dominique Gonzalez-
Foerster and Cyprien Gaillard to empathic journalism in a virtual reality,
this exhibition, curated by Tino Sehgal and Thomas Oberender spanned
a broad panorama, featuring a great variety of immersive practices
which dissolve categories of viewer and work and diminish the distance
between subject and object. Immersive works can only be experienced
in their own respective temporality – they need a phase of departure,
of immersion and emergence. The exhibition developed a dramaturgy
of non-commencement which knows no tardiness and yet integrates
periodic performances and workshops.
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The New Infinity
ARTISTIC FULLDOME PRODUCTIONS
In co-operation with Planetarium Hamburg
Mobile Dome, Mariannenplatz, Kreuzberg
26 September to 14 October 2018
As gateways to the infinity of the starry skies, planetariums
have been architectures of longing, visualisation devices and maximum
cinema for the last 99 years. Equipped with digital audio and video tech-
nology, they constitute a kind of hardware that provides visual artists,
musicians and game developers with as yet unexplored tools for brea-
king through the horizon. For the audience, they hold experiences of
collective immersion into unfamiliar worlds and new perspectives. From
now until 2020, the series “The New Infinity” will initiate and produce
artistic works for fulldome-systems and present them in a mobile dome
placed throughout the Berlin city-scape in several sequences of events.
The series was launched on Mariannenplatz by David OReilly – who is
developing his philosophic video game “Everything” into a multiplayer
version – and continued with works by Holly Herndon & Matthew Dry-
hurst, Fatima Al Qadiri & Transforma and others. The New Infinity will
be continued with new art productions for planetariums in 2019/20.
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Berliner Festspiele are funded by
PARTNERS AND SPONSORS
The programme Immersion was made possible by an initiative of the
German Federal Parliament and thanks to the support of the
Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
Partner
Media partners
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