Migrating Spaces (Exhibition / Ausstellungsprojekt - Haus der Kulturen der Welt, März 2016)

Es gibt Häuser in der Türkei, die sind irgendwie deutsch, aber auch türkisch. Die Ausstellung und Konferenz im Haus der Kulturen der Welt über den Hausbau der Rückkehrer und die oft unerfüllten Träume in einem Land, das ihnen zum Teil fremd geworden ist. 

Im aktuellen Diskurs um Migration und Integration gibt es einen bislang nur wenig beachteten Aspekt: Die Migration von Räumen. Mit den Menschen wandern auch Räume und Bilder, kulturelle Praktiken und Lebensweisen. Am Beispiel von Häusern der "Almanci" der zurückgekehrten, ehemaligen Türkischen Gastarbeiterinnen und Gastarbeitern, hat Stefanie Bürkle in das spannungsreiche Beziehungsgeflecht zwischen deutsch-türkischer Identität und gebautem Raum untersucht.

English

There are houses in Turkey that are somehow German, but Turkish too. An exhibition and conference about houses built by returned migrants and their often unfulfilled dreams in a country that has partly grown foreign to them.

An area in current discourse about migration and integration that up until now has been given little attention is the migration of spaces. When people move, so do spaces, along with images, cultural practices and lifestyles. Using the example of ‘Almanci’ houses, built by former Turkish guest workers who return to Turkey, Stefanie Bürkle has investigated the complex and conflicting relationships between German-Turkish identity and built space. The results of the three-year research project, presented as an installation of videos, mappings, images and collages, provides fascinating and surprising insights into the lives and spaces created by Turkish migrants when they return.

Team:
Künstlerische und wissenschaftliche Leitung | artistic and scientific director: Stefanie Bürkle, IfA TU Berlin  
Wissenschaftliche Kooperation scientific cooperation: Erol Yıldız, Universität InnsbruckKünstlerische Mitarbeit, Grafik, Video, Interviews | artistic assistant, graphics, video, interviews: Janin Walter, IfA TU Berlin
Künstlerische Mitarbeit, Video, Kamera, Schnitt, Interviews | artistic assistant, video, camera, interviews: Veronika Bökelmann, IfA TU Berlin
Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeit, Interviews | scientific assistant, interviews: Fulya Erdem, IfA TU Berlin
Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeit, Recherche | scientific assistant, research: Nicole Erbe, Hannah Hilbrandt, IfA TU Berlin 
Öffentlichkeitsarbeit | public relations: Simon Wöhr
Projektbüro | project office: Wiebke Sünderhauf, IfA TU Berlin
Ton | sound: Jan Giesecke 
Technische Leitung | technical director: Stefan Richter, Mediapool 
Studentische Mitarbeit | student assistant: Ilkin Akpınar, Dila Ünlü, Katharina Woicke, Emily Arthers, Kourosh Zargani   

Migrating Spaces Website

Ein künstlerisches Forschungsprojekt von Stefanie Bürkle, TU Berlin. An art and research project by Stefanie Bürkle, TU Berlin. Gefördert von / Funded by the Volkswagen Stiftung.

Schwestern - אָחוֹת (Sisters) - Again in February 2017 in Helsinki

by / with Moran Sanderovich & Veronika Bökelmann

Upcoming dates:

Mad House Festival, Helsinki February 2017

Previous dates:
CLINCH Festival Hannover: Sept 10th 2016
Pop Up Boat/ Jewish Museum Frankfurt: Sept 16th 2016
Lighthouse Festival, Fredrikstad Norway: Sept 24th 2016FeTel Aviv: Center for Contemporary Art, Oct 28th & 30th 2015

Frankfurt: Mousonturm Nov 21st & 22nd 2015

Schwestern / אָחוֹת is an encounter between four women, including the performers’ absent sisters. Both sisters were once close to them, yet both have turned towards radically different systems of belief. Veronika’s sister moved from a small town in Germany to India as a Hare Krishna devotee, while Moran’s sister decided to live in an ultra-orthodox settlement in Israel. Within a structured dialogue, the audience is introduced to the daily lives of the ‘absent sisters’ by the performers, who create a maze of cultural choices, corporeal perceptions, and gender roles. How far are we from our sisters? How much can one really transform? 

Schwestern / אָחוֹת has been realized in the frame of "Performing EnCOUNTERs - in and between Israel and Germany.“ http://performing-encounters.org/

The Cut - 135 Euro per month? Guerrilla Performance at the opening of transmediale festival 14

© Gerhard Swoboda

© Barbara Mürdter

How can we live from 135 Euro per month? 
Guerrilla Performance at the opening of transmediale festival 14 - afterglow
January 29th 2014

(English version below)
How do you feel today? Wie fühlen Sie sich heute, ist die Leitfrage des transmediale festivals 2014. Eine Bestandsaufnahme, die zugleich erforschen möchte, wie wir im Zeitalter des post-digitalen “afterglows” fühlen, kommunizieren und produzieren. Mit unserer nicht-eingeladenen Guerilla Performance nehmen wir diese zentrale Frage direkt wieder auf: welche Gefühle produziert die Produktionsweise des Festivals, das als repräsentatives “Leuchtturmprojekt der Kulturstiftung des Bundes” zugleich repräsentativ ist für oftmals vorherrschende Produktionsstrukturen in der Kulturszene in Berlin: das Festival kann nur darüber realisiert werden, das viele Menschen un- oder unterbezahlt an dessen Realisierung arbeiten. Im Sommer 2013 hatte ich (Veronika Bökelmann) mich selbst bei der transmediale 14 für die ausgeschriebene Stelle als “Projektmanagerin im Bereich Performance” beworben. Als Antwortschreiben erhielt ich die Nachricht, das wegen kurzfristiger Änderungen in der Personalplanung die Stelle mit dem selben Verantwortungsspielraum nur als Praktikum ausgeschrieben werden kann: “Ich gehe aufgrund Ihrer Qualifikation davon aus, dass eine Beschäftigung zu diesen Konditionen (Praktikumsgehalt Euro 135,00 pro Monat) für Sie nicht in Frage kommt. Sollten Sie dennoch Interesse an der Stelle haben, würden wir uns sehr freuen, von Ihnen zu hören.”

Wie können wir von 135 Euro monatlich leben?, fragt unsere Performance. Wie können wir kollaborative Strukturen aufbauen in Zeiten kultureller Kürzungen? Wie groß oder klein wäre das Festival, wenn alle Mitarbeiter wenigstens das Existenzminimum bezahlt bekämen? 

Wenn wir uns im Raum der Festivaleröffnung exponieren und entblössen, weisen wir auf diese existentielle Ebene hin. Die Devaluierung und Prekarisierung von Arbeit als strukturelles Phänomen der gegenwärtigen politischen Ökonomie trifft uns, ganz direkt, schmerzhaft, individuell und körperlich. 

English version:

“How do you feel today?”, is the central question at the transmediale festival 14 in Berlin. How do we feel, communicate and produce in the era of the “post-digital after-glow”? With our guerrilla performance, we directly relate to this query and ask: How does the festival’s mode of production and commutation make us feel? How does it affect us?

In the summer 2013, I applied for the announced job as “project manager for performance” at transmediale 14. As a reply, I received the note that due to changes in the personnel planning, the position can only be offered as internship with a salary of 135 Euros per month. How can we live from 135 Euro per month? How can we create and maintain supportive, collaborative structures in times of increasing cuts of cultural funding? How big or small might the festival be (which is a representative festival for the current mode of production in Berlin) if all employees would get paid at least a living wage at the margin of subsistence?

During the performance, exposing our bodies contact surface to create a dialogue, we point to this very existential dimension: The increasing devaluation and precarization of work as structural phenomena of the current political economy hits us directly; it hits us painfully, bodily and affectively.

© Anchi Cheng

Translation of the picture above:

Dear Miss Boekelmann,
thanks for your interest in working at transmediale festival 14 as project manager in the department performance. Unfortunately, due to short-noticed changes in our personnel planing, we can only offer the job as internship. 

Considering your qualifications I suppose that you are not interested in an employment under those conditions (135 Euro per month as intern), but if you are, we would be pleased to hear from you.

With kind regards,

XXXX


Related links:

transmediale 14 festival - afterglow

Feel Tank & Public Feeling

Haben und Brauchen - Was braucht die Kunst in Berlin?

MELEE & VOLKSKOERPER - THE PEOPLE'S BODY (Performance-Installations, New York, 2013; Berlin & Stuttgart 2014)

Showing at NYU, May 2013

 “The specter is also, among other things, what (...) one projects – on an imaginary screen.”

(Jacques Derrida in Specters of Marx)

Mêlée and Voelkskoerper - The People‘s Body form part of a series of installations and performances dealing with embodied history and identity, developed by Veronika S. Boekelmann as scholar of the German Cultural Exchange Service / DAAD at New York University.

In Mêlée and Voelkskoerper, the intimate sphere turns into a battle ground where we may rebell against identitarian attributions, and yet can hardly escape their affective impact on our bodies and interactions. The audience member watches himself in a mirror. In the reflection, his face merges with the lips of the artist talking, screaming, laughing, eating from a small screen. The audience member is taken on an emotional journey echoing the pain, the violence and the potential desire that can be produced by identitarian dichotomies. Intimately mingled, the audience members face muscles twitch in tune with rhythm of the speech of the mouth. Also his breath seems to accelerate in orchestra with the mouth on the screen. 

Shown at NYU-Tisch-Academy, New York, May 2013 & 27th Stuttgarter Filmwinter Festival, Stuttgart 2014 & Symposium Transnationality & Translinguality - Month of Performance Art Berlin 2014.
 

to video documentation click here

--------------------------------------------------------------- 

  

The series of works results from a one-year stay in New York supported by the DAAD – German Cultural Exchange Service. It formed part of the final project in Performance Studies at New York University.

PRESENT PAST - Documentary audio/video walk with an ipod. (Oslo 2012/13)

"During the walk I experienced three different times, the recorded time of the summer 2012, the present time of the walk in the autumn 2012 and the autumn of 1942." 

(Anita G.)

"It was a very physical experience. I felt this lap of time strongly. Suddenly, 1942 gets very close. I started to wonder - what is time?" (Øystein S.)

 

PRESENT PAST WILL BE SHOWN AGAIN IN APRIL 2016

Concept & realization:    Veronika S. Boekelmann & Kari Strand.
Funded by:                    Foundation Fritt Ord & Kunstløftet - The Norwegian Cultural Council 
Supported by:               The Jewish Museum Oslo
Thanks to:                     Holocaust Center Oslo, Rikksarkivet &all other kind supporters.

Shown in the frame of:   Den Kulturelle Skolesekken Oslo 2012/13.

Background.
At 26th of November 1942, 532 Jews were deported from the city of Oslo with the final goal of the concentration camp Auschwitz. As there were not enough police cars available, 100 taxi cabs transported the families to the harbor. On the boat shipping them to Poland, the young Kai Feinberg met the girl he was in love with, hoping “to marry her as soon as possible” upon their arrival “in the ghetto”, still thinking about how to tell his friends back in Norway about the “adventure” of the forced journey. Only five days later, at December 1st 1942, all elderly, children and women of the transport were killed in the gas chambers of Auschwitz – Birkenau. Soon afterwards a taxi driver involved in the deportation sent a letter to the police claiming one of the hundreds of empty apartments. He moved in there in March 1943, after the apartment had been “cleansed with gas”. In 1945 Kai Feinberg came back from the concentration camp as only survivor of his family. He rang the doorbell to his apartment and said: “Hello, my name is Feinberg. I live here.” When we rang the same doorbell in 2012, the woman residing in his former apartment does not know anything about the yesteryear of the place. 

The Project.

Present Past brings the audience member to buildings where Jews had lived until they got deported or had to flee under WW II. Each audience member walks around individually, guided by an ipod with video images and the voices of the artists. For the filming, Boekelmann and Strand have walked exactly the same walk in real time. The participant during the walk follows the same motion and tempo, moving the ipod as if filming herself. The images on the screen do not only guide her gaze but also position her in space, bringing her for instance close to a window front. The constant interplay between the focus on the screen and on the physical reality out on the streets creates a bodily disturbance and sensual confusion: ghost-like a person may appear on the screen where in the current moment nobody is walking. Consequently, the audience is confronted with an ongoing questioning about what is real or virtual, present of past. This alienating effect is reinforced by the use of binaural microphones recording three-dimensional sound, for example footsteps that approached the artists while recording, sound spatially realistic for the audience member, seemingly getting closer to her ear via head phones. Thus, the past becomes physically experienceable for the spectator, penetrating her present moment. Through the different forms of ghost-like merging of temporalities, the audience member of Present Past walks around in a constant interplay of several time zones: the historical time of the 1940ies, the recorded time of the video, the present time of the walk, and the imaginary – what could have been there if the family had not been deported.

 Dialogue with school class after the walk.

VI BESKYTTER LANDET - WE PROTECT THE COUNTRY (Lecture Performance, Oslo & Fredrikstad 2009, Trondheim 2010, Stavanger & Haugesund 2012)

Concept: Veronika Bökelmann, Séverine Urwyler, Marco D. Vitanza

Performers: Séverine Urwyler, Marco Demian Vitanza, Veronika Bökelmann

Video/outside eye: Veronika Bökelmann

Space design: Séverine Urwyler

Dramaturgy: Veronika Bökelmann, Marco Demian Vitanza

Technician, Light design: Yasin Gültepe (Ondskapend teater)

BOOKING CONTACT. Marco Demian Vitanza. m.d.vitanza@gmail.com. tlf: +47 95268027

ABOUT THE PIECE:

"Yes, we love this country," (“Ja vi elsker dette landet) sings the 90 year- old Rudolf with tears in his eyes about Norway. He was one of the German soldiers who had occupied Norway under the 2nd World War. At the same time he fell in love with the country, as he tells today. The documentary lecture performance VI BESKYTTER LANDET takes a look at mutual war memories. Created for touring in high schools it creates an intricate retrospect on the relationships between German soldiers and Norwegian women during the occupation. Formally it fluctuates between sober lecturing and poetical abstractions of intimacy: Historical objet trouvés, original soundclips, live-pro- jected images, archive texts and interviews meet with the performers’ body, reminding of the physical aspect in the German-Norwegian relationships. The different medias are sometimes unison, and sometimes disharmonious, but always with the purpose of transmitting history as something tactile. Something touchable. A lost object. A retrieved person. Somehow, this is also the history of history. Or perhaps a journey through the desolate landscape between humans and the very own history it has shaped.

  Sunset drawn by soldier Rudolf during the occupation of Norway 1943

30 DAYS (GREENLAND, GREECE, GERMANY, NORWAY, DANMARK, FRANCE 2009/10) - video installation

* Galerie Stadtgestalt c/o Serge von Arx, Berlin, December 2010.

 Video installation for 3-screens. Loop duration 6 hours; by Annesofie Norn, Veronika Bökelmann, Ole Kristensen.

30 DAYS explores the subjective perception of time, space and velocity. Over the frame of thirty days the three artists Annesofie Norn, Veronika Bökelmann and Ole Kristensen documented their experience of the rhythm of the places they visited with their travels in the summer 2009. With a same set of rules three distinctive video journeys lead through European metropoles, Greenland and the mediterranean sea, focussing on physical distances and means to overcome them. Twelve minutes of unedited filmations per day sum up to an monumental stream of images of 360 minutes.

 © Veronika Bökelmann

FACHADAS EN CRISIS - FACADES OF CRISIS (D/ NOR/ ARG, 2010,11,12) video/ space installation

Awarded as best work in the category Media in Space at 24th Stuttgarter Filmwinter:

"The installation captures a national crisis from the people´s point of view. It does not contain statistics or glossy and dynamic story-telling of the news, but gives space for people whose everyday life has suddenly erupted. The power of the artwork lies in its direct and modest approach, voicing out a political statement which has many dimensions and tones."

(Jury statement 24. Stuttgarter Filmwinter, Hanna Haaslahti (FIN), Johannes Auer (G), Mark Lee (CH))

GALERIE STADTGESTALT. Serge von Arx, Berlin. 2010.

Club Cultural Matienzo, Buenos Aires.. December 13th - 20th 2011, 

24. Stuttgarter Filmwinter. Festival for Expanded Media. International Competition/ Winner Jury Award Media in Space 2011  

As video-space installation Facades of Crisis explores the consistency and social relevance of architectural safety measurements in Buenos Aires that have boomed after the economic break down in 2001. The installation juxtaposes the rigid structure of metal bars with the personal experiences of ten inhabitants of the city. The descriptions of the interviewees from distinctive social backgrounds depict the effects of the crisis: They deal with trust and mistrust, precariousness and possibility, utopia and dream. The work creates a communal space for people, who due to increasing segregation are more and more isolated from each other. By doing that FACADES OF CRISIS reflects the fragile interrelation of individual and social life concepts and the deficits of our economic system.

Interviewed persons: Teresa Petrana Alaguibe (cleaning lady, has been living in an occupied house for many years), Marta Bodo (lawyer and notary), Walter Christian Citzenmaier (homeless, lives across the street of the government building), Lic. Eduardo Grimoldi (psychologist, specialist for anxiety and crisis), Claudia Rosenberg (sociologist, former flight attendant, actress since 2001), Nestor Piquero (architect and designer), María Graciela Ponce (kioskera), César Saldaña (locksmith, worked for Peugeot until 2001), José Saphir (constructor, inventor), Florencia Arbós (schoolgirl, born in 2001).

 
FACADES OF CRISIS: OUSIDE/IN. backprojection. Project draft for: Atopia (Oslo)

(IM) POTENICA - documentary theater installation (D, Arg, No 2010)

 "A strong piece with subjective-documentary power," Argentinian film maker Jeanine Meerapfel about (IM)POTENICA.

Performers: Tamara Saphir, Juliana Piquero, Veronika Bökelmann, Anett Vietzke. Producer in Buenos Aires: Paula Baró, Martín Fernandez. Producer in Berlin: Hendrik Unger. Technical Director: Fabian Lehmann. Stagedesign: Annesofie Norn. Assistant Stagedesigner: Moh Portuondo Alvarez. Music: Timo Kreuser. Artistical and technical realisation: Kerstin Ergenzinger. Concept and realisation: Veronika Bökelmann and Anett Vietzke. Assistant for Realisation and Dramaturgy: Lea Kalinna. Dramaturgical consultant: Tatiana Saphir.

(IM) POTENCIA as documentary theatre installation deals with the loss of identity of the people in Buenos Aires after the complete economic crash in 2001. Like no other place, Buenos Aires represents the fragile balance between individual life plans and their dependence on global economic systems. Today the architect Nestor Piquero (58) describes 2001 for his family and himself as a period of anxiety, impotence and hope. More or less over night thousands of people there lost their savings, perspectives and self-perception without any stately protection. Argentina, which always had felt closely connected to Western Europe, suddenly became a ‘Third World Country’ of South America. Consequently fear and the absence of safety but also arising dreams have manifested themselves in biographies, architecture and daily life. Nowadays life in Buenos Aires raises questions that mirror the European anxiety to lose financial and idealistic securities: What happens to people in an economic crisis? If the only certainty is, that you cannot rely on anything anymore, what does one dream of? Base of the performance are interviews with the inhabitants of Buenos Aires, the personal experiences of the authors and performers, images, sounds and objet trouves as subjective-documentary descriptions of everyday life in the post crisis of the metropolis. Urban culture of the so-called ‘first’ and ‘third‘ world functions as a two-way distorting mirror for transformation processes within society.


Based on interviews with: Teresa Petrana Alaguibe, Marta Bodo, Walter Christian Citzenmaier, Lic. Eduardo Grimoldi, Claudia Rosenberg, Nestor Piquero, María Graciela Ponce, César Saldaña, José Saphir. Thank you: Mariela Arzadun, Tatiana Saphir, Gerardo Naumann, Nacho, Kiosko Corrientes: Rodolfo Freire, Gustavo Zarate, Francisco Franek. Kiosko Boedo: Christian Sanchez, Gladys Varas, Susan Córdova, Lesly Córdova, Jorge Durand, Melody Sánchez, Yislei Ponce.

Fotos: Wolfgang Busch

 

DET BLINDE TEATER - BLIND THEATRE. FIVE AUDIO-SENSORY WALKS AS INTIMATE PORTRAITS.

"And I have found that of all the senses the eye was the most superficial, the ear the most haughty, smell the most voluptuous, taste the most superstitious and inconstant, touch the most profound and philosophical." 
(Diderot, ‘Letter on the Blind,’ 1749)

The audience is guided through the  NATIONAL THEATER in Oslo wearing a programmed bodysuit & headphones.

Concept: Ståle Stenslie, Authors: Veronika Bökelmann, Kate Pendry, Edy Poppy, Shiva Falahi, Narve Hovdenakk, Costume: Ingvild Hornseth, Sounddesign: Kate Pendry, Truls Kvam, Programming: Jonas Jongejan, Dramaturge: Kate Pendry, Performer and guide: Veronika Bökelmann, Grith Jensen, Sille Dons Heltoft, Edy Poppy.

Det Blinde Teater - Blind Theatre is a collaboration between five theatre authors and the media artist Ståle Stenslie, engaging in the exploration of new ways to stage dramatic texts: Individually guided through the theatre, the audience steps into the author’s electronically programmed skin and experience intimate portraits of five women. A sensual and disturbing monologue whispered into the audience ear displayed in a living body suit.


Det Blinde Teater - Blind Theatre is a co-production of National Theatre and Samtidsfetival 09. It is supported by Norsk Kulturråd.