Culture Tips from our Program Coordinators
Custom Culture

How do you approach reading and thinking about a book that is, mysteriously, called Oval? I stared at the cover of Elvia Wilk’s Berlin novel, flipping it over as if I could crack open some prophecy from the purple egg shape illustration. Taking up the US author’s challenge, I followed form(s): looking for lines, triangles, rectangles, and ovals to reveal some of the book’s themes, from housing to sustainability to inequality. The symbology proved a suitable reading framework for the book’s ominous urban rumblings as well as familiar images of transient expat life in a 21st century “creative” city. Get the book from your library and retrace this four-part geometrically patterned book report or try your own “graphic” approach on your reading list. 

How do you approach reading and thinking about a book that is, mysteriously, called Oval? I stared at the cover of Elvia Wilk’s Berlin novel, flipping it over as if I could crack open some prophecy from the purple egg shape illustration. Taking up the US author’s challenge, I followed form(s): looking for lines, triangles, rectangles, and ovals to reveal some of the book’s themes, from housing to sustainability to inequality. The symbology proved a suitable reading framework for the book’s ominous urban rumblings as well as familiar images of transient expat life in a 21st century “creative” city. Get the book from your library and retrace this four-part geometrically patterned book report or try your own “graphic” approach on your reading list. 

How do you approach reading and thinking about a book that is, mysteriously, called Oval? I stared at the cover of Elvia Wilk’s Berlin novel, flipping it over as if I could crack open some prophecy from the purple egg shape illustration. Taking up the US author’s challenge, I followed form(s): looking for lines, triangles, rectangles, and ovals to reveal some of the book’s themes, from housing to sustainability to inequality. The symbology proved a suitable reading framework for the book’s ominous urban rumblings as well as familiar images of transient expat life in a 21st century “creative” city. Get the book from your library and retrace this four-part geometrically patterned book report or try your own “graphic” approach on your reading list. 

How do you approach reading and thinking about a book that is, mysteriously, called Oval? I stared at the cover of Elvia Wilk’s Berlin novel, flipping it over as if I could crack open some prophecy from the purple egg shape illustration. Taking up the US author’s challenge, I followed form(s): looking for lines, triangles, rectangles, and ovals to reveal some of the book’s themes, from housing to sustainability to inequality. The symbology proved a suitable reading framework for the book’s ominous urban rumblings as well as familiar images of transient expat life in a 21st century “creative” city. Get the book from your library and retrace this four-part geometrically patterned book report or try your own “graphic” approach on your reading list.  

What comes to mind when you think of German food and drinks? If I had to guess, it’s probably one (or all) of the following: Weißwurst, Currywurst, Sauerbraten, Brezel, and Bier. But is that really all that German cuisine has to offer? In this blog, I’ll offer you a taste of how diverse German cuisine really is, and its importance to German gastrodiplomacy in the Midwest.

As the Bavarians say, “beer is liquid bread.” But how is beer used as a diplomatic tool in the US-German relationship? In this blog, I’ll talk about how beer diplomacy supports the promotion of mutual understanding between Germans and Americans and share insights from my interview with the KC Bier Company, a pioneering German-style beer company in Kansas City, Missouri. 

Lutz Dammbeck is one of many artists who turned their back on the German Democratic Republic (GDR) before the Fall of the Wall. What made him leave?
 

Novels by German writers of Soviet-Jewish backgrounds have stood out in the literary and general fiction world since the 2000s. Why are these stories of identity and hybridity so compelling? 

As the saying goes, “the easiest way to win hearts and minds is through the stomach”. But what is gastrodiplomacy all about?  Offering some food for thought on gastrodiplomacy as a concept, and how German food and drinks serve as ambassadors in the Midwest.

The Corona Passion Play: Nicolas Stehman and the Schauspielhaus Zürich’s work in progress and immediate theatrical response to the outbreak of COVID-19 and its implications.

Thirty Years ago a country disappeared: The GDR, German Democratic Republic. But what happened to its culture? What remains meaningful? Was it all too provincial, more folklore than art? In this blog series, we are tracing some of the GDR’s cultural heritage in obvious and not so obvious places.

Since their invention, films have offered a brief escape from the often boring reality of our daily routines. For some filmgoers, there is no better film genre that offers this escape than that of the genre film.

Remember what we discovered from a close reading of Edgar Leciejewski’s bildarchive, dine & dash? How a slim photo book can be a Polaroid series, image archive, exhibition catalog, postcard collection, limited edition artwork, and a flip-book. Leipzig photographer Leciejewski is the best inspiration for working from a strong concept, transgressing art (and book) conventions, and realizing story opportunities right in front of you. Time to be your own art director and make a flip-book.

As we celebrate cinema’s 125th birthday in 2020, the flip-book and its ancient predecessors are where images learned to move. And it is where this essay series on Leipzig photographer Edgar Leciejewski started when I flipped the ten pages of his dine & dash series of the window views.

Jan St. Werner is a fearless sound innovator who is continuously redefining the space he works in. Whether experiments with the latest 3-D speaker technology or insights into psychoacoustic idiosyncrasies, his explorations ultimately find their way into new compositions and sound installations.

 

In this essay series, we have gotten to know Leipzig photographer Edgar Leciejewski as a critical observer and creator, a meticulous archivist, an eager collaborator, and a shape-shifting multimedia artist. Now we hear from Leciejewski himself on being home and away, inhabiting analog and digital worlds, and why he has always wanted to work with children.
 

For German-Iranian Filmmaker Faraz Shariat and Jünglinge, the film production collective behind his multi-award-winning debut film Futur Drei (No Hard Feelings), the question of “where are you from?” is best answered by showing where they are going.

Talking about the prolific use of windows throughout art history, let’s keep looking from the inside out and the outside in and see how the digital world changes our gaze. After investigating Leipzig photographer Edgar Leciejewski’s “dashes” out of his studio window, the first photo here takes us inside his studio—including the shadows his windows throw onto his interior Polaroid display.

Are arts and culture of systematic importance and therefore worthy of support during times of crisis? How a misleading definition of the term results in disastrous conditions for Germany’s arts and culture scene.

“We can hear our interaction with the world very, very clearly, but we can overlook a lot very easily.” Sound thinker and composer Sam Auinger has cultivated an artistic practice around listening to and harmonizing the sounds of our urban infrastructure.
 

“I inscribe a quadrangle of right angles, which is considered to be an open window through which I see what I want to paint.” This is how Italian Renaissance artist Leon Battista Alberti famously recorded the first rules for depicting perspective in 1435. Six hundred years later, these still hold true (and are still challenged) as in the work of Leipzig photographer Edgar Leciejewski and many other artists across the genres.

My last post shed some light on Berlin as the birthplace of German Cinema. One hundred and twenty-five years after the Skladanowsky brother’s Wintergarten program, the annual achtung berlin - new berlin film award continues to shine the spotlight on films made in Berlin.

While Polaroids seem fun, fast and freely accessible, they come with some in-built baggage, from negotiating visual absences to color casts to ecological concerns. Leipzig photographer Edgar Leciejewski, who has produced thousands of Polaroids in his bildarchive series dine & dash, comes away with a sobering conclusion.

For sound artist Katrin Emler, aka Katrinem, urban spaces are best explored on foot with open ears, through the lens of her gait’s rhythm. This post looks at her approach to investigating sound and space.
 

Experimenting with techniques of artistic expressions in the 1960s and 1970s, the oeuvre of German writer Rolf Dieter Brinkmann is based on profound reflections about art and media, and our perception.

In 2008, a collector gave Leipzig photographer Edgar Leciejewski 8,000 Polaroid films, out of the last Polaroid production before the product was discontinued. From this, the artist developed the photo series dine & dash of inside and outside views of his studio.

German music lost one of its most eminent hopefuls when Rudi Stephan was killed during WWI. His remaining works give us a tantalizing glimpse of what might have been.

​My previous post pulled back the curtain on Lodderbast, Germany's smallest cinema, offering one example of how great cinema can come in rather small packages. In short, pun intended, the same can be said for the actual films themselves. 

Leipzig photographer Edgar Leciejewski’s wide range, formal and thematic eclecticism and playfulness are reflected in his panoptic life and career path, and in his “bildarchive: dine & dash,” the art book we are looking at in this essay series.

This blog series discusses the various approaches taken by German theatre practitioners as a reaction to the ongoing pandemic. The arts collective Forced Entertainment decided with their production “End Meeting For All” to transform a Zoom call into a stage.

Next on our list of musical hidden gems is Romantic composer, pianist, and organist Julius Reubke, a dazzling talent whose life was tragically cut short.    

This series invites you to open your ears and join a fascinating selection of sound artists on deep-listening journeys into the realm of sound and space that may just change your take on the world.
 

In the introduction to this essay series, we started to unravel the layers of Leipzig photographer Edgar Leciejewski’s photo book “bildarchive”. Continuing our close reading, we delve into more forms and functions of art books and ask the artist about his concept and context.

As we have involuntarily received a glimpse into our digital future and have been forced to spend our lives predominantly online for many months, Cultural Programs Curator Bettina Wodianka discusses artistic approaches that critically reflect the impact of media and our habits related to media usage.

Tucked away among office buildings and apartments in Hannover’s Warmbüchenviertel neighborhood, stands Lodderbast, Germany’s smallest cinema, and according to its owners, possibly the smallest in the world. 

To start off this Hidden Gems blog series, let’s take a look at a member of the New German School who you most likely have never heard of, Felix Draeseke.

You don’t have to go to a gallery to experience art and explore how it inspires us. In this series, meet Leipzig photographer Edgar Leciejewski, hear about the rise and fall of the Polaroid, and make your own flip book.

Cultural Programs Curator and blogger Lena Kuhnt addresses the challenges and opportunities that Germany’s performing arts scene faces today, including reactions to the pandemic and their implications.