FEBRUARY 2023

The cooperation between the Claussen Simon Foundation and the Institute for Culture and Media Management (kmm) as part of the Hamburg Talks for Culture & Media brings us a highly interesting and prominent guest right at the beginning of the month: Prof. Dr. h.c. Jutta Allmendinger, Ph.D. is President of the Social Science Research Center Berlin. Her research focuses on aspects of the labor market, social policy and social inequality. She also works on the sociology of the life course.

Together with Prof. Manuel J. Hartung (Chairman of the Executive Board of the ZEIT Foundation), she will discuss the question "How does trust develop when nobody wants to do anything about it?" on February 1.

There are still a few places available, which you can request by email. If you can't get a place, make a note of the equally interesting dates on April 19 and May 31.

Hamburg Talks for Culture & Media on 1.2.

Inspired by the near-death experiences of two friends, Tobi Pfeil made this subject the theme of his master's degree in multimedia composition. The descriptions of dying and reawakening form the basis of his piece Afterlife.

"I have always been fascinated by death and the idea of the afterlife or nothingness. I believe that a personal confrontation with death can be very positive - if you are aware of your mortality, you have a reason to live more intensely."

Afterlife is a kind of opera in the gaming universe. The music plays with elements of game music, epic film music and experimental electronic music. The narratives are conveyed through highly stylized vocals - but stylized differently than in classical opera. The multimedia artist has built a model of life after death in the game engine Unreal Engine, so that gamer fans and fans of mythological fantasy films will get their money's worth here.

...But not only: "My hope is that the multimedia elements will draw us into the piece immersively - and that we can become aware on a meta-level of how we are being drawn in. Feeling ourselves - that would definitely be a fundamental motivation for the multimedia setup."

Afterlife on 10.2.

The events of the past year have repeatedly challenged us to take a political stance and take a stand. First for Ukraine and then for the Iranians oppressed in their own country. We expressed our solidarity in various statements and events. Silence was not an option and so we looked for forms of expression that would fit in with an artistic university and make sense.

In Focus Iran is the title of a series of events that we are holding together with the Körber Foundation from February 15. It is a continuation and further development of the inaugural event last November, with which we responded at very short notice to the strong desire for action from our students of Iranian origin in particular.

We are devoting ourselves to social and political events in Iran from the perspective of art. We are giving the political discourse a stage and want to encourage young artists to deal with political issues artistically.

On February 15, the focus will be on the voice of women. We have been able to engage the German-Iranian journalist Gilda Sahebi as an expert on the situation of women in Iran. The detailed program will be published on our website shortly.

In Focus Iran on 15.2.

The final productions of this year's drama directing course, which you can experience at Kampnagel from February 17, are entitled Endspiel.

That sounds dystopian and tempting at the same time. Tempting, because the last production at the theater academy is also the departure into the professional world. Dystopian, because upheavals are raging in the world that seem to be taking on endgame-like traits - and which we are challenged to cast in theatrical forms.

Above all, however, the focus is on the game. Anticipating the world in play, playfully discovering and developing new options, utopias, these are impulses that defy the fatal endgame thinking.
Daria Geske opens with Outro

Final productions at Kampnagel from February 17th

February also presents itself as a kind of endless vocal festival of the most diverse formats:

The popular opera concisa remains true to itself and at the same time breaks new ground when it pairs up for the first time - as usual to the point - with Prof. Gordon Kampe's composition class and performs some world premieres with reference to Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot". The second half of the evening will be more classical. The singers of the opera class will perform.
opera concisa from February 10-12

The singing festival Prima la Parola enters its second round. Following winding paths of words and sound, it is dedicated to the interaction between text and music, between voice and instrument, and shows the contours of changing soundscapes through which singing moves and tells its stories. The festival is divided into two evenings with different focuses.
Prima la Parola on February 18 and 19

In 1811, Carl Friedrich Zelter, head of the Berlin Sing-Akademie, described Johann Sebastian Bach's Mass in B minor as "the greatest work of art the world has ever seen". Even today, it is still celebrated as the mass of all masses and is a permanent fixture on the concert stage.
The university orchestra under the direction of Prof. Ulrich Windfuhr and his conducting class will perform the great work in cooperation with the Lübeck University of Music, which is contributing a choir and soloists for the occasion.
Symphony concert on 25 and 26 February

The whole thing is peppered with one or two song recitals and studio concerts, the SingOn! school music evening on February 20, the Mozart competition on February 5 and a concert with the top-class chamber choir on February 25, so that lovers of the art of singing can really enjoy themselves.

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Short and intense. February is usually...