Special Events at the Prinzregententheater
Date & Time
Tuesday, July 27, 7.00 - 11.00 pm
Venue & Room
Prinzregententheater Munich, Prinzregentenplatz 12, Grosses Haus & Gartensaal
7.00 - 8.30 pm, Grosses Haus
Welcome
- Klaus Zehelein, President Bavarian Theatre Academy
- Brian Singleton, President IFTR/FIRT
- Claire Hudson, President SIBMAS
Panel Discussion: Curatorial Practices and the Public Sphere
Chair
Birgit Wiens, LMU Munich, Germany
Participants
- Claudia Blank, Deutsches Theatermuseum, Munich, Germany
- Gabriele Brandstetter, Free University Berlin, Germany
- Jane Pritchard, Victoria & Albert Museum / Theatre & Performance Coll., London, UK
- Richard Stone, National Library of Australia
Abstract
The term "curation" has gained in recent years a new plurality of meanings and applications. What was once an occupational title referring to the keeper or custodian of a museum or other archival collection is now applied to a wide range of different activities in the visual and performing arts. "To curate" something may refer to the conceptual work on an exhibition but can equally mean the organization of a performing arts festival. In the context of contemporary art, curation implies the combination of different art forms under a guiding idea to be displayed or exhibited for the public. Thus curation has become a key practice at the interface of critical theory and practice exploring the changing relationships between the arts, exhibition and performance spaces, and audiences. Our aim in this panel is to bring together representatives from SIBMAS and IFTR to exchange ideas about curation today and in the future. We wish to explore how better cooperation and more lines of communication can be established between academic scholarship on the one hand and the professional practices in libraries and museums on the other. Both activities are coming under increasing pressure to communicate with the wider public and it is here that new forms of curatorial practices provide an important point of intersection. What is the relationship between specialist and public interest? How does one bridge the gap between live and archived performing arts? What are limits and common denominators of curatorial practices between museum and festival?
8.30 − 9.00 pm, Grosses Haus
Theatre Performance: Ursonate by Kurt Schwitters
The German avant-garde artist Kurt Schwitters (1887−1948) managed to explore new forms of artistic expression combining visual arts with literature in his famous collages. He named his artwork MERZ (deriving from the German word Kommerz ; engl. commerce) which was also the title of his dadaistic art magazine published between 1923 and 1932. As the editor of Merz, Schwitters was able to show his versatile artistic skills ranging from poetry and narratives to theories in drama. The Ursonate, a dadaistic opera of spoken sounds, has to be seen in the context of his visual artwork. Its meaningless sounds vary in rhythm, intonation and volume and therefore challenge the imagination of readers, performers and the audience alike. The artistic form of the Ursonate does not depend on the meaning of a specific language and is therefore "understandable" for an international audience. Whether you speak Arabic, French or Spanish, you will grasp just as much as the German performers on stage. During their semester holidays (2004) a group of 12 Munich students worked on a stage adaptation of the Ursonate which they rehearsed especially for a Festival in Agadir/ Morocco. The "setting" is a traditional Bavarian feast. True to the dadaistic pattern, it is a fast-moving and humorous performance combining an ironical treatment of Bavarian clichés with onomatopoetic sounds. The basic themes of love, happiness and dispute are conveyed in an mode which breaks down the boundaries between the artistic genres.
Director: Katrin Kazubko
Performers: Evelyn Balan, Berenika Szymanski, Veronika Demuschewski, Denise Felsecker, Katrin Kazubko, Antje Otto, Marion Schneider, Sarah Hakenberg, Daniel Heßler, Stefan Strasser, Bernd Schneid, Sebastian Linz, Maximilian Specketer
Duration: 35 minutes
Copyrights: Gustav Kiepenheuer-Bühnenvertriebs GmbH/Berlin
9.00 − 11.00 pm, Gartensaal