brot

200 Years of History as Facade Performance

Festival "Relations in Time" – 25 years Kunsthaus KuLe August 2015

The sky is the limit. This is how work on the facade performance BROT, meaning “bread,” began. The idea to tell the story of Kunsthaus KuLe and its locality had developed into an attempt to give a face to the changes in the area. The staging should not start with the fall of the wall or the squatting of KuLe, but most definitely two hundred years earlier. 

 

The basic frame of the show crystallized from the structure of chiming bells: a scenic tableau should take place on the facade on the hour, every hour. Bread as a staple food should inform every scene: a bakery had existed in Auguststraße 10 since 1801, and the bakery is still a special performance space in KuLe today. In memory of the Medieval troubadours, a narrator leads us through the scenes. Acting as a representative of the ruling system, he transforms his appearance with the changing times. The performers, acting at the windows and on the facade using abseiling techniques, embody typical figures from the populace. A band accentuates the action with music. 

The historical material was structured into six epochs. The scenes that were developed from this were introduced by an acoustic signal typical for that particular period in time. 

  • 1st Image: 1700 AD, Arrival of the Poor 
  • 2nd Image: 1840–1918, Fireland: Workers' Quarter
  • 3rd Image: THE ’20s, Variety and Red Lights 
  • 4th Image: 1933–1945, Persecution, Hiding, Desertion
  • 5th Image: 1949–1990, East Germany and the Fall of the Wall
  • 6th Image: 2000 - 2015, Onwards and Prospects

funded by Rudolf Augstein-Stiftung and Bezirkskulturfonds Berlin-Mitte

created and performed by: Catia de Almeida Santos, Ursula Maria Berzborn, Nils Dümcke, Clara Gracia, Barbara Gstaltmayr, Helene Kvint, Charles Matuschewski, Andrew Medwed, Axel Meyer, Gerda Mustroph, Tom Mustroph, Karolina Pawelska, Barbara Pradzynska, Philipp Schenker, Torsten Holger Schlopsnies, Wenzel Schmidt, Sergio Serrano, Joachim Villegas, Daniela Vorachkova, numerous guests of KuLe, and the Krasnajas

PHOTO: ANDREAS KERMANN


VIDEO: STEFFI WEISSMANN, MICHAEL ZIMMER



 

 

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