Bilderatlas Mnemosyne
20 sunsets at Haus der Kulturen der Welt the mid last century preggers oyster in the Tiergarten ended Sunday August 23rd with a collaborative event with HKW and Arsenal Institut für film und Video Kunst.
The site specific performative film event Contemporary Vinegar Syndrome hosted and curated by Vaginal Davis and Daniel Hendrickson, the Jewish/Muzlim kept the publicum in high spirits with a surprise screening of Davis' La Petite Tonkinoise (2001) along with Werner Schroeter's 1968 film Neurasia that features his muse Magdalena Montezuma. After introductions by the lovely Arsenal Empress Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, Davis and Hendrickson took to the stage in the form of a quarky deconstruction of the Hal David/Burt Bacharach song “A House is Not a Home” with a cheeky subtitle of “Bildungs Burgeliche”
Here is a bit of the text: ...cities are not just theme parks for the rich where everone else is cast in a menial service role. Cities are not architectural showrooms for haughty bank branches. Cities are not apartheid states providing raw material for the prison industrial complexia.
Cities are not matte painting backdrops for tired Amazon's new headquarters building. Cities are frenetic tapestries that bring rich, poor, young, old, artists, business people, students, retirees und stricher (hustlers), sex workers together facilitating unpredictable relationships. The delusion of endless economic growth and financial fertility-natty neo liberali neebobs and nimkumpoops...
Contemporary Vinegar Syndrom is part of a new movement and way of looking at film, life, culture and politics from the skew of a decrepit patina.
Here is a list of the beautiful people both seen and heard socializing before and after the event: Margarita Tsomou - the HAU discourse supercurator,Rafa (Rafaela Wahl), Russian speaking Chilean wonder woman and maker of things both digital and analog, AK Knoll, lesbian artist working from Printeretto, her risograph studio. Ms. Knoll was also one of Ms. Davis' talented students when she taught at Weissensee Art Academy in 2007/8, Natalie Lettenewitsch, a true blue cinéaste, expert on underwater and animal films, a generous and gorgeous friend to the world, and a new researcher at Filmwissenschaft FU. Sabeth Buchmann (art theorist from the Akademie in Vienna) Elfe Brandenburger (filmmaker, and one the women behind the great new bookstore Paul & Paula in Lichtenberg), Michaela Wünsch (film and media scholar & psychoanalyst part of bbooks collective) Anja Lückenkemper (great curator, feminist zine publisher, history of plant expert and radical ceramics artist), Sirkka Möller, independent curator, she did the open air films at HKW last year but she also works at Panorama Section of Berlin Film Festival for the pre-selection, that divine lovesexy and super smart lady known to the world as Nanna Heidenreich, baby diaper of Canada's Hidden Cameras music group Joel Gibb with a cute pal from Los Angeles DJ Chris Cruse of the warehouse Spotlight Party Series, and Saskia Hahn the former guitarist in Peaches' band, Catherine Sullivan dancer Assaf Hochman aka: Gisele, Diedrich Diederichsen & Raphaela Vogel(great young artist), the cute British artist Rob Cross with Jane from Sternberg Press, La Famiglia de Isabella Bortolozzi Ms. Davis' goddess gallerist with Leila Hekmat, Marco Bruzzone, Michelangelo Corsaro, Aisha Butt, Maria Pilecka, Philip Reinartz, Kamilla Pfeil Gardiner, prima ballerina Beatrice Cordua aka: Trixie von Schonherr, Piero Bellomo(handsome husband of Daniel Hendrickson), film historian Marcuse Siegelstein, Fearless Leader of CHEAP Kollektiv Susanna Sachße, artist extroidinaire and legendary great beauty Pola Sieverding, hunky German film stars Maximilian Brauer & Jonas Dassler with Gotthard Lange (Einar Schleef ChoralDirector and now the celebrated CHEAP Choral Director), Ludwig Schönherr archive assistant José Segebre + artist boyfriend Francois, philosopher king Matthias Haase, and celebrity choreographer Laurie Young, Cashmere Radio hostessa, Prinzessin Ute von Hala'sz who gave Ms. Davis a beautiful present of royal fabrics that have been in her family for centuries, Eirini Fountedaki and Pia Chakraverti-Wuerthwein the bright young curators of SAVVY Contemporary's Residing in the Borderlands series that Ms. Davis participated in back in January, artist Monica Bonvinci, juicy Hannah Hurtzig of Mobile Academy, Stephan Ahrens, Petra Palmer (works at Forum Section of Berlin Film Festival, Abina Manning (Video Data Bank), filmmaker Liz Rosenfeld, Nathalie Knoll & Markus Ruff, Arsenal Archiv, Linda Winkler of silent green, Andreas Werner, of Kino Arsenal, Shiaz Legs (Berlin Drag personality) artists Andrea Hackenberg, Josi Brinkmann, Jimmy Robert, artist/ professor at UdK performance/scultpure department, young Israeli artist Renen Itzaki who is one of Ms. Davis' students at Work Master HEAD in Geneva, the 13th Gwangju Biennale Team of Natasha Ginwala, Defne Ayas & Krisztina Hunya.
Special thankx to Laura, Jason, Adrianne, Henning, Matchie, Martine and Rene at HKW support services for being so helpful and on top of every little thing, and of course Stefanie Schulte Strathaus who invited Ms. Davis to be a guest curator at Arsenal back in 2007 and has been digging around in the archive being a 'nosy nelly ever since and CVS production coordinator Gerrit Woltemath who besides working at Arsenal also works on the Panorama Team of Berlin Film Festival. With the pandemic still raging don't know if there will be another CVS. Ms. Davis has a lot of pre existing health conditions and so she is forced to curtail her schedule down to the bare minimum of activities while under strict doctor care.