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FREISPRECHANLAGE. STAGING OPINION
cURATOR | CReator
2011, Munich/Germany | festival
PROJECT PARTNERS, SUPPORTERS & VENUES: PLATFORM3 - SPACES FOR CONTEMPORARY ART, CHOIR PROJECT CAIRO, ART BABEL, IMPORT/EXPORT, PATHOS TRANSPORT THEATER, MORITZ S. BINDER, KUNSTWERKSTADT
FEATURED ARTISTS: CHRISTINE AUERBACH, EXPRESS BRASS BAND, DANIEL GRAZIADEI, ADHAM HAFEZ, FRANZISKA HOLZHEIMER, ANNA MCCARTHY, FLORIAN FROESE-PEECK, SALAM YOUSRY, AHMED ZEIDAN
The project
Over the course of twelve days, the interdisciplinary festival investigated the concept of freedom of expression and offered a stage in Munich for its manifold forms by way of an artistic conversation with Cairo, where only a few months earlier political upheavals had overthrown a dictator. The program included a weeklong Choir Workshop, a poetry jam and concert, a live-streamed sound dialogue between Munich and Cairo, a panel discussion, an intervention in public space, and two artistic works which were partly installed and screened in public space. The series of events and different formats sought to engage the visitors and participants of the festival in a multilingual conversation with the performative, the political and the poetic.
A few months later, I was invited to continue the project in a slightly different format for a city-wide artistic intervention.
My responsibilities
As initiator and curator, I drafted the project, researched and invited participating artists and speakers, communicated with venues, partners, and governmental and municipal authorities, and applied for funding. I supported and guided the artists in the development of their artistic works, procured technical equipment and worked in close collaboration with technicians, oversaw the space set-up, and planned, programmed and moderated events. The budgeting and accounting was my responsibility, as much as the production and creative supervision of communication and press material. I handled all kinds of last-minute emergencies (like the lack of internet during a live-stream sound dialogue), and ventured out with one of the artists in the middle of the night to support him during a guerrilla screening all over town.
WHAT YOU MUST NOT HEAR, Ahmed Zeidan, 2011
The short film presents Ahmed Zeidan’s project for which he asked strangers to tell his camera a secret. The confessions were recorded without sound, and later projected in public spaces in Munich.
SORRY I CAN'T HEAR YOU. SPEAK UP, Anna McCarthy, 2011
A short feature of artist Anna McCarthy’s mural for which she drew inspiration from traditional Irish murals as much as tales of female experiences during the Bosnia war.
THE CHOIR PROJECT
Gibberish, fluxus luxus, and a lot of embarrassment was overcome in and through the creative process: the short film documents the weeklong choir project workshop conducted by Salam Yousry.
