CAA Academy offers CAAs members and supporters a cultural program structured by different disciplines to increase the dialogue with Berlins most interesting figureheads of the contemporary art scene. Discussions and introductions are designated to increase the understanding of contemporary arts and culture and deepen the dialogue. With studio visits, artist talks or guided tours CAA Berlin aimes at facilitate its friends and supporters inside views of different positions of contemporary arts and culture in Berlin.

Mariam führt ein Doppelleben: Zu Hause die folgsame Tochter strenger muslimischer Eltern, auf der Straße die selbstbewusste ArabQueen, die mit ihrer Freundin Lena tanzen geht und sich andere kleine Freiheiten erschleicht. Als ihre Eltern eine Ehe für sie arrangieren wollen, steht Mariam vor einer Entscheidung, die ihr ganzes weiters Leben bestimmen wird. Die Journalistin Güner Balci schildert anhand der (wahren) Geschichte Mariams die Zerreißprobe, vor der viele junge muslimische Frauen in Deutschland stehen: der Tradition zu folgen oder sich von ihrer Familie zu emanzipieren – mit allen Konsequenzen. Mit „ArabQueen“ greift der Heimathafen Neukölln ein weiteres brisantes und virulentes Thema auf. Das Stück beschließt nach „Arabboy“ und „Sisters“ die Neukölln-Trilogie.

Die Berliner Staatsoper begibt sich mit Luigi Nonos Meisterwerk »Al gran sole carico d’amore« auf neue Wege und verlässt dafür ihr gegenwärtiges Quartier im Schiller Theater. Nach dem großen Erfolg bei den Salzburger Festspielen richten Regisseurin Katie Mitchell und der Dirigent Ingo Metzmacher gemeinsam mit mehr als 200 beteiligten Künstlern die monumentale Musiktheater nun in einem ehemaligen Heizkraftwerk in Berlin-Mitte ein. Die Tribüne für 929 Zuschauer steht bereits, und die Proben haben begonnen.

Zur #11 Lecture at Home bei Loretta Würtenberger freuen wir uns sehr auf Thomas Ostermeier, den Künstlerischer Leiter der Schaubühne Berlin. Unter dem Titel: „Maske und Wahrheit – Die ganze Welt ist ein Theater (Totus mundus agit histrionem)“ wird er uns einen Einblick in seine Arbeit als Regisseur, insbesondere seiner Shakespeare Inszenierungen, geben. Seit mehr als zwölf Jahren leitet Thomas Ostermeier die Schaubühne. Die einen Kritiker verteufeln seinen Hang zu Zeitgeist und Oberfläche, andere bejubeln seine Kraft und Genauigkeit, die aus seinem Theater eine Stätte der Wahrheitssuche machten.

Zum Einstieg in das Programm der CAA Academy 2012 wenden wir uns in den dunklen Tagen der bunt-psychedelischen Kunst des finnischen Künstlers Sture Johannessons in der Galerie Kraupa-Tuskany zu. Alt-Hippie und Computerkunstpionier Johannesson setzte radikale politische Parolen neben Bob Dylan-Zitate und löste damit einen Skandal aus. Dass er – als „Psychopath“ diffamiert – nicht sogleich polizeilichem Gewahrsam zugeführt wurde, lag, laut Johannesson, nur daran, dass es sich beim Direktor der Lunder Polizei um einen Kunstliebhaber handelte.

Besuch in der Galerie Zink zur Performance von und mit Reynold Reynolds „The Lost Film Project“. Im Anschluss Empfang in den Privaträumen von Michael Zink & Artist Talk mit Reynold Reynolds http://www.galeriezink.de/

This time we are hosting the concept and video artist Christian Jankowski. In a relaxed club atmosphere he is going to present the musik and work of his life. Additionally, in a conversation with Alexandra von Stosch, an insight view of his work will be given.

Juerg Judin, collector and gallery owner, commissioned the architect team bfs d -bröer flachsbarth schultz and planbb brakel, to restore an old gas station and extend it with a glass facade in a part of Schöneberg, which is not exactly known as beeing very noble. There, he shows his art in a surrounding of the fifties.

Dr. Katja Blomberg leads the friends and supporters through the exhibition “Music Box” by the Dutch artist-composer William Engelen at the Haus am Waldsee.
Chocolate bars, vacuum cleaner bag contents, rubber trees, diaries, stomach growling and weather data are the parameters of the compositions by William Engelen. The Dutch artist and composer designs his scores in the form of graphical notations. His work is often inspired by cultural memories of different levels of perception. They range from the “Big Bang” to chocolate dreams of everyones childhood. You use the weather data in the first decade of the early twentyfirst Century or capture the unconscious musicality of their own  intestines.

Antoine de Galbert sammelt seit 1987 zeitgenössische Kunst mit einer bewussten Entscheidung gegen den Mainstream und bestimmte Trends. Volkskunst, „art brut“ und religiöse Objekte ergänzen seine Sammlung zeitgenössischer Werke. Das Interesse an Motiven der Vergänglichkeit und Sexualität, verbindet Antoine de Galbert mit dem Essener Sammler Thomas Olbricht, in dessen Räumen in Berlin nun Teile der Sammlung de Galberts gezeigt werden.

Radtour durch den Wrangelkiez in x-Berg mit Besichtigung der Arbeiten von Urban Art Künstlern wie z.B. Blu, Nomad und ROA mit Jan Kage alias Yaneq
„SIE KOMMEN JEDEN TAG UND VERUNSTALTEN UNSERE STÄDTE: SIE HINTERLASSEN ÜBERALL IHRE IDIOTISCHEN SCHRIFTZÜGE: SIE MACHEN AUS DER WELT EINEN HÄßLICHEN ORT: WIR NENNEN SIE WERBEAGENTUREN UND STADTPLANER“ BANKSY

Die PREVIEW Berlin lädt die CAA zur Vorbesichtigung der 7. PREVIEW Berlin in den Hangar 2 des Flughafen Tempelhof ein. Am Tag vor der Eröffnung werden wir gemeinsam mit den Organisatoren und den Ausstellern den Aufbau der Messe erleben und haben im Anschluss bei Brot&Wein Gelegenheit zum Gespräch u. a. mit Galerien wie: Hamish Morrison Galerie, Berlin, Gallerie Maria Veie, Oslo, ME Contemporary, Kopenhagen, Galerie Hunchentoot, Berlin, WAGNER + PARTNER, Berlin, Wendt + Friedmann Galerie, Berlin, WIDMER + THEODORIDIS contemporary, Zürich Galerie Ilka Bree, Bordeaux

Gemeinsamer Besuch des Eröffnungskonzerts des musikfest Berlin in der Philharmonie mit dem Philadelphia Orchestra. Zur Aufführung kommen Werke von Rihm, Liszt und Berlioz.

Ein Gespräch zur Musik von Franz Liszt und Wolfgang Rihm mit Dr. Winrich Hopp (Leiter des Musikfest Berlin) und Dr. Margarete Zander (Ultraschall Festival und CAA-Expertin für zeitgenössische Musik).

based in Berlin zeigt Arbeiten von rund 80 Künstlern, die in Berlin leben und arbeiten. Die Ausstellung umfasst alle zeitgenössischen Kunstpraktiken von Malerei und Zeichnung über Skulptur, Fotografie, Film und Video, von Textarbeiten und Performances bis zu Installationen. Essentieller Teil der Ausstellung ist daher ein umfangreiches Veranstaltungsprogramm mit Screenings, Performances und Live-Acts, Workshops und Debatten. „Wir wollen eine räumliche und zeitliche Konzentration erzeugen – die vielen künstlerischen Aktivitäten bündeln und einer breiten Öffentlichkeit zugänglich machen“, sagen die Kuratoren.

Einladung des Deutschen Theaters zur Eröffnung der Autorentheatertage am 15. Juni mit Elke Schmitter und Ulrich Khuon. Unter dem Titel „Make me laugh“ hat sich die Alleinjurorin der zweiten Berliner Autorentheatertage Elke Schmitter (Romanautorin und Spiegel-Redakteurin) von den noch zu entdeckenden Dramatikerinnen und Dramatikern gewünscht.

Im Anschluss besuchen wir das Gastspiel der Münchner Kammerspiele „Alpsegen“ von Feridun Zaimoglu und Günter Senkel in der Regie von Sebastian Nübling.

Founded in 1980 and situated in Frankfurt am Main since 1985, the Ensemble Modern (EM) is one of the world’s leading ensembles of Contemporary Music. Currently, the EM is comprised of 19 soloists from Argentina, Bulgaria, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, Poland, and Switzerland, all of whom provide the ensemble with its rich cultural background. n 2003, the German Federal Cultural Foundation nominated the Ensemble Modern as one of Germany’s »beacons« of contemporary culture. With this honor, the Ensemble Modern receives a funding package from the German Federal Cultural Foundation to support three important pillars of the Ensemble Modern – the Ensemble Modern Orchestra, the International Ensemble Modern Academy and eminent projects of Ensemble Modern.

Philipp Lachenmann, born in Munich 1963, first trained to become an architectural model builder, before studying art history, philosophy and film. He first started making art in 1997. Lachenmann primarily works in Cologne, Paris and Los Angeles.

The Hamburger Bahnhof proudly presents the exhibition, ‘Some Scenic Views’, to mark the acquisition this year of Philipp Lachenmann’s video installation Space_Surrogate I (Dubai). Eight works on show from the areas of video, film, photography, sculpture and sound, perfectly demonstrate Lachenmann’s exploration of the connections between the moving and static image, as well as his structural treatment of cinematic and photographic space. At the forefront of his artistic endeavour is the probing of the mechanisms of the imaginary and, in particular, shifts in the collective memory. The `scenic’ in the exhibition’s title also evokes the idea of ‘scenery’ and ‘mise en scene’ in artificially created and staged productions and thus serves as an indication of the terrain on which the works in the exhibition are played out.

For CAAs friends and supporters  Berlin-based artist Cornelia Renz will contribute the sound of her live and work and become the DJ in the relaxed atmosphere of a club. The talk with the artist will be moderated by Dr. Alexandra von Stosch.

The Berlin-based video and film artist, Julian Rosefeldt (1965), who has now established an international reputation, has won the ‘Vattenfall Contemporary 2010’ award. The artist impressed the jury with his lavishly produced film installations, in which he portrays paradoxand irrational aspects of everyday life with opulent imagery.
Julian Rosefeldt’s film installations present the paradoxical and irrational aspects of modern life and work using subtle comedy and irony. His film work “The Shift” (2008) is documented via a great number of images as well as being re-combined with his works from the 1990s. These earlier works delineate the point of departure of the artist’s interest in forgotten and hidden places. In “The Shift” these mutate into the claustrophobic inner life of a technoid, deserted future world.

In the third year of its cooperation with Deutsche Guggenheim CAA its pleased to invite its friends and supporters to the third annual party together with the members of Guggenheim Club. On the occasion of this event, an auction will take place. The benefit is designated to enable young Berlin-based artists from all cultural fields to follow their ambitions and to professionalize their work after finishing their studies through six-month scholarships. The auction will be followed by the party.

This year, PREVIEW Berlin invites CAA to take a look behind the scenes of the 6th PREVIEW Berlin in hangar 2 of the former airport Berlin Tempelhof. On the opening day, we will experience the build-up of the fair together with its exhibitors and organizers. With bread & wine we will subsequently have the chance to talk with international gallerist from Riflemaker (London), Kishon Gallery (Tel Aviv), Art Nueve (Murcia), Pilar Serra-Estiarte Gallery (Madrid), Rosa Santos (Valencia), Jarmuschek + Partner (Berlin), Nusser&Baumgart (Munich), Galerija Marisall (Zagreb), Maksla XO (Riga), heliumcowboy artspace (Hamburg).

One day, one of these teachers and saviours of the nation gets a unique opportunity to take a stance: while trying to introduce Friedrich Schiller and his idealistic visions of classic German theatre to a bunch of rowdy youths from a migrant background a fight erupts and a gun ends up in the teacher’s hands. A real gun. After a brief moment of hesitation, she takes her students hostage and forces them up onto the school stage to act out the play at gunpoint. For theatre, she reasons, is the only cure for the ills of this world. This hostage-taking drama liberally swerves between the genres of thriller, comedy and melodrama, and sets about deconstructing seemingly clear-cut identities with a vicious energy and humour. Verrücktes Blut is a co-production with Ruhr Triennial Arts Festival.

Folk songs. In 1964 this was nothing an avant-gardist would mingle with. Even the name suggested a mixture of Hippie movement, leftwing freedom songs and Biedermeier suspicion. Luciano Berio knew this, but held a secret: A composer who just went through a renaissance – Gustav Mahler. How many folk songs were integrated in his music? Not only fragments of The Youth’s Magic Horn were transplanted into symphonies – with or without lyrics. But also traditional folk music can be found in his musical work. This is theme is, what Berio is devising with absorbing folk music from all over the world, from Armenia to Aserbaidschan, from Italy and France to North America into his music. He is organizing foreign closeness – like Mahler.

The guestbook of this years MusikFest Berlin contains 37 soloists, 27 choirs, ensembles and orchestras of international standing – alongside with the orchestral flagships of Berlin. The program focuses on the musical Œuvre of Pierre Boulez, the great French composer and conductor, who’s 85th birthday is celebrated this year throughout the world of music, and his Italian colleague Luciano Berio.

„I believe that all of us – and from this the art world would benefit – should re-concentrate on art and its contents. Over the last decades museums have been forced to produce faster changing exhibitions, which were soon forgotten. The cannot be the entitlement of a museum.“

The 6. Berlin Biennale for contemporary art presents between the 11th of June and the 8th of August different positions of contemporary art. Michael Schmidts photographic work will build the first contribution to the Biennale and will be visible in public spaces throughout.
The program will be contextualized by an exhibition with works by Adolph Menzel (1815 – 1905), which has been curated by American art historian Michael Fried on invitation by Kathrin Rhomberg in collaboration with Alte Nationalgalerie and Kupferstichkabinett.

Each year in May people form all field of theatre-productions, journalists an d guests form all around the world are meeting in Berlin. Centerpiece of the meeting will be ten of the most remarkable productions, which are chosen by an independent jury out of 400 performances of this season.

In her work, New York-based artist Wangechi Mutu, who was born in Kenya, addresses issues related to black female identity between Western consumer culture, African politics and postcolonial history.
She became known for her collages that vacillate between beauty and
horror: By using the most various materials such as glitter, tape or
animal furs in combination with magazine clippings, she creates
idiosyncratic pieces that present the female body in a distorted,
seductive, or commanding way and in a state of constant
transformation.

Building upon the cosmic aspects of this quiet, meditative place, Turrell is creating the worldwide largest museum installation he has made to date at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, producing a light-filled space of experience in the tradition of his Ganzfeld Pieces. His installation will be an exploration of space and light: immaterial and material at once. The timelessness and fascination of James Turrell’s works derives from his incredible skill at capturing fleeting light and giving it the visual presence and tactile density of a physical body.

In squatting, Tilo Schulz and Jörg van den Berg articulate an exhibition practice, which emphasizes the presence and the actual experience of the artwork in the exhibition in terms of display as art mediation. squatting brings together works of art that address remembrance in thematic and structural terms, as well as pieces that deal with experiences o f places, situations, and people. Hence squatting establishes a direct connection between the Temporäre Kunsthalle and its location (the Schloßplatz) as a place that is permanently exposed to ideological appropriations.

The commitment to a solely subjective point of view is central to Thomas Olbrichts way of collecting. Surprises and antagonisms are not being dismissed – existentialist themes like dead, fugacity and Eros build central points. Big names like
Master of Parrots, John Currin, Eric Fischl, Franz Gertsch, Cindy Sherman or Marlene Dumas are facing newcomers like Corinne von Lebusa, Tomoko Nagai or Rachel Goodyear. Thereby, historic and timeless topics meet with modern and contemporary contents.

Since the early 1970s Rebecca Horn is working as an artist with performance, film, sculptural installation, sketching and photography.
The distinctiveness of her work lies in the precise technical and physical functionality with which Horn is bringing her sculptures to life. Her oeuvre seems to be held together by consequent logic: Each piece seems to develop right out of the former.

Nothing in Berlin is as constant as change. Apart of hysteric art fairs a formerly believed dead part of the city is developing into a must-see for those interested in art. New galleries, a Free Museum and some old acquaintances Potsdamer Strasse are becoming the antipole to Heidestrasse – and between both Neue Nationalgalerie and Hamburger Bahnhof are blazing.

For CAAs friends and supporters artist Tilo Schulz will as DJ contribute the sound of his live and work. In the relaxed atmosphere of a club guests can examine contemporary art from Berlin.

Tilo Schulz´s work can hardly be limited to a certain field. A broad range of disciplines characterizes the work of Leipzig-born Schulz: sculptures, paintings, shketches as well as object and installations. Moreover, he is working as a curator, author and docent. Central to his work is the question for ideologic and social motivation for exhibitions and aesthetics in which he is involving the visitor. „It is about a good balance between a single work, an exhibition and production – the fascination for a detail as a part of th whole… A piece of art is as complex as a machine, an exhibition as diverse as a film and the artist will then become a director or technician – it all differs on the perception.“ (Tilo Schulz). The talk with the artist will be moderated by Dr. Alexandra von Stosch.

Contemporary Arts Alliance Berlin is pleased to assign the CAA-Mentor-Scholarship 2010 to Nele Schwierkus. Since 2004 Nele Schwierkus studies at the UDK Berlin, from 2009 in the class of Florian Slotawa.

Her sculptural works focus on her environment and convince through humor, a playful interest in experimenting and an extraordinary sense for visual and acoustic presence of objects. Besides Nele Schwierkus consistent work, the CAA Jury has been persuaded by Schwierkus sensitive approach to her project in context with Campus Rütli, in which she will be working with scholars.

After we visited the shell of New Museum together with architect Alexander Schwarz (Chipperfield Berlin) two years ago, we will now be guided through the exhibition by Prof. Dr. Dietrich Wildung. A main feature of the newly erected building are its axial viewpoints. The association of different times, ruinous past and rebuilding, Nofretes brilliance and Helios, the god of the sun, transform the New Museum into a big stage. The concept of the exhibition compiled by Dietrich Wildung (former director of the Egyptian Museum) aims at cumulating themes rather than chronology. Central to the presentation is the Egyptian sculpture as “l’art pour l’art”.

Since 1995 the Canadian artist couple Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller are working interdisciplinary with visual arts, film, theater or sound. In their accessible installations the visitor becomes the protagonist. André Breton stated in his „Surrealist Manifest“ in 1924: „ I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, if one may so speak.“ But can the surreal be set into scene? In Janet Cardiff’s and George Bures Millers installations and the so-called „Walks“ Bretons vision seems to get to life. They take us to a surreal parallel world: audio-visual productions, who call for all senses.

Between 1986 and 1992 Martin Eder studied at the University of Augsburg, betwn 1993 and 1995 at the Academy of Visual Arts in Nürnberg and continued his education in Kassel. In 1999 he went to the University of Visual Arts in Dresden where he became the master student of Prof. Eberhard Bosslet. Martin Eder creates representational idylls in oil. Common motives are pets like little kittens, canaries or bunnies as well as Lolita scenes. At first sight these sceneries seem to be naive and kitschy, but there is always something, a little detail that irritates the viewer and activates hit critical reception.