Berlin Contributors

Jonathan Allen - Magician
(b.1966) is a London-based visual artist, writer, and performer. His work has been widely exhibited and performed at venues including Tate Britain, the De La Warr Pavilion, David Risley Gallery London, and most recently for the first Singapore Biennale in 2006. Jonathan Allen writes widely on theatrical magic history and related themes for visual art journals including Contemporary, and Cabinet magazine. He is currently guest-editing an issue for the latter in summer 2007.

Christian von Borries - Davos/Dubai
Christian von Borries is conductor, composer and producer. He focus’s is on what he calls ‘audio branding of classical music’.

Arianna Bove - Raw
Arianna Bove is an independent researcher in philosophy, involved in the making of www.generation-online.org, where her research, articles and translations can be found. She has translated many works from Italian and French, including texts by Althusser, Foucault, Negri, Bifo, Virno, and others.

Stefan Doernberg - Preventive War
Geboren 1924 in Berlin in einer deutsch-jüdischen Familie. 1935 Emigration mit den Eltern in die Sowjetunion. Abitur in Moskau 1941. Nach dem deutschen Überfall auf die Sowjetunion Meldung als Freiwilliger in die Rote Armee, Entsendung an die Front Anfang Juli 1941. Es folgte 1942 eine Internierung als Deutscher im Nordural. Von 1943 bis 1945 Angehöriger der Roten Armee, Teilnahme an der Befreiung der Ukraine, Polens und der Einnahme Berlins. Nach dem Krieg  Journalist in Berlin und nach Abschluss eines Fernstudiums an der Moskauer Universität Hochschullehrer für Geschichte in Berlin (Ost), Direktor des Deutschen Instituts für Zeitgeschichte und anderer Forschungseinrichtungen in der DDR. 1983 bis 1987 Botschafter der DDR in Finnland. Ehrenamtlich ab 1971 tätig als Generalsekretär und dann Präsident des DDR-Komitee für europäische Sicherheit und Zusammenarbeit. Zahlreiche Veröffentlichungen zur deutschen und internationalen Zeitgeschichte.

Heinrich Dubel - Helikopter
Heinrich Dubel is a writer of science-fact and -fiction for various german and international magazines. He has published books and articles on such diverse topics as urban develepmont and history, psychological warfare, the psychology of branding, youth subcultures. His most recent works deal with what modern technology does to the unconscious mind of man. Lives and works in Berlin.

Felix Ensslin - Anxiety
Felix Ensslin arbeitet als freier Kurator, Autor und Dramaturg. Zur Zeit schreibt er seine Doktorarbeit im Rahmen des Graduiertenkollegs "Lebensformen und Lebenswissen" an den Universistäten Potsdam und Frankfurt/O.. Jüngste Veröffentlichungen: “Eins, Zwei, Drei .....Fini!" Meinecke, Thomas, Menke, Bettina (Hg.) “Ratzinger Funktion", editon suhrkamp, Frankfurt a/M, 2006.; (Hg.), "Spieltrieb. Was bringt die Klassik auf die Bühne?", Verlag Theater der Zeit, Berlin, 2006. Vom 11. Mai bis 9.August 2007 ist im ZKM Karlruhe die Austellung "Zwischen Zwei Toden" zu sehen, die er gemeinsam mit Ellen Blumenstein kuatiert.

Stefan Heidenreich - Profit
Stefan Heidenreich has written several books on data streams, digital culture and art including Flipflop (Hanser, Munich 2004) and Was verspricht die Kunst (Berlin 1998). His main focus of interest lies in digital data streams and visual culture. He is currently editor of the website iconicturn.de, teaches at the Helmholtz-Zentrum, Humboldt-University in Berlin, works as a photographer (Cr&sh) and freelance writer for the FAZ, NZZ, Tagesspiegel, taz newspapers. Stefan's forthcoming book, Mehr Geld (Merve, Berlin 2005) is on the digital economy and his PhD thesis entitled Bilder sortieren, which will also soon be published, deals with sorting images in renaissance mnemotechnics and digital search engines.

Emil Hrvatin - Entertainment
Regisseur, Theoretiker, Redaktion Maska, Ljubljana.
Emil Hrvatin is a Slovenian all-round talent, involved in drama as a theoretician, dramatist, director and creator of installations and performances, and is also a magazine-editor and festival-director. He studied sociology and theatre direction at the University of Ljubljana and theatre theory in Antwerp. He is the author and director of several theatre performances. His work has been represented trough performances and lectures in several European countries. His works include Camillo-Memo 1.0: the construction of Theatre and Drive in Camillo. Hrvatin’s works also includes visual, multimedia and performance art works.

Peter Jahn - Untermensch im Osten
Peter Jahn, geb. 22.05.1941 in Küstrin, seit 1945 Berliner, Osteuropahistoriker, mit Schwerpunkt auf deutsch-russischen Beziehungen und deutscher Rezeption „Russlands“, seit 1992 Aufbau, 1995 bis 2006 Leiter des Deutsch-Russischen Museums Berlin-Karlshorst, z.Zt. Vorbereitung einer Ausstellung über deutsche Russlandbilder seit 1800.

Quio & Darius James - War (Nuclear)
DARIUS JAMES: After living and working in New York City for twenty-two years, Darius James moved to Berlin in 1998. He is the author of four books, a lecturer and spoken-word performer who has appeared on radio, television and film. With the German-based company, tvt film+vfx, and filmmaker, Oliver Hardt, he is currently developing a documentary exploring the influence of Voodoo on American popular culture and the birth of a new pantheon of Vodun spirits titled “The United States of Hoodoo”. In the course of completing this project, he will undergo a dramatic spiritual initiation, and emerge as a member of that religion’s priesthood. In order to understand his collaboration with Quio and Jon Evans in context, one should know Voodoo was the religious, political and military response to the oppressive conditions of slavery in the so-called ‘New World’. In these uncertain times, the Black American composer, Sun Ra, has been reborn as a loa (or ancestral spirit) in the new American Voodoo pantheon.

QUIO (INA ROTTER): Quio, a Berlin based MC, singer, performer wants to be misunderstood and taken unseriously. In 1999 Quio met AGF when they both performed in a club. Various collaborations followed. In 2003 they started QUIO. 2004 they released the first 12" on AGF Producktion and here is the full length album of the Quio. AGF and Quio have put together their different musical heritage, to come up with some uniquely new combinations, e.g. they mixed Drum&Bass MC lyrics with piano and strings into a melancholy anthem, and hiphop lyrics with experimental beats and a blues guitar.

Jon Evans is a Shaman from the Austrailian outback gone walkabout.

Sylvere Lotringer - Disappeared
Sylvère Lotringer is professor of French Literature and Philosophy at Columbia University in New York and the editor of Semiotext(e). He is generally credited for introducing French Theory in America. He has written several books in collaboration with Jean Baudrillard (The Conspiracy of Art, New York, 2005, Oublier Artaud, Paris 2005) and Paul Virilio (Pure War, New York, 1982 ; Crepuscular Dawn, 2002 ; The Accident of Art, New York, 2005). His most recent books are Hatred of Capitalism, New York, 2002 ; Fous d’Artaud, Paris, 2003 and A Satiete, Paris, 2006). He has written art essays on Nancy Spero, London, 1996 and David Wojnarowicz, New York, 2006 and catalogue essays for The Guggenheim Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, The New Museum in New York, The Musee du Jeu de Paume in Paris, the Kuntshalle, Wien, etc.

Brian Massumi - Perception Attack
Brian Massumi is an academic, writer and social critic. He teaches in the Communication Department of the Université de Montréal. Massumi focuses on the philosophies of communication, electronic art, computer-aided design, architecture and the virtual. He is the author of Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Duke University Press, 2002), A User’s Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari (MIT Press, 1992) and First and Last Emperors: The Absolute State and the Body of the Despot (with Kenneth Dean; Autonomedia, 1993) and editor of A Shock to Thought: Expression After Deleuze and Guattari (Routledge, 2002) and The Politics of Everyday Fear (University of Minnesota Press, 1993)

Khalo Matabane - Stance
Khalo Matabane has directed a number of films about South African issues, including the shorts Poetic Conversations (96) and Love in a Time of Sickness (01) and the documentaries Two Decades Still (96), The Waiters (97), Young Lions (99) and Story of a Beautiful Country (04). Conversations on a Sunday Afternoon (05) is his first feature film.

Avi Mograbi - Pleasure
Born in Israel in 1956. He studied philosophy at Tel Aviv University and art at the Ramat Hasharon art school. He has worked as an assistant director, scriptwriter, production manager and director for features films and commercials. Some documentaries produced previously include: ‘The Reconstruction’ (1994), ‘Learned to Overcome My Fear and Love Arik Sharon’ (1997), ‘Happy Birthday, Mr. Mograbi’ (1999), ‘A Moment Before the Eruption’ (2002).

Andrea Moll - Flintenweib
geboren 1964. Osteuropahistorikerin und Kuratorin in Berlin. Sie beschäftigt sich mit Themen der deutsch-russischen Beziehungen, Krieg und Kriegspropaganda, Erinnerungspolitik sowie „War and Gender“. Zur Zeit arbeitet sie an einem deutsch-russischen Ausstellungsprojekt zu gegenseitigen Fremd- und Feindbildern, das in Berlin und Moskau präsentiert wird.

Vanessa Joan Müller - Plündern
Vanessa Joan Müller, Direktorin des Kunstvereins für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, und wissenschaftliche Leitung des Projektes "European Kunsthalle" in Köln, das Modelle einer potenziellen Institution zeitgenössischer Kunst auslotet. Zahlreiche Veröffentlichungen zur zeitgenössischen Kunst und Kunsttheorie.

Michalis Pichler - Homefront
Michalis Pichler uses public space and everyday life both as a source and as an outlet. Employed techniques include camouflage/imitation, and infiltration, as well as sculptural, and archaeological and ethnographic procedures. His work has appeared in numerous places, amongst them the Postfuhramt Berlin, the Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje and the Goethe-Institut/InterNationes New York where he was a DAAD Arts Fellow in 2002/03.

Rimini Protokoll - Resist-Refuse-Rebel
Rimini Protokoll is the label for projects by Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi and Daniel Wetzel. www.rimini-protokoll.de
Rimini Protokoll (Haug/Wetzel) are presenting the two Vietnam Veterans and Anti-War activists Darnell Stephen Summers and Dave Blalock with their definition of RESIST...REFUSE...REBELL

DARNELL “STEPHEN” SUMMERS was born on July 9, 1947 in Detroit Michigan, USA. He volunteered for the US Army and served from 1966 to 1970. While home on leave before going to Vietnam in 1968 he became involved in the struggle to found the "Malcolm X Cultural Center (MXCC) in Inkster Michigan, a suburb of Detroit and was one of the spokespersons for the "MXCC".
His political affiliations included membership in the Black Workers Congress, Viet Nam Veterans Against The War / Viet Nam Veterans Against The War (Anti-Imperialist), chartermember of the Malcolm X Cultural Center(Inkster Michigan). As a Black man inside the Army he was confronted by not only by racism but also the fact that he was in a military organization that was murdering people across the globe. Since then Summers has been active in the struggles against racism and U.S. instigated aggression. He was instrumental in organizing the "STOP THE WAR BRIGADE" in Germany during the Gulf war to build support for anti-war GIs.
Darnell has professional experience as a Musician, Film Director, Actor, Media Editor, Composer, Cameraman, Producer and Sound Technician. He presently lives in Germany and has 4 children.

DAVE BLALOCK (born 1950 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania) volunteered for the US Army and served from 1968 to 1971. After being AWOL for nine days in basic training he was court-martialed and spent one month out of a possible six-month prison term doing “Hard Labor” time in the Fort Jackson stockade. He then spent one year in Vietnam (1969-1970) where he became politicized by his experiences there.
After returning, he spent his last 15 months in the army by joining the large anti war movement that had existed within the US military and actively worked inside one of the many underground GI organizations. In 1989 Blalock, along with three other people burned American flags on the steps of the US Capital building in protest against the new Flag Protection Act of 1989. They were arrested for this and their case ended up in the Supreme Court, which ruled the law un-constitutional. From Vietnam, to the 1980’s counter-insurgency wars in Central America, to the ‘91 Gulf War, to the ’99 Kosovar war, to 2001 bombing of Afghanistan, to the present war on Iraq he has been active in the fight to expose and oppose all US war moves around the world. He puts special emphasis on building support for the GI anti war resisters inside the armed forces.
Blalock and Summers are also playing themselves in the Rimini-Protokoll theatrical production of Schiller’s “WALLENSTEIN” where they among a cast of ten people out of real life take this opportunity to tell their story in the midst of Intrigue, War & Death.

Meir Wigoder & Irit Rogoff - Alert
Meir Wigoder teaches the History of Photography at the Communications School, Sapir College and at the Yolanda and David Katz Faculty of the Arts, Tel Aviv University. He is currently writing on the representation of trauma, memory and shock in the press coverage of recent political events in Israel.
Irit Rogoff is Professor of Art History/Visual Culture, Historical and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, London University. Her research interests include: Visual Culture; contemporary art and critical theory; post-colonialism and gender.

Saskia Sassen - Anti-War
Saskia Sassen is the Ralph Lewis Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago, and Centennial Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics. During the 1980s and 1990s, Sassen emerged as one of the most prolific authors on urban sociology. She studied the impact globalisation processes, and the movements of labour and capital which they involve, have on urban life. She also studied the influence of communication technology on governance. Sassen observed how nation states begin to lose power to control these developments, and she studied increasing general transnationalism, including transnational human migration. She identified and described the phenomenon of the global city. Her 1991 book bearing this title quickly made her one of the most frequently quoted authors on globalisation worldwide. A revised and updated edition of her book was published in 2001. She currently (2006) is pursuing her research and writing on immigration and globalization, with her "denationalization" and "transnationalism" projects. wikipedia.org/wiki/Saskia_Sassen

Armin Smailovic - Portrait/Mugshot


Simon Starling - Autoxylopyrocycloboros
Starling was born in Epsom in 1967, was educated in Sevenoaks, and did a photography degree at Trent Polytechnic before going on to study fine art at Glasgow. "I knew early on that I didn't want to study in London. I wanted to find something else, and Glasgow was the place. The early 1990s was a great moment for the city, there was a lot of buzz about the place." He currently divides his time between Glasgow and Berlin. Was London never attractive, career development-wise? "I'm not a big city person. I like to think things through at my own speed." Why Berlin? "I moved there for love." And stayed because it's an artistic hub? "Kind of." His partner is a writer and curator, and his son Vincent is 11 months old. http://arts.guardian.co.uk

Marcus Steinweg - Heraklit
Marcus Steinweg (born 1971 in Berlin) lives in Berlin. He writes on philosophical and literary themes. His most recent publications are: Krieg der différence and Autofahren mit Lacan (both Koblenz, Germany 2001), Der Ozeanomat. Ereignis und Immanenz (Cologne, Germany 2002) and Bataille Maschine (Merve Verlag, Berlin 2003). For several years he has been collaborating regularly with the artist Thomas Hirschhorn.

Stephan Trüby - Homeland Security Advisory System
(b. 1970) is an architect, theoretician and curator who studied architecture at the AA School, London, where he also taught. Since 2001 he is Assistant Professor for Architectural Theory and Design at Stuttgart University’s IGMA. As a member of Igmade, he co-edited (with Gerd de Bruyn) "architektur_theorie.doc: texte seit 1960" and initiated, co-edited and directed "5 Codes: Architecture, Paranoia and Risk in Times of Terror" (ed. by Igmade, Birkhäuser 2006). He is founder of the architecture-, design- and consultancy firm Exit Ltd.and is currently writing a history and theory of the corridor.

Soenke Zehle - Coloniality
A holder of various degrees in comparative literature, philosophy, political science, and translation, Soenke Zehle teaches transcultural literary and media studies in the Transcultural Anglophone Studies Program (TAS) at Saarland University as well as the Academy of Fine Arts (HBK) in Saarbruecken. Publications include essays on media studies and political ecology. He has been involved in launching numerous info-political grassroots and research initiatives.

kuda.org - Safe Distance
New Media Center_kuda.org is an independent organization which brings together artists, theoreticians, media activists, researchers and the wider public in the field of Information and Communication Technologies. In this respect, kuda.org is dedicated to the research of new cultural relations, contemporary artistic practice, and social issues. www.kuda.org