ENTEGA, a green power provider from the Federal state of Hessen and partner of the Berlinale, has worked towards helping the international film festival in Berlin reduce its carbon footprint.

This year’s ENTEGA motto for the festival aimed at getting people involved in the issue in a special way. It said: “Why opt for renewable energy? There are lots of good reasons. Tell us yours, and support the Berlinale’s efforts to protect the climate in the process.”

And for every reason given between 9 and 23 February 2012, ENTEGA donated 10€, with proceeds going towards a solar system for the Opera Village.

The appeal attracted a strong response and ENTEGA has generously rounded up the campaign sum, making a full 30,000 € available for the solar facilities at the Opera Village.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank everybody involved in this initiative, and first and foremost ENTEGA, for the wonderful idea and its enthusiastic implementation.

We are also pleased to announce that thanks to this initiative we will shortly begin work on a solar system in the Opera Village, a project that will take us a good step closer towards independence and sustainability.

www.entega.de
www.facebook.com/Entega

On April 21, 2012, the Berliner Philharmoniker, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, will play Bizet’s Carmen at the Philharmonie, in aid of Operndorf Afrika. An additional charge of 5 euros per ticket that evening will be donated to the project.

This generous support was initiated by Martin Hoffmann, general manager of the Berliner Philharmoniker.

We are most grateful for this generous financial assistance!

Further information available at: www.berliner-philharmoniker.de

frieze: What are the museums you’re currently most excited about?

Chris Dercon: (…) For the moment my favourite is Christoph Schlingensief’s opera village, a cultural centre in Remdoogo in Burkina Faso. Museums will become different – they will become community centres and art schools. You have to be radically different and to rethink the notion of the museum, not just in its physical substance but as a social organization.

You can read the full interview here!

Christoph Schlingensief's artistic centre in Burkina Faso opens with a new school

BURKINA FASO. The first phase of late artist Christoph Schlingensief's African opera village was completed on 8 October with the opening of a school in Burkina Faso. The remaining two phases are the building of an infirmary and a festival hall.

In 2008 Schlingensief, who died in August 2010, and architect Francis Kéré created the foundation Festspielhaus Afrika and the plan to build an opera village near Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso was born. The intention was to establish an artistic centre outside of Europe, in one of the poorest countries of the world.

After Schlingensief's death, the project was chosen for the German pavilion at this year's Venice Biennale. It promptly won the the Golden Lion, a decision very much opposed to by artists such as Gerhard Richter who thought of Schlingensief as a performer rather than an artist. Indeed, Schlingensief had turned the African project into a stage production, “Intolleranza II”, for which he was posthumously awarded the 3Sat award in May 2011.

Schlingensief's widow, Aino Laberenz, who worked with Schlingensief as stage and costume designer, took on the African opera village project. Laberenz opened the school in Burkina Faso, which is meant to create a space for the region's young people and to initiate a dialogue between European and African artists. The school aims to take on 50 local children each year, offering classes in film, art and music in addition to other subjects.

The opera village has been supported by the German political and social establishment, including the Foreign Office, the Federal Cultural Foundation and the Goethe Institute, as well as the Swedish author Henning Mankell and the Berlin lawyer and art patron Peter Raue. Former German president Horst Köhler also took up patronage following Schlingensief's death. The project has cost around €500,000 so far.

Alongside the German board of advisors that is representing the opera village, an artistic committee has been founded in Burkina Faso, which includes film-maker Gaston Kaboré, sculptor Siriki Ky and several other members of the Burkinabé cultural scene.

“Christoph would have been incredibly happy. With the opening of the school, part of his vision has become reality,” said Laberenz.

© The Art Newspaper, 01 November 2011
By Rita Pokorny

The idea would become Christoph Schlingensief’s last big dream: an opera village in the West African country of Burkina Faso – with a school, infirmary and festival hall. Now, the idea is taking shape. Raise the curtain for act one!

Christoph Schlingensief would have enjoyed the spectacle. More than one hundred African children with drumsticks, animal masks and wild costumes perform a mythical looking dance. In the scorching heat of the midday sun in Burkina Faso, their faces are dripping with perspiration, but for over an hour they are fully involved, full of earnestness and enthusiasm.

They are celebrating the opening of the school in the African opera village planned by Schlingensief. A good year after the death of the film and theatre-maker, his idea has become a bit of reality.

“Christoph is sadly not here today. But, I am certain that he’s sitting somewhere and watching us,” says his widow Aino Laberenz. Her voice is firm; she is wearing her husband’s large, heavy wedding ring on a chain around her neck.

Approximately 500 people came to the opening of the school on Saturday – chieftains and elders from the region, women and their children, many artists, the mayor as well as the cultural and educational ministers from the capital city of Ouagadougou 30 kilometres away. “What would have made Christoph most happy, is that you have made his dream your dream,” says Laberenz.

School began last week for 50 children. They come from the six surrounding villages. There are about an equal number of girls and boys – unusual in the poor and very male-dominated country. Lessons follow the country’s general curriculum, but there are additional classes in art, dance and music. A number of artists have already agreed to start up their own projects here.

Outside, it is almost 40 degrees, but in the two long school buildings it stays a pleasant 25. The award-winning Burkinabe architect Francis Kéré, who Schlingensief was able to gain for the project early on, has developed an exemplary natural cooling system for other schools in the country.

The walls of red brick are 30 centimetres thick, the double arched roof fends off the heat, ventilation slits and tilting wooden jalousies ensure a supply of fresh air. “The architecture may look complicated, but we prepared all of the materials on the building site,” says Kéré.
“At the beginning we thought this Schlingensief is crazy”

The opening of the school completes the first of three construction phases; the next will be an infirmary and finally the opera house. Aino Laberenz explains, “Christoph liked the image of a snail’s house gradually spreading out around the centre point of the festival hall.”

Following his death, the future of the project appeared uncertain, but Laberenz, with the aid of a prominent team of supporters, got it up and running again. Former German President Horst Köhler took up the patronage. The Berlin attorney and art patron Peter Raue is also among the driving forces. “The school cannot be the last word,” he says. “That would be like performing only one act of a three act play.”

The project has cost about 500,000 euros to date. “Our goal is not to make little artists out of all of our pupils,” says the teacher and artistic director Abdoulaye Ouedraogo. “But we are sure that the children very much prefer learning when it is creative and is done with fun.” The journalist Richard Tiéné from the local station Pulsar admits, “At the beginning we thought this Schlingensief is crazy. But Burkina Faso needs just such a place where the wealth of our culture can evolve.”

The Goethe-Institut, which is among the supporters together with the German Foreign Office and the Federal Cultural Foundation, also regards the opera village as a good docking station for stimulating dialogue with African artists. The responsible institute director, Katharina von Ruckteschell, says, “It is a risk, but a wonderful risk. And if we all believe in it, then it will happen.”

Copyright: dpa, 9 October 2011

Christoph Schlingensief's vision of an Opera Village has finally begun to come to life. The first phase of the planned centre for artistic education and exchange, a school, was inaugurated on October 8 in the town of Laongo.  Burkinabe and Germans met to celebrate this event and were treated to special performances in honour of the occasion.

A little boy draws a guitar, others are busy with papers and pencils. Children hand their paintings one after the other to visitors in the first ranks. This was one of many moments of creativity in Laongo, at the opera village site, where the late Christoph Schlingensief's grand idea of supporting artistic education and exchange in Burkina Faso finally materialized through the first school buildings ready to receive pupils. Schlingensief had introduced his opera village project as "social sculpture", as a place of encounter.

As the school doors opened on October 8, the first phase in his opera village in Burkina Faso was completed. At the same time that classes restarted all over the rest of the country, the opera village school building was inaugurated. Burkinabe and Germans met to celebrate this event, which took place roughly eighteen months after the first stone was laid by Christoph Schlingensief himself in February 2010, and just a little over a year after his death in August 2010.

The day-long ceremony included tree plantings, speeches from government officials, the local mayor and artists, as well as a guided tour by project director Aino Laberenz, Christoph Schlingensief's widow. "Today we celebrate and life in the village is starting", she said. "Tomorrow we will continue to construct."

Burkina-born architect Francis Kéré from Berlin elaborated upon his drawings of the opera village which have now taken shape. A film was screened describing Christoph Schlingensief's direction of "Via Intolleranza II" which included Burkinabe artists. A panel of German and Burkinabe cultural representatives discussed the state of the project.

Fifty primary school pupils are due to start lessons, with special classes in artistic expression. More classes will follow in the years to come. Construction of a medical centre is also on the agenda. Project organisers raised private funds, adding to the support from the German government, and are still active collecting further resources through various websites.

Special performance for inauguration
With funding from the Goethe Institut, Wilfrid Bambara, renowned Burkinabe rapper, prepared the spectacle DODO OPERA CONNECTION with youngsters from around the Laongo site. Bambara was a participant in the Goethe Institut's Cultural management programme in Africa. He completed an internship in Düsseldorf's Kabawil theatre.

For this event, five villages cooperated in Bamabara's project to honour the inauguration in workshops which linked local tradition to cultural techniques. Dance, music, masks and story-telling in the Griot tradition joined forces with contemporary performance techniques in theatre and opera.

Little girls moved their arms, bodies and hands in a delightful ballet. Other children performed with animal masks covering their heads, while recorded animal noises were played. Finally, youngsters in full body costumes as giraffes, elephants or lions met on stage, including a small child in a rabbit costume (which represent cleverness in Burkina Faso / Western Africa).

Visitors sat under tents in two semi circles to observe the programme in the Laongo arena, while many local women and children watched from a distance. A market place had been put into place, with fresh sorghum, vegetables and flour and textiles for sale. Trade and commerce seemed to flourish while villagers stocked up on the latest news through murmured comments and chat. Media interest from both the German and Burkinabe press was high.

The concept of the opera village continues to evolve through a German Advisory Council under the guidance of Aino Laberenz and an advisory board of Burkinabe cultural figures and experts. This council has started work on modules designed to promote the creativity of the students and put the focus on the exchange of artistic knowledge.

by Marianne Lange © GIC Pretoria, Oct 10, 2011

The Festspielhaus Afrika gGmbH, founded by Christoph Schlingensief and continued after his death in August last year by his wife Aino Laberenz, is extraordinarily happy to announce the following today:

Within the framework of the long term project Opera Village Africa, brought into being in 2008 by Christoph Schlingensief, the celebration to the official school opening will take place on 8th October 2011 in the Opera Village near Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. This marks the end of the first of a total of three building phases, which Schlingensief planned together with Burkina Faso-born architect Francis Kéré.

Aino Laberenz: “We made it! With the passion and the relentless dedication of all the participants we have taken a big step further towards the dream of an autodynamic cultural site. Christoph would have been incredibly happy. With the opening of the school, his vision today becomes partly reality. More important yet is the fact that the wish of so many local people, who are interested in and committed to the Opera Village, is taking shape more and more. Today we celebrate and life in the village starts. And tomorrow we continue building.”

The school will take in, over the next six primary school years, a new class of 50 local children each year. In addition to the regular school subjects there will be film, art and music classes, in which the children can learn to express themselves artistically in an independent way.

The school opening is at the same time the starting point of Schlingensief’s idea of establishing an artistic melting pot, outside of imported European high culture, in which different cultures meet on equal terms – and revitalize each other.

Among the prominent Opera Village supporters from the first moment are the Swedish best-selling author Henning Mankell, the Burkinabe filmmaker Gaston Kaboré, the former German Foreign Minister and present SPD party chairman in the German Bundestag, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Brigitte Oetker, Herbert Grönemeyer and Roland Emmerich. The patron of the project is former German President Horst Köhler.

In parallel to the German board of advisors around Aino Laberenz, acting in honorary capacity for the interests of Opera Village Africa, an artistic committee has been founded in Burkina Faso. With Gaston Kaboré, member of the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) jury 2009, the sculptor Siriki Ky, the director and president of the Burkinabe Theater Institute, Etienne Minoungou, the choreographer Irène Tassembedo, the musician Konomba Traoré and the rap musician Serge Bambara (Smockey), the board of advisors is composed of important representatives of the Burkinabe cultural scene.

In accordance with the central interest of the project that the Opera Village be handed over to the autonomy of the people on-site, the board of advisors develops ideas and programs for artistic life in the Opera Village. This includes the lesson planning in the school that is now opening.

During a public debate on the occasion of the staging of Schlingensief’s German-Burkinabe project “Via Intolleranza II” during the theatre festival “Theatertreffen 2011” in Berlin, Gaston Kaboré pointed out with the Opera Village in mind how important artistic expression is for the development of children’s own identity. In this process of self-discovery, Burkina Faso would need culture. The people would demand it, they were entitled to culture to counteract their own alienation and to reroot themselves more strongly in their native country. For Burkina Faso, the Opera Village would be a pilot project addressed at facing, in a self-confident manner, the challenges of the modern world and the necessary processes of change in Africa.

The whole population is invited to the ceremony on the occasion of the school opening on 8th October. At official level the Minister of Culture of Burkina Faso, representatives of the regional authorities, chiefs of the surrounding tribes, for Aino Laberenz on behalf of the Festspielhaus Afrika, Meike Fischer and Christine Richter will be present, among others.

Opera Village Africa is supported by the funds of the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Federal Cultural Foundation and the Goethe-Institute, which for its part organizes artistic and educational programs for the Opera Village.
Since the beginning the Goethe-Institut has consistently offered advice, and supported the realization of the project. Thus, on the initiative of the Goethe-Institute, the series of public panel discussions known as “Dorfgespräche” (“Village Conversations”) was started in March 2011, which accompanies the creation process of the Opera Village self-critically in and outside Africa.

Moreover, with regard to the school opening, the Goethe-Institut is supporting a very special project by young theatre activist Wilfrid Bambara. With 70 children and adolescents from the surrounding villages and with the participation of different artists, Bambara and his organization “Dodo Opera Connection – Jeunesse unie pour le village de l’Opéra” have over the past few weeks used workshops to create their own program for the opening ceremony on October 8th. This project has also created an intensive commitment of the population, above all the children, to the opera village.

Donations from the population continue to be of major importance and necessity to the project.  To this end the Festspielhaus Afrika gGmbH has set up the following bank account:

Recipient: Festspielhaus Afrika gGmbH
Bank: Deutsche Bank Berlin
IBAN: DE 45 1007 0124 0112 8578 00
BIC (SWIFT-CODE): DEUTDEDB101

Further texts and images relating to this project by Christoph Schlingensief, the development and the current state of the construction works can be found at www.operndorf-afrika.com.

Supported by:
Kulturstiftung des Bundes
Goethe-Institut
Auswärtiges Amt
Rudolf Klefisch-Stiftung

The exhibition has been curated by Susanne Gaensheimer and focuses on existing theatrical productions and films by Christoph Schlingensief, who died of lung cancer in late August 2010. Since his death, Susanne Gaensheimer and Aino Laberenz (Schlingensief's wife and closest collaborator for many years) have decided to not exhibit Christoph Schlingensief's sketches and proposals for the German Pavilion, but rather to show existing works. In collaboration with a circle of Schlingensief's closest collaborators and confidants including Carl Hegemann, Thomas Goerge, Voxi Bärenklau, Heta Multanen, and Frieder Schlaich, and drawing on extensive conversations with Chris Dercon, Alexander Kluge, and Matthias Lilienthal, a concept for the German Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale was developed.

In the main hall of the German Pavilion the stage of the Fluxus oratorio A Church of Fear vs. the Alien Within is presented. This work was conceived for the 2008 Ruhrtriennal and brings together Christoph Schlingensief's own personal experiences and the universal and existential themes of life, suffering, and death.

www.schlingensief.com
www.deutscher-pavillon.org
www.operndorf-afrika.com

The 3sat Award for the Theatertreffen in Berlin is awarded posthumously to director Christoph Schlingensief. The award does not only praise the director's stage production "Via Intolleranza II", shown at the Theatertreffen festival, but also honors the director, who passed away in 2010, as a person who acted as motor and driving force way beyond theatre to the national and international performance arts scene.

The award, which carries a value of 10.000 Euros, was handed to Schlingensief's widow, Aino Laberenz, on May 21st 2011 during the Theatertreffen discussion "Culture as a motor for development aid? Where cultural initiatives in Africa can make a difference". The award money will support the Schlingensief-initiated "Opera Village" project in Burkina Faso, which continues under Laberenz' direction.

The 3sat Award is traditionally given for an "outstanding artistic accomplishment" to one of the stage plays invited to the Theatertreffen.

Christoph Schlingensief pursued his idea of an opera village in Burkina Faso passionately. He imagined it as a “social sculpture,” a place of encounters and of dialogue. The Goethe-Institut supported Schlingensief in this project from the very beginning and continues to be committed to its development. In March, it began the “Village Conversations” series in Ouagadougou: workshops and discussions both in Africa and in Europe intended to support the realization of the opera village by providing creative stimuli and promoting inner-African dialogue. Now, on 2 June the second meeting will be held at the German Pavilion. Planned participants include Aino Laberenz, Susanne Gaensheimer, Francis Kéré, Chris Dercon and Simon Njami.

Near to Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, an opera village is being built – with a school, infirmary, stage, cafeteria and accommodations for the artists – on a rocky hill from which one has a view across the dry savannah landscape. Christoph Schlingensief pursued his idea of an opera village in Africa with great passion. He imagined it as a “social sculpture,” a place of encounters and of dialogue, a place that eliminates the division between art and life and where the local needs are addressed. In the process, Christoph Schlingensief repeatedly broached the issues of his search, his doubts and his exasperation in the realization – lastly in the play “Via Intolleranza II,” in which he worked with actors from Burkina Faso. The Goethe-Institut supported Christoph Schlingensief in this project from the very beginning, not merely financially, but also by accompanying him in the search for the right location through Cameroon, Mozambique and Burkina Faso and setting up connections to partners such as the architect Francis Kéré. This partnership will now be continued with his wife Aino Laberenz, his friends and his fellow workers at opera village gGmbH.

In the realization of this idea, Schlingensief dealt very intensively with the difficult relations between Europe and Africa, which are characterized by neo-colonial structures. The issues are also of great significance for the work of the Goethe-Institut. How can cultural dialogue take place at eye level if a country is dependent upon European subsides? How can we alter our own associations about others with new images? How can encounters between artists be devised in which each considers themselves a learner? And how does an art form change when it is shown and received in an entirely different context? Cultural dialogue also always involves the ability to be able to challenge ones own assumptions. Like hardly any other artist, Christoph Schlingensief demanded that we ought not to make ourselves too comfortable on the basis of origins.

Since March 2011 the Goethe-Institut has been holding the “Village Conversations” as a series of workshops and public discussions accompanying the genesis of the opera village. The conversations take place both in Africa and in Europe in order to address the different perspectives and interests associated with the opera village. They postulate and abandon ideas and reflect on the many contradictions and misunderstandings that are elements of cultural encounters. The series is meant to support the realization of the opera village through creative stimuli and interventions, with the Goethe-Institut’s role being to create platforms for inner-African dialogue. In the long term the conversations will serve as the basis for future alliances, which will take place in the opera village with the support of the Goethe-Institut in educational and art projects.

The series was begun in early March in Burkina Faso at the FESPACO African film festival through events with representatives of the Burkinabe cultural world. Now, at the opening of the German Pavilion in Venice a public Village Conversation will be held in an international art context, where Schlingensief’s work is present and the opera village is seen as his last major project and a significant part of his life’s work. Invitations to take part in the conversations have gone out to the architect Francis Kéré, Schlingensief’s wife Aino Laberenz, pavilion curator Susanne Gaensheimer and curator and art critic Simon Njami. Generally, the Goethe-Institut is promoting the 2011 German Pavilion at the Biennale in Venice with substantial funding.

Event: 2 June, 4 PM (t.b.c.) at the side wing of the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale

www.goethe.de

www.deutscher-pavillon.org