Creative Bureaucracy Festival in Berlin 20 September

I would love an excuse to visit Berlin again, but perhaps the "Creative Bureaucracy Festival", is not it. My invitation arrived from the UK Cabinet Office in the form of a 20 Mbyte PDF file. The document had 18 pages with complex charts and photos of dozens of people with impressive titles. Despite having events such as "Fu*kup Night" and "Legislative theatre work", apparently this is not a spoof. There really is a festival devoted to creative bureaucracy, in Berlin, 20 to 21 September 2019. But if they are really being creative, perhaps they could produce a smaller, simpler brochure for the event, but that might not be in the spirit of bureaucracy. ;-)

Even Genius Needs to Do Paperwork

The exhibition "Handwritten: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Treasures from Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin" at the the National Library of Australia shows a great range of work over the centuries. Some of the manuscripts shown are of great works, such as a draft of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, but others show that great people had to deal with paperwork, such as receipt from Michelangelo acknowledging funds from a patron. Others show that even geniuses don't always get it right, with Heisenberg's draft of a universal equation for everything which did not work out.

The exhibition's music room was of most interest, with a cacophony of the different music displayed being played in the background. There is an iPad on a wall with headphones, where you can pick from the works. The exhibition organisers need to install a set of white headphones on a white hook, as the room so dim (to preserve the manuscripts) and so the headphones and where to hand them up is almost invisible.

Other works to get my attention were Schliemann writing about the discovery of Troy, a patent by Watt (of steam engine fame), Diesel asking for state funding for his engine and several authors complaining about reviews they got.

It is unfortunate there is not a web site to accompany the exhibition, given the work which has gone into its preparation. Such a web site could be produced with a few days work, using the materials already prepared for the exhibition. This is something the ACT Government might consider funding to boost tourist numbers.

The exhibition is open until 18 March 2012 and is free, but it is a good idea to book a free ticket online (the NLA is using an Apple iPad to check the bookings at a desk in the foyer). There are also various events associated with the exhibition.

Manuscripts from Berlin State Library in Canberra

Greetings from the National Library of Australia, where Professor Everardus Overgaauw, head of the Manuscript Department of the Berlin State Library is talking about the manuscripts on display in Canberra in the exhibition: "Handwritten: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Treasures from Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin". The Berlin State Library was founded in 1661 and the story of the library and its manuscripts is bound up with that of the German state, with formation, war, partition and reunification.

On display are handwritten documents by: Bach, Beethoven, Cook, Curie, Dante, Darwin, Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Einstein, Galileo, Goethe, Haydn, Kafka, Kant, Kepler, Machiavelli, Marx, Michelangelo, Napoleon, Newton, Nietzsche, Nightingale, Nobel, Pasteur and Watt.

The exhibition is open until 18 March 2012 and is free, but it is a good idea to book a free ticket online (the NLA is using an Apple iPad to check the bookings at a desk in the foyer). There are also various events associated with the exhibition.

Modernity in German art 1910–37

The NSW Art Gallery's "The mad square: modernity in German art 1910–37" features work by Beckmann, Dix, Grosz, Höch and Lissitzky. along with performances of inter-war music. As well as paintings and political posters there are some sculptures, and some furniture from the Bauhaus.

Last night was a a private viewing followed by an evening of Weimar-style music with "Pierrot Lunaire and Berlin cabaret songs". The Cabaret started with a recreation of Marlene Dietrich's Gorilla suit striptease (although this is from the film "Blonde Venus" made after "The Blue Angel", which made her name). The NSW Gallery could not quite capture the decadence of a Berlin nightclub, particularly as management had banned red wine during the interval as it might stain the floor tiles in the foyer.

The exhibition is arranged into:

1. Expressionism in Berlin
2. WWI and the revolution
3. Dada
4. Bauhaus
5. Constructivism
6. Metropolis
7. New Objectivity
8. Power and 'degenerate' art

There is also an excellent shop at the end of the exhibition, with objects for sale including a chromed Zeppelin sculpture.

The exhibition move to the National Gallery of Victoria in late November. The dark themes of the exhibition clash with the sparkling blue of Sydney's sky and harbor and might better suite the more European atmosphere of Melbourne.

Also there is a display of "Bauhaus International: Neues Bauen International 1927/2002" at Sydney College of the Arts. This is aptly located in Callan Park, which is the center of planning controversy, with the use of the billions of dollars of real-estate of a Hospital for the Insane, being decided by a government appointed trust.

The Bauhaus was at the centre of a a movement in social architecture, which has carried on to the present day. In 2002 the students and staff of the current "Bauhaus Dessau" visited Sydney and worked on a project to plan an area of Sydney's inner west . During the visit I give the Bauhaus students a seminar on ICT and architecture. The students produced "serve.city 3rd trimester" with 22 pages of master planning ideas for linking Sydney's inner west to the CBD with ICT (Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, 2002, ISBN 3-936796-04-1).

Gritty Production of Cabaret in Sydney

Cabaret at the New Theatre in Sydney is not the glamorised 1972 film version of the Broadway musical. This is a darker, grittier production. For those only familiar with the musical numbers, the story abruptly introducing anti-Semitism and the Nazi rise to power can be a shock. However, in this production there is a sense of menace from the start. The performers of the fictional Kit Kat Klub are both sexy and threatening.

The story is based on two autobiographical novels by Christopher Isherwood and set in Berlin before World War II (the stage version changes the struggling author from British to American, whereas the movie changed him back to British). Isherwood describes arriving in Berlin by train and being befriended by a charming smuggler and drawn into a wild nightlife of Berlin.

Some of the places mentioned explicitly in the books and hinted at in the stage show are still recognisable in post-cold war Berlin. The Friedrichstrasse Station is still a good place to get a cheap meal.

ps: Isherwood gets an oblique reference in the science fiction TV show Torchwood, with one character exclaiming "I am a camera".