Künstlerkontakthof

Jasmina Tacheva Talks with Author and Event Manager Henrik Lüchtenborg



Jasmina Tacheva: Hi Henrik, how are you? Besides a writer and an event manager you are also the founder of the exchange platform Künstlerkontakthof - can you tell us a bit more about it? How did you decide to start it?


Henrik Lüchtenborg: Hello, Jasmina.

First of all thanks for your efforts to help me introduce Künstlerkontakthof to the public. The fact that the Künstlerkontakthof project is now in full swing,  makes me feel splendid.

I live beautifully, in the country side near Berlin and have a lot of time and above all peace, to take care of this exciting new project. By the way I am just finishing the final draft of my new children's book "Nursery Attacks" and am organizing tours around Europe for two Berlin musicians.



 Oscar and the Lady in Pink


How I came up with the idea to start this new initiative ...

After many small initiatives for artists, including the organization of 123 openings, 101 concerts, etc., I got the idea to create ​​a platform by artists for artists.

It is easy to be out on a limb and make promises to artists but it's much harder to bring them to fruition honestly and successfully, for the artist themselves and not just for one's own sake.

Künstlerkontakthof should be no artist agency or a commercial venue. Here, according to my idea, artists should meet, exchange ideas and facilitate their way to successful work.



There is no so-called "healthy competition". Competition always entails a certain amount of bigotry. If artists leave their eyes and ears, as well as their creative hearts, open, it will be so much easier to successfully mediate their art and work.

Thus, for example, a painter from Berlin could meet with a painter from Paris, and arrange studio exchanges (this could be described as "studio surfing" - derived from the so-called couch surfing) in order to expand their vistas and work and to present their art in various places in Europe.


JT: Are there a lot of collaborators and enthusiasts who work on the project with you and would you like to introduce them to our readers?


HL: Well, the Facebook page has been up for 2 months now and we have almost 2000 friends. There are new requests each day, which makes me very happy. The principle has been grasped. Everyone here is a MAKER. If everyone puts a stone, the house will be built quickly.

 I see myself only as someone who has brought and laid the first stone. Enthusiasts are the artists who started using our site to present their work or to ask me questions about studios or exhibition opportunities, etc., or even the many requests from musicians for concerts ...



JT: What can artists use the platform for?

HL: For themselves! This site belongs to no single person, every member is a component of the whole project; in the end everyone must decide for themselves how they are going to best use and support this platform.

JT: Is Künstlerkontakthof free?

HL: Of course! What am I supposed to take money for? Everyone does work here. In the end, however, everyone will be paid back; what I mean by that is that every individual should also receive benefits in exchange for their commitment, in whatever form, for their own projects.


JT: Who can join the project and how - are there any requirements or restrictions? Besides artists, can aer sellers, buyers and art gallery owners also become involved?


HL: All who want to seriously explore art are invited to participate. We all will get very little out of it, if the platform is used for private amusements only. Here, you want to work on a level that will help everyone move forward ..

Also politically active groups or individuals are probably out of place here ... it's all about art ... even if some political views probably do act quite "artistically".



JT: Is the platform planned for Berlin only, or can artists from around the world participate as well?

HL: Berlin would be too limited. Art should have no limits. I would be very happy if the platform would grow limitlessly.

 JT: Besides the interactive form of communication, do you plan any "live" events?

HL: I'm thinking of an annual event. Once a year all artists should get together for a great evening, and get to know one another better with good music and wine.

But even this is not for me alone to figure out, I welcome any helping hands.



JT: The project has its own Facebook page - about how many artists are currently taking part in it?

HL: As of right now, we are nearly 2000 from all corners of the world (though mostly from Berlin), but more keep coming every day (:



JT: What is the message you want to convey through this unique artistic campaign?

HL: If we all take each other's hand, art will become a stable, high-quality profession in the world.

Art must be out in the world!

JT: The logo of Künstlerkontakthof immediately catches the eye - it's very creative and imaginative - what exactly does it mean?

HL: What we can see are small figures that are holding each other's hand and thus form a community. Only one figure on the left bottom side is a little out of the ordinary ... He is taking a bow. This figure represents the artist in general. They take a bow to their audience, once they are done with their work.

The figures behind him hold each other and thus form a strong framework in which they can work safely. If we hold on to each other firm enough, bowing is (the reward, the applause, the payment) will be a much more realistic and easier goal for many artists ...

The name "Künstlerkontakthof" itself is related to my personal experience with the choreographer Pina Bausch in Wuppertal... I think that the piece Kontakthof has certainly changed the way I participate in life and the community.

My personal meetings with her or other dancers from her ensemble were also always impressive!




JT: I personally think this portal is a way to get back to the roots of art and remind society that it has little to do with money and markets but a lot with human warmth and understanding. Is my intuition on the right track?


HL: Yeah, in general that's right. Money can't replace ideology, ideas, or creativity. Money does not make you free ... and certainly can't be the first building block for a work of art ......

Money does NOT make you RICH!

JT: What have the biggest challenges been so far?

HL: I think the logo took us some time; I designed quite a few models together with some friends... in the end we all agreed on the current one though.

I think the biggest challenge has yet to come... in the form of some 1000 small tasks regarding the coordination of almost 2000 dedicated creative minds from around the world. But we can definitely do it:)

 JT: What are your wishes for the future of Künstlerkontakthof?

HL: I really hope that Künstlerkontakthof will become a contact zone that will make the artists' life not just easier but also more beautiful; that virtual friendships will grow into real relationships, and that our community will bring joy to everyone!

Thank you (:

Interview with Author T.H.E. Hill on his Upcoming Book Reunification: A Monterey Mary Returns to Berlin

By Lou Novacheck, BLOGCRITICS.ORG

The interview was initially published on Blogcritics.org: http://blogcritics.org/books/article/interview-with-author-the-hill-on1/

 

Today I'm talking with T.H.E. Hill, the award-winning author of two novels about Berlin. Hill's first novel-Voices Under Berlin: The Tale of a Monterey Mary-is ostensibly about an Army Security Agency Russian linguist working the Berlin Spy Tunnel in the mid-1950s, but, according to Wikipedia, it is closer in reality to the mid-1970s. His second novel-The Day Before the Berlin Wall: Could We Have Stopped It?-is based on a "legend" that was still current among U.S. Army soldiers in Berlin in the mid-1970s. According to the legend, we had advance knowledge of the Berlin Wall, and we knew that the East-German troops who were going to build it had been told to halt construction if the Americans were to take aggressive action to stop them.

Hill's forthcoming new novel-Reunification: A Monterey Mary Returns to Berlin-is also about Berlin.

Novacheck: Why this fascination with Berlin?

Hill: Berlin was the epicenter of the Cold War, and the Cold War and I grew up together. I was born during the Berlin Airlift, and came of age in a U.S. Army uniform inside the confines of the Berlin Wall. Now, Berlin is the capital of the "new," reunited Germany, and the epicenter of the Eurozone Crisis. It's a city that captures your imagination and won't let go.

And it's not just me. Berlin is the scene of the stories that German authors and screenwriters who are distilling the literary truth of German Reunification. Wolfgang Becker's Good Bye Lenin, Thomas Brussig's Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee (On the Shorter End of Sun Avenue), and the Oscar-winner for Best Foreign Picture of 2007, Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck are all set in Berlin. They are thought provoking, poignant literary and cinematographic treatments of German reunification from the German perspective.

So, while there is lots of competition to tell the story of German Reunificationfrom the German perspective, an American perspective on the reunification of Berlin is sadly lacking. For almost fifty years-from 1945 to 1994-there was a large and vibrant American Community in Berlin. I was once a part of it. It stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the Berliners during the Berlin Airlift, and through the Berlin Wall from rise to fall. It deserves to have a literary resolution to its disappearance. That's what I hope to do with Reunification.

So what's the storyline?

It's a multi-threaded story, based on the premise of an American who was stationed in divided Berlin during the 1970s returning to reunified Berlin on an academic Fellowship to write a book about how the Stasi dealt with dissidents. As he works on the book, however, it becomes clear that there are broader implications about the role of the CIA, from which Mike, the first-person narrator, has retired.

The next major thread is romantic. The novel opens at a reception where Mike is "reunited" with Ilse. She was his girlfriend during the time that he worked at the Army Security Agency Field Station in Berlin. She is not pleased to see him, and breaks a plate across his face to emphasize the point. The reader wants to know why she did that, but she's not talking, and neither is he, because his jaw is taped shut to help the cut from the broken plate heal. They have to figure out if there is still an "us" in their relationship.

The other big thread of the novel is a spy whodunit. When the narrator reads his own Stasi file, he discovers that somebody was reporting on him while he was in the Army in Berlin. Since nobody ever really retires from intelligence work, he can't rest until he finds out who it was. The prime suspect is Ilse, but he refuses to believe it was her, and sets off through the dark inner recesses of his memory in search of other suspects, and there are plenty to be found in the rogue's gallery of characters that he served with in the Army Security Agency. With his case-officer hat on, he imagines whom he could have recruited, if Field Station Berlin had been on his target list.

As more clues come out of the reconstructs produced by the special software that the Fraunhofer Institute developed to reassemble to files that the Stasi case officers shredded just before the GDR collapsed entirely, Mike develops a clearer picture of MUZIEK, the cover-name for the Stasi source who was reporting on him. The detection required to solve the whodunit mystery is molded on the classic fair-play mystery novels of detectives like Ellery Queen, whose works present the reader with all the same clues that the detective has, so as to give the reader a chance to solve an intellectually challenging puzzle along with the detective.

The plot thickens when Mike's daughter comes to visit him, and falls in love with the Director of the Stasi Archive where Mike is doing his research. The Director is none other than Ilse's son. Since the course of true love is never easy, there is a barrier to creating an "us" out of this German-American couple. In this case it is the question of whether the Archive Director is her half-brother.

Then add an IRA informant in witness protection who thinks that Mike is a hit man sent to rub her out, and serve stirred, not shaken in a classy cover.

The advance copies of the chapters that I have seen hint at a political thread in the novel. What's that going to be about?

The political thread is just that: a hint. It runs parallel to Mike's reunification with his Ilse, and her angry reaction to seeing him again. The political winds in Berlin changed after the Berlin Wall fell, and Germany was reunited. When I lived there in the 1970s, Kennedy was still incredibly popular in Berlin for his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech a decade before. Now, a generation after the Berlin Wall fell, German politicians are steering a new policy course intended to demonstrate their independence from America, and Americans are not as popular in Berlin as they used to be.

I guess that this is to be expected when you consider that German President Joachim Gauck and Chancellor Angel Merkel were both raised in the East. We didn't do them any favors when the country was divided among the four victorious Allied powers.

The merger of East and West Germany made some unexpected changes in the German Weltanschauung [mindset]. The thread of 'is there is still an "us" in U.S.-F.R.G. relations,' plays out in the background in parallel to Mike and Ilse trying to figure out if there is an "us" in their relationship.

There was a cryptologic contest to break the encrypted message in The Day Before the Berlin Wall: Could We Have Stopped It. Will there be another one in Reunification?

Yes, there will be. The display quote at the beginning of the book will be encrypted. The prize will be the same as the other cryptologic contest I run on my website: a signed copy of one of my novels.

Has anyone claimed a prize yet?

No, and I'm surprised. The system used is a 'paper-and-pencil' system, one that was actually used by the Russians, and there is enough depth to break it. I only had one submission, and it didn't even get the character count right. That's a hint for anybody who's interested. For the crypies who are worried that I might be giving something away that the Russians don't know about, the system is described on Wikipedia, but I'm not going to say where, of course. That would make solving it too easy.

From what I have read in the press, it seems like some of the Germans are suffering from a sort of "buyer's remorse" about reunification. A great number of East Germans now find themselves strangers in their homeland, suffering from East nostalgia. Like John Galsworthy said, one has "to leave one's country to become conscious of it," but in their case, they didn't leave their country. Their country left them.

I know how they feel. The same thing happened to us Americans. When my wife and I went back to Berlin after the Berlin Wall fell, and returned to the American Kaserns, the housing areas, the school, the hospital, the PX and the Commissary that had once been so familiar to us, these places were like a ghost town inhabited by living people who couldn't see the apparitions that shimmered before us. The sensation was as surreal as an episode of The Twilight Zone or The X-files. Thomas Wolfe's message was clear: you can't go home again. Your old home has been taken over by strangers.

The similarity of the German and the American experiences is the reason that I think that Reunification will find a welcome among both American and German audiences alike. That's why it's going to be released simultaneously in the States and in Germany.

It seems pretty clear that the flashbacks to divided Berlin come
from your personal experience while there in the U.S. Army. What are you basing your modern-day Berlin episodes on?

Like I said, we've been back to Berlin since the Berlin Wall came down, and the Internet brings the Berlin dailies like the Berliner Morgenpost, the Berliner Zeitung and the Tagesspiegel right straight to your computer screen. That's enough to get the ball rolling, but not to complete the novel. To put the icing on the cake, we're going back to Berlin in spring 2013 for an extended stay. After that, Reunification will go into final editing.

When can we expect to see Reunification on bookshelves?

The trade paper edition will come out on 13 August 2013, the anniversary of the start of construction of the Berlin Wall, and the eBook edition will follow in time or Christmas. While 2013 is the fifty-second anniversary of the start of construction of the Berlin Wall, it is the fiftieth anniversary of the first permanent SIGINT collection presence on Teufelsberg in Berlin, the operational home of Field Station Berlin. This anniversary is being marked by a reunion of Field Station Berlin veterans in Berlin, and the issue of a sheet of Cinderella stamps commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Field Station Berlin on Teufelsberg.

Can we read a sample somewhere before then?

Sure. The first chapter is up on the book's website.

Thanks for taking the time to talk with me.

Thank you for inviting me.

Read more: http://www.seattlepi.com/lifestyle/blogcritics/article/Interview-with-Author-T-H-E-Hill-on-his-Upcoming-4156067.php#ixzz2IF1eyvOp