Publication

  • Counter Gravity: The Films of Heinz Emigholz
    Anselm Franke
    Editor
    Michael Baute, Gertrud Koch, Dennis Lim, Ulrike Lorenz, and Ines Weizman
    Contributors
    Verlag Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, 2021
  • GRANTEE
    Haus der Kulturen der Welt
    GRANT YEAR
    2019

Heinz Emigholz, still from "Goff in the Desert (Goff in der Wüste)," 2002–03. Copyright Heinz Emigholz and Filmgalerie 451.

Haus der Kulturen der Welt is publishing the first comprehensive monograph on the complete works of the filmmaker, visual artist, and author Heinz Emigholz. Since the 1970s, Emigholz has used a unique cinematic formal language to explore the relationship between film time and spatial experience, remembrance structure, and consciousness. His work radically departs from conventional representations of space and architecture in film, making him a pioneer of experimental architectural film. Emigholz focuses on often lesser-known, visionary buildings by Samuel Bickels, Eladio Dieste, Bruce Goff, Adolf Loos, Pier Luigi Nervi, Rudolph Schindler, among others. The extensive, richly-illustrated publication will be the first to broadly classify Emigholz’s complete work within architectural criticism, art, and film studies. Several authors, including Hartmut Bitomsky, Gertrud Koch, Dennis Lim, Ines Weizman, contribute a thorough examination of the complex work.

Heinz Emigholz is a filmmaker, visual artist, writer, and producer. He held the chair for Experimental Film Design at the Universität der Künste Berlin from 1993 until 2013 and is a cofounder of its Institute of Time-Based Media and of the Art and Media program. Since 1973 he has made more than 100 short and full-length films. His most recent films include Bickels [Socialism] (2015–17), Dieste [Uruguay] (2015–17), Streetscapes [Dialogue] (2015–17), Two Basilicas (2018) and Years of Construction (2019). He has had many exhibitions, retrospectives and lectures in Germany and abroad and has published in books and journals. In 2007 the Museum Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin showed an extensive exhibition of his work and in March 2019 the Kunsthalle Mannheim presented the exhibition Heinz Emigholz. He has been a member of the Akademie der Künste (Academy of Arts) in Berlin since 2012.

Anselm Franke is a curator, critic, and writer. He has been head of Visual Arts and Film at HKW, Berlin since 2013. He was previously a curator at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin and director of the Extra City Kunsthal, Antwerp. In 2005, he and Stefanie Schulte Strathaus founded the Berlin International Film Festival’s Forum Expanded and he has been its cocurator since then. He curated the 2012 Taipei Biennial and the 2014 Shanghai Biennale. His exhibition project Animism was shown from 2009 until 2014 in collaboration with various partners in a number of cities. At HKW he initiated and cocurated the exhibitions Neolithic Childhood: Art in a False Present, c. 1930 (2018), Parapolitics: Cultural Freedom and the Cold War (2017–18), 2 or 3 Tigers (2017), Nervous Systems (2016), Ape Culture (2015), Forensis (2014) and The Whole Earth (2013), among others. Franke received his doctorate from Goldsmiths College, London.

Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), founded in 1989, creates a forum for the contemporary arts and critical debates. HKW develops and stages a program that is unique in Europe, blending discourse, exhibitions, concerts and performances, research, education programs, and publications. In its extraordinary, modernist congress-hall architecture, HKW enables new forms of encounter and opens up experiential spaces between art and discourse. Together with artists, academics, and partners across the globe, it explores ideas in the making and shares them with Berlin’s international audience and the digital public. In 2002, HKW, Berliner Festspiele, the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) and Martin-Gropius-Bau merged as business units to Kulturveranstaltungen des Bundes in Berlin (KBB) GmbH. The sole shareholder is the Federal Republic of Germany.