Frankfurter Rundschau 21.09.2007

Arno Widmann reflects on the 116 newly discovered photos showing Auschwitz SS guards at rest on display at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in New York: "These aren't Abu Ghraib photos. The Auschwitz staff didn't photograph each other lashing out at the inmates, or while they were being murdered. Perhaps such photos will yet appear. But these images are even more horrible. Here we come close to the perpetrators. And with them, their deeds. The Abu Ghraib photos show us what people are capable of. The Auschwitz photos show nothing, they give us a sense of what we are capable of. In front of them we start to think about the circumstances that make murderers of neighbours." Here a selection of the photos.


Süddeutsche Zeitung 21.09.2007

Kai Strittmatter writes a euphoric report from the Istanbul Art Biennial and its curator, Hou Hanru. "Hanru says he likes it best when visitors forget that there's a biennial going on. And this really does happen. On the search for art at the Golden Horn they stumble through a labyrinth of PVC and carpet shops and point their cameras in fascination at the entrance to one shop where men lounge around smoking in muscle-back T-shirts. In a dark street over in Asia they drag fruit crates onto the pavement and wait for the minibus that has just pulled up to turn on the projector and show protest videos from Sweden or Japan, videos which share the screen with the shadow of a Kadikoy grandmother. All Istanbul is a stage. Yes you can see art but it's almost more important how and where you see it. This biennial plays with the city, it teases and kicks it, steals from it and injects life into the most unexpected places. It is exhibiting the city."


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 21.09.2007

Dirk Schümer is delighted with a performance of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi's opera "Adriano in Siria," at the Pergolesi Festival in the Italian town of Jesi: "When he wrote the work, the twenty-four year old composer had to make major concessions to the horribly vain castrato Caffarelli. As 'primo uomo,' he ruled the stage more imperiously than the soprano Olga Pasichnyk, who had fantastic control over the hellish bravura arias spanning more than two octaves. In musical jewels like the 'lieto cosi tal volta,' where a dialogue unfolds between oboe and singer, Ottavio Dantone and the musicians of the 'Accademia Bizantina' gave a terrific demonstration of Pergolesi's penchant for mellifluous Roccoco sound. It was this which gave the composer the reputation of seraphic musician, and made him so beloved by his contemporaries."

Filmmaker Romuald Karmakar speculates as to why people are not showing more interest in his film "Hamburg Lessons" (more here and here) where an actor reads aloud the sermons of 'hate preacher' Imam Fazazi. "I think we are so focussed on integration that we don't want to acknowledge the very core of that which threatens us. We want dialogue with Islam and therefore ignore everything that might pose a threat to this dialogue."


Die Welt 21.09.2007

"Fantastic Julia loves incredible Romeo." Stefan Grund is positively smitten by Andreas Kriegenburg's production of "Romeo and Juliet," which premiered on Wednesday at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg with Olivia Gräser and Daniel Hoevels in the title roles. "It's as if we were hearing the story for the very first time. Like children, we want to to cry out so that Father Lorenzo can warn Romeo, who was standing on the stage only moments ago. And there is nothing we want more than for Julia to open her eyes a second sooner. But we know that this is the only possible ending, and that the director is right when he says: 'You need the pain of the two, you need their death.' Because the two have each other forever with their deaths, and because we can feel it on this night, our love for the theatre has been renewed."


Die Tageszeitung 21.09.2007

In a "keep it real" manifesto the rapper Textor alias Henrik von Holtum advocates treating music with a little more care. "You used to have to pilgrimage from flea market to flea market to find that one special record, now you are always just a few clicks away from a free music download. Why make things more difficult than they are? Only people stuck in an everything-was-better-in-the-past mentality lug records around. Everyone else just downloads them, night after night. But the sheer mass of material spoils your listening pleasure � how are you going to find the time to listen to it all? Music which needs full your attention to be appreciated doesn't stand a chance. (...) If you listen to the stuff on your laptop speakers or put it on your mobile phone, what's the point? You hear something squeaking, no more. That's just negligence."