Could we face our lives and this (mostly complicated) world in any other way than the usual way? Could there also be happiness in this?
In the event series WUNDERKAMMER music, science and philosophy combine with a somewhat different view of the world, based on selected phenomena from our everyday life. In doing so, the mirrored cabinets of the historical Wunderkammern offer us a productive, sensual echo chamber in which we bring contemporary experiences into relationship and resonance with figures of thought from antiquity and the Renaissance.
The chambers of wonder around 1600 – predecessors of today’s museums – placed their often bizarre exhibits of art, craft, nature and science in a holistic “world context” that we often lack today. Inspired by this, the Neuköllner Oper designs new, own WUNDERKAMMERN, which bring together a curious audience with experts from music, science and art. Music is the most important ally here and a kind of messenger, in its vibrational field we put together finds, stories and experiments from then and now – and try ourselves in wonder, which opens up a highly productive attitude to the world with the “curiosity of the child and that of the scholar” (Alexander von Humboldt).
The WUNDERKAMMER series began in the fall of 2020 and offered a sequence of 9 programs and 3 revivals until the summer of 2023: 30 performances at 7 selected venues in Berlin.
At the beginning of the 2023/24 season, there will be two new programs on TIME and DEVOTION, before entering a third season – episodes XI-XIV – in spring 2024.
The programs take place in collaboration and with the support of the Ernst Schering Foundation as well as in cooperation with the participating institutions that host the WUNDERKAMMER.
Conception and moderation
Bernhard Glocksin, Artistic Director of the Neuköllner Oper
Conception, research, set design
Sabrina Rossetto, Architect & Stage Designer
In Cooperation with
UPCOMING SHOWS
WUNDERKAMMER XI: HINGABE & ENGAGEMENT
In contrast to a present oriented toward effectiveness and utility, there is a great virtue of “waste”: devotion. It is one of the wonders of the human species – what would be our cooperation, what would be the history of mankind without devotion?
16 Oktober 2023, Neuköllner Oper
PAST WUNDERKAMMER-Evenings:
With the natural scientist and philosopher Norman Sieroka, the psychologist and dancer Miriam Ruess, the soprano Josefine Göhmann and the musicians Nico Meinhold and Hilary Jeffery, we look at scientific and philosophical concepts about objective and subjective, socially determined and individual time and test possibilities to experience time differently and to be able to shape it for ourselves.
6/7 September 2023, Museum für Kommunikation Berlin
WUNDERKAMMER VI: LONGING FOR BEAUTY
Summer evening in an extraordinary echo chamber: an Oriental garden. Where else could we encounter the great question of beauty more enclosed and vivid than here? To trace the mysterious power that beauty and music awaken in us? What would “beauty” be in relationships among people, in society, and to nature and the future? Could it develop a new dynamic and productive force in the social?
With Prof. Dr. Walter Sommerfeld (Uni Marburg), Prof. Dr. Rasha Abdel Rahman (HU Berlin), Luise Enzian (baroque harp), Tehila Nini-Goldstein (vocals), Kaan Bulak (electronics, composition)
15/16/17 June 2023, Oriental Garden/Reception Hall, Gärten der Welt
WUNDERKAMMER IX: Der unsterbliche Mensch oder vom Ende Der Wunder
Hasn’t it always been a dream of mankind to escape its own limitations? Will it be fulfilled in this century when nanobots repair the body and transhumanism promises eternal life?
WITH Dr. Christopher Coenen (Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis at KIT) and music by the Teichmann brothers (live electronics, sound objects) and Sebastian Lange (wind instruments).
CONCEPTION Bernhard Glocksin, Sabrina Rossetto, Christopher Coenen MODERATION Bernhard Glocksin
WUNDERKAMMER VIII: Tiere Sehen
The fox on the sidewalk, the crow in the park, the neighbor’s dog: in cities we get closer – but what do we know about each other? What do we see in animals and what happens when the gaze of an animal hits us?
WITH Prof. Dr. Katja Liebal (University of Leipzig, AG Human Biology and Primate Cognition), Prof. Dr. Klaus Fitschen (University of Leipzig, Church History) and the musicians Miguel Pérez Iñesta (Clarinet) and Kaan Bulak (Electronics)
CONCEPTION AND REVIEW Bernhard Glocksin, Sabrina Rossetto MODERATION Bernhard Glocksin
Museum für Naturkunde, 6. & 7. Februar 2023
WUNDERKAMMER VII: World without Pictures?
hosted by blind experts
We are happy to be guests of blind experts in November. With them we will experience music between spatial sound and artistic interpretation and learn about an environment that we as sighted people share with blind people and yet is so different. A world we don’t have to be afraid of…
With Prof. Dr. Dino Capovilla (Uni Würzburg), Dr. Roland Zimmermann (HU Berlin), Fanny Däuper as well as Miguel Pérez Iñesta (musical direction, clarinet) and other members of the ZAFRAAN Ensemble.
11 & 12 November 2022, Siemens-Villa/Berlin-Steglitz
WUNDERKAMMER III: Fungi
WHY WE ARE NO INDIVIDUALS
They make us wonder, sing, and see the world differently: Fungi and especially mycelia, their underground network of filamentous stolons, reveal fascinating patterns of intelligence, communication and organization – including that we are not individuals in the classical sense of the word. Inspirations for meeting the challenges of our time? With Prof. Dr. Vera Meyer, microbiologist (TU Berlin), Prof. Dr. Jens Krause (HU Berlin), Markus Syperek (musical direction) and other musicians with music from Monteverdi to the present
Prinzessinnengarten and Kiezkapelle, 29 September – 1 October 2022.
WUNDERKAMMER VI: LONGING FOR BEAUTY
Summer evening in an extraordinary echo chamber: an Oriental garden. Where else could we encounter the great question of beauty more enclosed and vivid than here? To trace the mysterious power that beauty and music awaken in us? What would “beauty” be in relationships among people, in society, and to nature and the future? Could it develop a new dynamic and productive force in the social?
With Prof. Dr. Walter Sommerfeld (Uni Marburg), Prof. Dr. Rasha Abdel Rahman (HU Berlin), Luise Enzian (baroque harp), Tehila Nini-Goldstein (vocals), Kaan Bulak (electronics, composition)
7 & 8 July 2022 , Oriental Garden/Reception Hall, Gärten der Welt
What would life be without music? But where does it come from? Is it inscribed in our DNA? What happens when we listen and play, what roles do the head and body play here? And what can current research tell us about this? With Prof. Dr. Eckart Altenmüller (HfM Hannover), Dr. Daniel Miklody and Prof. Dr. Benjamin Blankertz (FU Berlin/Berlin Brain Computer Interface), Christopher Verworner (composer, pianist).
10/11 May 2022, Neuköllner Oper
WUNDERKAMMER IV: THE BODY AS A MARVEL
Invitation to a blind date with the most important partner – our body and mind. Meeting point: Schinkel’s Rotunda in the Altes Museum, where Asklepios, the great physician of antiquity, watches us. With Prof. Dr. Tobias Esch (Uni Witten Herdecke), Dr. Mona Schrempf (among others HU Berlin), Wu Wei (Sheng and other traditional Chinese instruments), Niko Meinhold (harp, glockenspiel and others).
Schinkel-Rotunda at Altes Museum Berlin, 12-14 November 2021.
WUNDERKAMMER III: Fungi
WHY WE ARE NO INDIVIDUALS
They make us wonder, sing, and see the world differently: Fungi and especially mycelia, their underground network of filamentous stolons, reveal fascinating patterns of intelligence, communication and organization – including that we are not individuals in the classical sense of the word. Inspirations for meeting the challenges of our time? With Prof. Dr. Vera Meyer, microbiologist (TU Berlin), Prof. Dr. Jens Krause (HU Berlin), Markus Syperek (musical direction) and other musicians* with music from Monteverdi to the present
Prinzessinnengarten and Kiezkapelle, 9-11 September 2021.
WUNDERKAMMER II – Imagination and Scent
THE DREAMS OF ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. A journey of sound and smell to Mexico.
Composer Diana Syrse, soprano Ana Schwedhelm and neuroscientist Anna D’Errico (Goethe University & Max Planck Institute Frankfurt) lead an expedition of the inner senses.
Kiezkapelle, 23 & 24 Oktober 2020 and 17-19 March 2022
WUNDERKAMMER I – Sound and Worldview
THE AIR BETWEEN THE STRINGS.
A journey with baroque harpist Luise Enzian to the origins of music history and into the echo chamber of the Renaissance, with insights into the world, the central role of music, small experiments and sound pictures by Lena Wenta.
Neuköllner Oper/Hall, 19 & 20 September 2020.
Photos: © Sabrina Rossetto, Nancy Ludwig, Alexander Savin (WikiCommons)