Living Archive – Archive Work as a Contemporary Artistic and Curatorial Practice

Film curator, film researcher, author, Super-8 filmmaker and lecturer
Madeleine Bernstorff lives in Berlin and often works elsewhere. She mostly works in collaborative constellations: recent projects with Mariann Lewinsky, Sebastian Bodirsky, Brigitta Kuster, Manuela Schininá. She teaches, films and writes from time to time. A selection of some of her most recent projects includes "Frühe Interventionen: Sufragetten – Extremistinnen der Sichtbarkeit", Zeughauskino Berlin (2010), "Small Paths, Complex Stories", a film series put together with Brigitta Kuster about the (Visual) Colonialism Archive to accompany the "In the Desert of Modernity" exhibition at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2008). She has held teaching positions at a range of different institutions, including the Berlin University of the Arts (including a guest professorship 2004–2006, receiving the prize for good teaching in 2005), the HBK Braunschweig, the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon.

Projekt Let a Hundred Living Archives Bloom!

Musician and composer
John Blue is a musician and composer born in Portland, Oregon in 1970. He came to Berlin from New York in 2007 to collaborate with the artist collective CHEAP. He produces music in projects ranging from dance, film and theater to live performances in varying multidisciplinary contexts. His music combines traditional arrangements in many genres with experimental work involving manipulated field recordings and electronics. He created live soundtracks in Arsenal’s silent film series "Rising Stars, Falling Stars". He continues to compose and perform with artists such as Vaginal Davis and Susanne Sachsse in many projects. Most recently his work with filmmaker and brother Tim Blue was presented for the Filmmuseum München’s DVD release of Wilhelm Hein’s Materialfilme. This was performed live at the Berlinale 2009 and again in Berlin in 2013. Also during this time he completed a new album Trained to See Red with his band The Devil’s Blind Spot.

Project The Devil’s Blind Spot – Jumping the Gate

Curator
Ellen Blumenstein is a freelance curator, member of the curators' collective THE OFFICE and founder of Salon Populaire in Berlin. From 1998 to 2005, she worked as a curator for the KW Institute for Contemporary Art and has since curated the exhibitions "Between Two Deaths" at the ZKM Karlsruhe (Felix Ensslin, 2007) and the Summer Academy "Agulhas Negras – On the Necessity to Discuss Social Functions of Contemporary Art" in Sao Paolo / Campos do Jordão, Brazil (2008). In 2011, she curated the Icelandic pavilion at the Biennale in Venice. Since 2013, she is the chief curator of Berlin’s KW Institute for Contemporary Art.

Film historian and filmmaker
Oksana Bulgakowa was born in Moscow, is professor for Film Studies at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and lives in Berlin. She has written several books about Russian and German Cinema and directed the films STALIN – EINE MOSFILMPRODUKTION (1993) together with Enno Patalas and Frida Grafe and DIE VERSCHIEDENEN GESICHTER DES SERGEJ EISENSTEIN (1998) together with Dietmar Hochmuth. She has also curated various exhibitions and developed multimedia projects, including the "The Visual Universe of Sergei Eisenstein" website for the Daniel Langlois Foundation, Montreal (2005) and the interactive DVD "The Factory of Gestures. On Body Language in Film" for the Stanford Humanities Lab (2008).

Project Living Archive – Dying Archive

Artist
In her films, essays and installations, César explores the fictional aspects of the documentary genre and searches for experimental forms of accessing historical events. César has exhibited, amongst others, at: 8th Istanbul Biennial, 2003; Kunsthalle, Vienna, 2004; Serralves Museum, Lisbon, 2005; Locarno International Film Festival, 2005; CAG (Contemporary Art Gallery), Vancouver, 2006; Tate Modern, London, 2007; Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, 2007; International Triennale of Contemporary Art, Prague, 2008; SFMOMA, San Francisco, 2009; 12th International Architecture Exhibition, Venice, 2010; 29th São Paulo Biennial, 2010; Manifesta 8, Cartagena, 2010; Solar – Cinematic Art Gallery, Vila do Conde, Portugal, 2010; Labor Berlin 5, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2011; MUDAM, Luxembourg, 2012; Jeu de Paume, Paris, 2012.

Project Luta ca caba inda

Performer and curator specialized in early cinema and queer cinema
Vaginal Davis’ role in founding the homo-core punk movement, her various conceptual art and music projects and her performance, experimental film and video works sometimes specializing in early cinema and queer cinema represent just a small fraction of the many enduring artistic chapters in her career. Since 2005, she has been largely based in Berlin while still taking on various international teaching positions and intermedia projects. She has curated the silent film series "Rising Stars, Falling Stars" in Berlin since 2007, which she also hosts.

Project Rising Stars, Falling Stars: We Must Have Music!

Filmmaker, producer and curator
Gender, citizenship and urban scapes are Madhusree Duttas chosen areas of work. Her films have been screened widely in India and abroad in film festivals, art events and retrospectives. Dutta is also the executive director of "Majlis Manch", a centre for rights discourse and inter-disciplinary arts initiatives in Mumbai, India. The centre is engaged in campaigning for cultural literacy among students and other youth groups, facilitating interfaces among practices of different disciplines, and producing plays, films and multidisciplinary art works. Her current curatorial project "Cinema City: Research Art and Documentary Practices, 2008–2012", explores the joints between the city and its cinema in the context of Bombay / Mumbai and engages with more than hundred artists from different disciplines, genres and registers.

Project KEYwording

Artist and curator
Martin Ebner was born in Austria in 1965 and lives in Berlin and Hamburg. He studied Journalism and Communication Studies at the University of Vienna and Visual Media at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. His work draws on film, video, sound, sculpture, installations, room installations, text, music and economic criticism. He publishes on a regular basis, is involved a range of communication projects, is the co-runner of the JAZZCLUB, Berlin as well as co-editor of the magazine STARSHIP. In 2005, he designed the exhibition project "Poor Man's Expression" in the foyer of the Filmhaus at Potsdamer Platz together with Florian Zeyfang. The project was based on the holdings of Arsenal’s (at that point still named the "Friends of the German Film Archive") collection of experimental films.

Project Film Without Film, Films Perceived as Objects

Film curator and filmmaker
Darryl Els is a film programmer and researcher living and working in Johannesburg, South Africa. In 2010 he co-founded The Bioscope Independent Cinema, an alternative exhibition platform, where he currently works as the programme director.

Project Shifting Grounds: Reflections on National Identity in the Archive

Artist, filmmaker, author
Heinz Emigholz was born near Bremen in 1948 and has worked as freelance filmmaker, artist, cameraman, author, journalist and producer both in Germany and the USA since 1973. His work has been shown in a large number of exhibitions and retrospectives both nationally and internationally and he has given presentations and published extensively in Germany and beyond. In 1978, he founded the production company Pym Films. In 1984, he began the film series "Photography and beyond". From 1993 to 2013 he was a professor at the Department for Experimental Film Design at the Berlin University of Arts. In 2003, a progressive DVD release of his films began (Filmgalerie 451). His publications include "Krieg der Augen, Kreuz der Sinne", "Seit Freud gesagt hat, der Künstler heile seine Neurose selbst, heilen die Künstler ihre Neurosen selbst", "Normalsatz – Siebzehn Filme" and "Das schwarze Schamquadrat" (all published by the Martin Schmitz Verlag), "Die Basis des Make-Up" (I), (II) and (III), "Der Begnadete Meier" and "Kleine Enzyklopädie der Photographie" (in Die Republik No. 68–71, 76–78, 89–91, 94–97, 123–125), "Die Basis des Make-Up" (Pym Films).

Project Onwards and don’t forget…

An archive project aimed at communicating film through film
The ENTUZIAZM – Freunde der Vermittlung von Film und Text association was founded in Berlin in 2007 and is concerned with circulating and publicizing text and film formats both past and present that seek to communicate what film is. In 2008 and 2009, a project team carried out the "Kunst der Vermittlung. Aus den Archiven des Filmvermittelnden Films" project, which was aimed at researching, collecting and publicizing different audiovisual forms of film and cinema communication. Entuziazm was founded by Michael Baute, Volker Pantenburg, Stefan Pethke and Stefanie Schlüter among others.

Project The Business Year 1978

Artist and filmmaker
Harun Farocki was born in Neutitschein (today Nový Jičín, the Czech Republic) in 1944. He studied at the German Film and Television Academy (dffb) in Berlin from 1966 to 1968. Since then, he has directed over 100 different productions for television and cinema. Farocki was editor of and one of the authors for Filmkritik magazine from 1974 to 1984. Since 1996, his films and installations have been shown in a large number of group and solo exhibitions in museums and galleries. He has been a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna since 2006.

Project La verifica incerta

Curator and critic
Anselm Franke works primarily in Berlin and Brussels. He was director of the Extra City Kunsthal Antwerp until the end of 2010, where he curated a number of exhibitions including "No Matter How Bright the Light, the Crossing Occurs At Night" (2007), "Mimétisme" (2008) and "Sergei Eisenstein: The Mexican Drawings" (2009). In 2008, he was involved in putting together the concept for different exhibitions to be held at the Manifesta 7 in Trient, Italy and the first Brussels Biennale. He started his long-term project "Animism" in Antwerp (Extra City and MuHKA) and Bern (Kunsthalle) in 2010, which can also be seen in modified form in Vienna (Generali Foundation, September 2011) and Berlin (Haus der Kulturen der Welt, March 2012). Since 2011, he has been responsible for the theoretical training program at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts (HISK) in Ghent and teaches at the HfG Karlsruhe. He was the curator of the 2012 Taipei Biennial and since 2013 he is Head of the Visuals Arts and Film at Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin. Anselm Franke is currently completing his PhD at the Centre for Research Architecture/Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths, University of London. Anselm Franke is currently completing his PhD at the Centre for Research Architecture / Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College, London.

Project Meridians

Filmmaker and author
Stephan Geene works at the Berlin publisher, shop and film production company b_books. He has been involved in various film projects (including with Judith Hopf amongst others), making his feature debut with AFTER EFFECT. He is the co-editor of "geld.beat.synthetik" and "Film Avantgarde Biopolitik" and the author of "money aided ich-design".
His current projects include a translation of "Film Fables" by Jacques Rancière (with Teodora Tabacki) to be published in 2013, "Film, ein Leben" (working title) to appear in 2013 and “umsonst”, a fiction / documentary hybrid shot in summer 2012 and in postproduction.

Project If Sex Takes No Time (Und Kein Lebendes Bild Ist)

Cultural Studies scholar and curator
Nanna Heidenreich is currently a research scholar at the Institute for Media Studies at the HBK Braunschweig, a member of the Forum Expanded curatorial team and also works for Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art primarily in the area of experimental film and video art. She has been a member of the anti-racism network Kanak Attak for many years. She occasionally works as a translator, has published extensively (mainly on the subject of migration, image debates, racism and visual culture) and is an independent curator for film and video projects. She lives in Berlin.

Project Two DVDs: Riki Kalbe and Philip Scheffner

Curator and journalist
Tobias Hering was born in Siegen in 1971 and lives in Berlin. His work focuses on topical programs often reflecting on social issues and image politics but also allowing literary references. Films play a central role in his curatorial practice. Recent collaborations have been with Atelier RE.AL (Lisbon), Jeu de Paume (Paris) and gallery Savvy Contemporary (Berlin). Since 2006 he works free lance both in Germany and abroad, and has been a member of the programming jury for "dokfest" Kassel since 2011. At Arsenal, Tobias Hering presents the ongoing series "Der Standpunkt der Aufnahme - Point of View".

Project Specters of Freedom

Filmmaker, author and curator
Dietmar Hochmuth was born in East Berlin in 1954. He worked as an assistant director at the DEFA feature film studio in Babelsberg from 1972–73 and went on to study direction at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography in Moscow (under Georgi Danelia) from 1973–79. From 1979, he worked as an assistant director and later as a director and author, directing three cinema films, MEIN VATER IST EIN DIEB, IN EINEM ATEM, MOTIVSUCHE, and around 25 documentaries, mainly for television, including for arte, ZDF, 3sat, NDR, SR, ORB). In addition to his film work, he has also held various teaching positions and worked as an author, translator and publisher. In 1996, he founded PotemkinPress, a publishing house for film literature and new media, and worked as a lecturer for direction at the German Film and Television Academy (dffb).
In 1998, he moved to north California to work on film projects and teach at Stanford University, giving classes on film history and film education, digital filmmaking and an introduction to world cinema art. In 2004, he returned to Germany and became the professor for Documentary Film Direction at the Cologne International Film School in 2004/2005. From 2006, he taught at the Berliner Technische Kunsthochschule / Hochschule für Gestaltung (experimental and documentary film, video). From 2004–2008, he worked on the film and DVD "Factory of Gestures. Body Language in Film" (160 min., together Oksana Bulgakowa).
He is currently acting professor for Film and Video at the Institute for Media Design at the Mainz University of Applied Sciences and is overseeing the 2010 the film modeling trials at the Department of Film Studies and Screenwriting at the University of Mainz together with Prof. Dr. Norbert Grob.

Project Living Archive – Dying Archive

Film and video curator
Originally hailing from New Zealand, Brent Klinkum has lived and worked in Caen, France for the past 20 years. In 1994, Along side his work codirecting a contemporary art centre, he founded Transat Vidéo (now Transat Projects) in 1994. Recent projects include being a founding member of the Suspended Spaces collective, curating "Breaking Ground, 60 years of Austrian Experimental Cinema", in 10 film & video programs presently travelling. Or this summer’s project "La Ligne", a multidiscipinary event over five weeks along the Norman coastline, with artistic, architectural, scientific, gastronomic, or performative interventions in public spaces, alongside artistic residencies resulting in photographic books, videos, sound works, hand drawn maps…In 2011 he received a grant from the DAAD Berlin Artists-in-Residence Programme.

Author, filmmaker and producer
Between 1991 and 2000 Merle Kröger was involved in the realization of numerous documentaries and video art works as a member of the group dogfilm. 2001 she co-foundend the media production platform pong together with Philip Scheffner. In subsequent years, she worked as a producer and co-contributing author, producing the award-winning documentaries THE HALFMOON FILES (2007), DAY OF OF THE SPARROW (2010) and REVISION (2012). In addition to her film work Merle Kröger published three novels in the ariadne series by renowned publisher argument. The novels combine historical research, personal history and political analysis with elements of a thriller. The novel "Cut!" (2003) was translated into English and published in 2007 in India. The novel "Kyai!" reached #5 of the Crime/Mystery World Bestsellerlist in February 2007. Based on the research for the film REVISION, she developed the novel "Grenzfall", which won the German Crime Literature Prize in 2013.
As a curator Merle Kröger directed the transnational project "Import Export - Cultural Transfer between India and Germany, Austria" (2003–2005), as well as the filmpool project "Work in Progress" (2006/2007) for the Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art.

Project World in Progress

Eunice Martins was born in Berlin in 1965 and is a pianist, improviser and composer. She studied at the Berlin University of the Arts and the Musikakademie Wiesbaden. Since 2000, she has been Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art’s in-house cinema pianist. She has been a guest and provided musical accompaniments at numerous festivals, theatres and cinematheques, including the Hong Kong International Film Festival, Il Cinema Ritrovato (Bologna), the Jornada do Cinema Silencioso Sao Paulo, the Istanbul International Film Festival, the South River Art Center (Shanghai), the National Theater Taipei, the Taiwan Auditorium du Louvre (Paris) and the Cinematek Royale Brussels. She has taught at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University (Frankfurt am Main) and the University of Paderborn amongst others and has given workshop and presentations on film and music/sound across the world, including in New Delhi, Sao Paulo & Shanghai.

Project The Sounding Archive

Artist
Angela Melitopoulos produces video projects, installations, experimental documentaries, photographs and audio samples with time-based media since 1985. She invents new formats and production concepts. Her work deals with the production of subjectivity in relation to mobility, i.e. with the collective memory in relation to geography, the media image/video technology and the archive. Angela Melitopoulos studied at the Art Academy in Dusseldorf under Nam June Paik. Her video works are presented at international art exhibitions, film festivals and symposia (including the Taipei Biennial, the Berlinale Forum Expanded, Athens Biennale, Antonin Tapies Foundation, Barcelona, KW Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin, Manifesta 7, the Centre Georges Pompidou Paris, Whitney Museum, New York). Her videos have received numerous awards. She organizes seminars and exhibitions, publishes essays and was a guest professor at colleges and universities.

Project Realm of Possibilities

Filmmaker
Avi Mograbi is an Israeli documentary filmmaker who was born in Tel Aviv in 1956. His experimental documentaries take a critical look at Israel’s policies on the Palestinians. From 1979-1982, Mograbi studied Philosophy at Tel Aviv University and Fine Art at the Ramat Hasharon Art School. After completing his studies, he worked as an assistant director and production assistant before directing his debut film in 1989. Avi Mograbi has shown several of his films at the Berlinale Forum. His film AVENGE BUT ONE OF MY TWO EYES premiered at the Cannes International Film Festival. In 2002, Mograbi won the Peace Film Prize at the Berlinale. In 2009, Mograbi was awarded the Konrad Wolf Prize from the Berlin Academy of Arts, being honored for his role as a "committed contemporary witness of the Middle East Conflict". In 2011, he received a grant from the DAAD Berlin Artists-in-Residence Programme.

Project A Night at the Archive

Film Studies scholar
Sabine Nessel studied Film Studies, Theatre Studies and Modern German Literature in Erlangen and Berlin. Since 1991, she has held teaching positions at various universities in Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Potsdam, Basel and Minnesota. She is a founding member and co-publisher of the Internet magazine "Nach dem Film" and editor of the magazine "Frauen und Film". In 2005, she completed her doctoral thesis on "Kino und Ereignis. Das Kinematografische zwischen Text und Körper". In 2008, she was guest professor for Post-1945 Film History and Aesthetics at the Institute for Theatre, Film and Media Studies at the University of Vienna. 2010–2012 Sabine Nessel has been a guest professor for Film Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. She is currently a researcher at the University of Frankfurt/Main and is working on her habilitation project on the theme of "Kino, Zoo, Moderne". She has numerous different publications to her name both as an author and as an editor.

Project The Archaeology of Film

Film Studies scholar
Winfried Pauleit is a professor and lecturer at the Institute for Art at the University of Bremen, having completed his PhD at the Berlin University of Arts in 2000. He has given numerous presentations and put out a wide range of different publications on film, art and media, most recently "Das ABC des Kinos. Foto, Film, Neue Medien", Stroemfeld Verlag, Frankfurt am Main/Basel 2009; "Filmstandbilder. Passagen zwischen Kunst und Kino", Stroemfeld Verlag, Frankfurt am Main/Basel 2004. He is co-founder of the Internet platform "Nach dem Film".

Project Film and Theory – Theory and Film (RIDDLES OF THE SPHINX and AMY!)

Filmmaker and film curator
Author of film-essays, video-installations and critical texts, he has received dozens of international and national awards. Films like ENIGMA DE UM DIA (1996) and ANABAZYS (2009) has been presented in the Venice Film Festival, just like GLAUCES, ESTUDO DE UM ROSTO (2001) and DORMENTE (2005) that appeared in important events such as the Festival de Locarno and Oberhausen.
He is counselor for the Escola do Audiovisual in Fortaleza; professor in the Faculty of Arts in Paraná; curator of the works of Gauber Rocha and co-director along with Paloma Rocha of the documentaries in the Glauber Rocha’s DVDs.
He participated in the project Artecidade e da Bienal de São Paulo, Mercosul with video-installations and performance direction. He recently released the documentary ELOGIO DA GRAÇA which was selected for the official competition of "Visions du Réel" in Nyon, Switzerland. Recently his film Mr. Sganzerla won the Award for Best Brazilian Documentary at the International Festival Its All True. His filmessay Naked Eye will be released in 2013. He is one of the 2012 Goethe-Institut Fellows.

Project Virtwall

Artist and author
Constanze Ruhm was born in Vienna in 1965. She studied at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and at the Städelschule in Frankfurt. Since 1990, she has exhibited internationally, with her work encompassing installations, film/videos, publications and curatorial activities (haus.0programm at the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart 2001–2003; "Fate of Alien Modes", Secession Wien 2003 and ZKM Karlsruhe 2004). Her work develops a contemporary artistic practice which explores the interactions between film/film theory, theatrical forms and new media primarily with regard to questions of identity, representation and (feminist) film theory. Her productions include installations, film/video work, text/publications, curatorial projects and websites, often spanning more than one of these areas at the same time. She has also completed works for public space (most recently in the form of an invitation to take part in a competition on the Kunstpassage Karlsplatz, Vienna).
Since 2006, she has been professor for Art and Media at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Since 2007, she has also been an adjunct professor at the Art Institute Boston / Lesley University. She lives in Vienna and Berlin. Her most recent film KALTE PROBE (COLD REHEARSAL) (in collaboration with Christine Lang) had its world premiere during Forum Expanded at the Berlinale 2013.

Project Replay: ANNA

Actress
Susanne Sachsse is an actress and has belonged to many different theater ensembles, working with Einar Schleef, Heiner Müller and Robert Wilson at the Berliner Ensemble to name just a few of the people she has acted with. Since 2000, she was been working freelance, including on projects at HAU and the Volksbühne. More recently, she has acted in productions and projects by Bruce La Bruce, Ron Athey, Barbara Weber, Milan Peschel, Sascha Bunge and Claudia Bosse. She has also collaborated with Keren Cytter, Heinz Emigholz and Yael Bartana on video, performances and installations. Her film appearances include Bruce La Bruce's THE RASPBERRY REICH and OTTO; OR, UP WITH DEAD PEOPLE, Christophe Chemin's SEEKING ME YOU SAT EXHAUSTED, Oskar Roehler's DER ALTE AFFE ANGST, ALASKA.DE by Esther Gronenborn and DER IRRE by Thomas Wendrich. She is a co-founder of the artists' collective CHEAP, the band RUTH FISCHER and was a co-curator for "LIVE FILM! JACK SMITH! Five Flaming Days in a Rented World" at Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Kunst and at HAU – Hebbel am Ufer (2009).

Project Serious Ladies

Artist
Ines Schaber was born in Reutlingen in 1969 and lives and works in Berlin. After studying Fine Art in Berlin, she went on to study Architectural Theory in Princeton. In 2001, she developed the notable work "on movers and shapers" in New York, which was first shown at the storefront for art and architecture before going on to be exhibited at such venues as the actar gallerie (Barcelona), die Plattform (Berlin), the Forum Stadtpark Graz, x-lands (Leipzig) and the Kunstraum Munich. As part of the Kunstwerke project "No matter how bright the light, the crossing occurs at night", she created the piece "picture mining" in Berlin and Pennsylvania in 2006, which was subsequently shown at extra city (Antwerp) and the Badischer Kunstverein. Ines Schaber is a guest critic and gives regular workshops and seminars at the Technical University Berlin, the University of Geneva, the HfGZ Zürich and the Lyon School of Fine Arts. Her work is centered upon questions of visibility and the archive, deliberately focusing on the flipside of what becomes (or is made) visible; her work questions in particular the status of things that remain hidden or that have become invisible.

Project KEYwording

Film education specialist with a focus on children and young people
Stefanie Schlüter is a specialist on communicating film, working at the point where cinema, museum, school and university meet. She studied Philosophy and German as part of her teaching degree and completed her compulsory training year in Berlin-Neukölln. She initiated the project "What Is Cinema?", a film education project for children, young people and teachers, together with Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art and the Deutsche Kinemathek – Museum for Film and Television. Over the course of this project, she has carried out numerous practical film workshops with the filmmakers and artists Anna Faroqhi, Ute Aurand, Robert Beavers and Dirk Schaefer as well as numerous Berlin school children. From 2007–2009, she worked on the project "Kunst der Vermittlung – Aus den Archiven des filmvermittelnden Films" and gave a seminar to accompany the project at the Berlin University of Arts on "Communicating Film Through Film". She has been a fellow at the Interart Studies International Research Training Group at the Free University Berlin since October 2009 and is currently writing her dissertation in Film Studies.

Project Living Archive for Children, with Children

Film Studies scholar and artist
Sabine Schöbel studied History of Art, German, Romance Language Studies and Architecture in Regensburg, Granada, Madrid and Potsdam and wrote her Master’s thesis on "Bildzitaten und Bildparaphrasen in der spanischen Malerei von 1960 bis 1985". She completed her doctorate under the supervision of Heide Schlüpmann at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main on the first generation of female filmmakers in Europe entitled "Die Zwei. Weibliche Doppelfiguren im Europäischen Aufbruchskino der 60er Jahre."
Sabine Schöbel work spans film studies, cinema, production design and experimental film. Her films LUPINEN LÖSCHEN, GRUNSKE and HEINRICH are all part of Arsenal’s distribution range. From 2010–2012 she was managing director of the Bundesverband kommunale Filmarbeit in Frankfurt am Main, since 2012, she works at the Berlin University of the Arts.

Project El cine de la Transición

Filmmaker and curator
Marcel Schwierin was born in 1965 and studied Photography, Film Direction, Film History, Politics and Aesthetics. He is a co-founder of the Werkleitz Biennale and the experimental film database cinovoid. His films include THE IMAGES (experimental found footage, 1994); EWIGE SCHÖNHEIT (about the aesthetic of the films of the Third Reich, 2003). Since 1993, he has worked as a curator for a range of different projects, including for the Werkleitz Biennale, the Goethe Institute, the Max Ophüls Festival, the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen and the Transmediale. He was artistic director of the Werkleitz Festival America 2008 and of Arab Shorts in 2009 and 2010. Since 2010 he is the film & video curator for the transmediale. His curatorial work in 2011 included "SyncExistence", a film and video program for the Transmediale.11, "Shooting Animals – A Brief History of Animal Film" as the theme for the International Short Film Festival Oberhausena and "Zoo" for the Werkleitz Festival.

Project The Cinema of the Republics

Film Studies scholar and curator
Marc Siegel is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Theater, Film and Media Studies at the Goethe-University in Frankfurt. His research focuses on avant-garde film and queer studies. His projects as a freelance curator include "Camp/Anti-Camp" (with Susanne Sachsse, HAU/Berlin, 2012); "George Kuchar" (Berlin Biennial, 2010); "LIVE FILM! JACK SMITH! Five Flaming Days in a Rented World" (with Susanne Sachsse and Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, 2009); "Underground/Overseas" (Forum Expanded, Arsenal/Berlin and Extra City, MUKHA/Antwerp, 2007); and "In Parentheses: The Films of Carmelo Bene" (Arsenal/Berlin 2005). He is also one of the co-founders of the artists' collective CHEAP, whose performances and installations have been presented at venues such as HAU/Berlin, the Donau Festival/Krems, Steirischer Herbst/Graz, Theaterhaus Gessnerallee/Zürich, Theater an der Parkaue/Berlin and the Forum Expanded/Berlinale.

Project Ludwig Schönherr’s Happy and Stupid Structures

Film Studies scholar and film maker
Senta Siewert is currently Professor (interim/part time) for Film Studies with the focus on film theory and film aesthetics at the Ruhr-University Bochum. Her research focuses on film analysis, music in film, film practice, film education and Expanded Cinema. She is part of the DFG-research network "Experience space Cinema" and is the head of the research project "Programming, Curating and Reconstructing as elements of a performative practice of film historiography". Senta Siewert was director assistent of documentary films for arte, 3SAT and ZDF e.g. "Youthquake’65"; "Fantastic Voyages – A Cosmology of the music video" (7 episodes); "Music Planet – Silver Rockets/Kool Thing. 20 years of Sonic Youth"; "Lost in Music – Deep into Dub"; "Lost in Music – From Disco to Disco"; "Pop Odyssey – Beach Boys and Satan"; "Lost in Music – Girls, girls, grrls" and "Themeevening 'S,M,L,XXL Street fashion".

Artist and professor at the UdK
Hito Steyerl was born in Munich in 1966. She lives in Berlin and works as a filmmaker, video artist and author, exploring essayistic documentary film and postcolonial criticism both as a producer and theorist. Her work is located at the point where film and art meet. The themes most important to her work include cultural globalization, political theory, global feminism and migration. She is also active as a political journalist, film and art critic and catalogue and book author. She is a doctor of Philosophy, guest professor for Experimental Media Design at the Berlin University of the Arts and has held a number of additional teaching positions at various art schools and universities in Vienna, Munich and Hannover. Her films, videos and installations have received international prizes and been shown at numerous international film festivals and art exhibitions, including the 3rd Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (2004), Manifesta 5 (2004), documenta 12 (2007) and the Shanghai Biennale (2008). In 2009, the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein presented her first solo exhibition (curated by Marius Babias).

Project NOW! (Compressed)

Curator, critic and filmmaker
Dorothee Wenner studied German and History at the University of Hamburg and began her career as a freelance journalist, author and filmmaker in 1985. Since 1990, she has been a member of the selection committee of the International Forum of New Cinema at the Berlinale and headed the Berlinale Talent Campus in 2007 and 2008. In 2010, she curated the film series "Moving Politics – Cinemas from India" at the Arsenal cinema together with Nicole Wolf to coincide with the "Being Singular Plural: Moving Images from India" exhibition at the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin. Her own films include "DramaConsult" (D 2012), PEACE MISSION (Germany 2008), STAR BIZ (together with Merle Kröger, Germany 2005), and DIE POLEN VOM POTSDAMER PLATZ (Germany/Poland 1998).

Project Family Affairs

Artist and curator
Ian White is an artist working mainly in performance. From 2001–11 he was Adjunct Film Curator for Whitechapel Gallery, London. Numerous independent curatorial projects include "Emily Wardill" at De Appel, Amsterdam (2010); Kinomuseum, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (2006) as well as "It’s Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse…" and "Kopietheater" for Arsenal (2009/2010). He has written extensively on artists’ moving image and taught at universities in the UK and internationally. He is a tutor in performance at the Dutch Art Institute, Arnhem and since 2007 the facilitator of the LUX Associate Artists Programme, London.

Project A Shared Stage of Contingent Production

Film studies scholar, anthropologist and curator
Nicole Wolf is a lecturer at the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her most recent curatorial projects include "Moving Politics – Cinemas from India", a three-part film program at the Arsenal cinema to coincide with the "Being Singular Plural: Moving Images from India" exhibition at the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (2010) and "No Man's Land", a film program for the "Lines of Control, commemorating 60 years of partition of the Indian Subcontinent" exhibition curated by Green Cardamon (London). Her publications include "Weg in Berlin – Aber echt! Dokumentarisch-fiktionale Randnotizen" / "Away in Berlin – Really! Documentary-fictional Side Notes", in: Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, Florian Wüst (Eds.), "Wer sagt denn, dass Beton nicht brennt, hast Du's probiert? Film im West-Berlin der 80er Jahre", and "Lovers of Life for Heterogeneous Time" in: "Identity Theft: Cultural Colonisation and contemporary Art." (Ed.) Jonathan Harris, University of Liverpool and Critical Forum Tate Liverpool, 2008.

Project Engaging cinema and re-viewing collective pratices

Artist and curator
Florian Wüst was born in Munich in 1970 and works as a freelance artist and film curator in Berlin. His previous collaborations with Arsenal include the five-part touring program "Touching Politics" with 16mm-films from the Arsenal archive (2005), the film series "Die Poesie des Unbewussten. Peter Weiss und der Avantgardefilm" (2007) and the "Wer sagt denn, dass Beton nicht brennt, hast Du's probiert? Film im West-Berlin der 80er Jahre" film series and book of the same name curated with Stefanie Schulte Strathaus (2006/2008). His many additional curatorial projects include "White Noise", Blickle Kino, 21er Haus, Vienna (2013); "Becoming Voice", South London Gallery (with Maxa Zoller, 2012); "Jailbreak", Impakt Festival, Utrecht (2011), "Kulturen des Wirtschaftens" (a event funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation together with the Ludwig Maximilians University Munich, radialsystem Berlin, 2010), "Generation Berlin Wall" (Goethe-Institut, Tate Modern, no.w.here, London, 2009). Some of the exhibitions he has participated in include "Shared.Divided.United", Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst, Berlin, Berlin Istanbul Stipendiaten 1998–2009, Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin, "In Istanbul – Between Arrival and Departure", BMSuma, Istanbul, "Come in, friends, the house is yours!", Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe (all 2009). His solo exhibitions include Tolms Traum, Galerie Visite ma tente, Berlin (2008), "Studies on the political subject", centre d'art passerelle, Brest (2007).

Project So They Go and Buy

Artist and curator
Through art, film, and publication projects, Younis investigates the position of individuals in a politically driven world, and the conditions in which historical and political conditions of the collective become personal ones. Younis curated "Museum of Manufactured Response to Absence" that premiered in 2012 at Museum of Modern Art in Kuwait, as well as "Maps, Timelines, Radio Programmes" for La Galerie, Contemporary Art Center in Noisy-le-Sec (Paris), "Out of Place" with Kasia Redzisz for the Tate Modern (London) and Darat al Funun (Amman), and "Momentarily Learning from Mega-Events" for Makan (Amman) in 2011. She has also curated film programs for the three editions of the Independent Arab Film (Arab Shorts), organized by Goethe-Institut in Cairo (2009–2011) and Kuwait's 1st national pavilion for the 55th Venice Biennale (2013).
She was one of the 2012 Goethe-Institut Fellows.

Artist and curator
Florian Zeyfang was born in Stuttgart in 1965 and has been professor for Video/Installation at the Academy of Fine Arts in Umeå, Sweden since 2006. He lives in Berlin and works as an artist, videomaker and author. In his texts, video works and installations, he takes a critical look at the connotations of the globalised media and its world of signs and illustrates the consequences for society and the individual before the backdrop of art and political history. His works are created using different variations of the moving image: film, video, slides, animation. Florian Zeyfang regularly takes part in exhibitions both nationally and internationally, most recently at the Kunstverein Cologne, A Gentil Carioca (Rio de Janeiro), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago) and Artists Space (New York), the 2nd Tirana Biennale at the ICA Moscow, the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf , the Kunstverein Hannover, the 6th Werkleitz Biennale in Halle and the Kunstwerken Berlin. In addition, the artist has also developed curatorial projects for a range of different institutions, including the CCA Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, the sala rekalde in Bilbao, the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, the 8th Havanna Biennale, the Fotofest in Houston, the Austrian Museum for Applied Arts in Vienna, the MAK Schindlerhaus in Los Angeles and the Swiss Institute New York. Together with Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art (at that point still "Friends of the German Film Archive") and Martin Ebner he created the exhibition project "Poor Man's Expression" in 2005. The jointly edited publication appeared in 2010.

Project The Fool on the Hill – Introducing Films by Nicolás Guillén Landrián