Simon Fujiwara, The personal effects of Theo Grünberg, 16 July 2010, 7 p.m., performance, NUMBER THREE: HERE AND NOW, JULIA STOSCHEK COLLECTION, Duesseldorf
Through theatre plays, music, fiction writing, performances and installation, Simon Fujiwara scripts and performs his own biography as fiction. In the densely spun narrative dramas of personal relationships, family, politics and grand histories that unfold, Fujiwara plays the part of multiple characters: Archaeologist, architect, writer, director, eroticist. When Theo Grünberg: academic, explorer, Nazi prisoner and eroticist died in Berlin in the winter of 2008 he was 136 years old. The personal effects he left behind included a library of almost 1000 books, poetry diaries, vinyl records, newspaper cuttings and postcards that Fujiwara inherited from Grünberg’s grandson. Shortly after, Fujiwara embarked on a journey to piece together the life of the impossibly ancient man through the story his library told, but was quickly led into a maze of mirrors, dead ends, and deception. Telling the personal story of his search, Fujiwara presents a performance set within the library of Theo Grünberg that details a quest that consumed him for almost two years and brought him some 10,000 kilometers around the world, from Berlin’s ‘Stasi’ headquarters to the deep Amazonian jungle in Brazil. As Grünberg’s life story becomes increasingly entwined with the history of modern Germany, Fujiwara in turn finds himself suffocatingly possessed by a man that he no longer recognizes as his own invention – until the day he discovers that Theodor Grünberg, the 20th Century Man, may not even be dead.
Simon Fujiwara studied architecture at Cambridge University and Fine Art at the Staedelschule, Frankfurt am Main. Selected recent and forthcoming exhibitions include: 53rd Venice Biennale (2009), 29th Sao Paulo biennale (2010), Manifesta 8 (2010), MUSAC, Leon (2010), Art Basel Statements (2010). He is this year's recipient of both the Cartier Award, Frieze Art Fair and the Baloise Art Prize, Art Basel 41 and is nominated for the forthcoming Future Generation Art Prize, PinchukArtCentre, Kiev. He lives and works in Berlin and Mexico City.
Programme
27.10.2009 Andrea Fraser
27.11.2009 Marina Abramović, Eunhye Hwang, Ragnar Kjartansson, Nico Vascellari
28.11.2009 WW in concert
12.12.2009 Andrea Zittel
18.12.2009 Dara Friedman
09.01.2010 Xavier Le Roy
22.01.2010 Bert Didillon, Stefan Ettlinger, Andreas Korte, Cornelius Quabeck, Sven Vieweg
06.02.2010 Christian Jankowski
27.02.2010 Jérôme Bel, Eva Meyer-Keller
13.03.2010 Sharon Hayes
26.03.2010 Keren Cytter, Michalis Nicolaides, Annette Sonnewend & Michael Strasser (Cie. Agar Agar)
09.04.2010 Jimmy Robert, Saskia de Keyser, Emma Hedditch, Ian White
24.04.2010 Jen DeNike
14.05.2010 Manuel Graf
28.05.2010 Joan Jonas
05.06.2010 Tino Sehgal
12.06.2010 Tino Sehgal
18.06.2010 Tris Vonna-Michell
19.06.2010 Tino Sehgal
26.06.2010 Tino Sehgal
03.07.2010 Allora & Calzadilla
10.07.2010 Allora & Calzadilla
16.07.2010 Simon Fujiwara
17.07.2010 Allora & Calzadilla
24.07.2010 Allora & Calzadilla
29.07.2010 John Bock