Roee Rosen: Kafka for Kids, with Hani Furstenberg – Volksbühne Berlin

Performance

In English language

Introduction: Marcel Schwierin

Tuesday, 14.05.2019

9 p.m.

The project Kafka for Kids by artist, writer and filmmaker Roee Rosen will be shown in the Grüner Salon as a Berlin premiere. It serves as a basis for discussion on the question of which materials are appropriate for children, especially against the problematic background that childhood and naivety are often seen as a privileged perspective on life. After an introduction by Marcel Schwierin, director of the Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art and long-time curator of Rosen, new film and visual material by the artist will be shown for the first time at the beginning of the evening. The works come from Rosen’s current, brutally surreal series Kafka for Kids, which combines elements of comic drama fiction, documentary, musical and animation based on the artist’s drawings. Childhood is then viewed from a completely different perspective: The awkward, intricate details by which Israeli military law defines childhood in the occupied Palestinian territories. Hani Furstenberg, an accomplished actress and long-time collaborator of Rosen, appears as a fictional legal scholar and gives a strangely eroticized and, in terms of logic, completely opaque explanation of the Kafkaesque legal reality of the occupation.

In film, drawing, writing and performance, Roee Rosen explores alternative worlds that are related to ours, yet exist separately from them through farce, tragedy and near-truths. He often imagines historical figures or ties unfounded stories to existing ones; he weaves desirable or humorous twists into current events and pushes history or politics to their illogical extremes. He has dealt with the following figures, among others: Marquis de Sade, Georges Bataille, Vladimir Putin, Franz Kafka and Eva Braun.

Hani Furstenberg is an actress known internationally for her performances on stage and screen. She spent her early career in Israel, where she starred in television series and award-winning films such as Yossi and Jagger and Campfire , and was a regular cast member at Tel Aviv’s The Cameri Theatre. She has lived in New York since 2010 and has appeared in internationally acclaimed films such as The Loneliest Planet and The Golem.

A cooperation between the Volksbühne, Berlin and the Edith-Russ-Haus