Kakania at the Freud Museum - January 22nd 2015

A more beautiful, more fitting setting could not be found for Kakania than the house of Sigmund Freud during his last days in London, now a museum. The Freud Museum showed us the same generosity so many have around the Kakania project and we were allowed to commission five new works, each by a contemporary artist, each taking place in a different room of the house. It's very rare to be able to present works in such a rarified space, one curated so carefully, but also one that maintains a fluency that would us to walk nearly 60 people from room to room on a tour of performances.


​We began with Emily Berry reading beautiful new poems appropriated from Sigmund Freud's beautiful correspondence before moving onto Tom Jenks new conceptual work on Otto Gross, read in the exhibition room, Eros around him. We then moved into Anna Freud's study, where the remarkable performance artist Esther Strauss was asleep on Anna's original couch. Esther had stayed up for a whole day to make herself tired enough to sleep, to dream in Anna's room. It was a mesmerising and unforgettable performance. We then moved downstairs where Dylan Nyoukis resurrected Raoul Hausmann in the dining room before Jeff Hilson finished the event, reading his Wittgenstein poems in the landing. 

A major highlight for me, as the first Kakania had been, as a curator. To be able to work with such a calibre of artists, thanks to the Austrian Cultural Forum's generosity, and to launch our two new original Kakania publications too, it was a satisfying feeling. I've long wanted to perform or organise in the Freud Museum also in fact it was a motivation for me to develop Kakania to work in that space, having had a long relationship with Freud's text. In the light of these artists works, the museum became something new to me, and Im sure the audience too felt this was a special evening.

Thanks to Lili Spain for all her support. Pictures below by Wanda O'Connor.


Kakania at the Freud Museum - Jan 22nd

In just under two weeks time, on January Thursday 22nd, I’m delighted to say Kakania will once again feature contemporary artists and poets presenting original commissions on the life & work of a figure of Habsburg Vienna from one century ago. This time Kakania will be in the extraordinary setting of the Freud Museum, with the artists performing their works in the rooms of what was once the house of Sigmund Freud in north London. The audience will tour with the artists, going room to room, as each performance unfolds. 

Spaces are limited and the event is ticketed, so please do book using this link: http://www.freud.org.uk/events/75773/kakania/

 Directions to the Freud Museum can be found here: http://www.freud.org.uk/visit/

The lineup:
Emily Berry on Sigmund Freud
Esther Strauss on Anna Freud
Tom Jenks on Otto Gross
Jeff Hilson on Ludwig Wittgenstein

& Phil Minton on Carl Jung


I’m happy to announce the final details and lineups for the third and fourth Kakania events to take place in February and March. Please pop them in your diaries. 

Kakania III at the Horse Hospital - February thursday 19th
http://www.thehorsehospital.com/
Caroline Bergvall on Gustav Klimt
Martin Bakero on Arnold Schoenberg
Colin Herd on Oskar Kokoschka
Marcus Slease on Max Kurzweil
Damir Sodan on Gustav Mahler
Joerg Zemmler on Karl Kraus

Stephen Emmerson on Rainer Maria Rilke 

Kakania IV at the Austrian Cultural Forum – March Thursday 26th
http://www.acflondon.org/
George Szirtes on Arthur Schnitzler
Ben Morris on Ernst Krenek
Joshua Alexander on Paul Wittgenstein
Thomas Duggan on Ernst Mach
Fabian Faitlin on Otto Wagner
Stephen Emmerson on Rainer Maria Rilke
Jeff Hilson on Ludwig Wittgenstein
Emily Berry on Sigmund Freud
Colin Herd on Oskar Kokoschka


The Freud Museum event will also be the first time the two ambitious Kakania project publications will be available, with both books to have specific launches later in the program. Both have been designed by http://www.polimekanos.com as part of the Austrian Cultural Forum’s Occasions series. 

Oberwilding is a collaborative poetry collection, written by Colin Herd and I, with a poem marking each year of Oskar Kokoschka’s life - an avant garde exploration of the great painters century in collaborative, experimental poetics.

Kakania: an anthology is a groundbreaking collection of brand new works from 40 amazing artists and poets, that features poetry, portraiture, woodcuts, conceptual texts, photography, graphic design and a multitude of arts and artists. It contains work by: 

George Szirtes on Arthur Schnitzler, Martin Bakero on Arnold Schoenberg, Emily Berry on Sigmund Freud, Stephen Emmerson on Rainer Maria Rilke, Colin Herd on Oskar Kokoschka, Sharon Gal on Anton Webern, Jeff Hilson on Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tom Jenks on Otto Gross, Maja Jantar on Lou Andreas-Salome, David Kelly-Mancaux on Egon Schiele, Diane Silverthorne & Ariadne Radi Cor on Alma Mahler, Dylan Nyoukis on Raoul Hausman, Damir Sodan on Gustav Mahler, Marcus Slease on Max Kurzweil, Joerg Zemmler on Karl Kraus, Michael Zand on Hugo von Hofmannstahl, Jaime Robles on Ludwig Boltzmann, Alison Gibb on Bruno Walter, Pascal O'Loughlin on Wilhelm Reich, Vicky Sparrow on Margarethe Wittgenstein, Kim Campanello on Alban Berg, Jack Little on Peter Altenberg, Eley Williams on Broncia Koller-Pinell, Andy Jackson on Oscar Straus, JT Welsch on Hermann Broch, Fabian Peake on Franz Werfel, Aki Schilz on Hermann Bahr, Fabian Faltin on Otto Wagner, Iain Morrison on Alexander von Zemlinsky, Clare Saponia on Julius Wagner-Jauregg, Rhys Trimble on Felix Salten, myself on Robert Musil, Robert McClean on Max Reinhardt, Ryan Van Winkle on Ernst Weiss, Andrew Spragg on Koloman Moser, Peter Jaeger on Theodor Herzl, Nia Davies on Viktor Ullman and Esther Strauss on Anna Freud.


All Kakania events, including this next one at the Freud Museum, will also feature the beautiful books of Pushkin press, with a book table to peruse, accompanied by a Kakania flyer which offers a discount on buying their Habsburg era books online. http://pushkinpress.com/

www.kakania.co.uk / www.stevenjfowler.com

& with thanks to the Austrian Cultural Forum http://www.acflondon.org/