www.akademiaoper.com
Something needs to change. We are stuck in a system. Art doesn't seem to be free anymore. Make art for the art market if you want to survive. There seems to be no alternative proposal to this situation.
But there is a whisper through the communities of a new generation: “We have to change something".
Change what? And how?
Dissatisfaction and insecurity spread, but these feelings are difficult to grasp, impossible to name.
The road to success seems logical but hard to master: first the institution, then the market, where we need to prove ourselves within the given guidelines. What is an artist? Which ideals should be represented? How should institutions prepare us? Where should they guide us?
WHAT DO WE WANT TO CHANGE?
“How free is art?” The most urgent question of the current art debate. Every institutional space, each system, has its own laws, its own discourse, its own rules.
But what freedom can art have within the systematised art academy, art market, capitalism, the patriarchal system?
An institution often degenerates into a system that controls behavior and creates conformity, making art a part of the system. Even if it claims to be a critique of the system art which results from the system doesn't change or improve it, owing to the fact that to be seen or heard art is forced to use the characteristics of the system. Art within the art market is synonymous with the latter.
“Success in art is currently analogous with success in patriarchal capitalism (the desire to have money and power). If one benefits from its comforts then capitalism immediately appears less terrible and corrupt than just a moment ago.”
(Jolanda Wessel)
The artacademy Düsseldorf as an example for many art institutions
The opera "Akademia" is an experimental opera that deals with the questions and topics mentioned above. It shows the various perspectives of different positions in the institutional system and explains ideals, ideas, fears and personal struggles. The framework for these discourses is an example of different discursive contexts and locations in the Düsseldorf Art Academy. Through the collaboration with over a hundred artists, the project “Akademia” wants to create a more concrete awareness of this topic among artists themselves, as well as the public in general. After graduating from high school, Lara Wittenberg is accepted to the art academy. She gradually learns about its characters and institutions and is soon confronted with the gap between her own ideas and the ruling system. What is being praised as a place of anarchy and freedom slowly develops into the scene of her own doubts, political struggles and hurdles that stand in the way of her own art and thought.
There is a piece of Lara in each of us
Visitors to the Akademia Opera receive a Student ID entering Malkasten Park with the name Lara Wittenberg on it. During the welcoming speech by Elena Ubrig and Aylin Leclaire, on the first of five stages, the visitors are addressed as new students of the Art academy. The character Lara Wittenberg also receives her acceptance letter for the Art academy and joyfully expresses her hopes and expectations. The opening ceremony begins. Beth Stone, the new principal of the art academy, presents her values and ideals which are partly received with hope and enthusiasm, partly with terror and indignation by the students and professors. After the end of the annual opening, the visitor now has the opportunity to choose their own order of the following scenes. As a new student they can visit the Asta Café, join the colloquium of Malstein’s class, participate in a life drawing class of Harald Werl or attend a Senate meeting. Lara Wittenberg reflects on the situation at the end of each of the scenes and has her own personal order, which is still readable for the viewer.
Life drawing with Harald Werl
A few students are drawing the nude model in the middle of the room, others drink beer or are otherwise busy. Harald Werl is sitting on a chair, puffing a cigar and reading the newspaper. The life drawing class is like the Italian marketplace of the art academy; there are stories being told from past times, the current art scene and the latest academy gossip. This life drawing class is the shore of the traditionalists, a rough male-dominated room. Despite the male presence, the class functions as a room for all kinds of characters and Lara chooses to join the life drawing class as her first stage. After getting over her irritation that the room seems to be more of a men's get-together than a class for learning to draw, she discovers the very special charm to this place. She is naturally attracted to the passionate atmosphere that allows open discussion.
Colloquium with Professor Malstein
Lara is attending her first colloquium with Professor Walter Malstein, an aging artist who sways between the role of the wise master artist and the failed, melancholy old man. The students try to assert themselves and their work in front of him. For the first time she feels the importance of artistic creation in her own being and immediately falls into a crisis. By the end of the scene she pulls herself out of it, with newly won energetic resolutions and findings.
The Asta Café
The visitor will find the Asta Café (student union café) in a 20 metre long ship. The student "revolutionaries" sit at a rotating bar and are planning to overthrow the authorities at the academy. Unfortunately, the Revolutionary Act soon gets lost in binge drinking. Lara Wittenberg, who has been at the academy for a while now, enters the café in a rage, tired of the academy’s restrictions and requirements. She asks the others to finally take action; she has hope, wants to change something and sees the problem. However, Lara currently only sees these problems in the context of the art academy.
Senate meeting
The high professors are sitting around a long, narrow table, to advise and decide important tasks and plans to do with the future of the academy. There are big things happening, it seems. But gradually it becomes clear that the senators lose themselves in petty arguments and infighting instead of fighting for their ideals. Lara observes the meeting and is disappointed, she thought here she would be meeting her role models. She understands that the problem of restriction and inaction is more far-reaching, a problem of society as a whole, one that reaches beyond the walls of the academy.
The finale
The spectator returns to the now mirrored first stage, the circle is complete. Everything has repeated itself; a new headmaster welcomes the students and introduces his values and ideals. Lara Wittenberg decides she can no longer only watch and wants to take action, wake people up, make a difference. At the last moment she gets talked down by the people surrounding her and their societal tunnel vision. She breaks down and melts into the ground.
The process
The piece describes our current situation in terms of artistic freedom and takes the perspective of Lara Wittenberg. Each scene represents Lara's reflections and shows the viewer her understanding of the situation. By positioning the piece this way we are able to show that Lara is critical of everyone as a part of the system, not just pointing fingers at authority figures.
During the two-year production process the work took shape over various phases. Aylin Leclaire developed the concept for Akademia for over a year, starting with interviews she conducted with students and graduates of the art academy Düsseldorf. Then research in newspaper articles and literature (e.g. Foucault's "The Order of Discourse" and Gene Sharp's Guide for non-violent revolutionary strategies "from dictatorship to democracy"). Subsequently, Aylin Leclaire wrote a base of the libretto.
Then the work started to take shape with a collective working process. Leclaire founded a text team which utilised the existing libretto written by Leclaire to write the opera Akademia. After several busy weeks of regular collaboration the final libretto was ready.
A composition team of six composers started to transform the text of the opera musically. Composers of various genres worked on the piece and gave each scene a different atmosphere particular to their style of composition.
The basis for the opera was completed. At the same time as talking to the Künstlerverein Malkasten a stage team consisting of several artists began to
work on five different stage installations.
An open call, organized by the public-media team, brought almost forty singers and twenty musicians together to start rehearsing the piece in early 2019. Elena Ubrig took over as director of performance, Aylin Leclaire as director of the music. In May 2019 we finally entered the park.
The construction of the stages / installations began and rehearsals took place in the park at their designated venues. At the same time, the technical team implemented a complex PA system on the five stages.
At this moment hundreds of participants were creating a large scale work collaboratively, if someone was needed, there were more than enough people to gladly help out. Everyone was working together, a self-initiated Catering team provided warm meals for everyone around the clock.
After two years of work, the premiere took place on June 11, 2019. In bright sunshine 200 visitors wandered through the Malkasten park for four hours and explored scene by scene. Akademia was performed six times and was completely sold out each performance (with 2000 visiotors in total).
Akademia began with the idea of one person to make an opera. Through the partially democratic work process, Aylin Leclaire organized the individual teams, functioning as a kind of glue for the process. She gave each of the participating artists as much freedom of expression as possible, while taking care of the possibilities of realisation and over time a large and complex collective project emerged.
The special aspect of the project is not that over one hundred artists have gathered to raise their voice to express the need for freedom and criticality, but that one hundred people, through their strong cooperation, have given a counterexample to the current situation and demonstrated a possible solution. This cooperation could not be planned, it only grows from a mixture of desire, suffering, concept and teamwork.
The collective established itself in this project and wants to continue to fight for artistic freedom and is currently working on future strategies.