From the outside, the Humboldt Forum may seem like a journey back in time. Inside, visitors enter a place that has never existed before, designed by the community of four players: the Ethnological Museum and the Museum of Asian Art, the Stiftung Stadtmuseum, Humboldt University and the Humboldt Forum Foundation in the Berlin Palace. For the past year, we have been inviting visitors from near and far to a new kind of contemporary forum for encounters through and with cultures. We want to become a place for the diverse urban society, for international
polyphony and for transdisciplinarity and experiential knowledge. The same goals, it seems to me, have been set by the Neukölln Opera in its own way for years. That’s why we are ideal partners for the first music and dance theater at the Humboldt Forum: Mexico Aura: The Myth of Possession. Here, the aura of objects and stories of collecting mania and passion meet contemporary music inspired by traditions, the bodies of dancers and singers, and the texts of a Spanish-German author duo.
author duo that interweaves myth, fiction, and satire. This new musical dance theater, developed especially for the Humboldt Forum, is just as inviting as many evenings I have already had the pleasure of experiencing at the Neukölln Opera: a very sensual encounter of the arts, an entertaining, witty examination of the polyphony of the world. The most famous definition for aura comes from the Berlin-born Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin – as “a unique appearance of a distance, as close as it may be.” The Humboldt Forum may be unique, but distant and unapproachable it is not. If anyone can give the place an aura, it is the artists – and all of you, the visitors. I am very much looking
I am very much looking forward to your encounter!
Hartmut Dorgerloh, General Director of the Humboldt Forum
This text was published in print in the editorial of the July-September 2022 program of the NKO.
Mexico Aura: The Myth of Possession
Music theater by Diana Syrse (music), Eva Hibernia and John von Düffel (texts), Christopher Roman (staging) and Zafraan Ensemble. From July 21 to August 5, 2022 at the Humboldt Forum.