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Home » Review » Module 1 Perspective I – Festmahl! banquet for the 33 scholarship-holders of the certificate course

Review

Module 1 Perspective I – Festmahl! banquet for the 33 scholarship-holders of the certificate course

From the 24.09.-26.09.2021, the first module of “Artistic Interventions in Cultural Education” was held at the Federal Academy for Cultural Education in Wolfenbüttel. Thirty-three participants as well as six lecturers and an artist filled the three days with inputs, workshops, aesthetic communication formats and artistic impulses. On our Homepage, we present three perspectives looking back at the weekend.

The performance FESTMAHL! by Ellen Kobe formed the centrepiece of the weekend. It was staged at the Schloss Museum Wolfenbüttel, a historic building which had for a long time served the Dukes of Braunschweig-Lüneburg as a Residenz.(übersetzt “residence”) Today, the Schloss Museum Wolfenbüttel boasts the baroque rooms preserved in their original state which today still bear testimony to the glamour and splendour of courtly life. During the FESTMAHL! in collaboration with cook Christoph Pemmann and his team which took place in the palace’s ceremonial hall, surrounded by original exhibits, the historic rooms came to life again with their stories and tales.

Ancient candle bearers, valuable china and other artefacts in the collection created a baroque, festive atmosphere for the evening. The Tromp-l‘oeil principle provided for a game of confusion based on seeing and understanding. The story of Ellen Kobe’s being a relative of Prussian Queen Elisabeth Christine was made so convincing with the historical artefacts serving as proof that the question remained where historical narratives and inventions actually coincided. Again and again, the participants had to ask themselves what was really genuine.

With a choreography of dining staged in accordance with the set of rules for baroque dining culture, the FESTMAHL! was turned into a place of communication and encounter among the scholarship-holders. “My identity as a performer was correctly announced by the programme, glimmered through the perspective of action and speech and remained suspended between reality and fiction.” (Ellen Kobe)