Elena Kaufmann, born in 1992, is working on a multimedia approach to poetry and lives in Berlin.
contact: elenakaufmann@posteo.de
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27.09. – 18.10.2024 Das lässt sich sehen – zeitgenössische Positionen der Visuellen Poesie
group-show & festival
organised by KOOK e.V.
Galerie Spor Klübü, Berlin
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11.2024 poetry reading at meine drei lyrischen ichs, Kunstverein München
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12.2024 – 02.2025 restaging DANIEL'S DESTRUCTION
DANIEL'S DESTRUCTION – Akademie der Künste Berlin
a theatre project of Unbestimmten Bewegung
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Video installation daniel's destruction
group-show The Breath of a House is the Sound of Voices Within
Akademie der Künste Berlin, Hanseatenweg.
01.03.2024 – 01.04.2024
Performance/ Live-Film/ theatre essay daniel's destruction
16.03.2024, 21.30 h, Kleines Parkett, free entry
Akademie der Künste Berlin, Hanseatenweg
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daniel’s destruction is a multimedia search for traces that explicitly delves into a web of intoxication, addiction, sexual violence and sex work in the context of contemporary Berlin’s gay scene. The film deals with the true story of a young man who died after being forced into sex work, depicting his immediate social environment and the final weeks before his death from an overdose of the synthetic party drug GBL in January 2020.
An installation and a theatre piece convey a sense of life between Grindr dates, OnlyFans uploads, drug use and drug dealing, taking a critical look at such interactions in the gay scene. Gay life in Berlin plays an important role in marketing the city’s party culture – but discussions rarely go deeper than the surface. This project shows a vulnerable inside perspective, a psychogeography of Berlin shaped by intoxication and sex dates.
daniel’s destruction is a poignant portrayal that operates between breathless interior and tragic exterior. daniel’s destruction deals with a grieving process amid stigma and shame. daniel’s destruction is a poetic snapshot of a Berlin milieu.
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A project by Unbestimmte Bewegung
Director: Yannik Böhmer / Text framework: Nicolaas van Diepen / Dramatic composition: Elena Kaufmann
Performance: Nicolaas van Diepen / Shlomi Moto Wagner / Tim-Fabian Hoffmann
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__starting December 2022 there's a second edition of the artist's book Dear world you have made the persons slow.
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__working grant Literature of the city of Berlin 2023
press statement Literaturstiftung Bayern – LITERATURUPDATE 2020 Den Tod schreiben (second prize):
"The eleven poems of the 27-year-old, born in Erlangen, are rhythmic miniatures on the fragility of life. The jury remarks that 'impressively, Kaufmann manages to write the ever-existent presence of death in its most literal sense, word by word, sound by sound."
BR2 KulturLeben, 21.10.2021 –
"Dear World..." – Mit Blackout Poetry durch die Krise. Kunstbuch der Lyrikerin Elena Kaufmann
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„[…] Erst beim Zuhören fällt er so richtig auf, der persönliche Ton, der in ihren poetischen Botschaften mitschwingt: sphärisch und direkt; tastend, aber irgendwie unerschrocken.“"
(...listen to the complete feature here)