presentation

presentation

presentation

diego-lama-screening

© Fête de la Musique, Katerina Valdivia Bruch, 2008

Arts and Conversation, was initiated by Katerina Valdivia Bruch in 2007, started first as a “living room” project called Haus Bruch, in which invited art practitioners gave a talk about their work. The invited participants were developing work in Berlin, so that most part of the presentations were about an ongoing project. Usually galleries in Berlin do an opening, sometimes a closing event, but there is few that do an additional programme about the content of the exhibition. For that reason, she collaborated with a number of artists, art institutions and galleries and presented this event as an addition to the regular programme. In 2008, Arts and Conversation was presented as part of the Festival New Life Berlin.

Her talk at Ruang MES 56 was about some aspects of curating contemporary arts from the point of view of an independent art curator. It showed also some examples of exhibitions done with emerging international artists. After that, there was an overview presentation of the arts scene in Berlin, focusing mainly on visual arts, electronic and/or experimental music and performing arts. Part of the talk was also a glimpse on the most important art festivals held in the city during the year.

The last part of the Katerina’s presentation was a screening with some video works of Diego Lama. Diego Lama (*1980, Lima) studied Fine Arts in Lima at Corriente Alterna, was a resident artist at Site Gallery in Sheffield, United Kingdom and did a course on multimedia and video at Mediamatic in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. His works have been presented in a number of International festivals and exhibitions in Argentina, Netherlands, Peru, Germany, Czech Republic, Brazil, Spain, Israel, USA, Switzerland and France. He lives and works in Lima, Peru.

Biography:
Katerina Valdivia Bruch is an independent art curator and contemporary dancer based in Berlin, Germany.She studied Philosophy in Lima at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru and in Germany at the Freie Universität Berlin. She holds a postgrade in Cultural Policies and Management of the Universitat de Barcelona and a diploma of the Independent Study Programme of MACBA, Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona, Spain.

She has been working in the field of arts management since 2001, including working for institutions such as House of World Cultures in Berlin and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC, USA. After her work as Exhibitions and Program Coordinator at Casa Asia, Barcelona, she started curating contemporary arts in 2006 with IN_FUSION, an exhibition about Peruvian contemporary art. IN_FUSION was presented at Cervantes Institute Berlin in 2007 and at Cervantes Institute Munich in 2008. She was invited as a curator for the International Prague Triennale in Czech Republic in 2008 with her project Hybrid Identities in Urban Landscapes. She has curated the yearly program of exhibitions for the gallery IAC-Berlin after its opening in February last year. Katerina works also as art critic and has been writing for some printed and online magazines, such as Kunst Magazin Berlin, Artfacts.net, the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia.

As a contemporary dancer, she has been in Peru, Brazil, Spain, Poland and Germany working for different dance companies, but also presenting her own choreographies. She usually does collaborative works within a multidisciplinary approach and works with visual artists, sound artists and experimental musicians.

During her residency period at Ruang MES 56, she has been researching about contemporary Indonesian art, Indonesian recent history and artist initiatives in Indonesia. Back in Berlin, she will give a talk about artist initiatives space in Indonesia (with examples from Yogyakarta, Jakarta and Bandung) at the Asia Pacific Weeks in Berlin in October 2009, invited by IfA (Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations). Besides that, she is planning an exhibition on contemporary Indonesian art to be presented in Berlin next year.