Reading & Discussion
EMPIRES FACING EACH OTHER: LITTLE GOLDEN AMERICA

10/13/15
7:00pm
Goethe-Institut New York

In 1935, at the height of Stalinist terror and the Great Depression, the Russian writer duo Ilya Ilf and Jewgeni Petrow, were send on a four-month tour of the US by the newspaper Prawda. Their travel­ogue, published under the title Одноэтажная Америка (literally One-Storied America) in Russia and translated into English as Little Golden America, is a fascinating collage of words and images that reflects the tensions between the USSR and the US during the emergence of fascism in Europe.
 
Eighty years later, Berlin-based writer Felicitas Hoppe, who is the author of the foreword to the German publication of Little Golden America, Das eingeschossige Amerika (Die Andere Bibliothek, 2011), travels along the duo’s original route together with the visual artists Alexej Meschtschanow and Jana Müller. The intention is to reexamine the relationship between East and West from diverse artistic perspectives and in the light of current political developments. Hoppe, Meschtschanow, and Müller will speak about their journey and the book Little Golden America at seven branches of the Goethe-Institut North America. In New York–their final destination–Hoppe will read from her travel notes and Little Golden America, accompanied by photographs of the journey. The subsequent discussion will be moderated by Belarus-born, New York-based curator and art critic Olga Kopenkina, who grew up with the writings of Ilf and Petrow.  

The project Empires Facing Each Other is made possible by the generous support of the branches of the Goethe-Institut North America, the Villa Aurora (Berlin/Los Angeles), and Professor Ulrike Rainer (Dartmouth College, New Hampshire), who organized the journey.


Felicitas Hoppe (born 1960 in Hameln, Germany) lives and works in Berlin. She writes novels, children’s books, and essays and regularly collaborates with visual artists and musicians. Currently she is translating the collected writings of the US-American children’s book author Dr. Seuss into German. Her work is published by S. Fischer Verlag and has been awarded multiple prizes, including the 2014 Georg Büchner Prize and the 2015 Erich Kästner Literaturpreis.
 
Alexej Meschtschanow (born 1973 in Kiev, Ukraine) moved to Leipzig in 1984, where he studied painting with Timm Rautert at the Leipzig Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, 1997-2008. Since his time at the Academy he has turned away from painting to work in experimental sculpture. Awards and residencies include a residency at Villa Aurora, Los Angeles with Felicitas Hoppe. Meschtschanow lives in Berlin.
 
Berlin-based artist Jana Müller (born 1977 in Halle/Saale, Germany) studied photography and visual art at the Leipzig Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst. Her work deals with questions of memory as well as narrative and filmic forms and spans the mediums photography, installation, and fictional narration. She has received numerous stipends and participated in artistic projects in Germany and internationally in Venice, Istanbul, Vienna, and Banja Luka.

Olga Kopenkina is a Belarus-born, New York-based curator and art critic as well as adjunct professor at NYU's Steinhardt School for Arts and Art Professions. Among other exihibitions, she has curated Lenin: Icebreaker Revisited, Austrian Cultural Forum New York (2014-2015); Sound of Silence: Art during Dictatorship, EFA Project Space (2012); and Russia: Significant Other, Anna Akhmatova Museum (2006). Her writings have been published in journals such as Art Journal, ArtMargins, and Modern Painters.