"Performance": Photo exhibition by Frank Stefan Kimmel opens at KWS Biotechnikum

Einbeck, 13.10.2023

The exhibition by photographer Frank Stefan Kimmel, which opened at KWS Biotechnikum under the title "Auftritt," tells of life with and on the stage. With his photographs and accompanying interview texts, he introduces 25 actors and musicians such as Iris Berben, Götz Alsmann, Romy Haag, Ulrich Matthes and Martin Lindow.

Live performances are a natural part of the cultural experience, whether at concerts, readings or in the theater. But what does this form of public performance look like from the perspective of the performer? What happens between the performance and the final applause from the point of view of an actress, a musician, an author? How do they experience themselves and others in this special and yet familiar situation between tension and flow, happiness and self-criticism, authenticity and staging? This is what Frank Stefan Kimmel shows with his project "Auftritt", which has also been published as a book.

At the vernissage, accompanied by Thomas Zander (saxophone), Julia Hansen read exemplarily from the interview with Ulla Meinecke. The actress, singer and artistic director of the "Kulturkrafttage" reported how the singer, originally from Hesse, once went on stage after an encounter with Udo Lindenberg, and how she learned to deal with stage fright and applause from then on. At the new festival in Einbeck in March, Frank Stefan Kimmel's photographs were already on display in the PS.Halle. Some of the artists photographed will perform next year at the "Kulturkrafttage" in Einbeck, such as Götz Alsmann

"The side stage area has always fascinated me," says photographer Frank Stefan Kimmel. "A clearly defined line runs there, separating the visible from the hidden, the diffusely dark from the brightly focused, the private from the public. Whoever crosses this line comes back changed." Frank Stefan Kimmel studied psychology, realized classical and jazz productions as a music producer and owner of his mobile recording studio "while-others-sleep", stood on stage as a singer with a band and his own songs, so he knows them from different angles.

That's why Frank Stefan Kimmel came up with the idea of asking various artists to give him 30 seconds of their time immediately before and after their performance in front of his camera. "Always in front of a neutral background and with an identical light setup, usually directly on the side stage," the photographer reports. Thus, over four years, different snapshots of artists were created on and behind the large and small stages of the Republic.

Frank Stefan Kimmel understands his project "Performance" as a plea to be aware of how valuable the quality and immediacy of the live experience is for artists and audience alike, how diverse and unique the experiences are for performers and spectators - quite different from livestreams, for example. The photographer wants to "break a lance for public performance in front of an audience, for the appreciation that culture can mean for us," Kimmel said.

"This project is developing completely new ways of looking at our cultural experience at concerts, plays, dance performances or even readings," said KWS Executive Board member Dr. Peter Hofmann in his welcome speech.

The "Performance" exhibition at the Biotechnikum ends on October 13. On that Thursday at 5 p.m., Frank Stefan Kimmel will give another tour of his photo exhibition about life with and on stage. Registrations are possible at kunst@kws.com.

About KWS*

KWS is one of the world's leading plant breeding companies. More than 5,500 employees in 70 countries generated net sales of €1.1 billion in fiscal 2018/2019, with earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) of €150 million. KWS has been run independently as a family-owned company for more than 160 years. The company focuses on plant breeding and the production and sale of corn, sugarbeet, cereals, rapeseed, sunflower and vegetable seed. KWS uses state-of-the-art plant breeding methods to increase farmers' yields and further improve plants' resistance to diseases, pests and abiotic stress. To realize this goal, the company invested around 200 million euros in research and development in the past fiscal year.

* All figures exclude the shares of the companies AGRELIANT GENETICS LLC, AGRELIANT GENETICS INC. and KENFENG - KWS SEEDS CO., LTD. accounted for using the equity method

Further information: www.kws.com

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