Since January I’ve been working on a project whose intention is to be a metaphor for the creative and personal evolutions from one state to another during the period I was being naturalized from an American citizen into a fully fledged German-European. This project is called HINAUSGEHEN.
The word is German for ‘to go out’ or ‘to be exposed’. ‘Über etwas hinausgehen’ means ‘to transcend something’. I chose to follow a 3-movement sonata form to narrate various metamorphoses. While making the first movement I was an American (Exposition), in the second I was stateless (Development), and in the third I became a German citizen (Recapitulation).
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The video WESEN will be published this month, with it HINAUSGEHEN, the threepart audio visual composition, is completed. At this time, we will create a own USF-site for this project.
A form stood deep in the smoke, most likely only those closest to the stage could really see that it was Karin. There was no spot light and no real movement to speak of. At times it was very beautiful…Ceven after visiting Fever Ray in concert
Coming with the end of summer I begin to feel the first bits of the next creative moult. While I never seem to stop working, it is more difficult to concentrate during the spring and summer months… [more]
I was in a place I’ve never been to before with many rooms connected to each other endlessly. Each room was Industrial Revolution/Victorian style. There were people in them that I have never before seen.In one room a woman in a blue and lavender Victorian dress with giant hat was sitting on a long finely stuffed brown leather sofa. She did not look at me but away as if posing for a painting. Behind her was a doorway. I stepped through and looked down to my right to see a woman in a 1940’s style dress crouching in the corner on the floor. [more]
In January 2005, I was working on my first (and ill-fated) film festival in Berlin and wanted a new film of my own to be shown as well. It was to be a parody cooking show “Sauerbraten” which started out well but ended in disaster and the resulting footage was unusable. Arriving home a few nights before the festival feeling discouraged about it all, Helga and I decided to play around and see what could come of it. The result was an improvisational story with stuffed animals. We recorded the voice-overs (also nearly completely improvised) a day later and the film was finished at the very last minute, only to be missing the sound on the final hardcopy (due to a dvd-making error). The festival passed and I put the film in its final form online. It was my first German film made at a time when I barely understood the language. There are small inconsistencies in the script which reflect that, but the initial attempt is worth noting. I love this film because it embodies exactly where I was at a particular place and time just at the brink of transformation. While at the Geräuschkulisse for an experiment involving two others (Miriam Siebenstädt & Natalie Hausmann), I chose to use this film as a backdrop while recording improvised music tracks. There were many instruments involved, saxophone, clarinet, flute, melodica, accordian, and various percussion pieces. The result was quite nice and so I decided to put everything together for the internet. Once again I love this film and for exactly the same reasons. I hope that you enjoy seeing them together and perhaps in another four years we make another version.
-Ceven Knowles
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Der Kleine Bär Sucht das Nordlicht (2005, deutsche Version)
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Der Kleine Bär Sucht das Nordlicht (2009, Musical Interpretation)
Ceven über Bagdad Cafe – Out of Rosenheim von Percy Adlon: I tend to dislike sentimental films but this one is done with such a style that it’s easy to forgive the obvious conveniences. [more]
A form stood deep in the smoke, most likely only those closest to the stage could really see that it was Karin. There was no spot light and no real movement to speak of. At times it was very beautiful… 
