January 14 - February 13, 2015 | Exhibition | Martin Karplus: Photographs 1953 - 2009

Martin Karplus is a chemist, Professor emeritus at Harvard University, and Nobel laureate who has spent the past fifty years consumed by a passion for documenting humanity in thousands of photographs. Sourced from Europe, Asia, and the Americas, his photographs capture societies at pivotal moments in their cultural and economic development in rich Kodachrome color.

In 1953, the Austrian-born, American Karplus received his uncle’s Leica camera as a gift from his parents and headed to Oxford University on a fellowship. In the following years he would spend months exploring the globe, documenting what he describes a “vision of a world, much of which no longer exists”.

Images from the Netherlands, Denmark, Greece, Italy, France, Yugoslavia, and Germany present the closure of a bygone lifestyle as societies modernized and rebuilt in the wake of World War 2 and the dawning of the Cold War. Further travels throughout the 1950s took him to the Americas, where he photographed the exuberance of suburban Californian prosperity alongside Native and Latin Americans living a way of life uninterrupted for centuries, yet largely unheard of today. A more recent series from 2008-09 presents a look at China and India as each nation’s unfurling economy brings rapid modernization, as well as to Japan, where it has firmly taken root.

When: Opening on Wednesday, January 14, 2015 | 7:30 pm
The Exhibition will be open from January 15 - February 13, 2015
Mon - Thu: 9:30 am - 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. | Fri: 9:30 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.
Where: Austrian Cultural Forum | 3524 International Court NW | Washington, DC, 20008
Tickets: FREE | For opening please register at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/exhibition-martin-karplus-photographs-1953-2009-tickets-14734797175

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January 19, 2015, 7:30 pm | Concert | Ramsch & Rosen

World music between once and now.

Amongst old paintings, manuscripts, and between the lines, Julia Lacherstorfer and Simon Zöchbauer rummage for old tunes. A layer of dust carefully wiped away, what they discover usually turns out to be a treasure chest - gems to bosom and ears.

Their music bridges past and present - a past when clocks ticked differently and a present where we can connect ourselves to the whole world and choose from an immeasurable number of opinions, pick the most precious, the most suitable items for our individual character.

The result: A type of unique music that is inseparable from the people who perform it. It need to take place within them, earnestly, yet with a wink.

„The most beautiful moment in a concert is when everything starts to coalesce: we with our music, our music with the audience, the audience with space and time, so that only the present moment exists with its sound and image."

The playground they are moving on contains traditional tunes and songs from Austria as well as improvisations and their own written tunes.

When: Monday, January 19, 2015 | 7:30 pm
Where: Austrian Cultural Forum | 3524 International Court NW | Washington, DC, 20008
Tickets: FREE | Please register at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/concert-ramsch-rosen-tickets-14702436383

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January 26 - May 15, 2015 | Exhibition | Hands-On Urbanism. The Right to Green

The research-based exhibition is dedicated to the history of the idea of appropriating land in urban space. Since the shockwave of modernization that accompanied industrialization towns and cities worldwide have had to face some very significant challenges. City-dwellers have always found a number of solutions in crisis situations, they are involved in bottom-up urban development. Self-built and self-organized settlements and fruit and vegetable gardening lead to other forms of collective cohesion, neighborliness and fair distribution. Another world can be planted, as today’s community gardeners are clearly showing.

Following many years of international research, the curator Elke Krasny presents 19 historical and contemporary case studies of bottom-up urban development in Chicago, Leipzig, Vienna, Bremen, New York, Paris, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Porto Alegre, Havana or Quito. They provide an overview of informal, self-organized collective movements and of the spaces that are created by them. The exhibition shows how decisively small projects have often led, and are still leading, to major changes.

‘Hands-on Urbanism’ introduces an alternative urban history, one that poses urgent questions about the responsibility of design for architects and planners, and the resource-logic of towns and cities.

When: The Exhibition will be open from January 26 - May 15, 2015 (closed the week of March 15th) | Mon - Thu: 9 am - 9 pm | Fri: 9 am - 4 pm | On the weekend by request.
Where: Kibel Gallery in the School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation | University of Maryland | College Park, MD 20742
Tickets: FREE | no registration required

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January 27, 2015, 6:30 pm | Celebration | A Mozart Birthday Celebration

Enjoy the wine, dance, and song that Mozart so loved!

Please join the friends and fans of The In Series at the Embassy of Austria, for a joyous celebration of Mozart's birthday, January 27, 2015, 6:30-9:30.  We will savor the cuisine and music of Mozart's homeland -- and we will even learn Viennese waltz!
The evening begins with a waltz demonstration and lesson by a professional dance team. Beloved stars of the In Series then take center stage, sharing highlights of Mozart's Don Giovanni, Cosi Fan Tutti, Marriage of Figaro, and the Magic Flute. The evening concludes with a buffet dinner, featuring specialties of Mozart's homeland and wines selected for this occasion.
Tickets can be purchased on-line at www.InSeries.org or by calling 202 204 7762.  We look forward to celebrating with you!

When: Monday, Januray 27, 2015 | 6:30 pm
Where: Austrian Cultural Forum | 3524 International Court NW | Washington, DC, 20008
Tickets: Tickets can be purchased on-line at www.InSeries.org