"Was ist Aura?" Das authentische Objekt.

To celebrate the 75th anniversary of its archives, the Akademie der Künste is opening its repositories and showing auratic documents and objects from its collection. The title of the exhibition, Out of the Box, is meant literally. Selected from cardboard boxes and filing boxes, from drawers, cabinets and folders, 75 objects tell stories about the creation of artistic works, about the structure and organisation of cultural knowledge, about transmission and lacunae. The objects include iconic works such as Walter Benjamin’s fragment What Is Aura?, Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera, George Grosz’s satirical work Christus mit der Gasmaske, one of Käthe Kollwitz’s diaries, Nam June Paik’s video Der Dom als Medium, Hermann Scherchen’s futuristic Nullstrahler, Anna Seghers’s love letters, and Mary Wigman’s notations documenting her expressionist dances.