ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

• I would like to say thank you – from the bottom of my heart! To every-body who has helped with the preparations for this auction, and without whose help this event in support of the Operndorf would not have been possible.
  I cannot mention everybody here, but I would especially like to thank Peter Raue, whose initiative it was to make this auction a success. I would also like to thank my office, with Meike Fischer and Christin Richter, as well as André Odier, Christiane Burisch and Patrick Hilss for their hard work! Without them, we could not have put together this auction. And of course I would like to thank Udo Kittelmann who has made Hamburger Bahnhof available for the auction as well as for a two-week exhibition.
  Finally, very special thanks are due to the many artists who so generously donated works for the Operndorf Afrika. I was very touched by the incredible response over the past weeks.
  The proceeds from this auction will not just give us a chance to keep building, the broad support also strengthens my faith in the project! And my faith in myself!
  To see the opera village as an art project, as a place for encounters and experiments, is not easy for many people. The attempt to establish art in life. The abolition of the separation of art and life.
  It is not a project that wants to show results immediately, but rather a village as an organism, where you really have to engage with the country and the people, with their art and culture. This shift in perspective is so interesting to me! To risk that in this project, we may ›just‹ watch and learn. Maybe that could mean that we regain our autonomy. By letting others do their thing. That new images of their own are produced at the opera village in which we share by looking at them. And maybe even switch of our critical apparatus for once.
  We are right in the middle of it. The school stands. Teaching has started, and the first film classes are also taking place. The images are little by little being produced.
  The auction will keep things going. The next step in the infirmary. So that the village can become a village, and at some point become autonomous!
  
  Once again: thank you very much indeed!
  Aino Laberenz