Lara Rüter & Volker Gerling: Von Affen und Menschen

Volker Gerling has been on the road for over twenty years - as a Daumenkinograph... as a what? He wanders and shows flipbooks: sequences of photographs taken during his journeys on foot. Short, jerky series of images that capture moments of human encounter in a way unlike anything else. Daumenkinograph - a genuinely singular art form.

Award-winning author Lara Rüter had close encounters with apes while working at the Leipzig Primate Research Institute. The result is her book Affenliebe, which recounts moments spent with great apes and the question that kept surfacing: what does it actually feel like to be human? A text that freely mixes scientific inquiry, poetry and autobiography between two covers.

Host Thomas Koch promises a fine evening. Musical accompaniment comes from the wonderful Cologne trio LUAH, winners of the German Jazz Prize for their vocal work.