Smoke and Fire and Electricity
Film and Music Marathon
Stadttheater Luckenwalde, Grünstraße 14, 14943 Luckenwalde
16 October 15:00 – 00:00
Featuring works by David Lynch, and performances by Olga Hohmann with Yannik Wittmann, Franziska Aigner, and Sainkho Namtchylak
On Friday 16 October 2026, E-WERK Luckenwalde will present Smoke and Fire and Electricity at the Stadttheater Luckenwalde, running parallel to major exhibition Electricity by Asad Raza at E-WERK. The programme honours the legacy of David Lynch and his recurring, devoted explorations of electricity - as cinematic motif, as natural phenomenon, as language of the unconscious. It also marks a continued relationship between Lynch and Raza; who have worked together across previous projects.
For Lynch, electricity was at once beautiful, unsettling, unknown, sublime. Something adjacent to the unconscious that could mesmerise, crackle, arc and disturb. This film and music marathon takes Lynch’s fascination as its point of departure, bringing film, music and live performance together as an extended encounter with the electric sublime.
The evening will present selected feature films including Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) and Inland Empire (2006) that resonate with Lynch’s obsession with electricity, in addition to rare short films including Lumiere (1995), Out Yonder Neighbour Boy (2001) and Industrial Landscape (2008). These will be punctuated by musical and performative interludes by Olga Hohmann with Yannick Wittman, Tuvan throat singer Sainkho Namtchylak with German Popov, and cellist and singer Franziska Aigner aka FRANKIE, expanding the cinematic experience into live space.
The event will unfold within the striking modernist architecture of Luckenwalde’s Stadttheater. Built between 1927 and 1930 as part of the Friedrich-Ebert-Schule, the theatre is one of the city’s defining works of New Architecture, with its geometric forms, vivid colours and expressive interior creating an unusually cinematic environment.
About the artists
David Lynch (1946–2025) was an American filmmaker, artist and musician whose work repeatedly unsettled the boundary between the ordinary and the uncanny. Across films including Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire, and the television series Twin Peaks, Lynch transformed familiar spaces, sounds and objects — suburban homes, diners, roads, telephones, lamps, televisions — into portals to something strange, psychological and unknowable. Electricity was one of his most persistent fascinations. As Lynch himself put it, he loved “smoke and fire and electricity”: its beauty, sound, power and capacity to disturb. In his work, electrical currents, flickering lights, power lines and interference become more than visual effects: they suggest transmission, rupture and forces operating just beyond what can be seen or understood.
Olga Hohmann with Yannik Wittmann expands the evening’s exploration of the electric and the uncanny through a live intervention where language, voice and presence become charged materials. Moving between intimacy and abstraction, her work opens another register of Lynch’s universe: the space where sound, memory and the subconscious begin to flicker into one another.
Sainkho Namtchylak brings her extraordinary vocal practice to the programme, transforming the voice into a visceral, otherworldly instrument. Known for her mastery of Tuvan throat singing, as well as her use of extended vocal techniques and improvisation, she engages with the physical qualities of sound to open the space between voice, body and electricity — creating a live, unpredictable counterpoint to Lynch’s cinematic dream worlds.
Franziska Aigner is an artist, performer, musician, and philosopher working at the intersection of performance, music, and philosophy. She studied choreography and dance at P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels and has collaborated with Anne Imhof, William Forsythe, Mette Ingvartsen, Alexandra Bachzetsis, and Holly Herndon. Her own performances have been presented internationally at Kunstenfestivaldesarts, HAU, brut, Theatre de la Bastille, The Place, and Die Liste. As musician FRANKIE, she performs cello and vocals and has released several EPs and albums, including collaborations with Battle-Ax and Kelman Duran. She holds a PhD in philosophy from Kingston University London and her monograph on Kant and technics was published with Bloomsbury Press in 2024.
