Born to
German emigrant parents, Henning Lohner was raised near Palo Alto, California,
where father Prof. Dr. Edgar Lohner taught Comparative Literature at Stanford
University, and mother Dr. Marlene Lohner, ne Clewing, taught German
Literature. Lohner has one brother, Peter, who is a lawyer turned
writer/producer for film and television. Lohner returned to Germany to complete
studies in musicology, art history, and Romanic languages at Frankfurt
University, from which he graduated as MA in 1987. In 1982 Lohner took a year
at the Berklee Jazz College in Boston, studying Jazz Improvisation with Gary
Burton and Film Scoring with visiting lecturers Jerry Goldsmith and David
Raksin. During the European Year of Music, 1985, Lohner was awarded a grant for
music composition at the Centre Acanthes to study with Greek composer Iannis
Xenakis, who subsequently became Lohnerâs lifelong mentor. Parallel to his academic
studies, Lohner became assistant to German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen in
1984; working at La Scala in Milano on Stockhausenâs opera Licht, Lohner was introduced to the visual media. On Stockhausenâs
recommendation, Lohner went to Paris to become musical advisor and assistant
director to Louis Malle on his film May
Fools (1989â90, starring Michel Piccoli). Apprenticeships on Steve Reichâs
multi-media oratorio The Cave (1990)
and for Giorgio Strehler on his theater project Goethes Faust I + II (1990-1992) followed. Due to his commitment to
the fields of contemporary music and theater as well as avant-garde filmmaking,
Frank Zappa became aware of Lohner and invited him to work in California;
Lohner collaborated with Zappa intermittently until his death in 1993. Lohner
initialized and co-produced Zappaâs last concert performance, The Yellow Shark, along with the album
of the same name, followed by the album Civilization,
Phase III; both albums are based on collaborations with the Ensemble Modern, a contemporary music
group from Frankfurt, Germany. Frank Zappa introduced Lohner to highly
acclaimed cinematographer Van Theodore Carlson in 1989 to film Peefeeyatko, the biographical art film
on Zappaâs life and work.
Peefeeyatko spawned Lohner and Carlsonâs life-long
artistic partnership. It contains the first published examples of their filmic
artwork. Of formative influence to the art of both filmmakers was working with
composer, artist, and philosopher John Cage during the early 90s. one and 103, Cageâs last work and
artistic credo, in collaboration with Lohner as director and Carlson as
cinematographer, is a 90-minute black and white feature film about light in an
empty room; Cage also called it: âa film without subjectâ. It was completed
just days before Cage died in August 1992. The
Revenge of the Dead Indians, a film essay with composed screenplay and
editing in analogy to Cageâs rigorously democratic philosophical and musical
practice, was begun together with Cage in 1990 and was completed after his death
in 1993. The Revenge of the Dead Indians
became Lohner & Carlsonâs homage to their mentor. Subsequently, Lohner
& Carlson exhibited their audio-visual installation raw material, vol. 1 - 11 (1995) throughout Europe at venues such
as the Gemeente Museet, in The Hague, The Sonic Arts Festival in Rome, and the
Video Art Festival in Berlin. From the raw material gathered during 20 years of
work in film and television, Lohner established a catalog of individual images
- simply named Moving pictures - visible in any artistic or cultural context
outside of narrative film or television. Lohner & Carlsonâs Moving Pictures
are implanted as loops on a digital canvas to hang on any wall-space like a
painting. This artistic approach to the transformational nature of film raises
the question of its aptitude for the essence of pictoral autonomy. They were
first shown in 2006 at the renowned Springer & Winckler Gallery in Berlin.
Lohnerâs media art has been exhibited around the globe at such venues as: the
Centre Pompidou, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the San Francisco Museum of
Modern Art, the Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, the Galleria Traghetto in Venice
and Rome, the National Art Gallery of Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur, the Mira Art
Collection in Tokyo, the Kunsthalle in Emden, and many others.
Lohnerâs
film installation project raw material toured several important museums in
Europe from 1995 until 1997, establishing Lohner as multi-media artist. Thanks
to Hans Zimmer, Lohner began composing for films, joining his Remote Control Productions in 1996. From
here on in Lohner works equally in the fields of audio and visual media.
Lohner
lives and works in Los Angeles and Berlin. He is a Visiting Professor at the
renowned Zurich Academy for Music and Theater, now ZHDK (Academy of Arts) in
Switzerland.
