ON AIR

Founded in 2002, ON AIR is the Berlin based production company of Frauke Havemann and Eric Schefter. Over the years they have created films, performances and installations developed in collaboration with various authors, filmmakers and performers.

Frauke Havemann is a director, choreographer and filmmaker. She teaches at the Inter-University Centre for Dance Berlin and manages the AULA, an independent rehearsal and performance space. Her work is characterized by interdisciplinary practice and includes film, video installations and performance. ON AIR is the production company which she founded in 2002 together with Eric Schefter. For more information: Frauke Havemann.

Eric Schefter began working as an editor in film and television in New York after receiving a BA in Film and Video from NYU. Additionally in the early ’90s he cofounded four intermedia performance groups including 77 Hz and The Luminists. These groups combined video imagery, electronic music and theatrical elements to create precise live A/V compositions. Works were presented in numerous New York venues including The Knitting Factory, The Kitchen, Roulette, and The Experimental Intermedia Foundation. In 1997 he moved to Berlin. Some of his credits as an editor include the feature films Gendernauts (Monika Treut), The Nomi Song, We are Twisted Fucking Sister (Andrew Horn) and Sarita (Sergio Basso). Since 2002, he has worked with Frauke Havemann on live performances, installations and the films Weather House (co-director), The Woman Who Swallowed Her House (camera) and Be Right Back (producer). For more information: Eric Schefter


Simon Brückner (filmmaker) on the performance work of ON AIR


Focused, precise yet playful, they design minimalist parallel universes which are fully autonomous in their own laws and logic – in which people talk in and with machines, stage settings meld with screen projections, linguistic signs with visuals. Performers appear inside and out of electronic equipment, they meet their own images, turn each other on and off, are looped, deleted. They meet as looks between screens, as heads without bodies, as bodies and voices mute in the darkness; as thoughts, presences, in often alienated, displaced and, at the same time, immediate ways. Highly technical, almost formal, yet profoundly human, and therefore unsettling, even comically, absurd. And so do the characters encounter time, the weather, and, again and again, themselves.

excerpt from Martin Kudlac’s review of Weather House in Screen Anarchy
Frauke Havemann’s previous experience working on film, video installations and performance,  synergistically converge in Weather House, firmly molding the film´s style. Havemann´s oeuvre cleverly  assimilates civil horror and somewhat latent irony. The final blend gravitates suspiciously close to the poetics of the theatre of absurd. And that´s only for the benefit of the whole project. The approach does not feel outdated, on the contrary, Havemann and Schefter reinvigorate it with modern filmmaking.

ON AIR ist die Produktionsgemeinschaft von Frauke Havemann und Eric Schefter, welche 2002 gegründet wurde. Seitdem entstehen Arbeiten im Film- sowie im Performancebereich, welche in Kollaboration mit unterschiedlichen Autor*innen, Filmemacher*innen, Performer*innen entwickelt werden.


Simon Brückner (Filmemacher) über die Live-Projekte von ON AIR

Konzentriert, präzise und trotzdem verspielt entwerfen sie minimalistische Paralleluniversen mit einer Fülle von Eigengesetzlichkeiten. In ihnen sprechen Menschen in und mit Maschinen, durchdringen sich Bühnenbild und Bildprojektionen, sprachliche und visuelle Zeichen. Performer treten in elektronische Apparaturen ein und aus ihnen heraus, begegnen ihren eigenen Abbildern, zeichnen einander auf und schalten sich ab, werden geloopt, gelöscht. Sie begegnen sich als Blicke auf der Leinwand, als Köpfe ohne Korpus, als stumme Körper und Stimmen in der Dunkelheit, als Gedanken, Präsenzen, in oft entfremdeter, verschobener zugleich ganz unmittelbarer Weise. Sehr technisch, fast formal und zugleich tief menschlich und deshalb unheimlich, auch komisch, absurd. So begegnen die Figuren der Zeit, dem Wetter und immer wieder sich selbst.

Auszug aus Martin Kudlacs Kritik zu Weather House in Screen Anarchy
Frauke Havemanns bisherige Erfahrungen mit Film, Videoinstallation und Performance fließen in Weather House synergetisch zusammen und prägen den Stil des Films. Havemanns Werk verbindet geschickt zivilen Horror mit latenter Ironie. Die endgültige Mischung kommt der Poetik des Theaters des Absurden verdächtig nahe. Und das ist nur zum Vorteil des ganzen Projekts. Der Ansatz wirkt nicht überholt, im Gegenteil, Havemann und Schefter beleben ihn mit modernem Filmemachen.

Currently Associated Artists