Performative Memory Culture

WS 22/23 / workshop with Laia Rica

Who are “we?” What role do objects, materials and everyday products play? What can we tell through them? What do they say about us? How do they shape us? With which other people and contexts do they connect us? What (de)colonial heritage is hidden in objects, materials and everyday products?In the lab, we will work performatively with different materials and examine them in different different states performatively. We will tell autobiographical stories and find stories in the materials. In the relationship with and materials, we will explore the practice of collecting and exhibiting objects. of objects. The concept of colonial continuities will be used as a perspective on historical events in relation with personal, structural privileges will be examined.

Inter-weavings

SS 2022 / Exchange program with the performance class, Art School in the University Kassel of Mounira Al Solh

Inspired a.o. by artist and writer Etel Adnan, but also by post-colonial thinkers such as Glissant, Spivak, and Fanon, we would like to open up our work and connect our classes, with a shared interest in performative formats. For her weavings, writings, and poetry the artist Etel Adnan referred to her own past as migrant, inter-weaving her different identities, using tangible and non-tangible materials that gave her inspiration: the sun and the mountains around her, her everyday life, and her involvement with the planet, wars and daily news, whist also being able to work with abstraction.

The use of textiles as common source material for all participants will function as an open communal starting point. Working with ‚Textile’ could include working with old or new clothes, with pieces of cloth or textiles used or new, working with wool or cotton, using knitting, even recycling plastic, old tapes,  etc., anything that one can think of in relation to textiles, even on a metaphorical level. At first, in the beginning of June Kassel students could bring their own material to Berlin to play with. After that, on June 20th until around June 25th Berlin students will visit Kassel, the outcomes will be used in performative ways in the city of Kassel including the visit of Documenta15.

Workshops by performance artist and choreographer Ania Nowak

EXCHANGES AND INVISIBLE ENTANGLEMENTS

WS 2021/22 – SS 2022 / Research project and study trip around the project Maison Gbégbé in Agouegan, Togo

This project is set up in the context of postcolonial theory and in dialogue with the following pairs of themes: Original / Copy, Mutual Approach / Multiple Authorship, Appropriation / Exchange. Is it possible to overcome the separation of traditional culture and contemporary art that is constituted in the Western European exhibition business? In this project, we want to programmatically focus on the interstices and connecting elements of binaries focus. In Togolese Traditional Knowledge a distinctly collaborative and participatory understanding of art is lived. The participating students of my class work and rehearse around themes such as identity, distribution of tasks, and roles in collective and/or participatory projects.

With Workshops, evaluations, and discussions by lecturers Gregor Kasper & Musquiqui Chihying and Arlette-Louise Nkoze, and contributions o.a. by Abdel Amine Mohammed, Nanna Lüth, Anna Lauenstein, Jouliette Houssou, and an online meeting with Messanh Amedegnato, Rossila Goussanou, Nadja Ofuatey-Alazard, Anani Sanouvi, and dr. Ohiniko Toffa.

Post Digital Enlightenment / Group Performance in Coorperation with Technical University Istanbul

As part of a’21 amberNetworkFestival, a collaborative lecture-performance was developed by the instructors and students of Science, Technology, Society (STS) MA program in Istanbul Technical University (ITU) and University of the Arts Berlin (UDK) in March and May 2021.

In the first part, departing from the communication of science and technology studies, ITU STS students made a group presentation in which they provided a conceptual insight about the public (mis)understanding of vaccines in Turkey. Focusing on the production of disinformation especially in social media, ITU STS students revealed their research findings entitled as follows:Dissemination of Disinformation in Times of Pandemic – Cansu Çobanoğlu A Technofeminist Perspective to Vaccine Hesitancy – Didem Ermiş Anti-Vaxxer Radical Islamists as a Relevant Social Group – İsmail Yiğit Disinformation as an Entertainment Source – Vezire ipek Pişkin Among health politics and the manipulations of popular doctors – Şeyda Aslandoğan Temel Conceptual Models of Public Understanding of Science – Gözde Sevimli How media used disinformation as a marketing tool during the vaccine development process – Atilla KılınçParticipants Science, Technology, Society (STS) MA Program, Istanbul Technical University Advisor: Assoc. Prof. Ebru Yetiskin / amberplatform curator STS Students: Şeyda Aslandoğan Temel, Didem Ermiş, Gözde Sevimli, İsmail Yiğit, Atilla Kılınç, Cansu Çobanoğlu, Vezire İpek Pişkin

In the second part, a few students from the Time Based Media and Performance class of the UdK Berlin came up with a collaborative performance project called “Post Digital Enlightenment”, an opinion poll designed to reflect and dismantle how the group’s opinions are shaped in pandemic times, how polarization in opinions might be influenced by pandemic lifestyles and finally how this might change our perception on Post-Covid life.
Participants Klasse ter Heijne, Performance and Time-based Media, University of the Arts Berlin. Advisor: Mathilde ter Heijne, Milena Bühring
Students: Charlotte Seebeck, Laura Carvalho, Samet Durgun, Klara Kirsch, Milena Bühring.

POST DIGITAL IGNORANCE

a’21 amberNetworkFestival
Art Technology

How does technology influence socio-cultural change? Can technological change bring about a democratization of society, can we dream of a techno-utopia? Does unrestricted access to knowledge and information sharpen the critical consciousness of society or does it exacerbate incomprehension, fear, and ignorance? How can power structures be broken up and changed through critical artistic interventions?

LAB is a new feature introduce to amberNetworkFestival. The lab aims at creating collective research, creation, and production platform where artists from the network nodes collaborate physically as well as remotely meeting at Oyoun in Berlin, which is the base for the LAB. The LAB will be based at Oyoun in Berlin but also in the network nodes. All the activities will be hybrid; on multiple locations and online at the same time.
In a’21 amberNetworkFestival, we are placing the LAB in the core of the festival which will be longer than a month where the invited artists and artists from the network nodes collectively research, create, produce as well as curate and perform. The output of the LAB will be documented and exhibited at Oyoun as well as distributed locations on the network and also online on the website of the festival.

In the ’21 amberNetworkFestiva LAB, we exchange with students from the Humanities and Social Sciences Department of the Istanbul Technical University, under the guidance of Ebru Yetiskin.

More info

From Concept to Performance

SS2021 / Workshop by Laia RiCa

Performing artist Laia RiCa opens the exchange about the practical side of free artistic work. Students’ concrete ideas and concepts for performances will be discussed, further developed, and brought to a public performance. Different performance formats and dramaturgical strategies will be explored, and other aspects of a production will be considered, such as team communication, logistics and coordination, media strategy, collaboration with a performance venue, and networking with other artists and possible collaborative partners. The course directly follows the seminar by She She Pop from WS 20/21; the concepts developed there serve as a starting point.

Intersectional Matter Reading Bag Launch

The compilation of Zines, Syllabus, Stickers, and Posters in a hand-printed bag was brought together on the occasion of the interdisciplinary university project »Intersectional Matter«.

Hopscotsch Reading Room
Kurfürstenstraße 14, 10785 Berlin.
December 19, 2020

Never Look Back / Ein Orpheus Festival

Kooperation von der Universität der Künste Berlin (Studiengang »Bühnenbild« Prof.
Janina Audick) und »Institut Kunst« (Prof. Mathilde ter Heijne), der Hochschule für Schauspielkunst Ernst Busch sowie dem Hochschulübergreifenden Zentrum Tanz Berlin (Studiengang »Choreographie« Prof. Wanda Golonka) mit der Staatsoper Unter den Linden.

Der Mythos vom Sänger Orpheus ist einer der ersten Opernstoffe überhaupt und fordert Musiktheaterschaffende bis heute zu immer neuen Bearbeitungen und Sichtweisen heraus. Mit dem Orpheus-Festival lädt die Staatsoper Unter den Linden Studierende der Berliner Kunsthochschulen dazu ein, aus Themen und Motiven des Orpheus-Geschichte Performances und installative Formate zu entwickeln. Die Arbeiten werden mit wechselndem Rahmenprogramm im Alten Orchesterprobensaal gezeigt. So rundet das Orpheus-Festival das Programm der BAROCKTAGE 2020, bei denen auf der großen Bühne »Orfeo«-Vertonungen von Claudio Monteverdi, Christoph Willibald Gluck und Carl Heinrich Graun im Zentrum stehen, aus einer zeitgenössischen Perspektive ab.

Vorstellungstermine
13/14/15.November 2020
20/21/22.November 2020
19.30 Uhr

Fremde Wesen

WS 20/21 Workshops mit Fanni Halmburger und Sebastian Bark von She She Pop

In diesem Kurs geht es um performative Selbstportraits (individuelle wie kollektive) und um die künstlerische Strategie der Entfremdung. Wir stellen uns selbst und gegenseitig Aufgaben, die uns aus alltäglichen Kommunikationsmustern und der gewohnten Perspektive herausbringen. Und wir entwickeln verschiedene Rahmungen, in denen das eigene, vertraute Material ‘fremd’ erscheinen kann – und damit verhandelbar und politisch. Wir arbeiten zunächst an Einzel- und Gruppenportraits und im zweiten Schritt an Performances mit ‘fremden’ Gästen, die wir außerhalb unserer bekannten Kreise suchen und zu uns einladen in gemeinsame Doppel-(Selbst)Portraits.

Rundgang Steinplatz Public Screening

SS 2020 Brick Wall Paper Trail is the title of the video that participants of the class ter Heijne developed together with Diana Arce for the alternative Rundgang.

The course curriculum of the UdK is a source for an empiric approach to answer these questions: What access do students have to instructors of color?
What opportunities do students have to select courses that include the perspectives and ideas of BIPOC?