Category: EPHEMERIS

Sujatro Ghosh
Stephanie Imbeau

Exhibition
02/12/2022–26/02/2023

Curated by
Livia Tarsia in Curia & Lara Huesmann

Co-curated by
Cleo Wächter

Organized by an• other here residency in collaboration with Bärenzwinger.

“Roaming Winters” is the fourth part of the annual programme EPHEMERIS

Events

Opening House
02/12/2022 5–9 pm

Artist Talk
Sujatro Ghosh + Kavita Meelu
04/12/2022 3 pm

Artist Talk
Stephanie Imbeau + Wilma Lukatsch
15/12/2022 7 pm

Sewing Sessions
with Stephanie Imbeau
Thursdays, 3–6 pm

Memory Jars
Workshop with Sujatro Ghosh
21/01/2023 2–4.30 pm

Soundperformance
with Narval (Evgenija Wassilew / Peter Strickmann)
04/02/2023 5 pm

Drawing Desire
Graphic Novel Workshop with Sarnath Banerjee & Sujatro Ghosh
18/02/2023 2–4 pm

Closing House
26/02/2023 2–6 pm

In collaboration with the residency program an• other here, the Bärenzwinger invites two artists who have been appointed through an Open Call to develop winter-proof projects over a processual exhibition and winter residency on site.

Over a period of three months, Sujatro Ghosh and Stephanie Imbeau will develop performative and in-situ installations, and enter into a dialogue with each other, strengthening and enabling both collective and solidarity-based approaches.

Can the Bärenzwinger become a refuge in winter, and offer protection from the cold and satisfy the longing for togetherness? The selected artistic proposals take an inductive approach into the season and respond to the absence or lack of warmth, be it potential or real, mentally or physically. The works by Sujatro Ghosh and Stephanie Imbeau break into the symbolism of the place to bring the desires there to life.

Stephanie Imbeau’s work investigates how people seek community, personal safety and a place to belong. She uses representations of monumental and fragile houses, exploring their duality, both restful and transient.
During her residency, she invites us to shed our certainties and rethink these multi-layered spaces that interweave our lives with those of others. 

Winter is often a time of rest and retreat, but also of reactivating the ‘preserved’. The act of retrieving dehydrated, fermented and pickled food is not only a practical way of bridging the hibernation of plants and animals, but also becomes an act of embodying memories. Sujatro Ghosh will touch upon various forms of preservation, the social and political aspects of food. And the coming together over and through food as part of the three-month residency.

Lack and desire, two aspects that play a major role in the works of both artists, which underlie the most obvious things of our everyday life and which we want to trace together in the context of Roaming Winters.

Roaming Winters is the last of four processual exhibitions within the programme EPHEMERIS at Bärenzwinger. “Ephemeris” can be understood as a form of diary in which the constellation of planets, stars and bodies are recorded. “Ephḗmeros” literally means “for a day” in ancient Greek and can be associated with the first forms of organising days in accordance with seasonal changes, which evolved into physical records with names of time periods used as calendars. The programme is characterised by ephemeral art forms and materials. Performative and action-based artistic practices occupy the Bärenzwinger.

Sujatro Ghosh is a multidisciplinary artist-activist, currently based in Berlin. His practice attempts to initiate a conversation about social action and political protest which produces the conditions for othered voices to be heard.

His works weave across conceptual and material adventures produced by radical thought primarily around queer rights, diasporic tensions, women rights, climate change and transnational migration. He works across film, performance, poetry, fabric works and photography. He is currently working on the relationship between food, memory, violence and justice.

Stephanie Imbeau received her Master of Fine Arts from Newcastle University in 2007 and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from The Ohio State University in 2004. Her ambitious outdoor umbrella installations have been staged all around the world. In addition to her large-scale installations, her sewn drawings and ceramic work has been exhibited in Germany, France, England, Greece, and the United States.

Imbeau has been awarded a number of residencies around the world. Since 2016, she has lived and worked in Berlin. For over a decade her artistic practice has revolved around investigating the way individuals seek to establish connections between themselves and others. She uses a variety of mediums with a specific interest in materials that possess the opposing qualities of utility and fragility, such as clay, cardboard and fabric.

26/02/2023 2–6 pm

The artists and team will be present.

The Closing House is a time to reflect on the creative processes which took place at the Bärenzwinger. Together we’ll activate the various installations of the Roaming Winters exhibition.

Come and see what has risen out of the collective sewing sessions by Stephanie Imbeau and which food and memories have been preserved through Sujatro Ghosh’s participatory projects.

Having journeyed through winter, we look forward to coming together one more time. Come join the artists and the team!

with Narval 
(Evgenija Wassilew / Peter Strickmann)

04/02/2023 5 pm

Free Admission

On February 4, the textile works of Artist in Residence Stephanie Imbeau will experience a rare use when sound-performance-duo Narval invites us to listen together to their sounds which will be shaped by the wintry Bärenzwinger and Imbeau’s installation. The space is activated by small acoustic gestures as well as spatial resonances. In this site-specific performance, the duo uses acoustic feedbacks, prepared objects, homemade instruments, as well as parts of Stephanie Imbeau’s installation in order to interweave the spatial actions and their sounds with the notion of shelter, house, and prison.

Narval is a sound performance duo consisting of Evgenija Wassilew and Peter Strickmann, which was founded in the winter of 2018 on the frozen river Aurajoki in Turku. Since then they have performed at Titanik Galeria in Turku, ausland Berlin, konnektor Hannover, Zwitschermaschine, Aktionsraum Spoiler, Zönotéka and Saarländische Galerie in Berlin, aswell as at Projektraum Alte Feuerwache in Friedrichshain and Errant Sound in Mitte, Berlin.

www.soundcloud.com/narval-narval

www.evgenija-wassilew.com

www.peterstrickmann.info

Memory and Preservation Workshop with Sujatro Ghosh

21/01/23 2–
4.30 pm

Please RSVP to info@baerenzwinger.berlin as we have limited places available.

Event in English language.

On Saturday the 21.01.23 from 2 to 4.30 pm, Sujatro Ghosh will be conducting a Workshop revolving around the idea of “Memory and Preservation”.

As a ritual of sharing, we will cut, prepare and eventually preserve our food through this workshop.  Sujatro sees preserving food as an act where food becomes memories and memories act as an archive of our winter struggles. The food here acts as a form of nourishment.

In preparation for the workshop participants are invited to think of a memory which they would like to preserve, and are requested to bring a tangible item that represents this memory to them (This could be a love letter, a picture, a text, a poem, a flower, a butterfly or any kind of object.)

We hope to see you all soon.

(Jars and ingredients will be provided.)  

with Stephanie Imbeau

every Thursday in January and February

3–6 pm

Throughout January and February, Artist in Residence Stephanie Imbeau is happy to host collaborative Sewing Sessions on Thursday afternoons, from 3 to 6 pm.

The main goal will be to slowly produce a textile skin for the large house frame, which is situated in the outdoor area of the Bärenzwinger. In the first week, the sessions start off with designing, drawing and experimentation. As this project gets underway there will also be smaller hand-sewing repairs to be done on the other houses.Those who are interested can bring their own sewing machines, or hand-sew with needles Stephanie Imbeau provides.

“I hope that these times can be both productive and cozy, at least in the way of sewing circles, offering a time to work with others, while sharing stories and ideas and presence.”

Signing up isn’t necessary, just stop by!

with Stephanie Imbeau + Wilma Lukatsch

15/12/2022 7 pm

Conversation in English language

This Thursday, December 15, at 7 pm we are hosting an artist talk with Roaming Winters resident Stephanie Imbeau. We are joined by our guest, Wilma Lukatsch. A writer, curating researcher and editor based in Berlin, Wilma has graduate degrees in Art History, History of Religions and Sociology from the Freie Universität Berlin and the Humboldt-Universität of Berlin. She has since been working with artists and archives, and is focusing on developing a dialogue-based writing practice in close exchange and collaboration.

Together, Stephanie and Wilma will enter a conversation about Stephanie’s practice and intentions for the residency at Bärenzwinger.

Stephanie Imbeau’s work investigates how people seek community, personal safety and a place to belong. She uses representations of monumental and fragile houses, exploring their duality, both restful and transient. During her residency, she invites us to shed our certainties and rethink these multi-layered spaces that interweave our lives with those of others.

Please take note that the space can become rather cold. So, Bring your Own Blanket

with Sujatro Ghosh + Kavita Meelu

04/12/2022 3 pm

Conversation in English language

Sunday, December 4, at 3 pm we are hosting an artist talk with Roaming Winters resident Sujatro Ghosh. 

We are joined in this by a special guest, Kavita Meelu. Kavita is a Cultural anthropologist, culinary curator and community organizer.Her area of interest is at the intersection of food, identity and power. Exploring the crossovers in the modes of work and activism of Sujatro, they will talk about his intentions and hopes for his residency time at the Bärenzwinger.

Winter is often a time of rest and retreat, but also of reactivating the ‘preserved’. During his residency-period Sujatro is, among other things, working with retrieving dehydrated, fermented and pickled foods. This act is not only a practical way of bridging the hibernation of plants and animals, but also becomes an act of embodying memories.

You are warmly invited to join us! Please take note that the space can become quite cold. So, Bring your Own Blanket.

Martin Hansen &
Melanie Jame Wolf

Exhibition
18/09–13/11/2022

Opening
18/09/2022, 3–7 pm

Dramaturgy: Louise Trueheart
Styling and Exhibition Advisor: Evan Loxton
Film Crew: TINT Film Kollektiv
Choreographic Assistance: Caroline Alexander

“The Superimposition (scenes 1–3)” is the third part of the annual programme EPHEMERIS

Supported by the NATIONALES PERFORMANCE NETZ – STEPPING OUT, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media as part of the NEUSTART KULTUR initiative. Dance Aid Programme.

Events

Superimposition 1
Live Performance
Martin Hansen & Melanie Jame Wolf + Justin Kennedy
18/09  4 pm

Superimposition 2
Durational Performance
Martin Hansen & Melanie Jame Wolf
22/10  2–7 pm
drop in drop out

Superimposition 3
Podcast
Martin Hansen & Melanie Jame Wolf + guest
Online and on site
From 13/10

What secrets do film and dance have to tell one another?

The Superimposition (scenes 1–3) considers the possibility of the cinematic and choreographic as containers of embodied action and subjectivity across and outside linear time – to be filled and to be emptied, to transmit and to transform. It is the first in a series of process-based experiments by choreographer Martin Hansen and moving image artist Melanie Jame Wolf.

Three examples of unexpected ‘everyday dance’ scenes that occur in narrative art house cinema have driven the research that brought you the video installation and 2 episodes of live performance presented at Bärenzwinger. They are, namely, Bande a Part by Jean-Luc Godard (1964) and two films by Hal Hartley that reference the Godard: Surviving Desire (1991) and Simple Men (1992).

The artists have been friends for 10 years, and this is the first work they have made together. As choreographer and filmmaker, they are interested in what happens when two formal systems come together, but this is an experiment in form as much as an experiment in collaboration, relation, and in embracing a politics of messy coalition through the sharing of knowledge and skills.

Martin Hansen (AUS/DE) is a Berlin-based choreographer and artist working in performative media, within both theatre and gallery contexts. In their practice, archives in the form of extant photography, film, video, and GIF collections are used to critically explore memory and time, with ghosts recurring as generative figures and structures upon which individual works are built. A formally trained and celebrated dancer, movement is central to, yet autonomous within, their artistic process.

Since 2015, Martin’s solos and group works have been presented at venues such as Tanzfabrik, Sophiensaele, and Radialsystem (Berlin), PACT Zollverein (Essen), Rencontre Chorégraphique Internationales De Seine Saint Denis (Paris), Charleroi Danse and KANAL Centre Pompidou (Brussels), Hong Kong Arts Festival (Hong Kong), Dancehouse and Dance Massive (Melbourne), Aerowaves (Aarhus), and Carriageworks (Sydney).

Melanie Jame Wolf is a visual artist and choreographer who lives in Berlin. She works solo and with friends, making interdisciplinary pieces about power, flows of capital, and the phenomenon of ‘show business.’ She examines these economies and entanglements in works for gallery, theatre, and screen spaces. Coming from a background in contemporary performance, she approaches installation and the moving image as an expanded choreographic practice. She is invested in humour as a strategy for critical possibility and in working with language in subliminal and surprising ways.

Spaces that have presented her work include Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Kunstmuseum Basel – Gegenwart, KW – Institute of Contemporary Art, HAU – Hebbel am Ufer, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, nGbK, The National 2019: New Australian Art biennial, VAEFF Film Festival NYC, Arts Santa Monica, Schwules Museum, Sophiensaele, Münchener Kammerspiele, Arts House Melbourne, and Institute of Modern Art Brisbane.

Born in Duisburg-Marxloh in 1994, caner teker is a choreographer, survivor and sex worker living between Amsterdam, Berlin and Düsseldorf. caner teker graduated from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and studied at SNDO – School for New Dance Development (Amsterdam). Their work deals with the intersectional entanglements of identity, work, and post-migration in the context of their personal experience as a German-Turk as well as the life story of their own family. Premiere of the piece KIRKPINAR (in co-production with SOPHIENSÆLE Berlin) at the 29th Tanztage Berlin, followed by invitations to “DISAPPEARING BERLIN” and “Radikal Jung” at Volkstheater Munich.

Further performances took place in the context of the “Favoriten Festival” in Dortmund and at the Theater Neumarkt in Zurich (both 2020). caner teker’s performances have already been performed in the Museum Abteiberg Mönchengladbach (2017), in the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf and in the Julia Stoschek Collection (2021). As a scholarship holder from the Norbert Janssen Foundation, Munich, caner teker also received the award for fine arts from the city of Düsseldorf last year and was a guest fellow at the PACT Zollverein, Essen. In 2022, they will be a danceWeb scholar at Impulstanzfestival in Vienna.

Liz Rosenfeld (b.1979, USA/DE) is a Berlin based interdisciplinary artist and educator who works with the mediums of film/video, live performance and
experimental discursive writing practices. Liz explores the sustainability of
emotional and political ecologies, cruising methodologies, and past/future histories
in regard to the ways in which memory is queered. Liz’s moving image and performance work approaches flesh as a non-binary collaborative material,
specifically focussing on the potentiality of physical abundance and excess, regarding questions connected to the responsibility and privilege of taking up
space. Departing from the personal, Liz’s writing is rooted in questions that contend with how queer ontologies are rooted in variant hypocritical desire(s). 

Liz is nominated for the 2022 Shortlist Live Art Award of the Anti Festival in Kuopio, Finland. Liz was the 2017 Goethe- Institut artist in residence at LUX Moving Image in London. Liz’s films are represented by Video Data Bank and LUX
Moving Image. Liz’s films and performances have shown in various international museums, events and venues including 2022 Berlinale International Film Festival, The 2019 Bergen Assembly, Berlinische Galerie, Mapa Teatro, Sophiensæle, The Hebbel am Ufer Theatre, The Gorki Theatre, Arts Admin, Galerie Emanuel Layr, The Tate Modern, The Hammer Museum, The Leslie Lohman Museum,The Barbican Centre, The CAC-Glasgow, Tramway, The Stedelijk Museum, The C/O Gallery, and The Deutsches Historisches
Museum. Liz received an MFA in Performance from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2005, followed by an MA from The Department of Performance Studies at New York University in 2007.

With the beginning of spring, “Weaving Roots” brings together two artistic individuals and practices who explore the idea of the garden and its social function as a place of community building in different ways. Weaving and roots, interweaving and rooting are thereby experienced as concrete actions.

Jared Gradinger co-creates a garden that will blossom and flourish on the outdoor terraces of the Bärenzwinger. In collaboration with Nature as a partner, choreographer Jared Gradinger creates a participatory place for development, participation and transformation.

Claudia Hill brings a 125-year-old high loom for tapestry weaving to the Bärenzwinger. The loom acts as a social sculpture, a site for networking and thus not only as a production instrument of textile material, but above all as a physical medium of communication.

Claudia Hill is a Berlin-based interdisciplinary artist working with performance art, costume and stage design, textile materials and somatic practices. Her work has been presented internationally in both performing and visual arts contexts, including at Paris Internationale, Mumok in Vienna during the ImPulsTanz Festival and HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin. Her artistic practice is based on her deep-rooted relationship with textiles and crafts made by women. She explores collective ways of communicating through multi-sensory experiences, as described in her book Social Fabric Earth Return. The book is published by BOM DIA BOA TARDE BOA NOITE. Her short film Kŏn′voi′ screened at numerous film festivals, e.g. Les Rencontres Intl., Paris and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.

Hill has a background in contemporary dance and fashion design. Her collections have been presented internationally, including in Japan and New York, where she lived for many years. She has designed costumes for choreographer William Forsythe and The Wooster Group and has worked frequently with choreographer Meg Stuart. She was admitted to the United Scenic Artists of America. In addition, her work increasingly focuses on the healing potential of textile objects and transformative rituals.

www.claudiahill.com 

Jared Gradinger is an interdisciplinary artist working in the fields of performance, dance, social art and ecology. Since moving to Berlin in 2002, he has been developing long-term collaborations and unique artistic practices, connecting community and Nature, while exploring different forms of co-existence and asking, ‘What can we do together that we cannot do alone? He has a long term artistic collaboration with Angela Schubot, with whom he creates extremely physical work dedicated to exploring the dissolution of self through an unconditional togetherness; most recently in collaboration with Nature and plants. He co-created his first garden in the Uferstudios (Berlin) called The ‘Impossible Forest’, which is a 240m2 garden dedicated to the non humans and unseens. His most recent research, ‘Garden of Duets’, was a year long project partnering musicians and writers with their own plant partner in the Impossible Forest, with the intention to develop an intimate relationship and in time an artistic duet.

Currently, he is working on a long term project in and with the village of Coqui, Colombia; helping to transform the Museum of Lost Knowledge into a School of Lost Knowledge through tender touch, artistic thinking and plant partners with the village of Coqui, Organizmo, Angela Schubot and the Goethe Institut. This is a part of a bigger project called ‘Herbarium’ with Angela Schubot; continuing their search to dissolve the Nature Human dichotomy while working with plants as mediators for knowledge transference, co-creative strategies and artistic offerings. This project will take place in Coqui. Colombia, Helsinki, Finland and Berlin, Germany. He is a co-founding member of Constanza Macras Dorky Park (2002-2009) and has ongoing work relationships with Meg Stuart, Claudia Hill, Shelley Etkin, Stefan Rusconi, HAU, Uferstudios. Jared has worked with William Forsythe, Jeremy Wade, Aleesa Cohene and others. He continues to teach and offers mentoring to artists, groups and students. 

www.jaredgradinger.com

25/3/2022, 4 – 6pm

Co-Weaving Session with Claudia Hill

More Sessions on 31/3, 9/4, 16/4, 21/4, 28/4, 5/5/2022,
each from 5 – 7 pm

Please bring proof of a negative Corona-Antigentest result of the same day.

During the period from March 24 to May 5, seven public Co-Weaving Sessions with Claudia Hill will be offered at the Bärenzwinger. During the Co-Weaving Sessions, Claudia Hill shares her experience of weaving with interested visitors on a weekly basis and invites them to weave together. The starting material is silk fabric that has been plant-dyed on site and stretched across the room, as well as other materials from Hill’s textile collection.

Claudia Hill sees the loom not only as a weaving machine, but also as a somatic, physical communication tool; the conversations held and texts read aloud while weaving together flow into the fabric as immaterial components. The loom acts as a social sculpture, as a playground for networking. Weaving and growing roots, interweaving and rooting can be experienced as concrete actions.

Saturday

30/4/2022, 2 – 6 pm

Co-Weaving with Claudia Hill

Co-Gardening and Memory Garden with Jared Gradinger

“I invite you to close your eyes and remember out loud, a garden from your childhood. It can be any garden. Your neighbor’s garden, your grandparent’s garden, a garden you passed by every day on your way to school, your family’s garden, even the one potted plant in your childhood home can be considered a garden. With your eyes closed, take five minutes to describe that garden in whatever ways you remember. Start your timer (5 minutes), press record, state your first name, close your eyes and remember a garden out loud. When timer ends, please press stop on the recorder. Love, Jared”

During the upcoming weekend we we will be continuing to weave a carpet and a hammock with and guided by Claudia Hill, gardening at the Bärenzwinger Garden co-created by Jared Gradinger with Nature and collecting intimate recordings of your childhood garden memories. A voice recorder will be provided on site.

Join us for a springtime drink on Saturday (30/04) between 2 and 6 pm.

Thursday

12/05/2022, 6 – 9 pm

Music Performance & Release of texts

Music starts at 6 and 7 pm

With Marc Lohr and Grape, Anja Müller and Monkey Puzzle, Tian Rotteveel and Clover, Shelley Etkin, Astrid Kaminski, Sandra Man, Liz Rosenfeld, Angela Schubot, The Impossible Forest and The Bärenzwinger Garden. In co-creation with Nature. 

Garden of Duets is the current result of one year of encounters between Grape and Marc, Tian and Clover, Monkey Puzzle and Anja and Wisteria and Claire. For over a year these plant/human partnerships have been developing and deepening into a musical proposal, each co-created by the two partners. The plant partners were originally found in the Impossible Forest, a garden in Uferstudios, Berlin-Wedding. They have now been planted in the new Bärenzwinger Garden as an energetic link and portal of support between the two physical gardens in Berlin and the performative Garden of Duets. 

This project is first and foremost dedicated to the encounter between plant and human and the co-creative process that supports the possibility to work with Nature as a partner and go beyond habitual thinking born out of human-centric decision making and thought patterns.

The invited musicians have been asked to devote to developing an intimate and then artistic relationship with a particular plant over the course of one year. The practice was to cultivate an internal stillness in order to direct their attention outwards towards their plant partner to cultivate a loop of reciprocity.

Five writers were also invited to work with this co-creative practice by writing WITH the garden. These unique texts by Shelley Etkin, Astrid Kaminski, Sandra Man, Liz Rosenfeld and Angela Schubot will be shared in print.

The Bärenzwinger Garden will be the host of revitalizing these encounters and partnerships. The music is a gift to the garden and its inhabitants, and we invite the humans to bear witness to these acts of devotion and interspecies communication.

The carpet and hamoock woven by Claudia Hill together with the visitors of Bärenzwinger will be published during the event.