Category: Openings, not Openings

Emilene Wopana Mudimu
Ferat Ali Koçak
Yasmin Ayhan
Zuher Jazmati

Opening
02/26/21

Curated by
Lewamm Ghebremariam

Exhibition
02/18/21 – 03/28/21
(extended)

Outdoor installation,
commissioned by Erkan Affan, within the framework of the »Open Sesame:
A Photophobic Experiment« programme.

Funded by the Draussenstadt initiative of the Senate Department for Culture and Europe.

»The show is over«

A phrase that most people associate with a previously great show. The warm feeling of satisfaction that spreads within us when the experiences of art, music, dance, theater or film have exceeded our expectations.

Some people may even feel disappointment.
Disappointment that what was seen, heard and felt came to an abrupt end.
Desire for more as it is in our nature.

»The show is over«

But how do we feel when these exhibitions are about the repeated, undesired display of >our< culture and life?

Flags
Four points,
marked out like a frame,
Kennel,
cramped,
conquered?

Marked out like the colonial borders, that even today
press, restrict and injure
BIPoC people.
Marked out like the bear’s kennel …
and the colonial legacy,
that the Germans still do not honor to this day.

»The show is over.«

Thoughts by
Lewamm Ghebremariam

Click here for audio (EN)

The project »The Show is Over« shows the continuity of Germany’s problematic display of Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPoC) and uses the exhibitionistic nature imminent in the Bärenzwinger to give the artists space for their creative engagement with the socio-historical heritage of museums, zoo facilities and public exhibition spaces in Germany and throughout Europe.

In their works, the artists – Emilene Wopana Mudimu, Ferat Ali Koςak, Yasmin Ayhan and Zuher Jazmati – reflect the critical view of the white majority society and, based on their own experiences, partly reflect the local reality of BIPoC.

The curatorial decision to display the artists’ works on flags symbolizes the socially constructed boundaries that BIPoC people encounter here every day.

Placed in the open, outside, in front of the exhibition space, the flagpoles set a series of public interventions in motion in textual, visual and auditory form. Parallel to the opening of the exhibition »Open Sesame: A Photophobic Experiment«, the two artistic interventions will be made virtually accessible on March 1st, 2021 on the website of the Bärenzwinger.

»The Show is Over« takes an intersectional look at the various dimensions of discrimination and deconstructs Eurocentric perspectives. Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPoC) thus create accountability, accessibility and security for themselves.

The artistic positions waving on the flagpoles transforms the outdoor area of ​​the Bärenzwinger into a publicly accessible exhibition space and at the same time directly involves the surrounding neighborhood in the intervention. Cultural education is fruitfully interwoven here with the critical examination of the coloniality of one’s own environment.

Artistic Contribution

»
Flags.

For me, an expression of nationalities. Between which we moved. And still do. We. The children of the diaspora. Those who learned early. What it means not to be free but to be trapped. In the imagination of a white majority society. That doesn’t make it. To be a home. For all of us*. But as in these narrow lines. In which I share my thoughts, We create new strength and courage from the circumstances. In order to triumph over heteronomy with our own narratives.

Words from WOPANA.
«

Click here for audio (DE)

Biography

Emilene Wopana Mudimu, born on February 26th 1992 in Kinshasa, is a social pedagogue, racism-critical education officer, moderator and spoken word artist from Aachen. Since 2012 she has been active in various initiatives and projects for the Black community. In addition, Emilene Wopana Mudimu is invited nationwide for workshops / lectures with a focus on Afro Hair Politics, empowerment work with Black people and People of Colour, Antira awareness training and creative writing. She has worked for the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, DGB, VHS Cologne / Aachen and Theater Oberhausen and can in referenced in WELT, now, Zeit Campus, Edition F, Vogue and at WDR. Since 2014 she has been running her own socio-cultural youth center “KingzCorner” in Aachen together with her husband Sebastian Walter.

Instagram

Artistic Contribution

»
Since the lockdown, it has been tight in my own home, but it has always been tight outside too. The looks of others who classify me, first according to my appearance, then according to my words, if they understand it at all. They create a ‘we’ and ‘you’ in this society, even if they pretend there is an ‘us’ with some of us in their “we”. But at the next police check in Neukölln, we will all know what it is like to be “us” when they watch as if we were alone in a bear pen.
«

Click here for audio (DE)

Biography

Ferat Ali Kocak, born 1979 in Berlin, grew up in a large family as the grandson of a guest worker, the child of a women’s rights activist and a refugee trade unionist. He has been involved in anti-racist and anti-fascist initiatives since his youth. After a right-wing attack, in which he and his family only survived through luck, Ferat started as @der_neuköllner to implement his street activism via social media in order to reach young people – especially those affected by racism – and to motivate them to become active. The graduate economist works as a campaigner in the field of racism and right-wing extremism, and uses his experience from various branches of the private sector in marketing and public relations for his voluntary activities.

Instagram

Artistic Contribution

»

Maaaaan that’s no rap, close but I’m a poet
This is entertainment in which sounds are not mandatory,
Look at my headscarf and never ask again if I’m sure
The boss of all who prevented the chances for women

I dedicate an album to you
The words show poise
The shoulders too
Attitude oldschool like circuit
Just raise my fist against division

Early 20s, headscarf, African quarter, I’m from Wedding,
Give me 65 seconds and you’ll hear that I’m real
Seriously, RIP this scene cause I’m the stronger sex
I’m not the next thing
I’m on my way to domination
because there has never been anything like me before

You are blenders and posers,
I combine poetry and prose,

Facial expressions and choice of words,
Styles from 030 area code,

Always as personable as Kai Pflaume
You have no chance to withdraw like Frauke
Better than you, if only because I don’t steal
Could live fancy but go home with U8

faster than an angry woman can type texts on you,
So accurate that you can bet on me
Silk Road an album without a song
You heard correctly, I’m talking without a beat
Because what I do is living poetry
«

Click here for audio (DE)

Biography

Yasmin Ayhan, known as »YasminPoesy«, is a Weddinger poetry slam artist. The trademark of the Berliner, who was built in ’98, is the headscarf and a cheeky manner. You can feel her love for poetry when you listen to the texts about social criticism, prejudice and melancholy. Her first album “SeidenStrasse” is available online everywhere and has finally brought original poetry to streaming portals.

Instagram

Artistic Contribution

»
In the summer, they stood at the main train stations and applauded you for making it here after a long journey. They brought you food, drink, clothing, and support. It was a national mission to stand up FOR you. But slowly, the mood changed completely. The picture suddenly did not fit into what one imagined. How can less of you arrive? It was a national mission to stand up AGAINST you – even if it means death to you. Friends and helpers surrounded the “NAFRIS” – like humans and monsters.

Context: thousands of refugees arrived in Germany in the summer of 2015. Many of them were men from Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq. It felt like everyone saw it as a duty that the refugees be offered security. This mood gradually changed with crimes that were often carried out by men who had fled, but it turned completely after the events on Cologne’s Domplatte on New Year’s Eve 2015/2016. It seemed as if the refugees, who had been systematically kept away for years, could not be expected to face any difficulties. But as soon as there was a systematic approach to it again: deportation strategies, the expansion of Fortress Europe, racial profiling, etc. On New Year’s Eve 2016/2017, the police described men of color as NAFRIS, derogatory and inhuman, while they, like an interplay of animal keepers and wild animals, encircled. And German society applauded the police for their great work in dealing with the men read as “NAFRI”. When some politicians cautiously pointed out that this was racial profiling and an unjust prejudice against non-white men, they were cut down from left to right – for how they dare question the racial work of the police.
«

Click here for audio (DE)

Biography

Zuher Jazmati is a political educator, podcaster, trainer and DJ. He previously studied »Politics of the Near and Middle East« in Marburg and Cairo, and »Empires, Colonialism and Globalization« at the London School of Economics. He has been working for many years on the topics of (anti-Muslim) racism, (continuities of) colonialism, Syria, queerness and intersectionality. Zuher is a board member of the »TakeOver – Association for Intersectional Campaign Work« and co-host of BBQ – the BlackBrownQueeren Podcast.

Instagram

»The show is over«

A phrase that most people associate with a previously great show. The warm feeling of satisfaction that spreads within us when the experiences of art, music, dance, theater or film have exceeded our expectations.

Some people may even feel disappointment.
Disappointment that what was seen, heard and felt came to an abrupt end.
Desire for more as it is in our nature.

»The show is over«

But how do we feel when these exhibitions are about the repeated, undesired display of >our< culture and life?

Flags
Four points,
marked out like a frame,
Kennel,
cramped,
conquered?

Marked out like the colonial borders, that even today
press, restrict and injure
BIPoC people.
Marked out like the bear’s kennel …
and the colonial legacy,
that the Germans still do not honor to this day.

»The show is over.«

Thoughts by
Lewamm Ghebremariam

Click here for audio (EN)

Biography

Lewamm “Lu” Ghebremariam, born 1989 in Stuttgart, is an activist and full-time senior campaign strategist at the platform Change.org Germany. Here, she has been supporting and advising activists with her marketing and strategy expertise since 2018. Lewamm has accompanied numerous campaigns and initiatives – with a particular focus on giving more space to “marginalized” voices and allowing “niche” topics, including #RKellyMute (#MuteRkelly Germany), #TrueDiscrimination or the recently passed law against upskirting.

Lewamm is also on the extended board of the Berlin “Club Commission”. It primarily focuses on the issue of awareness and strives for a non-discriminatory, diverse and sustainable club culture. Since 2017, Lewamm has been organizing the queer-feminist party series BRENN and, in December 2020, she was included in the “Alternative Power 100 Music List 2020” by shesaid.so and Nativeinstruments to give voices in music and club culture more space.

Erkan Affan, born 1994 in London, is a gender non-conforming curator & writer of colour, currently based in Berlin. With an academic background in ‘Middle Eastern’ politics ( SOAS) and global migration (UCL), Erkan’s research focuses notably on the intersections between sexuality, gender, migration and diasporic identity.

Since relocating to Germany in 2019, Erkan completed a residency funded by the European Commission and co-founded the Queer Arab Barty collective; curating social and political spaces in Berlin for LGBTQIA+ Arab individuals. Over the past year and a half, Erkan has collaborated both individually and collectively with a number of venues and organisations across Europe, including the ICA and Rich Mix in London, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Die Kunste Werke and ACUD MACHT NEU in Berlin, and the IQMF in Amsterdam.

Take a 3D tour through the exhibition

Furmaan Ahmed
Anna Banout
Tewa Barnosa
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley
Sanni Est
Gabriel Massan

Curation: Erkan Affan (main curator), Sanni Est and Tewa Barnosa (Artists-In-Residence)

Coordination: Maja Smoszna
Production: Ulrike Riebel

Flyer designed by Tewa Barnosa and Viktor Schmidt 
Download here

Exhibition
03/01/21 – 03/28/21
(extended)

المفهوم التنظيمي
Conceito curatorial

Erkan Affan in conversation with the artists of »Open Sesame: A Photophobic Experiment«

02/26/2021
Journal: »Notausgang: Mapping the Journey of Spaces«
Online Launch

(1) OPEN SESAME

What did Ali Baba see when he opened the doors of the cave using the magic words, “open sesame”? What had been stolen and hidden by the thieves in the darkness?

As the story of Ali Baba & the Forty Thieves unfolds, we’re confronted with the realities of how far one may go to claim another’s treasures as their own. As the curatorial team and commissioned artists of this season at the Bärenzwinger, we’re no strangers to such an act. Our experiences as Black, Indigenous and Racialised Majority individuals – as well as the subsequent intersections of queer and transness* that we navigate – mean that we witness time & time again how the very treasures of our antiquities, our recent pasts, our current embodiments, and even our projected futures are erased, entrapped and paraded against our will. Similar to the tale of Ali Baba, the Thieves of our stories coercively enter into and co-opt our spaces – claiming and controlling access to our treasures as they so wish.

Such complex experiences of power make it a tentative experience to “take over” – albeit temporarily – and (re)contextualise a space of hegemonic display like the Bärenzwinger with our programme. It is an act that requires us to address certain questions through our own practice, such as whether it is even possible to subvert the legacy of a space that has such a specific function embedded into its core, physical structure. “Open Sesame” is an invitation to join this addressing and questioning through our occupation of the former zoo. It is an exploration, a deconstruction, a reconstruction… It is an opening. An assessment of the given meanings of a space, and an exploration of whether a new meaning is in fact possible at all.

So, repeat after us as you enter:
Open sesame
Sesam öffne dich
Abre-te Sésamo
Açıl susam
افتح يا سمسم
ⴰⵔ ⴰⵙⵉⵎⵙⵎ

What are these new meanings that we would like to employ?

Welcome to our photophobic experiment. If photo means light and phobia means fear, then photophobia is the light that they fear.

Our world is understood, measured and influenced by the discourses of the Enlightenment. Art, science and philosophy – the cognitive auxiliaries of humanity that one uses to understand the world – have been pathologized in our surroundings to centre the experiences of the White, cisgender, heterosexual male. From the lessons taught in schools to the paintings exhibited in museums, the dominant view is one that is determined by the points of ‘knowledge’ spread to us via this age of Enlightenment.

But what came before the Enlightenment? What deviations from knowledge have there been? Have we – the Others – not created alternative productions of knowledge, or nurtured rays of Light that have shone through the crevices of the human experience to illuminate a multiplicity of paths that can be taken ahead?

We have been erased – in our past and our present, but we refuse to accept this for our future. This Photophobic Experiment is an opportunity to centre our meanings, our experiences, our lived modalities, as the epicentre around which a plot develops. We are the protagonists, who invade this space and its hostile architecture to provide a glimpse into a world that presents us as the wilful subject of focus.

Until now the Enlightenment continues to push us into the Dark, but we have found our own forms of Light in the shadows.

*Photophobia is an artistic movement previously elaborated on by Sanni Est

Click Here for Programme (Internal Design)
Click Here for Programme (External Design)

The physical opening of the exhibition was supposed to happen on November 5, 2020. Due to the lockdown in Berlin and closure of exhibition spaces, the show opens as a virtual experience in March 2021.

Furmaan Ahmed (1995) is a multi disciplinary artist from Glasgow who creates installation works that act as sites of knowledge for POC queer and trans bodies. They are a recent graduate from Central Saint Martins who has already worked with galleries and community initiatives such as Gossamer Fog, Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh Arts Festival, Tate Modern and the Southbank Centre. Furmaan also has a collaborative practise as an image maker, set designer and art director where they have photographed and collaborated with artists such as Willow Smith, Kate Moss, SOPHIE, Sasha Velour, Nile Rodgers and David Lachapelle.

In their diverse art practise, Ahmed explores their dual identity being transgender and muslim and how the hybrid bodies manifests in the institutional world. With a passion for the British gothic architectural style and islamic ornamentation, Ahmed questions codes of historical design to reimagine fantasy worlds through the creation of communal shrines, colonial monuments, gardens and water fountains to look to a future that is more inclusive for black, brown and queer people.

With a deep interest in the mysticism of ecology and the botanical, Ahmed explores the fantastical and the rubrics of reason against order. Furmaan creates these digital and live worlds as a sites for community engagement, queer brown hybridity and communal healing.

Website – https://furmaanahmed.com/
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/furmaan.ahmed/
Metal Magazine interview – https://metalmagazine.eu/en/post/interview/furmaan-ahmed
WhyNow Interview – https://whynow.co.uk/read/it-all-existed-online-and-now-it-exists-in-real-life-the-rising-stock-of-furmaan-ahmed/


Erkan Affan in conversation with Furmaan Ahmed (PDF)

Anna Banout is a speculative designer and artist. She graduated from the Faculty of Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (MA) in 2017 and currently lives and works in Berlin. Although her professional background is product design, her practice aims to bend its boundaries and explore its restrictions – her practice merges design processes, traditions and its deep connection to the material with storytelling through the language of objects. In her work, Banout revolves around both personal and social experiences and narratives, exploring human-object relationships, continuously blurring boundaries between design process and storytelling, craft and technology.

Banout’s MA work, SYRIA 2087, was awarded the 1st prize at the Designblok Diploma Selection 2017; her works were exhibited in Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, Feldfünf Berlin, Station Beirut, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Gdynia Design Days, Łódź Design Festival, Designblok Prague, Ambiente Frankfurt and other galleries and venues around the world. Since 2017, she is also a designer for a Warsaw-based brand Tre Product.

– Website
www.annabanout.com

Erkan Affan in conversation with Anna Banout (PDF)

Tewa Barnosa (b. 1998) is Libyan Tamazight artist and cultural producer. She was born
and raised in Tripoli and is currently based in Berlin. Her practice revolves around
identity and the definitions of belonging, the ancient histories and uncertain futures of
languages, and on written, oral & collective memory in the social and political context
of Libya and North Africa. Barnosa focuses on the use of different forms of
Tifinagh and Arabic calligraphy and texts as the main elements in her artistic
Production. She experiments with paper-based works, installations, digital
mediums, moving images and sound art.

Barnosa founded WaraQ art foundation in 2015, an independent non-profit
organisation dedicated to support the contemporary Libyan art scene locally
and in the diaspora. Through encouraging socio-critical dialogue between artists
and audiences, she curated and organised several exhibitions, projects and
activities that took place in WaraQ’s space, and in the public spaces of the old
city of Tripoli.

www.tewabarnosa.com
www.waraq.de

Erkan Affan in conversation with Tewa Barnosa (Interview)

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley is an artist working predominantly in digital media to communicate the experiences of being a Black Trans person. Their practice focuses on recording the lives of Black Trans people, intertwining lived experience with fiction to imaginatively retell Trans stories. Spurred on by a desire to record the “History of Trans people both living and past” their work can often be seen as a Trans archive where Black Trans people are stored for the future. Throughout history, Black queer and Trans people have been erased from the archives. Because of this it is necessary not only to archive our existence, but also the many creative narratives we have used and continue to use to share our experiences.

Danielle’s work has been shown in Focal Point, Science Gallery, MU, Barbican, Tate ,Les Urbains as well as being part of the BBZ Alternative Graduate Show at the Copeland Gallery.

https://www.daniellebrathwaiteshirley.com/

Erkan Affan in conversation with Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley (PDF)

Sanni Est is a singer, curator and community organiser based in Berlin and with roots in North-Eastern Brazil. Inspired by socio-political structures, etymological research and
autobiographical narratives, Sanni weaves multilayered artworks that challenge the notion of humanity of the viewer while decolonizing herself from Eurocentric gender-binary patterns with
her voice and body. Sanni’s work in progress ‘PHOTOPHOBIA’ is a transmediatic storytelling that will culminate in a music album to be released in 2021. This concept has previously been explored as a manifesto – exhibited by different Goethe Instituts in “Queer as German Folk” – and as a homonyme performance piece shown during the festival “The Present is Not Enough” at Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin.

“Escape Route” is one of the chapters of ‘PHOTOPHOBIA’. In it, Sanni creates a path with her voice alone that allows her to navigate her trans, North-Eastern Brazilian vocal qualities in an emotional ritual that celebrates introspection. It will be exhibited as an audiovisual installation in collaboration with Gabriel Massan for ‘Open Sesame – A Photophobic Experiment’, co-curated by Erkan Affan, Tewa Barnosa and Sanni Est herself.

www.instagram.com/sanniest
Erkan Affan in conversation with Sanni Est (Interview)

Gabriel Massan (Rio de Janeiro, 1996) lives in Berlin, Germany. Bachelor in Social
Communication from the State University of Minas Gerais (UEMG), Brazil. Also studied at Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage (EAV, Rio de Janeiro), Brazil. Since 2017 Gabriel has presented his research in digital art in galleries, fairs, institutions, and national and international festivals. In 2018, he began producing 3D prints for São Paulo Fashion Week and signed 3D animations for Glamour Brazil, also featured online for Motorola, representing the new names of video art in Brazil. Resided at ETOPIA – Art and Technology Center in
Zaragoza, Spain, in 2019, produced the immersive installation “EPT”, where proximity sensors, augmented reality filters and fabric painting interacted in the same environment through multiple canvases. Developed the VR experience “Barriga” with Camila Roriz for the
Empower Fest, Flutgraben eV, Berlin.

Selected for the group exhibition “Proxy Salvia From a Ranked Souvenir” at The Wrong Biennale. Massan has signed 3D visuals for NTS Radio London, collaborated on Sebastian Tabares-Vasquez’s FMP animation “Astrea” at London College of Fashion and is part of the project “TV Coragem”, by Lorran Dias, commissioned for the Moreira Salles Institute (IMS), São Paulo, in 2020.The artist seeks to build narratives that use animated three-dimensional objects and augmented and/or virtual reality, permeating programming, sculpture, painting, and digital manipulation.

Instagram

Erkan Affan in conversation with Gabriel Massan (interview)

Erkan Affan is a gender non-conforming curator & writer of colour, currently based between Berlin & London. With an academic background in ‘Middle Eastern’ politics (BA, SOAS) and global migration (MSc, UCL), Erkan’s research focuses notably on the intersections between sexuality, gender, migration and diasporic identity. Since relocating to Berlin in 2019, Erkan completed a residency funded by the European Commission and co-founded the Queer Arab Barty collective; curating social and political spaces in Berlin for LGBTQIA+ Arab individuals. Over the past year and a half, Erkan has collaborated both individually and collectively with a number of venues and organisations across Europe, including the ICA and Rich Mix in London, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Die Kunste Werke and ACUD MACHT NEU in Berlin, and the IQMF in Amsterdam.

During their time as the main curator of the Bärenzwinger, Erkan invites Libyan artist Tewa Barnosa and Brazilian artist Sanni Est – both Berlin-based – to work as commissioners in developing a programme at the gallery spotlighting Black, Indigenous and Racialised Majority-identifying LGBTQIA+ individuals.

On Thursday, November 5 the exhibition »Open Sesame: A Photophobic Experiment« was supposed to open. Due to the public administration’s current guidelines and recommendations on how to deal with the coronavirus, this has now been postponed.

Pending the physical opening of the gallery, Erkan Affan and the Bärenzwinger team have commissioned a series of discussions with the artists set to exhibit their installations in the space upon the reopening of the galleries. Taking place virtually, the discussions very simply ask the artists to elaborate about their artistry, their inspirations, the works they are potentially bringing to the gallery, and more.

You can download the interviews here:

Sanni Est
Tewa Barnosa
Anna Banout
Furmaan Ahmed
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley
Gabriel Massan

Iskandar Ahmad Abdalla
Mario Asef
Anna Bromley
Akash Sharma
Shazeb Arif Shaikh

Exhibition opens
Thursday, 09. July 2020
4 – 10 pm

Exhibition
07/09/2020 – 10/25/2020

08/19/2020 7 – 10 pm
TheorieMittwoch with Brandon LaBelle, Diana McCarty, moderated by Anna Bromley

أحلام مهاجرة
DIASPORIC DREAMS
Open Call
Radio Drama Workshop
Berlin, 14 – 17 September 2020. Deadline: 24.08.2020

09/11/020  7:30 – 9 pm
Manifest in Just One Hour – Soundperformance from Ute Waldhausen

10/10/2020 4 – 8 pm
»public.listening« radiolecture by Anna Bromley

10/18/2020 4 – 8 pm
»public.recording« (2) mit Anna Bromley

10/25/2020, 4 – 8 pm [CANCELLED]
Finissage and presentation of the works from the workshop »Diasporic Dreams« by Iskandar Ahmad Abdalla

»Sound and listening form a supportive base from which to nurture a broader intelligence in approaching the pervasive realities of crisis.« (LaBelle, 2018)

The »sound.nodes« exhibition is a first step toward exploring the subject of opening, the theme of our new annual program »Openings, not Openings.« The idea here is that the various artistic approaches and perspectives shown allow the Bärenzwinger’s spaces to expand in self-reflection.

New insights and changes in circumstances due to the current situation are forcing the Bärenzwinger into a self-critical, fusilli-shaped process of opening at a time when opening is either prohibited or only possible under strict conditions.

The space offers different themes, dynamics, and perspectives to connect and create »nodes«, which in turn further evolve in a self-reflective manner, continuously interlinking in new ways over time.

The act of listening among the participating artists and their contributions raises a wealth of questions that will determine the next steps we take:

to what extent is opening an act of opening the self? How do we ourselves approach opening, and how open are we to perspectives that question our own standpoint?
How do we cope with the fact that the memories of others don’t always reflect our own perceptions, and sometimes even question our memories and perceptions? Can we truly open ourselves up to everything?

Curation Exhibition & Events
Ulrike Riebel and Hauke Zießler
Katja Kynast and Isabel Jäger

Co-Curation: Alexandra Neuß
Production: Carolina Redondo
Production assistant: Claudio Aguirre
Translation: Andrea Scrima
Graphic design: Viktor Schmidt

Dowload concept

Born in Alexandria, Egypt. Film Curator, educator and translator. Iskandar Ahmad Abdalla studied history, politics, and Middle Eastern Studies in Egypt and Germany. Currently a doctoral fellow at the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies. In his research, he focuses on Islam, Arab migration and discourses of sexuality in Europe. Abdalla also writes about film and cultural history of the Arab world. He worked inter alia for Deutsche Welle, Goethe-Institute and the Jewish Museum Berlin. Since 2014 Abdalla is currently a program curator at the Arab Film Festival Berlin (Alfilm) and published in several cultural platforms like dis:orient and Jeem.

The piece »Balcony of my Dreams« presented in the exhibition is a part of a larger project that tries to tackle the issue of diasporic presence in relation to space, time and history, through sounds and creative storytelling.

Sound-Cloud-Link

Mario Asef is an architect and conceptual artist based in Berlin. He studied architecture at the University of Architecture and Urban Development in Córdoba, Argentina (Dpl.), and art at Chelsea College for Art and Design in London, England, Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Karlsruhe and at the Universität der Kunst (UdK) in Berlin, Germany, where he obtained a master’s degree. His work has been exhibited worldwide, most recently at Daegu Photo Biennale (South Korea), Quartier 21 (Museumsquartier, Vienna), Wild Palms (Düsseldorf), Silent Green (Berlin), Junge Kunst e.V. (Wolfsburg, Germany), Kasa Galerie (Istanbul), SSamzie Space (Seoul), The Drawing Hub (Berlin).

His videos, photographs, sound installations, and interventions in public space deal with architectonic as well as sociopolitical questions and confront issues related to their spatial representability. Mario Asef uses these normative orders to develop a methodology that combines causality with happenstance, pushing things into absurdity. Since 2014 he organizes exhibitions and lectures for Errant Sound e.V., a project space dedicated to sound art in Berlin.

Soundcloud-Link

Anna Bromley develops exhibitions, installations, performances, texts, radio talks and pieces. She is interested in fractures and interruptions in representative ways of talking and saying. Recently her works have been shown and heard in AgvA CIAT, nGbK, HKW and SAVVY Contemporary Berlin as well as in MUU Helsinki, documenta14 Radio, Musrara Mix Jerusalem and Fondazione Arthur Cravan di Milano. Since 2010, she has also conceived and realized curatorial formats – mostly in non-hierarchical collectives and collaborations. These have focused on the politics of self-ironic jokes, queer temporalities, and Central European disciplinations of body and psyche. Their curatorial research groups have produced the anthologies Glossary of Inflationary Terms (Berlin 2013, Mexico City 2014) and Jokebook (Berlin 2015). She is the author of Quatsch (AAAAA PPPPP, Berlin 2020).

Bromley’s most recent research project is dedicated to radio practices in protest networks. In 2020 she is a Fellow for Queer Studies at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne.

Soundcloud-Link

Akash Sharma is an experimental artist exploring electro-acoustic improvisation, data manipulation, algorithmic compositions, and sensor-based music. He is the founding director of sound.codes – a sound research lab which conducts archaeoacoustics conservation. He is interested in Human-Machine relationships and interfaces. His work explores the transmission of information, how to make traditional knowledge and information more accessible to the public at large.

Born in Indore, India, 1987, Akash Sharma has been developing, archiving Tribal and Traditional information since 2012 and lives in between Himalayan village and Mumbai. He has studied Computer Science from Mumbai University and Music Technology from Emory University.

Soundcloud-Link

As an independent curator and producer, Shazeb Arif Shaikh focuses on experimental practices and processes across human endeavour. With this pursuit, bringing deeply inquisitive people together from diverse cultures and perspectives has blossomed beyond a profession, into a way of life and lifelong learning. With a wide-spectrum of curiosities across arts, science, philosophy, culture, technology and their various intersections now and into the future, my projects have evolved as original frameworks of interdisciplinary research, production and experience.

Change is indeed the only constant that governs my mutating body of contemporary work spread across long-term social impact projects both urban and rural, landmarks, festivals, exhibitions, public space interventions, social experiments, residencies, facilities, live performances, films and web-based collaborations. Operating in a niche experimental space in a country with a vibrant traditional culture but largely deficient in institutional support across the board, the need to fill gaps in this society led to the experience of envisioning and establishing projects from ground zero and nurturing them into independent institutions with an international outlook, partnerships and associations.

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08/19/2020 7 – 10 pm
TheorieMittwoch with Brandon LaBelle, Diana McCarty, moderated by Anna Bromley

In the frame of the current exhibition »sound.nodes«, Anna Bromley, Diana McCarty and Brandon LaBelle will talk about the practice and theory of free radio as »social media«, community building and the significance of sounds and tones in social processes and emancipatory practices. 

Diana McCarty lives and works in Berlin. She is a co-founder of the award winning free artists radio, reboot.fm/88,4 mhz and the faces-l international community for women in media. As a cyberpunk in the 1990s, she was active in the emerging netzkultur and nettime, MetaForum and hackingspaces. McCarty is a BAK Fellow 2019/2020 in Utrecht (NL).

Brandon LaBelle is an artist, writer and theorist working with sound culture, voice, and questions of agency. He develops and presents artistic projects within a range of international contexts, mostly working in public and informal spaces. Central to his practice is initiating collaborative activities with others, often through forms of performative pedagogy and self-organization.

Anna Bromley creates installations, performances, exhibitions, texts, radio conversations and radio works. For the current exhibition »sound.nodes« she presents a »Transistorsargverstärker*in | Transistor coffin amplifier«, which consists of a dented transmitter system that belonged to two clandestine radio stations that once improvised a polyphonic programme about 50 years ago. Her interest lies in the fragmentation and interruption of representative ways of speaking and discussing, and moderation as an artistic practice as well as a form of mediation and research. 

The event will be in English.

Schedule 19.08.2020:
– 7pm Meeting point at Bärenzwinger with the opportunity to visit the exhibition (max. 5 people at once)
– 8pm Panel discussion in open air, accompanied by the surrounding urban acoustics.

OPEN CALL
Radio Drama Workshop
Berlin, 14 – 17 September 2020

Deadline: 24.08.2020

A decade is almost over. Traumas and losses of »the Arab spring« are traceable in the lives of hundreds of thousands of migrants who left their homes in its aftermath. Yet, the political consciousness triggered by the revolutions and the potential for change they brought about remains inexhaustibly inspiring for the diasporic communities. How do memories of the revolution have shaped the experience of exile and the sense of home of those who have witnessed it? How do they haunt them in the present and press on their visions for the future? What remains from a home that ceased to exist, and from revolutionary hopes in face of political defeats and existential fears? We believe that the artistic retelling of dreams can create a tool for approaching similar questions in a manner that is at once politically empowering and animating creative possibilities for remembering and telling. In this workshop, we will try to explore dreams as a medium for creative storytelling, as an artistic intervention to recall the past and envision the future, a narrative vehicle to process loss and cultivate hope.

This workshop aims to adapt dreams into radio dramas; to develop podcasts that highlight a range of personal perspectives on diasporic experiences in the aftermath of »the Arab spring« and in commemoration of its 10th anniversary.

The participants will be introduced to the basic principles of podcasting: storytelling for radio, recording, and editing. No previous knowledge is required, but passion and creativity are appreciated.
The workshop will take place in Berlin form the 14th to the 17th of September 2020.

The application should include the following:

• letter of motivation,
• short biography
• written sample outlining an idea for a podcast episode that is relevant to the workshop’s theme. (Maximum one page. The text can be in Arabic, English or German).

Participants are required to follow the general rules of hygiene and distance and to wear appropriate mouth and nose coverings throughout the workshop.
Participants should make sure that they will be able to attend the entire period of the workshop.
Travel expenses can be reimbursed under certain conditions.

Interested candidates can send their application to diasporicdreams@gmail.com by no later than 24.08.2020.

The project is supported by Rosa Luxemburg Foundation with funds of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.

09/03/2020 5 – 8 pm
Öffentliches Forum – Vision für den Bärenzwinger

For more information click here.

09/11/020 7:30 – 09 pm
Manifest in Just One Hour – Soundperformance from Ute Waldhausen

Ute Waldhausen developed the sound performance »Manifest in Just One Hour« especially for Bärenzwinger. The work will be shown during Gallery Weekend on September 11th between 8 and 9 pm. The performance is based on Alvin and Mary Lucier’s multimedia work »I am sitting in a Room«. Waldhausen investigates the resonance of spatial isolation and movement patterns in speech. 


The Bärenzwinger is run by parrots.Its outdoor areas have the shape of a horizontal figure eight.The performers repeatedly traverse this spatial loop.Their instinct to flee is suppressed, the bodies are stuck in routines and survival strategies emerge from them.What is meant for me?The spoken and sung texts manifest channelled self-confidence, parroting alongside and with each other.In the course of the performance, common actions and the atrophy of language are emphasised.”We live in a space where you are apparent.”The voices, however, go their own way and get out of the waiting loop of tomorrow.

Ute Waldhausen lives and works in Berlin, London and in the mountains. She studied art history, Romance languages and literature, media design and art in Berlin and Weimar and was a master student for Visual Culture Studies at the Berlin University of the Arts. Her performances have been shown at Forum Expanded, the NNOI Festival Zernikow and the Café OTO, London. She exhibited at the Kunstraum Michael Barthel in Leipzig at TÄT und BRAENNEN in Berlin, produced for radio and is part of the music project Parabelles. 


Performers: Lola Göller, Doreen Kutzke, Ute Waldhausen


Language: English and German


Total duration: approx. 60min For the protection of visitors, please wear a face mask and keep a minimum distance of 1.5 metres during your visit. Up to five people can be in the Bärenzwinger gallery at once. The performance can also be followed from outside.

10/10/2020, 4 – 8 pm
»public.listening« radiolecture by Anna Bromley

Additional speaker: Anke Dörsam Languages: German and English

Anna Bromley develops exhibitions, installations, performances, texts, radio talks and radio plays. For the current exhibition »sound.nodes« she shows a »Transistor coffin amplifier«, which consists of a dented transmitter of two clandestine radio stations that improvised a polyphonic radio about 50 years ago. She is also interested in the breaks and dropouts in representative ways of speaking, in moderating as artistic practice and as a form of artistic mediation and research.

Anna Bromley develops exhibitions, installations, performances, texts, radio talks and radio plays. For the current exhibition »sound.nodes« she shows a »Transistor coffin amplifier«, which consists of a dented transmitter of two clandestine radio stations that improvised a polyphonic radio about 50 years ago. She is also interested in the breaks and dropouts in representative ways of speaking, in moderating as artistic practice and as a form of artistic mediation and research.

For the protection of visitors, we ask to wear a mouth-and-nose protection and keep a minimum distance of 1.5 meters during your visit to the exhibition space. The generally applicable rules of distance and hygiene apply to the indoor space as well as to the outside area.

The Event can be listened to live through Akash Sharma’s binaural Live Stream on radio.sound.codes
Listen to Annas Radio Broadcast from home and be transplanted into different times and spaces of Indian cultural heritage.

public.recording
Dream of a crackled Voice
with Anna Bromley
Sunday, 18.10. 2020, 4 – 8 pm

As part of the current exhibition “sound.nodes” Anna Bromley will record the last minutes of “Radio Freies Wendland” broadcast shortly before its eviction in 1980. After a short introduction to the history of a “Free Radio” in Europe with some acoustic examples, including the last minutes of the eviction of Radio Alice from Bologna in 1977, the text will be practiced and recorded in different roles. The event can be listened to live through Akash Sharma’s binaural Live Stream on https://radio.sound.codes/  

Listen to Annas Radio Broadcast from home and be transplanted into different times and spaces of Indian cultural heritage.

Anna Bromley develops exhibitions, installations, performances, texts, radio talks and radio plays. For the current exhibition »sound.nodes« she shows a »Transistor coffin amplifier«, which consists of a dented transmitter of two clandestine radio stations that improvised a polyphonic radio about 50 years ago. She is also interested in the breaks and dropouts in representative ways of speaking, in moderating as artistic practice and as a form of artistic mediation and research. Anna Bromley is currently a fellow at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne.

Please register for the event: info@baerenzwinger.berlin. For the protection of visitors, we ask to wear a mouth-and-nose protection and keep a minimum distance of 1.5 meters during your visit to the exhibition space. The generally applicable rules of distance and hygiene apply to the indoor space as well as to the outside area.

10/25/2020, 4 – 8 pm
[CANCELLED]
Finissage and presentation of the works from the workshop »Diasporic Dreams« by Iskandar Ahmad Abdalla