Sound.nodes

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.

Soundcloud-Link

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