R.E.D. Residency Artists

2023

Virginnia Krämer aka Ogechi

PROJECT
“hair pulling“ (wt) dissects questions around an individual as well as collective Black, possibly queer pattern of behavior; hair pulling/hair thinking/hair thinking. As an everlasting political issue, a source of knowledge and a learning site for Black history(s), for ways of taking care of oneself and others, Afrohaar becomes the starting point of this process. In doing so, this sometimes takes into account the physicality of the process: When do I pull knots out of my hair? Why do we pull knots out of our hair? What happens mentally, physically, hair-wise in the process? How does the process correlate with racism-based stress? What does hair pulling sound like? Why does my upper body usually lean to the left during pulling? What can we learn about pulling, searching, parrying, waxing, and the power of our fingers? „hair pulling“ plants the hair aspect in the context of a practice developed based on my choreographic research process on blackness and being adopted; roots (past), present (body) and future (hair) structure different performative and somatic approaches that flow into each other according to the afrofuturist principle and are mutually dependent.

↪ BIOGRAPHY: Virginnia Krämer aka Ogechi

Nora Amin

PROJEKT
The Migrant Dance”

The project of the residency aims to invite communities of women* with a history/experience of migration or displacement to find collaborative embodied spaces where dance can become an encounter of mutual empowerment and the celebration of the self. Based on my own choreographic and feminist approach to Baladi dance (known as “bellydance” in the western context) I will examine the possibility of transforming the encounter into a more structured/choreographed practice where the training becomes almost like a performance for the group and by the group. Accompaning question will be: How can Baladi dance be decolonised through an embodied feminist approach? And what choreographies can emerge from acknowledging the traumatic experiences of the migrant body and of trans-generational wounds? The residency will culminate with a dance video that reaches out to a wider spectatorship, sharing a community dance (based on elements of my choreographic style of Baladi dance) as a form of embodied healing choreography. Which also raises the question what happens to community dance when brought into a frame of digital performance? The residency would be a space for exploration, embodied research and development of a choreographic language that transforms Baladi dance while also healing and celebrating the un-staged and stigmatised dancing bodies.

FINAL PROJECT OF HER RESIDENCY
The Migrant Dance (Video)
↪ Link zum Video

↪ BIOGRAPHY: Nora Amin

Olivia Hyunsin Kim & Jones Seitz

PROJECT
Foam

In our research, we want to look at the practice of resting as a collective practice of care. We would like to do this from an intersectional perspective. In a capitalist society, being sick, especially for freelancers, is an individual, not a collective problem. We find this fact as problematic. The "only way out" for artists with chronic illness or disability seems to be to disappear from the scene. In our research we would like to rest artistically as a common, social space. Our practice of resting is not meant to be a reproduction of the self-care routine adopted in capitalism. This kind of self-care is very individual and refers to the needs of one person. She must first consume in order to come to rest. Interestingly, the term self-care in the Western world goes back to an idea from the independent women's health movement and the Black Panthers in the United States in the 1950s. Self-care here filled a gap of social services that the state did not provide for marginalized groups and that were instead initiated and provided by activist groups, such as free breakfast services for Black children or safer spaces. These services were not directed exclusively at individuals. Rather, the focus was on the notion of a community in which individual needs could also find a place. We would like to create such social spaces together in our residence.

↪ BIOGRAPHY: Olivia Hyunsin Kim

↪ BIOGRAPHY: Jones Seitz

Thiago Rosa & Johanna Ryynänen

PROJECT
Urban Foragers Research on foraging in an urban setting through the lens of eco-feminism By Johanna Ryynänen and Thiago Rosa

Can we expand the idea of foraging beyond only materials? Can we forage immaterial matters as well?

The idea of “Urban Foragers” is to use the act of collecting as a performative dispositive, taking the urban space of Berlin as source of that collection. Movements, words and objects link together through methods of walking, collecting, assembling and transforming, producing an artistic research material.

Drawing inspiration from the theories and practices of Silvia Federici, Adriana Schneider and Thiago Florencio, we will dive into the practice of foraging in an urban setting as a political and performative inquiry into existing within oppressive systems of neoliberal capitalism. We are referencing back to the time before agricultural revolution and back to the ideas prior to those of ownership as well as exercising authorship over land and other bodies in order to imagine alternative futures informed by the past, through and with performance, bodies and landscapes.

↪ BIOGRAPHY: Thiago Rosa

↪ BIOGRAPHY: Johanna Ryynänen

2022

Makisig Akin

Makisig Akin (They/Them) is a choreographer, dancer, artist, activist, transgender Filipino born and raised in the Philippines. Akin is currently living and working in Berlin, Germany. Akin’s artistic work focuses on strengthening the recognition of intersectional identities, reconnecting with their ancestry, and decentralizing Western ideologies in dance making. They are interested in reimagining the process of making-dances, how can the process serve the dancers as they continue to have agency in directing the trajectory of the work? How can they create a community that functions beyond identity while honoring identity? Akin holds a Bachelor’s Degree in both Cognitive Science w/ Specialization in Neuroscience and Dance at University of California San Diego, California, USA and recently finished their Master’s of Fine Art in Dance Choreography in the program World Arts and Cultures/Dance at University of California Los Angeles, USA in June 2019. Akin’s physical dance background includes but is not limited to: Filipino Traditional Dance, Contact Improvisation, Kung Fu, Improvisation, walking meditation, Authentic Movement, Bouldering/Climbing and Contemporary Dance.

Performance ↪ Emerging Change: Give me your heart. No, the real one.

Adrian Marie Blount aka GodXXX Noirphiles

GodXXX Noirphiles (Adrian Marie Blount)- Parent to Chance Aijuka/ Non Binary Femme Boi/Founder/Organizer/ Curator/DJ- Is based in Berlin by way of San Diego, CA. After attending San Francisco State to obtain their BA in theatre, they performed in New York, traveled across the country with a touring theatre troupe, then moved to Rhode Island to perform with various Brown University programs including the Center for Slavery and Justice, Brown/ Trinity and Trinity Repertory theatre. Since being in Berlin, Adrian has taught anti-racist and collective healing workshops with various organizations such as Dice Festival and Conference and AfriVenir, dj’d internationally, performed at München Kammerspiele, Volksbühne, Gorki, Sophiensaele, Ballhaus Naunynstrasse and English Theatre Berlin (and others) and is the founder and lead organizer of the drag collective House of Living Colors for exclusively queer and trans BIPoC.

Performance ↪ Emerging Change: Power Tower Pishiboro

Frida Laux

Frida Laux (she/her) engages in art as (con)textual and social practice and works as artist and mediator in the expanded field of the performing arts. Coming from a background in dance and choreography, she follows an ongoing curiousity about bodies and other entities as places of knowledge production that can shift the perception of what is and what could be. She studies Accessibility and Accountability as relational and generative practices and is involved in the organization of the Performing Arts Forum in St. Erme (France). Recent works include the dance performance “Still To Come – A Feminist Pornscape”; “Paradance”, a book and installation on dance as practice of resistance; “Ki(n)”, a collective research with kids on forest as drag. Collaborative works have been invited and shown at venues such as Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt, Teatro Il Lavatoio Santarcangelo, Queer Zagreb Festival, MOT Festival Skopje, Act Festival Bulgaria, Hessische Theatertage, Festival Implantieren Frankfurt. Forthcoming is the publication “Access and Exhaustion”, a collection of practices and perspectives that seek to expand the notion of accessibility in the arts and beyond.

Lau Perez* Transperreo Collective

Lau Perez (none or they/them) is a performer and producer as well as a Makeup and Hair Artist. They are also a member of the Transperreo collective. Lau Perez dedicates part of their time organizing events and bringing together groups to activate solidarity from the migrant Queer community in and beyond Berlin. Their motivation is to mobilize resources through activities that combine movement and pleasure in soli events which also includes selling food, in order to send donations where it’s needed. They met the members of Transperreo through these activities, which involve different forms of activism, for instance the Perreo Marik, a political block that shows up for pride, the 8th of march (International Women’s Day) and other political meetings. They aim to make use of the public space and encourage queers to resist together. Through dancing they reclaim the enjoyment of their bodies and identities, that have been neglected by imposed religions, patriarchy and heteronormative society.

Lau Perez is affiliated with Transperreo, a collective predominantly composed of individuals from Abya Yala*, but also from other non-hegemonic territories. Transperreo uses various artistic and performative practices around the perreo music, dance and ways of partying, as well as the associated aesthetics and statements, to criticize the ways in which colonial legacy has affected our bodies and imposed patriarchal, binary, racist and capitalist relationships based on exploitation and discrimination. Instead, the collective reclaims movement, collective care, desire, and hip-shaking euphoria as powerful means to transgress imposed orders. Through these practices, they aim to mobilize reflection and action in the historically powerful locations in which they currently reside. The conviction to live as drag performers, dancers, visual artists, artisans, DJs, and more is regularly challenged by the marketing industry subjecting their creativity and political positions to the commodification of the idea of "Latinidad". The members of the Transperreo collective counter this struggle through collaboration and self-management which finally reinforces their bonds.

* Abya Yala is a pre-colonial name, originating from the Kuna language of Panamá and northwestern Colombia, for the Americas before the arrival of Christopher Columbus and the Europeans.

** Latinidad is a Spanish-language term that refers to the various attributes shared by Latin American people and their descendants without reducing those similarities to any single essential trait.

Elvan Tekin

Elvan Tekin (she/her) is a dancer, choreographer and community organiser living in Berlin. Raised as a Kurdish woman in the geopolitics of West Asia, her artistic interest lies in the intricate and fluid notions of body, language and formation, mutation, transformation of identity. In 2022, Elvan's research "poetics of political resistance" was funded by the #TakeHeart residency in Kampnagel Hamburg. She recently presented her solo performance "to be a fish in a raki bottle" at Tanztage 2023 at Sophiensæle Berlin. Elvan is the founder, co-curator and organiser of the curatorial project emergent spaces that is centering queer and trans* feminist perspectives in diaspora. She is currently studying MA Choreography at the HZT Berlin.

Dafne Narvaez-Berlfein

Dafne Narvaez Berlfein (she/her) is a Berlin-based film and video artist; she also teaches and researches historical and contemporary media aesthetics. Prioritizing a collaborative approach and an intersectional perspective, her work encompasses multiple genres and media. Film, videotape field recordings, live video captures and modulated interventions are Narvaez Berlfein’s tools to create visual interpretations, in dialogue with the works of composers, sound artists, and performers, always with a DIY and DIWO (do it with others) approach. Her works have been shown at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Philharmonie Luxembourg, Documenta 14 and many other institutions and independent venues.

Dafne Narvaez Berlfein’s research focuses on female-identified artists who produce in underground contexts and deal with experiences of uprootedness. She has lectured at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig, Universidad de Buenos Aires, and Universität der Künste in Berlin.

All of her projects share the concern of decentralizing social-cultural structures through artistic discourse.

Ana Libório

Ana Libório (they/them) is a non-binary artist, dancer and performer that works along the intersection of performance, videogames and visual arts.
All of their performative work questions the hybrid body as a choreographic-digital representation in an intermodal performative research, thus expanding the scope of performative practice as a strategy of socio-political digital engagement. Their practice navigates questions surrounding decolonizing the digital interfaces and decentralizing western ideologies in performance making. In regarding choreography as expanded physical experiments that are improvisational, imagistic, they play with body transformations through embodiment.

2021

Jee Chan

Since 2015, I have been developing a series of work based on my body’s relationship to various other bodies of water. The contexts within which this series is located and the compulsions behind it are diverse, yet collectively resonate from my maternal grandmother’s experience of undertaking a sea-crossing, fleeing from a Japanese invasion of her home in Guangzhou to Singapore. My current practice is concerned with re-imagining the world through ocean-based perspectives which detach from a static understanding of post-colonial identities and territories. During my residency at Tanzfabrik, I will extend my research into orality and embodied knowledge in Southeast Asian contexts through the development of two choreographic projects in parallel — bendungan and sea flights (every one of them landed on a beach like this). I will be doing so in relation with individuals who hold diasporic histories, as well as with specific sites in and around Berlin.

Biography Jee Chan

Interview Jee Chan

Carrie McILwain

The Pile and the Pyre.

The figure of the witch offers my practice crystal thinking, many faceted and slick for symbolic projection. In my research this year I have been busy with the historic victims and their trials (accusation, interrogation, execution) as recorded in: court documents, theological debates (Malleus Maleficarum) and in woodcuts (from 1300-1800). These documents are starting points for a practice of speculative feminism (Donna Haraway) of somatic fantasy that searches for the knowledge that was situated in the witch’s body and in the wood that was placed alongside her*.

I will be joined this August in the studio by Josephine Brinkmann, Suvi Kemppainen, Johanna Ackva, a pile of wood (Totholz) recovered from Tegeler Forest and together we will move - thinking through textual offerings from Silvia Federici, Jane Bennett and the others mentioned here throughout. We will invite wooden materiality and give attention to agencies, voices, bodies and the gravity of being together as we stack, carry, lean - piling up. The witch offers a character that can move between binaries or realms, situated in cyclical wisdom - phase existence, intersectional and inclusive. A figure that practices power-within rather than power-over (Starhawk) and was condemned because of wielding an illegitimate (access to) power. If this power was not achieved through the acceptable means of inherited privilege, accumulation in capitalist enterprise, or seized through violent force, it is a knowledge, an agency that our contemporary world urgently needs to imagine or re-discover.

The pile is an inclusive and chaotic mass. It is full of spiders, insects, rotting material, freshly cut wood, mold, bacteria, things fallen, things forgotten. The pyre a rearrangement, an ordering of these agents for the purpose of punishment within human culture. With the inclusion of the human subject, it makes for a penultimate collaboration of human and non-human elements. When the flames finish their performance, a pile appears once more this time containing ash, memories in the bones and branches that did not burn away, dust settles and new agents flourish. Through performance we will explore these forms searching for the choreography of the pile and an aesthetic action of reclaiming.

Biography Carrie McILwain

Interview Carrie McILwain

Roger Sala Reyner

In the short essay “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” Ursula K. Le Guin beautifully writes about Elizabeth Fisher’s Carrier Bag Theory of human evolution. In her book “Woman’s Creation: Sexual Evolution and the Shaping of Society” Fisher tells: “The first cultural device was probably a recipient (…) a container to hold gathered products (…)”. And Le Guin elaborates: “A leaf a gourd a shell a net a bag a sling a sack a bottle a pot a box a container. A holder. A recipient.”

I have invited 4 collaborators with whom I’ve engaged in the past and with whom I have an ongoing working-affective-collaborative relationship to fill up the bag with me. I’ve asked every one of them, all of us, to take on ourselves the task to respectively curate a week for each other, 5 times 5 days of exchange that others will join. And on the 6th week we’ll gather again to look together at what has been collected. Instead of being a sharp tool to carve a production, through our incongruent/quirky generosity toward one another, this residency should hopefully become a soft container, a caring and carrying bag wide enough to receive and make available anything that we are willing to share and find on the way. In it, we will joyfully confuse our roles and playfully mix the un-mixable to the point where, hopefully, something beautiful will spring out of the womb of our unexpected co-creation.

Biography Roger Sala Reyner

Litó Walkey

Developing collaboratively through circuits of transversal interdisciplinary processes my work operates with language and writing as a mediating device that nourishes collective processes to compress, translate, disrupt and displace location, sense-making and intention. This residency will support the development of my long-term research project ‘Critical Ecologies in Choreographic Practices’, that addresses alternative modes of disseminating creative processes. The project aims to create public spaces for critical thinking and experimentation unbound by single authorship, discipline or terminus.
Discursive and practical exchange with Berlin-based colleagues will consider how publishing, curating and audio recording practices could enhance participatory engagement. This will be complimented by dialogue with writer/artist/ publisher Renee Gladman, musician/composer Boris Hauf and visual artist/set designer Nadia Lauro.

Biography Litó Walkey

Interview Litó Walkey