Performing Encounters
is a series of salons, inviting anyone interested in the arts and its reflection.


Performing Encounters & peer to space @ Volksbühne
May 23, 2019

Gemeinsam mit Tina Sauerländer von peer to space organisiere ich die sechste Ausgabe der PECHA KUCHA ART NIGHT.

Welche Technologien produzieren wirklich neue Kunstformen? Wie?
Im Pecha Kucha Format sprechen 10 Kulturschaffende über die Gegenwart 4.0.

More info coming soon.

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Performing Encounters @ Volksbühne, Grüner Salon
April 24, 2019

Der Salon versammelt Künstlerinnen, Hackerinnen, Aktivistinnen und Wissenschaftlerinnen (tba) in der Volksbühne Berlin, um den Fragen nachzugehen: „Wie ist der feministische, weibliche Cyberkörper geformt?“ und: „Wer formt den weiblichen Cyberkörper?“ Denn anhand der Figuren der weiblichen Cyborg als Servicefigur in Science- Fiction und Wirtschaft, von den 1940er bis hin zu Amazons Alexa, von den „Lenas“ des Binary Codes der 1970er bis hin zu Microsofts jugendlicher (und rassistischer) AI Tay wird eine Geschichte des Technobodies erzählt, auf den Weibliches projiziert wird.

Dieser Salon ist eine Mischform aus informellem Austausch und Impulsvorträgen.

Es wird sich um einfache Sprache bemüht und widmet sich neben der feministischen Auslegung von Technobodies der Diversity.

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Performing Encounters @ Volksbühne, Grüner Salon
February 1, 2019

Politics of Data. Ein Salon über die (Un-)Freiheit von Subjekten und Objekten.

Wir widmeten uns, gemeinsam mit der Künstlerin Nora Al Badri und Cryptoparty Berlin dem Verhältnis von Freiheit und Demokratie im Web.
Wie frei sind wir, wenn wir surfen? Wem gehört unser content? Sind unsere Personendaten weniger schützenswert, als etwa die von Objekten in Kulturinstitutionen? Al-Badri beschäftigte sich mit den Begriffen von “free” und “open” Data im Rahmen des ” Nefertiti Hack” im Jahr 2016 und anderen Cultural Hacks. Sie vertritt damit eine Forderung von Netzaktivist*innen, die sich mehr Transparenz auf Seiten von öffentlichen Gütern, Regierung etc., sowie mehr Datenschutz für das Individuum wünschen.
Auch CryptoPartys dienen dieser Bewusstmachung: Eine CryptoParty bezeichnet ein Treffen von Menschen mit dem Ziel, sich gegenseitig grundlegende Verschlüsselungs- und Verschleierungstechniken zu vermitteln. Sie können jedoch auch dem Zweck dienen, das Handeln im Netz zu verbergen, um als „human shield“ whistleblower zu schützen. Die CryptoParty-Anhänger*innen argumentieren damit, dass Einzelne, die aus gutem Grunde, etwas zu verbergen haben, durch den Demaskierungszwang im Web kriminalisiert werden.
Wir diskutierten mit Nora Al-Badri, CryptoParty Berlin, Ellen Euler, Jonas Leonhard Tinius, Fazil Moradi, Fabian Hesse, Mitra Wakil, Daniel Seitz und Euch die Grenzen von Freiheit und Transparenz.

Teil von transmediale.Vorspiel





Performing Encounters @ acud macht neu
November 3, 2017

Ein Salon, frei nach Frei Otto.
Das Denken in Modellen betreiben Designer*innen, Szenograf*innen und Künstler*innen, aber auch Kurator*innen im Planungsprozess.
Uns beschäftigte: Wie denkt man im Modell? Wie wirken sich neue Techniken des Modellierens – etwa mit Programmen wie “Rhino” auf die Entwürfe und ihre Umsetzung aus?
Es war ein bunter Abend mit einer Mischung aus gezeigten Modellen im Raum und Impulsvorträgen von Designer*innen, Forscher*innen und Künstler*innen.

Mit:
Nikolaus Baumgarten, Künstler und Programmierer
Sebastian Körbs, Künstler
Benno Zindel, Produktdesigner und Gründer Yakone OHG
Patricia Rahemipour, Botanisches Museum Berlin
Katja Czellnik, Universität der Künste Berlin, Institut für Bühnenbild
Moritz Queisner, Exzellenzcluster Bild Wissen Gestaltung
Jan-Nikolai Nelles, Künstler
Charlotte Kaiser, Gestalterin und Architektin/ it´s about
Silke Feldhoff, Bauhaus-Agenten Programm
Julia Apitzsch, Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes


Performing Encounters @ artists studio
November 13, 2016

Artist Yvon Chabrowski works with symbolic media images and re-enacts them in a reduced form. She asks: “How much context needs a picture? How far can you deliberate it out of its context? Will you still recognize its origin?” Her re-produced images appear somehow alien but still familiar. We shared an evening around the topic of collective memories and had dinner together.

 


Performing Encounters @ Haus am Luetzowplatz
September 28, 2016

 

“Standardisation” and “control” are starting points for the interface between machines and the human being. I invited Ralf Baecker,  Sebastian Schmieg and Jennifer Lyn Morone to create an evening around these fields of tension.
Jennifer and Ralf held inspiring and mind-blowing lectures while Sebastian was showing his works Segmentation. Network and How to Appear Offline Forever.

Jeni Fulton, editor-in-chief at Sleek magazine moderated the discussion. It was a beautiful and intense evening.

Screenshot of Segmentation. Network, Sebastian Schmieg, 2016

 


Performing Encounters @ Haus am Luetzowplatz
June 29, 2016

 

This salon by Birte Bosse installed an experimental supper club at Haus am Lützowplatz.

The evening addressed the various aspects of the diverse relationship between two workspaces: kitchens and artists-studios.
Both are scenes of mysterious activity, workrooms of inspiration and alchemical formulations, places of creative chaos and classificatory thought.

 


Performing Encounters & YKON @ Goethe Pop-Up Pavillon Breslau
May 14, 2016

Performing Encounters and YKON were invited to contribute to the
Goethe-Pop Up Pavillon (on the occassion of European Cultural Capital Breslau 2016).

As I propose “dialogue” as space for criticism together with artists, and/or other critics, activists and interested subjects, I like the blurring, hybrid liminal spaces that arise from the collaboration practice “working with”.
This concept tries to avoid the top-down hierarchies in art, be it experts’ authority or symbolic capital accumulation. It means to favor the critical dialogue and to foster the argument, but to reject the existing codes of communication, such as exclusiveness, arrogance and careerism. It means to get rid of strategic sociality (the selective socializing only as part of professional interest and benefit). In this spirit, I’ve invited the artist collective YKON to create a dinner-as-game, that plays with social conventions at the dinner table.

It was a nice trip to Breslau and I was so happy to see, how my “baby”, the YKON DINNER, has evolved since its premiere at Haus am Lützowplatz in April 2016. We had inspiring discussions about Breslau/Wrocław and urban planning, bicycle activism, plant consciousness and art in general. I had the feeling, that we were “working with” each others and created a public sphere of debate. It was joy-and delightful!

Thank you, Pekko and Tomas from YKON and Thanks for inviting us, Goetheinstitut Krakau!


Performing Encounters @ Haus am Luetzowplatz
April 13, 2016

Performing Encounters invited the Finnish/German art collective YKON (Tellervo Kalleinen, Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen, Pekko Koskinen, Tomas Traeksman and Christina Kral) to Haus am Lützowplatz, to design and organize a performative salon.

The YKON DINNER is an open source game that alters interactions at the dinner table. By using a dinner structure of multiple courses, YKON facilitates the interaction between guests. Rules, scripts and designed hardware encourages the conversations to go into new directions.
You could imagine the YKON DINNER as a combination of a dinner party with friends whom you haven’t met but always wanted to meet, a candy box of tools that you can take home with you and a series of close encounters with your possible futures.

 


Performing Encounters & ABA @ zqm
January 25, 2016

On the occasion of Chloé Delarues exhibition at zqm Berlin, the salon TAFAA – Writing room questions the relation between body/nature and ghost/machine from different perspectives.

TAFAA (Toward A Fully Automated Appearance) is a combination of several installations, that Chloé prefers to call “environments”. These environments are elements of the recomposition of a more or less abstract body. Once these elements overlap, they create a sort of spectrum, a material and immaterial flow of informations that Chloé then links with “the Ghost”.

“The Ghost” in computer sciences means cloning via fragmentation, partition. Therefore a “Ghost” copy is never a real copy but a more substantial one – one that seeks to save the very substance of an information.
This process of “Ghosting”  interests Chloé in relation to her research about the so-called ” Capgras Delusion”. The Capgras Delusion, a “delusional misidentification syndrome” is a human desease. People with Capgras Delusion believe, that someone or something close to him has been replaced by his double, a copy.
During her residence at ABA AIR Berlin Alexanderplatz Chloé got curious about this analogy, this “flow shape” between us and the tools we use.
Our gathering focussed on the above described topics in relation to the works displayed in the exhibition space.

NOTE: We asked the participants to use some disposable cameras for documentation purposes.


Performing Encounters @ KW Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin
January 12, 2016

“Identity of a resident stranger”

Salon no2

Nina Haab  (*1985, Bellinzona, lives in Geneva) is a photographer and video artist. Her practice  explores the memories of others through their life stories, personal archives and meaningful places. These elements constitute the main inspiration and source material for her work, and her installations   and films reimagine and represent her collaborators’ stories.
During her residency at ABA AiR Alexanderplatz in Berlin, Haab has been holding Salons as part of her research and process of memory collection and exchange. The Salon at KW Institute for Contemporary Art took place at the KW- Studiolo on January 12th and offered the participants the opportunity to encounter the topic of memory trough different perspectives:

Is memory selective? Can we trust our memories?

This Salon was a collaborative project, together with the KunstWerke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin ABA AiR Alexanderplatz and Performing Encounters and was supported by The Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.

More information


Performing Encounters and ABA AiR @ KW Institute for Contemporary Art
September 10, 2015

Reg Carremans from Belgium invited to the sequel to his “Correspondance-summer-school” at Kunst-Werke Berlin / Studiolo.

Details

Reg Carremans is a former resident of ABA (AiR Berlin Alexanderplatz).
ABA AiR Alexanderplatz is an artist-run research based artist residency at Berlin Alexanderplatz. Founded by artists Susanne Kriemann and Aleksander Komarov in 2009, ABA offers residences to researchers from Switzerland (through Pro Helvetica), The Netherlands (Mondriaansfonds) and Belgium (Kunstenenerfgoed) and serves as a living space, production studio and meeting point for residents and their extended communities.

Performing Encounters and ABA collaborate during the summer and autumn 2015.

 


Performing Encounters @ ABA AiR
July 17, 2015

The current resident at ABA AiR Alexanderplatz is recently announced Swiss Art Award awardee Jessica Pooch from Switzerland. Jessica Poochs work is about the regulation of humans through objects and urban interventions.

The ABA Berlin is a research-based artist residency, that is intrigued with interdisciplinary discourse. Founded by artists Susanne Kriemann and Aleksander Komarov, ABA encourages their residents to present their projects in the form of a salon.
Performing Encounters and ABA collaborate during the summer and autumn 2015.

Details for the salon: we visited the most famous toilets of Berlin.

 


Performing Encounters and ABA AiR Berlin Alexanderplatz @ KHS Weissensee
July 10, 2015

Correspondence #1 took place at Kunsthochschule Weißensee on the occasion of an AIR Berlin Alexanderplatz salon, as part of artist Reg Carremans´ residency.

The salon was a combination of activities of which the drawing part was one. The other activities could be seen as the ‘interventions’ aspect of the workshop. They were a Malerweg performance (Reg Carremans was wearing a “Malerweg- shop”), a guided tour of the building followed by a talk by Hanna Hennenkemper on the planned skills colloquium at the college. We finished with a discussion on the topic of art education and skills.
When first discussing this event we talked about using stuffed animals from KH Weißensee’s depot. When this wasn’t going to happen, we happily kept the original envelope content, as it created the sought after discrepancy between the course content and the context.

Sketchbooks and pencils were kindly provided by ABA.
ABA AiR Alexanderplatz is an artist-run research based artist residency at Berlin Alexanderplatz. Founded by artists Susanne Kriemann and Aleksander Komarov in 2009, ABA offers residences to researchers from Switzerland (through Pro Helvetica), The Netherlands (Mondriaansfonds) and Belgium (Kunstenenerfgoed) and serves as a living space, production studio and meeting point for residents and their extended communities. Performing Encounters and ABA collaborate since 2015.

 




Performing Encounters @ Kreuzberg Pavillon
May 30, 2015

An evening with hands on texts by: Anton Vidokle,
Christopher Williams, Okwui Enwezor, Jan Verwoert, Marina Abramović, Ólafur Eliasson, Liam Gillick, Miranda July and others

 

NOTE: We worked with the 2015 published book “Akademie X- Lessons for Art and Life” (Phaidon Press). I had prepared some quotes, keywords and excerpts  on plastic sheets, that seemed to highlight the individual statements of the “teachers”. We discussed these mini-festos and made mani-festos out of it – with hands on texts- and scissors.

More about Kreuzberg Pavillon

 


Performing Encounters @ Kreuzberg Pavillon
April 18, 2015

Both working on the topics of weaving, artists Berenice Güttler and Nikolaus Baumgarten share an interest in video-games.
Nikolaus developed websites like the zoomquilt and programmed browser to create Girih patterns. He is a painter and a sceptic. Berenice was working the last month at monastery St. Marienberg on old weaving technics. She uses textiles, sewing, weaving in similar ways, Nikolaus uses algorithms and color.

We encountered their works at Kreuzberg Pavillon and discussed the woven structures of web and net during a “white dinner”.

NOTE: I asked every participant of the “white dinner salon” to bring a text/material related to “networks”. We discussed some of these texts during the evening and had inspiring conversations about the net as structure, textile and rhizome.

More about Berenice Güttler
More about Nikolaus Baumgarten
More about Kreuzberg Pavillon


Performing Encounters @ District Kunst- und Kulturförderung
April 17, 2015

4-7pm
Roleplay Workshop with Ben Vickers /UnMonastery and Kei Kreutler / unMonastery and open tech school
duration 3 h

7-8pm
talk with Ben Vickers and Kei Kreutler, moderated by Jeni Fulton, SLEEK magazine
duration 1h

9pm
Screening of works of Sebastian Schmieg und Jonas Lund
duration: 50 Min, afterwards we discussed

NOTE: I asked each participant of the workshop to record the most interesting moments and conversations in a notebook. As “documentation” you can sneak a peak into these diaries.

More about District
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Performing Encounters @ Grimmuseum
March 28, 2015

An evening on the occasion “State of Conservation” by Tobias Sjöberg at Grimmuseum.

Tobias work deals with repetition and rhythm. One can read the rhythms as reference to accelerated tempo in times of accelerated growth : Contemporary time is jam-packed with appointments, is growing faster and faster. Everyone is striving for more – and our world keeps evolving.
We encountered a ̶r̶̶e̶̶l̶̶a̶̶t̶̶e̶̶d̶̶ ̶̶(̶̶?̶̶)̶ modern movement: the Futurists.
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti published the “Manifesto of Futurist Cooking” in 1930.
Enrico Centonze cooked original recipes taken out of the book:

starter
Intuitive Antipasto
(formula by Signora Colombo-Fillia)

intermediate course
Aerofood
(formula by the Futurist Aeropainter Fillia)

main course
Futurist Risotto (Roars of Ascent)
(formula by the Futurist Word-in-Liberty poet Mazza)

dessert
Like a Cloud (Italian Breasts in the Sunshine)
(formula by the Futurist Poet of National Record Farfa)

NOTE: Sophia Schomberg was drawing us during the evening.

More about Tobias Sjöberg
More about Grimmuseum


Performing Encounters @ District Kunst- und Kulturförderung
March 5, 2015

Pathways by Nikolaus Baumgarten

An evening about DIY Bio, Biohacker and art practice.

5-7pm
We started with a workshop with C-LAB London
Howard Boland examined experiments to make the collective work of bacterias visible.

7-8pm
Rüdiger Trojok held a lecture performance about a DNA BIOM Hack (and hacked himself afterwards!!!)

8:30 – 9:30
Screening of  HackteriaLab 2014 – Yogyakarta (duration 50’38’’)
a film by Marc Dusseiler and Seni Gotong Royong
Afterwards we discussed with Brian Degger.

NOTE: I asked the artists Sebastian Körbs and Nikolaus Baumgarten to translate the abstract language of Biochemics into artistic language.
As model both of them refered to the famous Roche Biochemical Pathway Posters.
While Nikolaus Baumgarten made a website and translated the pathways into abstract labyrinths, Sebastian Körbs used the poster itself and extinguished the whole contained information by painting it over. Both artistic responds to the topic used the impulse of non-usable knowledge.

Excerpt from the pressrelease: “Within the framework at District two transdisciplinary phenomenons of art and science production will be explored. Content-wise DIY-Bio and post-net aesthetics overlap in many ways: Do-it-yourself-biohacking only became possible through the democratization (open content) of web content – vice versa DIY bio artists of the web 2.0 bring back the network community back to the analogue realm for instance.” The sequel to this encounter will follow on April 17th, again at District!

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More about District


Performing Encounters @ Kreuzberg Pavillon
February 21, 2015

It was a playful evening about girih tales, artificial hells and the beauty of ornamental games.

NOTE: This time the intended concept of documentation failed, as the strip ripped in the camera and broke it. So, instead of an artistic approach to the topic and the conservation of conversation, enjoy the  “classic” way of documentation with images by Heiko Pfreundt (curator of Kreuzberg Pavillon).

More about Sebastian Körbs work
More about Kreuzberg Pavillon


PERFORMING ENCOUNTERS @ Kreuzberg Pavillon
January 24, 2015

An evening about how-to-get-lost-and-found? On the occasion of Birte Bosses installation at Kreuzberg Pavillon, we talked about usability, functionality, reverse moments and minimalistic, archaic forms.

//

Ein Tisch, Essen ̶f̶̶ü̶̶r̶̶ ̶̶A̶̶l̶̶l̶̶e̶̶ bis es alle ist, Streitgespräche.

NOTE: As we wanted to see in every direction, I asked the guests of the salon to use one-way-cameras for documentation.

More about Birte Bosses work
More about Kreuzberg Pavillon


PERFORMING ENCOUNTERS @ Curators home
December 13, 2014

Performing Encounters invited to an exhibition in a Neukölln-living room. >>Friendship is beautiful<< showed works of the artists Birte Bosse, Berenice Güttler, Sophia Schomberg, Sebastian Körbs and Nikolaus Baumgarten.

As always, not only works were shown, but also networks were represented. The artists studied at “Braunschweiger Schule”, partly they work and live together, they share interests and had exchange over years. The living room of curator Yvonne Reiners was a meeting point for the artists works.
>>We know each others since studying Fine Arts together at HBK Braunschweig, We lived together, shared a bed and more, we had drinks together. We shared everything, we even dished our dirt in public and asked each others often: does love or hate glue us together?
Dear Birte Bosse, dear Berenice Güttler, dear Sophia Schomberg, dear Sebastian Körbs, dear Nikolaus Baumgarten, as many times, I like to invite you to my home. This time my aim is to find out something about your work. All of you share some kind of interest for patterns, signs and ornaments. Lets try out in which ways your works are already influenced / infected by each others. When comes the moment of destruction? Friendship is beautiful.<<
NOTE: As I am aware of the tradition of exhibitions in living rooms, as described for example in the famous book “Stationen der Moderne”, I asked the photographer Ines Kotarac to portrait the artists in the style of “Avantgarde”.

 

More about Birte Bosse
More about Sebastian Körbs
More about Berenice Güttler
More about Sophia Schomberg
More about Nikolaus Baumgarten

Pictures by Ines Kotarac


PERFORMING ENCOUNTERS @ Künstlerhaus Bethanien
December 10, 2014

A salon about things, , including a screening of l’objet”, a video by Belgian
multimedia artist Jacques-Louis Nyst (1974).

with:

Bodil Furu (N)
Ramiro Guerreiro (P)
Youki Hirakawa (J)
Charles van Otterdijk (NL)
Steven Jouwersma (NL)
Inez Kotarac (HR)

NOTE: I asked the artists to bring a “thing” from home or thats important to their work. The photographer Jonas Holthaus made images of those things in front of a green screen.

 

More about the Künstlerhaus
More about Bodil Furu
More about Ramiro Guerreiro
More about Youki Hirakawa
More about Charles van Otterdijk
More about Stewen Jouwersma
More about Inez Kotarac

Pictures by Jonas Holthaus


PERFORMING ENCOUNTERS @ Grimmuseum
December 7, 2014

A salon about memories.

Took place on the occasion of the exhibition Reto Pulfer: “Erinnerungshäuser”
at Grimmuseum

NOTE: As I am aware that the documentation of conversation is a sensitive topic, I decided to ask an artist friend of mine, Nikolaus Baumgarten, to attend the salon in his function as court sketch artist. His drawings are as objective as documentation is always.

More about Grimmuseum
More about Reto Pulfer

Sketches by Nikolaus Baumgarten