Chuquimamani-Condori and Joshua Chuquimia Crampton present a live music performance at Radialsystem on December 04th as part of “SENSE presents Creamcake: 10/11”, as well as a screening of their film-collaboration “Amaru’s Tongue: Daughter”. The sibling artists’ and musicians’ work is knotted with traditional Aymara knowledge and practice, an indigenous people of the Andes regions of South America. Their sounds emerge between the horizons of American west coast post-minimalism as well as autochthonous Andean Aymara music.

The 2021 movie “Amaru’s Tongue: Daughter” by Chuquimamani-Condori and Joshua Chuquimia Crampton is a moving image collage of Super 8 mm film, animation and archival sound and footage. A reflection on life, death, and time from the perspective of their Aymaran heritage, the film tells of the artists’ late grandmother, her three-year transition of death and the ever-present guidance of Andean goddess Pachamama – the spacetime world mother. A surreal and unnerving score by Joshua Chuquimia Crampton accompanies writer-director Chuquimamani-Condori’s artful, and at times amusing rumination on ritual and ceremony.

“SENSE presents Creamcake: 10/11” is the first collaboration between the Berlin-based interdisciplinary platform Creamcake and Radialsystem. On the occasion of the 10th respectively 11th anniversary (with an interruption due to the pandemic), Creamcake’s birthday series “10/11” reflects on art, culture and music that has either come, gone, or carried on, with and around its scene since starting in 2011. Employing the perspectives of choreography, visual arts, music and workshop formats, Radialsystem investigates in the programme series “SENSE” an embodied practice of sensory perception.

So 04 12 2022 8 pm

For her new solo performance “The Pressing”, premiering 29 July at this year’s edition of Radialsystem’s SENSE series, Dani Brown re-appropriates the word ‘CUNT’ from its realm of vulgarity. In a world of speculation, belief and queer narrative, she gives herself, her body, soul, intellect, her dance and choreographic practice over to what she terms a ‘CUNT’ entity. Brown starts with the physical qualities of the female sexual organ, the neural connections between brain, clitoris and carnal knowledge, to seek out the expressive possibilities of this anatomically and socially complex organ – what would a vulva-oriented/cunt-centric performance look, feel and sound like?

She is accompanied by the immersive music of artist and DJ Justin F. Kennedy and their queer ode to ‘CUNT’ with laid tracks, historic samples and angelic vocals. Belgian designer Jan Fack’s stage setting features huge floral arrangements and live moths curated by Project Cultivation, and is inspired by the sensually luscious and equally complex Vanitas paintings of the 16th and 17th centuries.

Fr 29 07 2022 20:30h

Sa 30 07 2022 20:30h

Su 31 07 2022 18:30h

How does your body feel today? In this time of velocity, violence and chaos, choreographer and performer André Uerba explores intimacy as a practice of being together, along with five performers and a musician, in his new work “Æffective Choreography”, which premieres at this year’s edition of Radialsystem’s SENSE series. The performance plays with the boundaries between sharing and withdrawing, movement and stillness, beauty and deception; the performers structure their encounter through a slow pace, propelling their bodies to attune, sink and merge together, refining their present moment.

The desire to make hidden things visible is unfolded by their intimate gestures. Collectively they turn their gaze to inner landscapes where slowness and touch become a main practice. Their bodies resemble a choir that acknowledges the group as a body itself.

André Uerba began his research on rehearsing intimacy during the process of “Burn Time” (2018) and continued through “Fire Starter” (2019/20), “Inviting Moments of Stillness” and “A hole the size of your touch” (2021). “Æffective Choreography” marks a new chapter in the research and is reinforced by his current training in bodywork by the Institute for Somatic Learning, Sexuality and Bodywork (ISB Berlin). 

Fr 29 07 2022 18:00h

Sa 30 07 2022 18:00h

Step, Glide, Turn, Stamp, Stomp, Hook, Box Step, Time Step, Two-Step, 3-Step, Indian step, Pas Debourree, Zulu Spin, Slide, Leg Swing, Side Swing, SideWalk, Swirl, Donkey Kick, Kick Ball Change, Chase, Jacking, Chasse, Fouette, Cramp Roll, Shuffle, Snake Feet, Wing, Heel-Toe, Jazz split, Double tap, Lofting, Corkscrew, Legwork, Thread back, Knee Hook, Twister, Lotus, Tip Tap Toe, Around the world, Criss Cross, Toe Touch, Knock, Popcorn, Salsa Step, Salsa Hop, Crossroads, Farmer, Peter Paul, Pow Wow, Gallop & Shuffle, Shuffle & Dodge, Roger Rabbit, Happy Feet…

„The key to longevity is learning every aspect of [dance] that you can“
Prince

“KISS” for three dancers has evolved along Prince's posthumously released album “Piano & A Microphone 1983”. The choreography by Kasia Wolinska, which premieres at this year’s SENSE series at Radialsystem, presents dance as a driving force, a joyful expression of being alive. Prince’s remarkable ability to move between aesthetics, as well as the diversity of the musical language of this album, serve as a compositional and narrative basis. The choreography expertly plays with techniques, qualities and colours of dance in a variety of ways to recapture its affective potential and musicality, thereby invoking the invigorating experience of dance.

Th 28 07 2022 19:00

Fr 29 07 2022 19:00

Sa 30 07 2022 19:00

Su 31 07 2022 17:00

Scenographic elements from the choreographed guided tour „Full Melt Down“ created by Claire Lefèvre in 2021 for K3 Kampnagel, Hamburg. Claire invited Sophie Utikal to develop a textile room full of intimacy and softness with images that can be sensed, caressed, or used to hide behind. Therefore, „Full Melt Down“ is a physical place as well as a metaphorical one. It is the room in which gentleness becomes a method, a topic, and a portal through which to imagine (the) work.

Sophie Utikal (1987, US) was born the same year Gloria E. Anzaldúa published „Borderlands“. Since then, she has lived in many places. In her artworks, Utikal combines textile fragments into self-portraits in large-format fabric images where the black thread remains visible – a transgenerational sewing technique used by women in her family in Colombia. Her use of textile, representing the negative form of her body, is combined with Anzaldúa‘s method of autohistoria. Tears, waterfalls, rivers and oceans transcend her bodies to narrate stories based on traumatic as well as pleasurable experiences of migration and self-empowerment as a woman of colour in Germany. Departing from a decolonial perspective, her textile works are devoted to forms of unfolding physical knowledge that go beyond rationality such as feeling, perceiving and being. She constantly seeks for a new awareness that involves the body as an agent in a possible healing process. Sophie Utikal lives and works in Berlin.

Spatialized sound as an expressive form is at the centre of the two different yet conceptually related pieces by composer Laure M. Hiendl that are to be presented on two consecutive days at Radialsystem: NeoQuartet performs “String Quartet No.2” on electric string instruments that are hooked up to samplers. The ensemble KNM Berlin performs “In Abeyance”, an instrumental-acoustic ensemble piece. Both compositions are Hiendl’s intimate articulation of queer plight and desire, whose expression finds its form in the temporality of the pieces: Hiendl uses sampling techniques to deconstruct the hierarchical structures of acoustic linear sequences in favour of a simultaneity of sound material, generating a sort of equal, spatial sound. The quartet and ensemble works are presented as part of the “SENSE” series, through which Radialsystem explores power relations within a geography of perception.

In Abeyance

“In Abeyance” is not a concert piece in the strictest sense; it is an attempt to create an “animated still life”, a kind of sound object that exists like a moving standstill in time and space and which can be perceived in a similar but ever slightly changing way. In a long process of copying and pasting, Laure M. Hiendl has assembled a score out of tiny pieces of pre-existing notation that ushers sampling techniques into the instrumental-acoustic realm: the ensemble KNM plays on analog instruments the playback that would otherwise emit from an electric sampler. The sampled material is an excerpt from “Epilogue” from Ralph Vaughan William's opera Job. The sampled music is about 2 bars in length (ca. 10 seconds), and encompasses all the material contained in the 42 minutes of “In Abeyance”.

Sat 23 04 2022   8:30 pm

Unsichtbare Schwellen der Macht: „Moving Across Thresholds“ (MAT) ist ein fortlaufendes Workshopformat der Choreografin Renae Shadler. Der Workshop beschäftigt sich mit der Wahrnehmung von strukturellen, physikalischen oder anderen Grenzen in der alltäglichen Erfahrung und interpretiert sie als Schwellen, die zu einem anderen Denken und Handeln einladen. Der Workshop ist als Experimentierraum konzipiert: Die Teilnehmer*innen erkunden mit vollem Körpereinsatz, wie aus Einschränkungen neue Möglichkeiten sich zu bewegen und zu denken entstehen – und zwar durch eine breitere Beteiligung und Partizipation diverser Körper im Alltag. Das bereits vielfach erprobte Format kombiniert Bewegung, Philosophie und Aktivismus. Mitte April finden über zwei Tage verteilt vier Intensiv-Workshops im Rahmen der Reihe „SENSE“ statt, mit der das Radialsystem Machtverhältnisse innerhalb einer Geografie der Wahrnehmung erkundet.

Die vier Workshops im Radialsystem beschäftigt sich speziell mit dem Thema „Foregrounding the background“, also mit den unsichtbaren Barrieren, die Macht und Privilegien in der Beziehung zwischen Vorder- und Hintergrund markieren: Was hervorgehoben und was in den Hintergrund gedrängt wird, ist nicht zufällig, sondern das Ergebnis historischer Prozesse, dominierender pädagogischer Praktiken sowie systematischer Macht- und Unterdrückungsverhältnisse. Gemeinsam mit internationalen Künstlerinnen und Forscherinnen aus Berlin, São Paulo und Dar es salaam/ Tansania kehrt der Workshop dieses Verhältnis um: Was passiert, wenn der Hintergrund lebendig wird und seine Präsenz spürbar macht? Was wäre, wenn die Landschaft ein Teil von uns wird, so wie wir ein Teil von ihr sind? Was, wenn wir die Peripherie in den Mittelpunkt rücken?

Sa 23 04 2022   11:00 – 14:00Uhr

Sa 23 04 2022   15:00 – 18:00Uhr

So 24 04 2022   11:00 – 14:00Uhr

So 24 04 2022   15:00 – 18:00Uhr

Spatialized sound as an expressive form is at the centre of the two different yet conceptually related pieces by composer Laure M. Hiendl that are to be presented on two consecutive days at Radialsystem: NeoQuartet performs “String Quartet No.2” on electric string instruments that are hooked up to samplers. The ensemble KNM Berlin performs “In Abeyance”, an instrumental-acoustic ensemble piece. Both compositions are Hiendl’s intimate articulation of queer plight and desire, whose expression finds its form in the temporality of the pieces: Hiendl uses sampling techniques to deconstruct the hierarchical structures of acoustic linear sequences in favour of a simultaneity of sound material, generating a sort of equal, spatial sound. The quartet and ensemble works are presented as part of the “SENSE” series, through which Radialsystem explores power relations within a geography of perception.

String Quartet No. 2

Laure M. Hiendl’s second string quartet is written for four electric string instruments that are hooked up to four samplers ­– the pitch of the string instruments controls the playback speed of the sampler. The audio material comprises orchestral sample packs for film music, so each of the NeoQuartet musicians controls the playback of an entire orchestra with their string instruments. Minuscule, constantly shifting pieces of sound material generate shimmering, oscillating soundscapes that move more across spatial rather than temporal coordinates.

A video piece with text and imagery punctuates the music; artist Jamie Shi’s text responds to contributions by composers and artists Wojtek Blecharz, Nico Navarro Rueda, Stellan Veloce and Weronika Wro Wrzesińska. The video, a kind of dialogic overdub, is a nod to the work of Barbara Hammer, US-American filmmaker and pioneer of queer feminist cinema.

Fri 22 04 2022   8:30 pm

Nguyễn + Transitory’s “Symphony Of Intimacies” is part of a perpetual work-in-progress which started in early 2018 with the piece “Bird Bird, Touch Touch, Sing Sing”. For their presentation at Radialsystem in April, the duo have invited five non-professional performers to join them in a performance that navigates between interdependency, vulnerability, closeness, disorientation and trust. These themes will be explored as forms of collective resistance.

The piece is built around a site-specific, structure-sensitive, touch-based sonic architectural interface made especially for multiple performers by Nguyễn + Transitory in collaboration with stage designer Lina Oanh Nguyễn. Maoyi, Kamila Metwaly, Andrés Pinto Álvaro, Mieko Suzuki and Monica Vanesa Tedja collectively transform sounds through touch, attempting to fuse the body with the instrument being played. The body not only touches the instrument, but becomes a conductor as well, generating a composition live and in real time and conducting the fluctuating electrical currents that are transmitted into a modular synthesizer.

This dynamic diffuses classical relationships, roles and hierarchies often present among director-composer-performer constellations and creates a situation that allows the complexities of collective agency to unfold. In this piece, touch becomes an essential tool of communication, a carrier and receiver of sound, and a tool through which agencies are renegotiated and the collective is sustained.

Fri    22 04 2022   7 pm

Sat   23 04 2022   7 pm

Sun   24 04 2022   4 pm

Kate McIntosh's performance “To Speak Light Pours Out”, shown as part of the series "SENSE – Geografien der Wahrnehmung" (“SENSE – Geographies of Perception”), at Radialsystem, touches upon the entire wealth of human senses: In an immersive sonic world of percussion and voice, listening transforms into a kinesthetic experience. Polyrhythmic beats take hold of the body, the sheer power of the voice becomes sensory, and sound and speech images overlap. A mix of rhythms and voices and texts by various writers, composers and performers, develops an energy and dynamic that casts a spell upon the audience, triggering a whole spectrum of feelings; the field of tension ranges from anger to disorientation to happiness and exuberant joy. "To Speak Light Pours Out" is political and poetic, liberating and stimulating – an appeal to the desire for change, resistance and the belief in what is possible.

"Currents of Breath" is an experimental performance format situated at the intersection of choreography, sound art and bodywork workshop that engages with the connections of human and more-than-human rhythms and temporal frames determined by breath. Together with breath practitioner and dancer Lisa Densem, sound artist Signe Lidén, choreographer and performer Su-Mi Jang and sound artist and musician Felix Claßen, choreographers Miriam Jakob and Jana Unmüßig have produced an installation that leads through an archipelago of experiential layers, sounds, and breathing practices. The sensory deep-listening experience of oceanic rhythms and temporal layers is confronted with a collective somatic perceptual praxis. As part of the series “SENSE – Geografien der Wahrnehmung” (“SENSE – Geographies of Perception”), there arises at Radialsystem a participatory and experimental space for listening and thought, where breathing together can be experienced as a physical and imaginative force.

"Unter" is the first collaboration by composer Billy Bultheel and visual artist and instrument maker Viviana Abelson, initiated as collaborative project between Schinkel Pavillon’s performance and music program DISAPPEARING BERLIN and radialsystem. Developed as a site-specific performance at Berlin’s only wave pool at Spreewaldplatz, both artists process the three-part architecture of the postmodern swimming pool, designed by Christoph Langhof in 1987, through their individual artistic practices. The ailing pool will be renovated next year while retaining its unique design elements such as columns and roof structure.

Billy Bultheel understands the different halls of the pool as resonance chambers thereby drawing an analogy to the acoustics of baroque architecture, deepening his research on Renaissance compositions and the then common inclusion of architecture in the composition itself: The pool complex thus becomes an architectural extension of an immersive composition. Viviana Abelson, who works with sculptures and installations, designs and builds the instruments for which the music is composed. Her practice in instrument making combines historical research with an industrial perspective to create new sound and instrument-specific performance methods.

The three-part evening extends over several pools on site. Abelson's sculptural and instrumental interventions meet Bultheel's site-specific composition for four musicians, whereby the two artists' common interest in the presence of space in sound and vice versa becomes tangible.

Every body has its own identity in relation to its skin, whose texture is subject to constant change through contact with other people... The new programme series "SENSE", in which the radialsystem explores power relations within a geography of perception, opens in mid-July with the mixed-abled dance piece "SKIN". Performed by Roland Walter, a dancer with full body paralysis, and Renae Shadler, an able-body dancer and choreographer, "SKIN" creates its own universe in which their two different bodies approach one another. This intimate duet transcends the performers’ physical boundaries and imagines a common poetry of movement.

“When Roland proposed in 2018 that we make a duet together, I was curious about how we could connect with one another. To connect as two individuals and at times even merge into one. This idea of ‘merging’ was formed especially by observing Roland and his assistants, because they were constantly working to extend his body, such as becoming his hands to feed him. This expansion is contrasted with the idea of contraction - from the beginning we worked with sleeping bags, placing a limitation on both of our bodies that enabled us to begin from a more level playing field.

SKIN is not about ‘access’ for people with disabilities but rather a work of ‘excess’ that we explore with care, curiosity and wonder. It is an attempt to make a world in which there is no more or less able body. To achieve this I draw from the author, Ursula K. Le Guin and her musings on amoeba’s and how they exchange genetic information when they make love by sending bits of themselves back and forth, mutually responding each to the other. This was my final key to uniting with Roland and inspiring a movement language in which we could share parts of ourselves and ultimately make that readable to the audience.” - Renae Shadler

Eyes wide open. Eyes closed. Eyes rolled back, the gaze directed inward: To open the new programme series "SENSE", which explores power relations within a geography of perception, radialsystem presents the performance "BLINK mini unison intense wail", in which choreographer and dancer Michelle Moura takes on a formidable challenge together with dancer Clara Saito: writing a score for the fundamentally involuntary movements of the eyelids.

Audio description is provided for blind and visually impaired visitors at Friday’s performance in collaboration with Gravity Berlin. The audio description comprises a live audio track featuring clear and impactful description of the visual details of the performance. Voiced by professional AD narrators, the audio description can be heard via wireless headset.

Strategies for navigating pleasure… During the two-day “Scores for Pleasure” workshop, and together with the participants, the performer and choreographer, Przemek Kamiński, will develop a series of scores that spark joy in movement and encourage delight in sensory experience. For this (re)discovery of pleasure in relation to the self and others, Kamiński combines various somatic practices, improvisational activities as well as bodywork and relaxation techniques. The scores practiced during the workshop form a catalogue of tools that the participants can take with them and combine into their everyday routine, their practice and their artistic work. The workshop is taking place during the opening weekend of the new programme series, “SENSE”, within which radialsystem is exploring power relations in a geography of perception. 

Touch, closeness, togetherness – a choreographic-performative exploration of the practice of touch: During his residency at radialsystem, André Uerba explores the different dimensions of touch – its properties, qualities and complexities. Through movement, ritardando and focus on the body, he and his co-residents test out different forms of becoming acquainted with and sensing one another as a means to uncover the potential of togetherness. He thus continues his examination of the topic of touch, which he embarked upon in 2018. In July he provides insight into his new work through a film presentation followed by a discussion. The film is shown as part of the new programme series “SENSE” in which radialsystem explores power relations through a geography of perception.
 

The radio show "Rhythms Studies #1 Bia Kut Si" by the musician Elsa M'bala aka AMET is about "Bikutsi", a popular and widespread music style of Cameroon. It was originally invented by women who played the music on different occasions to share - to the exclusion of men - their joys, pains or sexual experiences. The name "Bia Kut Si" comes from Beti, a language of central Cameroon, and translates roughly as "We stomp on the ground" - which also describes the typical dance movement to the music style. The central theme of the radio show are four Cameroonian musicians (groups) who have shaped the childhood of Elsa M'bala aka AMET: Mbarga Soukouss, Anne Marie Nzie, Brice Wassy and Les Têtes Brulées.

At the kick off weekend of the new program series "SENSE", with which the radialsystem explores power relations in a geography of perception, several sound stations will be installed on the terrace of the radialsystem, where the radio show can be heard over all three evenings. Rhythms Studies #1 Bia Kut Si" was produced during Elsa M'bala's residency at Amplify Berlin, June 2021.