7 October 2019, 19:00
Flutgraben Atelierhouse, 12435 Berlin, Am Flutgraben 3
After the Anthropocene, an age evoked by irresponsible human activity, will follow the Chthulucene, a time characterized by fear and the fact that we are all together in trouble.
Over the past few centuries, the sphere of existential and legal rights has radically broadened. We have developed practices, we have accomplished important results and incredible shortfalls.
In order to survive, we need to take responsibility for the collective and find ways to represent something other than just ourselves. We have to rephrase our mutual understandings, rethink our civic duties and reformulate our definitions of political life. There should be a natural contract, which, as defined by Michel Serres, is a collective understanding that would, in countering the damages caused by humanity, protect not only humans, but the wider world we want to and have to live in. It is hereby crucial to acknowledge that we, in our current system of political power, are responsible for giving a voice to the other.
To bring this understanding into practice, we call upon securing equal representation for other entities, even entities without language, entities without bodies and non-organic entities. We call upon this natural contract to include not only our species but all earthlings, some of which we know and some of which we don’t, along with non-living subjects, ideas and notions we cherish. This is – and we must understand that – about us, about you, and about all the others.
We Solemnly Swear is the fourth chapter of the Klimata series, a one-year performance project by Montag Modus that explores global changes, taking the term “climate” in its broadest sense. Based on Bruno Latour‘s definition, climate is understood here as “a wide range of relationships between humans and their material living conditions”. The fourth event of Montag Modus Klimata takes civil responsibility as its starting point and invites artists from Budapest and Berlin to invoke their personal interpretations on the topic.
In Under_Cover, Zeina Hanna, along with collaborators Darko Dragičević, Miriam Jakob and Julia Rodríguez, investigates various sleep patterns across species, hereby questioning notions of human and non-human agency. In his educational micro-series It’s Easy For You János Brückner learns and teaches whiteness through the perspective of an Eastern European person. Igor and Ivan Buharov, with their mixed media installation Diet, address with urgency the need to nurture the wisdom and sensibility that connect us to our environment. Civic responsibility is further approached on a methodological level in the work-in-progress Only a part, not the whole by six Berlin-based choreographers; Ayse Orhon, Christina Ciupke, Litó Walkey, Jasna L. Vinovrški, Clément Layes and Igor Dobričić address the collaborative structures of an artistic project in order to discover alternative modes of sociability and knowledge sharing. They strive to develop a way of working, thinking and creating together through modular physical encounters – while keeping one’s singularity and individual agency in the process.
During the event, the Budapest-based xtro realm artist collective will present parts of their encyclopedia, a freshly published book that is part of a multidisciplinary project gearing towards a post-anthropocenic world. Since 2017, the group has set up various programs (reading circles, exhibitions, field trips) in Budapest, dealing with new-realist and ecological theories that critique the anthropocentrism of contemporary thinking and that, in the spirit of knowledge-sharing and transdisciplinarity, provide access to the current discourse on climate change.
Zeina Hanna: Under_Cover (working title)
The notion of sleep comes with different paradoxes regarding consciousness and presence: sleep is ‘only perceivable at its edges or its outside’, and it ‘has no capacity for reflectivity within its own conditions’. So how do we recognize it? And how can we perform sleep without sleeping?
Under_Cover is a work in progress exploring the physical mechanisms of sleep that we can be aware of, such as falling into and waking up from sleep, taking naps, daydreaming and the experience of boredom, escapism and insomnia. In researching the sleeping behaviors of different species and their connectivity to the world from the perspective of how, where and when they go to sleep, Under_Cover explores sleep in its various stages, states, and degrees of presence and stages frictions between biology, ideology, technology and culture.
Zeina Hanna is an artist working in choreography and performing arts. Her choreographic body of work includes: Never live twice – a video installation performance, Backroom Anatomy1, Love & Revenge, in addition to collaborative works with different artists. In the past year, Zeina has worked with Johanna Hegenscheidt, Xavier Le Roy and Miriam Jakob. Currently, she is working on developing a new piece: Government of Sleep as a continuation of a year-long research on the ongoing project Under_Cover for which she received the Berliner Senat’s initial support in 2018. Born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon, Zeina holds a master’s degree in theatre from Paris 8 University and in Choreography from Inter-University Center for Dance Berlin.
Concept: Zeina Hanna
Performance: Julia Rodríguez, Miriam Jakob and Darko Dragičević
János Brückner: It’s Easy For You
How white is an Eastern European person? In the educational micro-series It’s Easy For You, you might just find out. Let yourself be led on a practical, emotional journey and learn about whiteness from the perspective of a Hungarian-born person. Using various learning methods and tackling the big questions in only 20 minutes and four episodes, starting from “Who is White?” to “Happy End”, you are sure to learn more about whiteness – an optimal choice for a Monday night performance! Suitable for all ages.
„Art is an experimental process for me: a diversity of formats, methods and truths committed to reach some kind of bottom or peak. Its aim is to investigate the human-being. It is emotional realism, professional failure, and the overdose of honesty. This allows me to subvert seeing and displaying the world through dichotomies like serious vs. ridiculous, public vs. personal, happy vs. sad, aesthetic vs. functional. All of these can be true and coexist at the same time.I work mostly with images: classic painting, photography, video, drawing, interactive large scale paint-by-numbers, material documents, or usable installations. For me, all these are pictures: tangible, physical, mysterious and excitement displays of reality“– János Brückner
János Brückner is a Hungarian artist currently living in Berlin and finishing his MA in Art in Context at the UdK Berlin.
Igor and Ivan Buharov with Hermina Fátyol, Dolores Hudin, Linn Löffler, Iringó Réti and Szabolcs Vereb: Diet
In a site-specific installation and performance, the Hungarian artist-duo Igor and Ivan Buharov will turn the Flutgraben into a laboratory, where interspecies exchange will finally be achieved. Plants have widespread and nuanced networks of communication, the artists claim, and therefore in times of mass surveillance, they may well be our best allies in seeking out new channels for secure communication.
Igor and Ivan Buharov have been creating experimental short films for decades, with the purpose of healing on a mental level. The work presented at Montag Modus is based on Örök szándékmező-hangolás, an installation created for the 2018 edition of Steirischer Herbst, with new additions and adapted to the Flutgraben location.
Ayşe Orhon, Christina Ciupke, Clément Layes, Igor Dobričić, Jasna L. Vinovrški and Litó Walkey: Only a part, not the whole
Only a part, not the whole addresses the collaborative structures of an artistic project in order to discover alternative modes of sociability and knowledge sharing. This artistic project, in which the fabric of collaboration is woven out of interactions between the artists, aims to become both a working method and a theme. How we design our internal relations will condition what we will be able to share with the spectator. The internal work of the making will gradually grow to become a mode of presentation, implicating the spectator into the social dynamics that are at play.
…………………..A notion of blindness as a functional lack of comprehensive view……………………………………………………………….A logic of a “chance” encounter favoring coexisting plurality of perspective…………………………………………………….…………..An ecology of “multiple drafts” rather than a dramaturgy of a fixed score.”…………………………………………………………
In 2017, Berlin-based choreographers and performers Christina Ciupke and Ayşe Orhon collaborated on the piece At Close Distance. In 2018, Christina and Jasna L. Vinovrški developed the project Now and Then. In 2019, Christina, Ayse and Jasna considered engaging in a collaborative work that would link these two works. To expand the concept of collaboration and to test alternative forms of knowledge sharing, each of them invited a close collaborator with whom an individual working relationship already existed: Jasna invited Clément Layes (choreographer and performer), Christina invited Igor Dobričić (dramaturge) and Ayşe invited Litó Walkey (choreographer and performer).
This is a first sharing* of the project Blind Date, which will be premiered on 1 November at Open Spaces at Tanzfabrik Berlin.
Light and sound: Catalina Fernandez
Production/PR: Barbara Greiner
A production by A lot of Body GbR in coproduction with Tanzfabrik Berlin.
Supported by the Berlin Senate’s Department for Culture and Europe in the frame of apap-Performing Europe 2020.
Co-financed by the Creative Europe Program of the EU.
Extrodæsia – Encyclopedia towards a post-anthropocentric world
xtro realm
Since 2017, the Budapest-based artist group xtro realm (Anna Zilahi, Rita Süveges and Gideon Horváth) has set up various programs (reading circles, exhibitions, field trips) dealing with new-realist and ecological theories that critique the anthropocentrism of contemporary thinking and that, in the spirit of knowledge-sharing and transdisciplinarity, provide access to the current discourse on climate change in Hungary. During the event, they will present parts of their recently published Extrodaesia, a multidisciplinary encyclopedia including the prose poems of six young Hungarian writers and visual art works that approximate the landscapes of theory.