“Teleconnections: On Cycles of Media, Climate and Politics”, Berlin Art Link.

Tega Brain & Sam Lavigne: ‘Media Cycle,’ 2022, digital print // © Tega Brain & Sam Lavigne, courtesy the artist

Artist, researcher and curator Sybille Neumeyer recently opened the group show ‘Teleconnections’ at D21 Kunstraum Leipzig, as part of her long-term artistic research into the narratives and aesthetics of climate crises. The term “teleconnections,” often used in climate science to describe links between distant climate zones, is reimagined here to explore the interplay between climates, media and politics. It also nods to “telecommunication”—emphasizing how media shapes socio-political and bio-cultural atmospheres. The multimedia contributions by 14 international artists examine how media-driven climate narratives (re)produce power dynamics. They critically address topics such as greenwashing, CO2 cycles, colonial data systems, activism and energy infrastructures, often taking eco-feminist, speculative, poetic or humorous perspectives. We spoke with Neumeyer about the pressing concepts behind some of the works in ‘Teleconnections’ and about how art can become a transformative agent in these cycles. 

 Read on Berlin Art Link.

Fundraising for the Roof: ‘No! More White Money’ at Sophiensaele, Berlin Art Link

No! More White Money premiers at Sophiensaele, Berlin 6 November 2024. Foto: Paul Holdsworth.

 

[No! More White Money] is a theater performance produced by an international cohort of artist organizations: Afra Tafri Creations (IN/NL), Flinn Works (DE), Drama Queen (IN), Tutùọlá Institute (NG) and Ada Mukhina (RU/DE). It follows on from ‘White Money’ (2021), an exhibition and program of performances produced by Flinn Works, which also premiered at Sophiensaele, and critiqued how the flow of cultural funding from Europe to the so-called “Global South” shapes cultural production.

Read at Berlin Art Link.

‘DJ Report/DJ Backlash’: Unsound 2024 Noise, Kraków, 29th of September – 6th of October 2024, Cyclic Defrost

Unsound Festival, Noise. Photo: Helena Majewska 2024
 

Some thoughts on Unsound Festival 2024, Noise, are now up on Cyclic Defrost. It’s a long read!

So while Unsound presented numerous notable concerts, club nights, installations and a discourse program, my focus here is on the festival’s DJ sets. Once in Kraków, I sensed a backlash against DJ culture, as people voiced to me their disdain for the popular Boiler Room platform, complained about the exorbitant fees headlining DJs charge and generally begrudged those who, to paraphrase British producer aya, “make a career out of playing other people’s music”— albeit admitting to having done so herself. Are such criticisms warranted? Let’s cut to the chase.

Read it here.

‘The Melancholic Melody’ Exposes Berlin’s Tech Culture, Berlin Art Link

Ariel William Orah: ‘The Melancholic Melody of the New Economy,’ 2024, performance views // Photo by Zé de Paiva
Ariel William Orah: ‘The Melancholic Melody of the New Economy,’ 2024, performance view.
Foto: Zé de Paiva
 

After the performance of ‘The Melancholic Melody of the New Economy’ at Ballhaus Naunynstraße, first-time director Ariel William Orah told an appreciative audience that 13 years ago, as a young migrant from Indonesia, he worked in Berlin’s then-burgeoning tech industry. Chatting later in the courtyard bar, Orah discussed scouring the migrant community channels where such jobs are posted to find the performers for his “musical-documentary theatre.” Rather than audition for roles, Orah interviewed whomever expressed interest and invited those willing to commit to the intense six-week development period to join. Despite working in Berlin’s so-called “creative industries,” the five participants of ‘The Melancholic Melody’ were eager to express themselves.

Read at Berlin Art Link.

Ethical Gaming: ‘The Soul Station’ at Halle am Berghain, Berlin Art Link

 

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley: ‘THE SOUL STATION,’ 2024, installation view at Halle am Berghain, Berlin. Foto: Alwin Lay


Staged within an amphitheatre constructed inside the former power plant of Halle am Berghain, ‘The Soul Station’—a monumental immersive installation by Berlin-based artist Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley—centres around a cockpit made of a twin reclining seat fitted with a single sizeable controller. “Leaders,” who voluntarily take up the controller, face a large round screen, a portal into a labyrinthine game-space. Commissioned by LAS Art Foundation, ‘The Soul Station’ debuts Brathwaite-Shirley’s newest video game, unfolding over two parts: the first episode, ‘You Can’t Hide Anything,’ was launched on July 12th and the second, ‘Are You Soulless, Too?’ is scheduled to go live on September 12th. Set in the aftermath of a revolution, the main action in ‘You Can’t Hide Anything’ occurs inside a temple dedicated to “Bodyswappers.” Gamers are challenged to find and engage with six people inhabiting this graphically dense and detailed parallel universe, and then save them by choosing from a restricted set of conversational prompts, all within 11 minutes. A testament to the graphic limitations of the PS2 console (released 2000), gamers steer their way through throngs of polygon characters, past curious objects, between floating text and across vibrant textures. 

Read at Berlin Art Link

Critical Radio, Springerin 1/2024

“Hideakie Gushiken, documenta fifteen, 2022.” foto: Sumugan Sivanesan

“Critical Radio: Community Building and Solidarity in a Low-Bandwidth Medium” published in Springerin 1/2024, "ArtGPT." Excerpts below:
 

At an assembly held during documenta fifteen, it was suggested that net radio is a kind of low bandwidth activism taking up digital space in a largely privatized and commercialized World Wide Web. While this may be so, fugitive radio claims that the critical front is not at public facing websites, rather “critical radio”1 emerges in the kinds of organizing, skill sharing and community building that occurs alongside the production of content. Hack-labs and live broadcast happenings facilitate sharing, co-learning and generate enthusiasm for alternative networked-sociabilities. While such gatherings are often premised on pursuing free and open (source) culture and promoting digital commons, it is arguably conviviality that shapes the micro-politics of experimental radio activity. 

 … 

“Make friends not art” was a phrase that memed during the Jakarta-based collective ruangrupa’s takeover of documenta fifteen (2022), also known as “lumbung one,” valorizing of the social aspects of art-making over its commodified objects. Friendship was thus politicized as it determined the communities, practices and issues leveraged through infrastructural art power. This was notable as evidence of antisemitism alongside racist and transphobic attacks rocked the event, leading to censorship, withdrawals and the resignation of Documenta’s Director General Sabine Schormann. Nevertheless, solidarities resolved among those remaining and initiatives, such as lumbung radio, are ongoing. Organizations have since proposed to “learn from lumbung,” a reference to an Indonesian community rice barn, emphasizing the pooling and redistribution resources among inter-local networks and collective planning. I think it would also be wise to learn from the Humboldt Forum.

 …

When I moved to Berlin in 2017, curators I met sought to politicize their practices. Now some admit to being strategically silent, contributing to a climate of self-censorship and antagonism that recalls East Germany’s Stasi era or McCarthyism in the United States. As spaces holding multiple perspectives are dramatically reduced, what are the alternative platforms for critical debate?

Reparative Architecture: Anujah Fernando’s ‘Kantstraße 104a’, Berlin Art Link

Anujah Fernando: ‘Kantstraße 104a: an archive survey (detail),’ 2023, installation view at Museum Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Villa Oppenheim. Photo by Allan Laurent
 

இனி வந்தென்ன வராமல் என்ன [Does It Matter Now If I Come or Go]–Letters from Kantstraße 104a (2023) is a docu-fiction film and visual arts installation, currently on view at Villa Oppenheim, Museum Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. Made by Berlin-based cultural scholar, curator and filmmaker Anujah Fernando, the film and installation elaborate on archival research, interviews and onsite documentation of Pension Kant. This hostel in West Berlin housed asylum seekers escaping the civil war in Sri Lanka in the 1980s, and currently hosts migrants fleeing the war in Ukraine.

Read at Berlin Art Link.