July 15–16 (Workshop) & July 14–23 (Spatial Setting). Linda Zhang and Dr. Biko Mandela Gray: Phenomenology of the Road: Tracing the Materiality of Loss
Linda Zhang and Dr. Biko Mandela Gray:
Phenomenology of the Road: Tracing the Materiality of Loss
Part of the project Aurora: A Platform on Ecology, Interdependence and Mutual Aid
Workshop: Friday, July 15, 16:00-20:00 & Saturday, July 16, 14:00-18:00
Spatial Setting: July 14–23, Th, Fr & Sa, 14:00-18:00
Roads regulate a plethora of social, cultural and historical affective flows. Affect is central here; while travelling, one feels as much as one thinks. In this workshop, 3D scanning is used as a way to investigate (to attempt to understand and think through) the events and conflict memories which transpire in the Phenomenology of the Road. Announcing the road as a space of contestation and memory, or rather of re-membering conflicting memories, we remember: we “member again,” piecing together fragments from what has transpired to make sense of our present.
Limited places for the workshop are available. Registration is required at auroraplatformtier@gmail.com
Linda Zhang is an artist, licensed drone pilot, principal architect at Studio Pararaum and an assistant professor of Interior Design at the Creative School at Toronto Metropolitan University. Her artistic practice explores community memory, cultural heritage, and identity through emergent technologies (including VR, AR and AI), matter, and material processes.
Dr. Biko Mandela Gray is an Assistant Professor of Religion at Syracuse University. He writes about blackness, embodiment, religion and literature, and philosophy. His forthcoming book, Black Life Matter: Blackness, Religion, and the Subject will be out with Duke University Press this fall.
Aurora. A Platform on Ecology, Interdependence and Mutual Aid
June–November 2022
A project assembled by The Institute for Endotic Research with MELT (Ren Loren Britton & Isabel Paehr), Linda Zhang & Dr. Biko Mandela Gray, Nnenna Onuoha, Shoufay Derz, mordo (Aline Baiana, Camila de Caux & Eric Macedo), Ana Alenso & Andrea Acosta, and Romuald Krężel.
—Christian NyampetaLife did not take over the world by combat,
but by networking.
—Lynn Margulis
“Aurora. A Platform on Ecology, Interdependence and Mutual Aid” is an interdisciplinary project initiated by TIER. It departs from the notion of mutual aid, as a way to understand connections between ecology and interdependence. Aurora, which stands for dawn, is among the most common symbols for hope. The project goes beyond criticism, proposing actionable strategies for imagining better futures.
Zoologist and political scientist Piotr Kropotkin used the term mutual aid starting in 1880 to describe a model in which nature, in many observed cases, functions through collaborative entanglements. This perspective was confronting the one based on competition, proposed by the Neo-Darwinists, who sought a model of nature that justified the exploitative and competitive logic of capitalism from a scientific point of view. This capitalist model based on perpetual extraction is arguably one of the main reasons for the climate collapse.
Instead, the mutual aid model looked for a system that understands how all entities are entangled, and how species developed through collaboration in many cases. Scientist Lynn Margulis expanded on this model analyzing how symbiosis is at the basis of all life on Earth, and how this process is based on interdependence. Can the notion of mutual aid (understood both from biology and from politics) offer the tools to face the climate crisis and the developing collapse? By placing focus on interdependence, could it be possible to anticipate strategies against the climate collapse, learning from historical processes inscribed in the colonial program? What role does machine learning play?
The Institute for Endotic Research (TIER) seeks to combine these views and methodologies to produce a platform together with other institutions and collaborators, who work in a critical position between art, activism and science: how can we think and work within ecology from a decolonial perspective, and with the logic of mutual aid? Which kind of speculative fictions are possible to foster the imagination of alternative, more sustainable ways of coexistence among humans, nonhuman lifeforms and nonliving entities based on interdependence?
The platform “Aurora“ will be presented from June to November 2022. Every month, there will be a new artistic installment at TIER, working as a spatial setting for hosting a workshop led by the invited contributors.
All events are free of charge. Limited places for the workshops are available. Registration for the workshops is required at auroraplatformtier@gmail.com
MELT (Ren Loren Britton & Isabel Paehr): Conspiring Timelines: Shimmering Temporalities
Workshop: Thursday, June 2 & Friday, June 3, 16:00-20:00
Spatial Setting: June 4–18, Th, Fr & Sa 14:00-18:00
Linda Zhang and Dr. Biko Mandela Gray: Phenomenology of the Road: Tracing the Materiality of Loss
3D Scanning Workshop: Friday, July 15, 16:00-20:00 & Saturday, July 16, 14:00-18:00
Shoufay Derz: Towards the Unknown: Rituals of Alienship
Workshop: Tuesday, September 6, Wednesday, September 7 & Thursday, September 8
Nnenna Onuoha: Apocalypse Where: Scenes from the Ends of the World
Workshop: Tuesday, September 13 & Wednesday, September 14
mordo (Aline Baiana, Camila de Caux & Eric Macedo): Merographic Relations: Steps to an Ecology of the Partial
Workshop: Friday, September 23 & Saturday, September 24
Ana Alenso and Andrea Acosta: We are Satellites, Experimental Observations in Semi-Industrial Territories.
Workshop: Friday, October 14 & Saturday, October 15
Romuald Krężel: Microclimate
Workshop: Friday, November 4, Saturday, November 5 & Sunday, November 6
Aurora. A platform on ecology, interdependence and mutual aid is supported by:
June 2–3 (Workshop) & June 4–July 9 (Spatial Setting). MELT (Ren Loren Britton & Isabel Paehr): Conspiring Timelines: Shimmering Temporalities
MELT (Ren Loren Britton & Isabel Paehr):
Conspiring Timelines: Shimmering Temporalities
Part of the project Aurora: A Platform on Ecology, Interdependence and Mutual Aid
Workshop: Thursday, June 2 & Friday, June 3, 16:00-20:00
Spatial Setting: June 4–18, Th, Fr & Sa, 14:00-18:00
In two reading & practicing sessions, we engage Zeitgeber as external cues that influence the timing of our internal clocks. Zeitgeber are for example reactions of plants to changing light conditions during climate change realities – often described within shifting circadian rhythms. In these workshops Zeitgeber are co-conspirators that allow us to practice towards crip (meeting our bodyminds) and trans* (making cuts when needed) timelines. We will together work with shapeshifting materials that give back time to us by modulating relations between our embodiments and sensorial environments. Materials we will engage in the space include: sand, water, light, makeup, various containers, video projection and impacts.
Limited places for the workshop are available. Registration is required at auroraplatformtier@gmail.com
MELT (Ren Loren Britton & Isabel Paehr) study and experiment with shape-shifting processes as they meet technologies, sensory media and pedagogies in a warming world. Meltionary (derived from “dictionary”), is a growing collection of arts-design-research engagements that cooks up questions around material transformations alongside impulses from trans* feminism and Disability Justice. Melting as a kaleidoscope like phenomena touches upon multiple topics at once: climate change, the potential for political reformulations, change over time and material transformation. MELT shares work in the forms of videos, installations, websites, lectures, workshops.
Aurora. A Platform on Ecology, Interdependence and Mutual Aid
June–November 2022
A project assembled by The Institute for Endotic Research with MELT (Ren Loren Britton & Isabel Paehr), Linda Zhang & Dr. Biko Mandela Gray, Nnenna Onuoha, Shoufay Derz, mordo (Aline Baiana, Camila de Caux & Eric Macedo), Ana Alenso & Andrea Acosta, and Romuald Krężel.
—Christian NyampetaLife did not take over the world by combat,
but by networking.
—Lynn Margulis
“Aurora. A Platform on Ecology, Interdependence and Mutual Aid” is an interdisciplinary project initiated by TIER. It departs from the notion of mutual aid, as a way to understand connections between ecology and interdependence. Aurora, which stands for dawn, is among the most common symbols for hope. The project goes beyond criticism, proposing actionable strategies for imagining better futures.
Zoologist and political scientist Piotr Kropotkin used the term mutual aid starting in 1880 to describe a model in which nature, in many observed cases, functions through collaborative entanglements. This perspective was confronting the one based on competition, proposed by the Neo-Darwinists, who sought a model of nature that justified the exploitative and competitive logic of capitalism from a scientific point of view. This capitalist model based on perpetual extraction is arguably one of the main reasons for the climate collapse.
Instead, the mutual aid model looked for a system that understands how all entities are entangled, and how species developed through collaboration in many cases. Scientist Lynn Margulis expanded on this model analyzing how symbiosis is at the basis of all life on Earth, and how this process is based on interdependence. Can the notion of mutual aid (understood both from biology and from politics) offer the tools to face the climate crisis and the developing collapse? By placing focus on interdependence, could it be possible to anticipate strategies against the climate collapse, learning from historical processes inscribed in the colonial program? What role does machine learning play?
The Institute for Endotic Research (TIER) seeks to combine these views and methodologies to produce a platform together with other institutions and collaborators, who work in a critical position between art, activism and science: how can we think and work within ecology from a decolonial perspective, and with the logic of mutual aid? Which kind of speculative fictions are possible to foster the imagination of alternative, more sustainable ways of coexistence among humans, nonhuman lifeforms and nonliving entities based on interdependence?
The platform “Aurora“ will be presented from June to November 2022. Every month, there will be a new artistic installment at TIER, working as a spatial setting for hosting a workshop led by the invited contributors.
All events are free of charge. Limited places for the workshops are available. Registration for the workshops is required at auroraplatformtier@gmail.com
MELT (Ren Loren Britton & Isabel Paehr): Conspiring Timelines: Shimmering Temporalities
Workshop: Thursday, June 2 & Friday, June 3, 16:00-20:00
Spatial Setting: June 4–18, Th, Fr & Sa 14:00-18:00
Linda Zhang and Dr. Biko Mandela Gray: Phenomenology of the Road: Tracing the Materiality of Loss
3D Scanning Workshop: Friday, July 15, 16:00-20:00 & Saturday, July 16, 14:00-18:00
Shoufay Derz: Towards the Unknown: Rituals of Alienship
Workshop: Tuesday, September 6, Wednesday, September 7 & Thursday, September 8
Nnenna Onuoha: Apocalypse Where: Scenes from the Ends of the World
Workshop: Tuesday, September 13 & Wednesday, September 14
mordo (Aline Baiana, Camila de Caux & Eric Macedo): Merographic Relations: Steps to an Ecology of the Partial
Workshop: Friday, September 23 & Saturday, September 24
Ana Alenso and Andrea Acosta: We are Satellites, Experimental Observations in Semi-Industrial Territories.
Workshop: Friday, October 14 & Saturday, October 15
Romuald Krężel: Microclimate
Workshop: Friday, November 4, Saturday, November 5 & Sunday, November 6
Aurora. A platform on ecology, interdependence and mutual aid is supported by:
May 11-28. Sergio Zevallos: LE CODE BLANC (The White Code) A Granular Audition + Archivo Ambulantes
Sergio Zevallos: LE CODE BLANC (The White Code) A Granular Audition + Archivo Ambulantes
Exhibition: May 11–May 28, Th, Fr & Sa, 14:00-18:00
Commencement: Wednesday, May 11, 18:00-21:00
The installation at TIER presents the results of the workshop carried out last year by Sergio Zevallos as part of the series Somatic Charting: The House is the Body. This was a one-on-one encounter based on the book Le Code Noir (The Black Code)—a document on the systematization of the black slave trade promulgated by Louis XIV in 1685—and on some other related texts and songs. The conceptual reversal of the project title indicates the intention to play with the postulates of the code as a study in discourse transmutation.
Starting from his daily practice in the use of the voice and from his work with sound and concrete poetry, Sergio Zevallos proposed a series of exercises, where the voice, the body gesture and the action of writing converged.
The sessions, which took place on-site in Berlin October 19 and 20, 2021, were audio-recorded, and excerpts from the recordings were used to develop a polyphonic composition.
The “Archivo Ambulantes” from 1983 is a collection of images and texts from the research/production of the photo series “Suburbios – Pasiones de un cuerpo Ambulante”, made during the Grupo Chaclacayo project in Lima, Peru. It contains more than 250 negatives on 9 x 14 cm baryta paper, as well as a photographic documentation of how the actions were carried out, the handwritten and hand-drawn scripts for the performances, sound scores for those performances, press clippings and dozens of religious and popular religious and popular images from the 1980s. Doing a selection from the archive, we aim at showing Sergio Zevallos’s practice of writing/drawing scores, both for performances and for sonic installations and sound compositions, which connects with the workshop installation developed within the frame of Somatic Charting.
Somatic Charting. The House is the Body (2020-21) was co-curated by Elena Basteri and TIER, and was supported by Hauptstadtkulturfonds, Between Bridges, and the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe.
Sergio Zevallos (Lima, 1962)
Co-founder of the Grupo Chaclacayo, a collective from the 80s with whom he made a provocative work relating armed conflicts with sexual and racial discrimination, desacralizing religious icons and the heroic masculinity of the soldier in the Latin American context. He migrated to Germany in 1989 and since 2012 lives between Lima and Berlin.
He works with photography, drawing, installation, sound and performance, with themes of cross-cultural identity, gender and the relationship between the individual, the power, the intimacy and the public life.
www.sergiozevallos.net
Grupo Chaclacayo was an art collective from Lima, Peru active from 1982-1994. Through their subversive happenings, processions, photography, drawings, artifacts, and sculptures, they used their bodies as a site to critique issues within Catholicism, military violence, the mistreatment of indigenous communities, and against patriarchy and machismo. Grupo Chaclacayo was comprised of three central members: Helmut Psotta, Sergio Zevallos, and Raul Avellaneda, although they occasionally collaborated with others including Jorge Angeles, Sixto Paniora, Frido Martin, Klaus Wittkamp, Cesar Guerra, and Piero Pereira.
April 14-23. A Material Relation. Initiated by Philip Widmann, in correspondence with Oscar de Gispert and Nour Ouayda
We invite you to the exhibition at TIER of A Material Relation, a 16mm and slide installation initiated by Philip Widmann, in correspondence with Oscar de Gispert and Nour Ouayda.
Commencement: Thursday, April 14, 18:00-21:00
Opening Hours: April 15-23, Thursday-Saturday 14:00-18:00
Philip Widmann makes films, texts, and film programmes. He has recently brought the camera, whose prolonged presence in Beirut led to A Material Relation, back to Berlin.
Funded by The Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media
March 19. Zukünftiges Denkmal für den geduldeten Afghan*inenn. Organized by Rita de Matos
Saturday, March 19, 17:00-20:00
Zukünftiges Denkmal für den geduldeten Afghan*inenn
Organized by Rita de Matos
For the second year in a row, TIER will be hosting the Zukünftiges Denkmal für den geduldeten Afghan*inenn. This is a proposition of a citizen-driven memorial for how our western Governments, with their Border regime and War policies, have treated the citizens of what has been, for the last years, one of the unsafest countries for its inhabitants on Earth.
The National Flower of Afghanistan is the Tulip. Bodies we’ve come to see as familiar, blooming every Spring in our gardens. And so, last Autumn, through 4 planting actions and the hands of many volunteers, 1000 tulips were planted in a spot in Tiergarten. Come join us this Spring in spreading more red tulips across the city and performing this memorial into existence – as both an act of accountability and solidarity.
We will be hosting a tulip pickup at TIER on the 19th of March between 17:00 and 20:00, together with a screening of work by Frishteh Sadati and Lin Xin. The event stands in support of Simorgh_s.b.g e.V., whose school for women in Kabul remains with open doors.
Frishteh Sadati has lived in Germany for five years. Originally from Afghanistan, she started working in cinema and theater already in her home country. Through multiple experiences of migration, and being unable to complete her academic studies, she has developed her practice through a hands-on, experimental approach. She has often appeared on stage in Germany and has made two short films. Since 2017 she is the Director of the AWA Theater Ensemble, and in 2018 she founded Simorgh_s.b.g e.V. in Germany to support the education of women in Afghanistan.
Lin Xin is an essayist and film editor. Originally from China, she has lived in Berlin since 2017. She is enrolled in the department of Asian and African Studies at Humboldt University.
Rita de Matos, born in Lisbon in 1996, lives and works in Berlin. Her practice has developed from painting towards video and installations in public space, which is preceded by participatory processes. Her work has been shown in Paula Rego’s Casa das Histórias, Berlinische Galerie; Warsaw Salon Akademii; and UNFRAMED Festival in Bethanien, Berlin, KUNSTSAELE BERLIN, National Society for Fine Arts, Lisbon. She is currently studying at the HBK Braunschweig as part of the Breitz-Cortiñas class, through a 1-year grant from the Gulbenkian Foundation.
February 12–26. Post-Post: Queer Caucasus. Curated by Giorgi Rodinov
Post-Post: Queer Caucasus. Curated by Giorgi Rodinov
Exhibition: February 12–26, Th, Fr & Sa 14:00-18:00 (except Feb 12)
Commencement: Saturday, February 12, 19:00-21:00
Online Discussion: Friday, February 18, 19:00 Berlin/CET (use this link to join)
What happens when empires collapse? What happens to all the plans and utopias? To the legends that are carried as a burden through generations of nations?
This year it is exactly three decades since the Soviet Union collapsed and its regions were granted the weight of independence. Since then, the South Caucasus has been going through an immense political and social mutation. Chaotic attempts to plan the future without any means to it doomed losses, poverty, and conflicts. To this day people of the post-soviet world carry this trauma.
Queer children of this mutation period were left marginalized by the system. To this day, they have to hide their real identities from the public. However, with the advent of informational progress, new realities and scenes became available for their self-expression.
Post-Post showcases young queer artists from Tbilisi, Yerevan, Baku and Sukhumi. It gives them a safe space to reflect on what the South Caucasus is now, 30 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
An online discussion with the artists, moderated by Giorgi Rodionov, will take place Friday, February 18 at 19:00 Berlin/CET. Use this link to join: https://meet.jit.si/
Hygiene concept: 2G-Plus. Be vaccinated or recovered, with a negative test from the same day or after your booster jab, with a valid EU Digital COVID Certificate presented in the CovPass or Corona-Warn app (if printed, it must include a valid QR code). Please remember to bring your FFP2 mask and wear it at all times inside the space.
David Apakidze is a visual artist, curator and art researcher. They graduated from Tbilisi State Academy of Arts with a BA in Art History and Theory. They co-created Fungus Project, a Caucasia-based queer art platform. In their research, they explore themselves through the lens of contemporary culture.
Salina Abaza was born in Damascus, Syria, in 1986. She is a graphic designer and interdisciplinary artist based in Sukhumi, Abkhazia.
Salina’s works are driven by her interest in personal narratives and their relationship to larger socio-political frameworks. She questions personal and political depths by looking at such concepts as identity, memory, violence and authority.
With this abstract and vast interest came diversified practice. She allows the concept to dictate the method, so her work acquires different mediums: from graphic design, videography and drawing to interdisciplinary performance, sculpture and installation. In the past two years she has taken interest in using creative coding platforms for art.
Nailə Dadaş-zadə & Ani Paitjan
Naila is a visual artist who works with different types of mediums including photography, video, installation, and archival materials. She was born in Baku, Azerbaijan, in 1998, but lived in different places. Her works consider such topics as space, time, and our relations to it, as well as identity in today’s world and activism through artistic expression.
Ani studied at the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium and has a Master Degree in Journalism. After working with multiple Belgian media outlets (press and radio), she moved to Armenia.
Vusala Hajiyeva is a Baku based poet, musician and filmmaker. She writes poetry on queer themes and social issues, composes music in neoclassical and indie styles. She made a documentary “Noise Symphony” and is working on a new script which is a self-portrait.
Giorgi Rodionov, born in 1990, is a Tbilisi-based artist and a curator focused on social and political stories that change eras.
Having grown up in a post-Soviet country, his interest in social structures and identities grew a lot. After graduating in journalism in one of the universities in the capital of Georgia, he moved to Europe and continued studies in contemporary arts for his MA.
Most of Giorgi’s works are based on his researches that are later transformed into installation, performance, participative art, books or other different media. As for the journalistic practice, he is very much interested in bringing science, art and the rest of the society together to deal with the issues as a joint power.
His artistic activity list includes many exhibitions in different European countries and Georgia, as well as personal projects published in different media. Giorgi lives and works in Tbilisi where he founded an art space called “Untitled Gallery Tbilisi”, which aims to bring artists from South Caucasus together to talk about social and political issues in the region.