Building Strength
Workshop: Friday November 4, 11:00-15:00, and Saturday November 5, 14:00-18:00
For this workshop we propose an exploration of semi-industrial areas representative of an era and their interconnection with other territories, inquiring on the operative dynamics that create new landscapes and ruins. Through a series of collaborative entanglements we propose a visit to an industrial complex located around the area of Neukölln/Treptow (exact location to be disclosed), where we will conduct a series of observations and material collections that will be further unpacked during a second session at TIER. Investigating how this location connects to other latitudes and problematics, either by the people who inhabit it or by the materials, resources or non-human forms that have found a way to adapt inside this late capitalism environment.
We propose to work with the idea of satellites as remote sensing tools but also as communication systems capable of receiving and retransmitting signals. How can we embrace this technology to reimagine the colliding of multiple perspectives on our immediate environment? How can these tools be reappropriated and embedded with presence and materiality? Which devices and strategies can we develop to visualize the entanglements of local specificities with transnational narratives and, therefore, the plurality of the lives and the places we inhabit?
We are looking for collective, scientific, speculative and artistic tools and approaches to situate ourselves in a territory, to share,collect and transform data into new forms of knowledge. We will use aeroespacial images to unveil the trans planetarian narrative we are all embedded in. Furthermore we want to create a collective installation designed for the TIER window space with the material gathered in physical form and also using digital interventions. Through this experience, we want to explore the poetic and political potential that can emerge from the exploration of spaces from multiple perspectives, tools and sensitivities, and its posterior transformation into new critical meanings and materialities.
Limited places for the workshop are available. Registration is required at auroraplatformtier@gmail.com
Andrea Acosta is a Colombian artist investigating notions of nature and landscape and their interconnection with urban or industrial environments and materialities. In her process-based practice she combines field research with drawing, sculpture, installation and photography, reflecting on the constant transformation of matter, gaze and territories. Her work has been shown internationally in Europe, Latin America and Asia.
Aurora. A Platform on Ecology, Interdependence and Mutual Aid
June–November 2022
A project prepared 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.
For Nzeyimana this is umwaku: a piece of information, some news, or a comment, actual or false, that is troubling to the mind. The notion of umwaku is of an animistic origin. What makes such comment stirring is not so much its unsolicited delivery, but its pre-emptive, anticipatory resonance to a possibly feared, relatively undesired image of the oneself.
—Christian Nyampeta
Life 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. The project is presented through workshops, exhibitions, podcasts and a reader publication. 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
Design by Lilia Di Bella/Archive Appendix.
Aurora. A platform on ecology, interdependence and mutual aid is supported by:
Part of the project Aurora: A Platform on Ecology, Interdependence and Mutual Aid
One-to-one encounters (30 min each):
Thursday October 13: 14:00, 15:00, 16:00, 17:00, 18:00
Friday October 14: 14:00, 15:00, 16:00, 17:00, 18:00
Saturday October 15: 14:00, 15:00, 16:00, 17:00, 18:00
One-to-one encounter in English of 30 min each. Please book a time slot in advance here: https://koalendar.com/e/
If you have a special question or request please contact us at: microclimateintier@gmail.com
Romuald Krężel – born in Poland, Berlin-based choreographer and performer. He received his MA in Choreography and Performance at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies of Justus Liebig University Gießen/Germany. Romuald’s work is nourished by expanded choreographic practices that incorporate visual and performative elements. The resulting movement-based performances, site-specific installations, participatory projects, videos, and other hybrid formats, explore themes such as labor, resistance, class struggle, environmental catastrophes and the potential exchange between humans and more-than-humans. Romuald’s works have been presented in HAU Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin, HELLERAU – European Art Center in Dresden; Kunstverein and Künstlerhaus Mousonturm in Frankfurt; Kaserne in Basel, among others. romualdkrezel.com
Aurora. A Platform on Ecology, Interdependence and Mutual Aid
June–November 2022
A project prepared 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.
For Nzeyimana this is umwaku: a piece of information, some news, or a comment, actual or false, that is troubling to the mind. The notion of umwaku is of an animistic origin. What makes such comment stirring is not so much its unsolicited delivery, but its pre-emptive, anticipatory resonance to a possibly feared, relatively undesired image of the oneself.
—Christian Nyampeta
Life 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. The project is presented through workshops, exhibitions, podcasts and a reader publication. 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
Design by Lilia Di Bella/Archive Appendix.
Aurora. A platform on ecology, interdependence and mutual aid is supported by:
mordo (Aline Baiana, Camila de Caux & Eric Macedo):
Merographic relations: steps to an ecology of the partial
Part of the project Aurora: A Platform on Ecology, Interdependence and Mutual Aid
Workshop: Friday, September 23, 17:00-20:00, and Saturday, September 24,
14:00-18:00
What is a relation? Could alternative ways of thinking relationality help us deal with the current ecological crises? In this workshop, we invite participants to a collective unlearning of relations taken for granted in our everyday thoughts. Engaging in talks, reflexive exercises and working together in the construction of material structures, we will look for the “displacement effects” enabled by changing the description of our own decomposition into open partialities.
Merography – a concept developed in the work of British social anthropologist and feminist Marilyn Strathern – could be defined as the study of relations between parts without wholes: anything can be seen as a part of something else. A perspectival change does more than change the ‘part’ we are to see; new connections bring new ontologies. Starting from a contrast between “plural” and “post-plural” worlds, we will discuss themes such as kinship between human and non-human beings, political belongings and action, and the paradoxical roles of all-encompassing ideas such as Nature and Gaia in contemporary discussions regarding the Anthropocene.
We recommend coming to both days of the workshop; however you can also join only one. Limited places for the workshop are available. Registration is required at auroraplatformtier@gmail.com
mordo is an artistic collective composed by:
Aline Baiana (she/her/hers) is an Afro-Pindoramic artist, born in 1985 in the territory today known as Brazil. Her research addresses Afro-Brazilian and Native-Americans worlding practices and ontological conflicts between the Global North and South. She participated in several exhibitions in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Belo Horizonte, and her work has been featured at the 11h Berlin Biennale and Sharjah Biennial 14. She is currently a grant holder of the Berlin Artistic Research Grant Programme.
Camila de Caux (she/her/hers; they/them/their) is a writer and ethnologist. Their interests, formed in the confluence between literary aesthetics and anthropological questioning, revolve around notions of multiverse and corporeality, and their reverberations in political practices. Their essays, poems, and short stories have appeared in Ruído Manifesto, mallarmagens, Revista DR, and elsewhere. They are co-editor of the online publication aperfectstorm.net.
Eric Macedo (he/him/his) is a social anthropologist, working on themes related to colonialism, ethnocentrism, anthropocentrism, and alterity relations. His PhD thesis describes the historical process of colonization in the region around the city of Altamira, in the Brazilian Amazon, and changes introduced by the Belo Monte Hydroelectric dam. He is currently a researcher at the Institute of Speculative and Critical Inquiry, investigating images of extraterrestrial beings in science fiction narratives, with a particular interest in crossings between multispecies and decolonial perspectives.
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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
Romuald Krężel: Microclimate
Workshop: October (dates tbc)
Ana Alenso and Andrea Acosta: We are Satellites, Experimental Observations in Semi-Industrial Territories.
Workshop: November (dates tbc)
Design by Lilia Di Bella/Archive Appendix
Aurora. A platform on ecology, interdependence and mutual aid is supported by:
Shoufay Derz: Towards the Unknown: Rituals of Alienship
Part of the project Aurora: A Platform on Ecology, Interdependence and Mutual Aid
Wednesday, September 7 and Thursday, September 8, 15:00 – 19:00
Location: Meeting at TIER, followed by an excursion to Volkspark Hasenheide. The exact location pin will be shared with registered participants.
Participants are invited to take part in the relational project “Ritual of Eels, loving the alien. This workshop invites acquaintances and strangers to become green creatures in the midst of various parks, gardens and uncultivated green spaces. The project is an ongoing collaboration and social gathering of green creatures, of which there are more than 100 so far. They first appeared in performances at Gulgadya Muru, the grass tree trail at Manly Dam Reserve in Sydney. From the sacred waters of the Gayamaygal people to the parks of Berlin and the lava beds of Lanzarote, these aliens/eels continue to gravitate to verdant realms and watery depths. For the artist, the figure of the alien, conjured in the work’s title and her sitters’ green faces, stands as a metaphor for transformation and our shared unknowns. The potentials of disappearance and transformation are shared, mirrored between the landscape and green faces. Engaging in a conversation about belonging, alienation and the possibilities of kinship with others and planet earth, her latest work proposes rituals for the end of the world so that together we can imagine other possibilities.
This workshop will involve green face painting, performing on camera, conversing and eating. Please wear black clothing and optionally bring any food you’d like to share during the picnic. QTBIPOC communities are strongly encouraged to join.
Limited places for the workshop are available. Registration is required at auroraplatformtier@gmail.com
Shoufay Derz is an Australian artist, researcher and educator of Taiwanese and German descent currently living in Berlin. Derz’s work explores the limits and possibilities of language and the ambiguities we confront when attempting to visually articulate the edges of the known. Deeply engaged with poetic potentiality her projects attempt to connect the silences in language with holes in social, structural and geological landscapes to contemplate the voids in time and also the uncertainties of future landscapes. http://www.shoufay.com/
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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
Romuald Krężel: Microclimate
Workshop: October (dates tbc)
Ana Alenso and Andrea Acosta: We are Satellites, Experimental Observations in Semi-Industrial Territories.
Workshop: November (dates tbc)
Design by Lilia Di Bella/Archive Appendix
Aurora. A platform on ecology, interdependence and mutual aid is supported by:
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.
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