The Shape of a Pocket Encounter: The maws of emptiness with Shoufay Derz

Date: Sunday, November 10th

Time: 17:00 – 19:00

In this rare encounter, Shoufay Derz will offer an assortment of alien snacks (whatever that means?) alongside nibbles (small case studies) from her wider practice. The session will unfold in a mix of planned and improvised moments, allowing for a fluid and open-ended exploration of the themes central to Derz’s work. The conversation may include a special guest moderator, Miguel Rodríguez-Casellas, adding another layer of spontaneity to the exchange. As part of the evening, Derz will also screen her updated video work “Ritual of Eels: Loving the Alien”—an ongoing series since 2019—which has never been shown in its entirety in Berlin before.

Expect an intimate dive into the ineffable, the void, and playful uses of humour and improvisation, touching on themes of emptiness and thresholds between the known and unknown.

For those interested in the philosophical concepts underpinning the work, additional reading on emptiness (śūnyatā) and the maws of emptiness will be available at the event.

BIO
Shoufay Derz is an artist and curator of Taiwanese and German descent who was born in Sydney and now works between Berlin and Sydney. In June 2023, she earned her PhD for her research, Towards the Unknown: The Visual Poetics of the Ineffable. Since 2022, she has co-directed the Institute of Endotic Research in Berlin. Exhibiting internationally, her practice spans analogue and digital photography, moving image, textiles, sculpture, performance, and text, probing the limits of language and the ambiguities faced when articulating unknowns, particularly in relation to migration and cross cultural exchange. Her work engages silences, misunderstandings, social and geological voids, and, more recently, uses tactics of humour and improvisation to reflect on exclusion, create connection, and imagine possibilities for belonging and transformation.