2 EVENINGS OF PERFORMANCE ART
10 SELECTED ARTWORKS
A KALEIDOSCOPIC EVENT UNDER ONE ROOF
PERFORMANCES RUNNING CONTINUOUSLY AND SIMULTANEOUSLY
FRIDAY 20th FROM 5P.M. TO 11 P.M.
SATURDAY 21st FROM 18.30 TO 11 P.M.
FREE ADMISSION
ENTRANCE, EXIT AND RE-ADMISSION IS PERMITTED THROUGHOUT THE EVENING
WHEELCHAIR ACCESS THROUGH RAMPS AND ELEVATOR
The Building has a Shape of the River by Tanja Ostojić
18:30 - 19:30
Tanja Ostojić’s The Building has a Shape of the River is a newly developed site-responsive performative research that consists of installation-elements inside the venue, and of two activations in the form of embodied performances, duration of approximately thirty minutes each. Ostojić's research departs from the facts that the building of Flutgraben was constructed half in the Spree, following the shape of the river in its form, while the walls witness shadows of the past, due to its location on the historical borders of the Berlin-Wall.
Ostojić's project poetically highlights the building's river-like shape and commemorates its position on what once was a piece of nature, a natural confluence, a flood trench, and the Spree River. She intends to voice those facts and to map out an intuitive strategy to touch and change, elaborating on bodily contact with the façade of the building, and the surrounding water.
The Building has a Shape of the River is related to Ostojić's ongoing research project “Changed by Water”, on urban swimming cultures, women’s collective knowledge, and menopause.
📸 Tanja Ostojić: Daily Swim in Bosphorus (2021), photo: Tanja Ostojić
o r d i n e by Sharon Estacio
19:00 - 23:00
The artist, a second-generation Filipino American, situates herself inside the Flutgraben building, washing the windows with her hair. The room is covered floor-to-ceiling with large letters creating a landscape of words decipherable only from a distance. The words are phrases gathered from conversations with artists of the Flutgraben community, translated into Filipino by the artist in a frivolous attempt to grasp a language that, in her larger frame of reference, has always been overshadowed by the predominance of English.
The performance reclaims gestures of care and challenges social perceptions associated with Filipino identity, amplifying visibility of a liminal space and condition, confronting stereotyped visions while exploring the nuances of language and representation.
📸 Sharon Estacio
Departure by Marina Arienzale
22:00 - 23:00
In Departure, a perpetual movement becomes a metaphor of a relationship between body and space, between the artist’s personal story and contexts that are spontaneously self-generated. The ridicule-brushing element of a minibike drawing infinite figure-eights until the gas is depleted generates a ritual that draws a sightline between the spectator’s eye and the performer’s motion, as if one could find their own story in that farcical and comical endlessness. The picture brings about a more indirect link, like a misplaced caption, accentuating the playful language of this universally shared symbology.
📸 Cosimo Picciardi
Eclissi Urbane/Urban Eclipses by Maria Novella Tattanelli
19:45 - ?
only on the 20.09
Urban Eclipses, created in collaboration with photographer and visual artist Laura Sgherri, proposes a reflection that goes beyond the mere physical appearance of spaces. The project examines with a critical eye our propensity towards seeking beauty while resisting the full embrace and complexity of change. Urban Eclipses is a peregrination through transfigured spaces, a performance that slowly fades and colors behind the glittering mask of beauty. This visual narrative unfolds in two separate acts, articulating the subtle symphony between the illusion of beauty and the reality of metamorphosis, where an ode to the fragility and power of human-environment interaction emerges, through the delicate, unrelenting force of time.
ABOUT MARIA NOVELLA TATTANELLI
Heavy Duty Beauty by Olympia Bukkakis
21:00 - 22:00
Queen of the Heavens and of the Earth, Empress of Despair, Architect of Your Eternal Suffering, Olympia Bukkakis will present HEAVY DUTY BEAUTY, a playful exploration of the possibilities of high- and subculture in a post industrial setting. Expect lip synced arias, experimental cello solos, and royalty wrapped in duct tape.
Paranoia Raum by Andreja Kargačin
18h30 - 23:00
A unique, two day site-specific performance installation inspired by panic rooms. Paranoia Raum explores the distinction between sudden panic and chronic paranoia, both in private and geopolitical context. It presents a timeline from 1989 - marked by the fall of the Berlin Wall - to the present day, 2024. The timeline includes objects and footage reflecting personal, geopolitical and crossover narratives, in particular Andreja’s late great-uncle Đoko Stojičić, a diplomat and Minister of Culture during the Yugoslavian war. The work is deeply connected to its site at Flutgraben, incorporating its cultural and historical context. It evolves with the location, including new objects found locally. Significant pieces include a "Happy New 1989" wooden sign, a collection of diplomatic passports, a dream diary entry from 1992, wartime photographs of the artist’s parents, an old telephone playing Nicolae Ceausescu's speech, a childhood video of the artist and her brother singing "The Wall," and a 2021 video of the game Among Us.
📸 Andreja Kargačin
Hader Halal by Fehras Publishing Practices
20:00 - 21:00
only on 21.09
Hader Halal, by Fehras Publishing Practices, delves into the history of globalized publishing infrastructures along with sound and performance as means for transformation and to sonify a body politic. Through their lecture performance, they will be reviving and celebrating the publishing legacy of the Afro-Asian Solidarity Movement, ignited during the 1955 Bandung Conference. Their focus is particularly on the literary magazine Lotus: Afro-Asian Writings which voiced the interconnected struggles and hopes of Afro-Asian peoples and their allyship. The lecture performance illuminates the trajectories of the magazine, exploring its rise and significance amidst the complex dynamics of the Cold War era and our understanding of “collecting” as a verb where stories and connections unfold. By leveraging the power of archives, voice, body and light, they will create a transformative space for sharing knowledge and reclaim forgotten publishing histories.
Hader Halal, which translates to “with regard to presence”, emerges as a beacon of cultural solidarity and memory dissemination. Recognizing the deep-seated pains housed within archives and by embracing publishing in its most expansive form, Fehras Publishing Practices aims to challenge the entrenched power dynamics that thrive on division.
ABOUT FEHRAS PUBLISHING PRACTICES
📸 Hader Halal Sessions; D'EST cycle #2: Postsocialism as Method. Anti-Geographies of Collective Desires, district*school without center c/o Flutgraben. LOTUS: Afro-Asian Writing archival collection. Fehras Publishing Practices, 2023.
Jaettu / Shared by Tiina Lehtimäki
19:00 - ?
Jaettu / Shared is a long durational participatory performance exploring the dynamics between performers and audience members within Flutgraben's unique spaces. Through a simple yet evocative structure centered around a long metal bar, the audience is invited to engage in collaborative interactions ranging from ceremony to playfulness. By deliberately withholding specific instructions on handling the bar, the performance necessitates shared responsibility and resilience, creating a space for participants to actively explore presence and interaction in the moment.
📸 Aurélie Trochard
Within the Veil of Speaking Bitterness and REDEFINE by Ivana Ranisavljević
20:15-21:15
On the first night, Ranisavljević will present "In the Veil of Speaking Bitterness", the second part of her diptych "In the Name of the Mother and the Daughter," premiered in 2023 at IMPORT/EXPORT Livorno. "In the Veil of Speaking Bitterness" creates a liminal space where past, present, and future collide, challenging the stability of contemporary patriarchal norms. Using the embroidery technique traditionally associated with women, Ranisavljević invites contemplation and reflection.
The second night Ranisaljević will perform REDEFINE, a work inspired by Barbara Kruger's work on women's reproductive rights. Redefine, part of a larger triptych titled "Shared Skin," emphasizes the urgent need to redefine, reorganize, and reshape societal norms, offering a new perspective on the body and femininity through a subversive process of writing and performance art.
📸 Filip Stefanović
Wounded Rhymes by Chollada Phinitduang and Thomas Rohe
20:15
"Wounded Rhymes" is a site-specific dance performance taking place in Berlin from September 2024. The performance delves into the bittersweet nature of human, fleeting relationships and the "ghosts"—memories, emotions, and invisible scars—that these relationships can leave behind. In a world marked by chaos and global unrest, the performance explores how people are inevitably connected to one another and how these connections shape our lives in ways we often do not understand until time has passed. The dancers move through various spaces in Flutgraben, with each location adding a new dimension to the performance, creating a dynamic and vivid experience against Berlin's urban landscape.
ABOUT CHOLLADA PHINITDUANG / ABOUT THOMAS ROHE
📸 Jörg Dedering, Samuel Feste Midteide- Editing Andreas Lanesjord
IMPORT/EXPORT is Maria Novella Tattanelli, Tiina Lehtimäki, Enrico L’Abbate, Aleksander Zain, Sharon Estacio, Darius Bogdanowicz (core group of artists and co-creators), Matthias Krause Hamrin, Sina Ahmadi (flutgraben e.V), Claudia Caldarano, Alessandro Brucioni (mowan teatro), Sanda Kalebić (U10 Art Collective). Jovana Trifuljesko, Ana Simona Zelenović, Bojana Jovanović, Dunia Belić, Maja Petrović (curatorial handbook team). Co-funded by Creative Europe.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.
2 EVENINGS OF PERFORMANCE ART
10 SELECTED ARTWORKS
A KALEIDOSCOPIC EVENT UNDER ONE ROOF
PERFORMANCES RUNNING CONTINUOUSLY AND SIMULTANEOUSLY
FRIDAY 20th FROM 5P.M. TO 11 P.M.
SATURDAY 21st FROM 18.30 TO 11 P.M.
FREE ADMISSION
ENTRANCE, EXIT AND RE-ADMISSION IS PERMITTED THROUGHOUT THE EVENING
WHEELCHAIR ACCESS THROUGH RAMPS AND ELEVATOR
The Building has a Shape of the River by Tanja Ostojić
18:30 - 19:30
Tanja Ostojić’s The Building has a Shape of the River is a newly developed site-responsive performative research that consists of installation-elements inside the venue, and of two activations in the form of embodied performances, duration of approximately thirty minutes each. Ostojić's research departs from the facts that the building of Flutgraben was constructed half in the Spree, following the shape of the river in its form, while the walls witness shadows of the past, due to its location on the historical borders of the Berlin-Wall.
Ostojić's project poetically highlights the building's river-like shape and commemorates its position on what once was a piece of nature, a natural confluence, a flood trench, and the Spree River. She intends to voice those facts and to map out an intuitive strategy to touch and change, elaborating on bodily contact with the façade of the building, and the surrounding water.
The Building has a Shape of the River is related to Ostojić's ongoing research project “Changed by Water”, on urban swimming cultures, women’s collective knowledge, and menopause.
📸 Tanja Ostojić: Daily Swim in Bosphorus (2021), photo: Tanja Ostojić
o r d i n e by Sharon Estacio
19:00 - 23:00
The artist, a second-generation Filipino American, situates herself inside the Flutgraben building, washing the windows with her hair. The room is covered floor-to-ceiling with large letters creating a landscape of words decipherable only from a distance. The words are phrases gathered from conversations with artists of the Flutgraben community, translated into Filipino by the artist in a frivolous attempt to grasp a language that, in her larger frame of reference, has always been overshadowed by the predominance of English.
The performance reclaims gestures of care and challenges social perceptions associated with Filipino identity, amplifying visibility of a liminal space and condition, confronting stereotyped visions while exploring the nuances of language and representation.
📸 Sharon Estacio
Departure by Marina Arienzale
22:00 - 23:00
In Departure, a perpetual movement becomes a metaphor of a relationship between body and space, between the artist’s personal story and contexts that are spontaneously self-generated. The ridicule-brushing element of a minibike drawing infinite figure-eights until the gas is depleted generates a ritual that draws a sightline between the spectator’s eye and the performer’s motion, as if one could find their own story in that farcical and comical endlessness. The picture brings about a more indirect link, like a misplaced caption, accentuating the playful language of this universally shared symbology.
📸 Cosimo Picciardi
Eclissi Urbane/Urban Eclipses by Maria Novella Tattanelli
19:45 - ?
only on 20/09
Urban Eclipses, created in collaboration with photographer and visual artist Laura Sgherri, proposes a reflection that goes beyond the mere physical appearance of spaces. The project examines with a critical eye our propensity towards seeking beauty while resisting the full embrace and complexity of change. Urban Eclipses is a peregrination through transfigured spaces, a performance that slowly fades and colors behind the glittering mask of beauty. This visual narrative unfolds in two separate acts, articulating the subtle symphony between the illusion of beauty and the reality of metamorphosis, where an ode to the fragility and power of human-environment interaction emerges, through the delicate, unrelenting force of time.
ABOUT MARIA NOVELLA TATTANELLI
Heavy Duty Beauty by Olympia Bukkakis
21:00 - 22:00
Queen of the Heavens and of the Earth, Empress of Despair, Architect of Your Eternal Suffering, Olympia Bukkakis will present HEAVY DUTY BEAUTY, a playful exploration of the possibilities of high- and subculture in a post industrial setting. Expect lip synced arias, experimental cello solos, and royalty wrapped in duct tape.
Paranoia Raum by Andreja Kargačin
18:30 - 23:00
A unique, two day site-specific performance installation inspired by panic rooms. Paranoia Raum explores the distinction between sudden panic and chronic paranoia, both in private and geopolitical context. It presents a timeline from 1989 - marked by the fall of the Berlin Wall - to the present day, 2024. The timeline includes objects and footage reflecting personal, geopolitical and crossover narratives, in particular Andreja’s late great-uncle Đoko Stojičić, a diplomat and Minister of Culture during the Yugoslavian war. The work is deeply connected to its site at Flutgraben, incorporating its cultural and historical context. It evolves with the location, including new objects found locally. Significant pieces include a "Happy New 1989" wooden sign, a collection of diplomatic passports, a dream diary entry from 1992, wartime photographs of the artist’s parents, an old telephone playing Nicolae Ceausescu's speech, a childhood video of the artist and her brother singing "The Wall," and a 2021 video of the game Among Us.
📸 Andreja Kargačin
Hader Halal by Fehras Publishing Practices
20:00-21:00
only on 21.09
Hader Halal, by Fehras Publishing Practices, delves into the history of globalized publishing infrastructures along with sound and performance as means for transformation and to sonify a body politic. Through their lecture performance, they will be reviving and celebrating the publishing legacy of the Afro-Asian Solidarity Movement, ignited during the 1955 Bandung Conference. Their focus is particularly on the literary magazine Lotus: Afro-Asian Writings which voiced the interconnected struggles and hopes of Afro-Asian peoples and their allyship. The lecture performance illuminates the trajectories of the magazine, exploring its rise and significance amidst the complex dynamics of the Cold War era and our understanding of “collecting” as a verb where stories and connections unfold. By leveraging the power of archives, voice, body and light, they will create a transformative space for sharing knowledge and reclaim forgotten publishing histories.
Hader Halal, which translates to “with regard to presence”, emerges as a beacon of cultural solidarity and memory dissemination. Recognizing the deep-seated pains housed within archives and by embracing publishing in its most expansive form, Fehras Publishing Practices aims to challenge the entrenched power dynamics that thrive on division.
📸 Hader Halal Sessions; D'EST cycle #2: Postsocialism as Method. Anti-Geographies of Collective Desires, district*school without center c/o Flutgraben. LOTUS: Afro-Asian Writing archival collection. Fehras Publishing Practices, 2023.
ABOUT FEHRAS PUBLISHING PRACTICES
Jaettu / Shared by Tiina Lehtimäki
19:00 - ?
Jaettu / Shared is a long durational participatory performance exploring the dynamics between performers and audience members within Flutgraben's unique spaces. Through a simple yet evocative structure centered around a long metal bar, the audience is invited to engage in collaborative interactions ranging from ceremony to playfulness. By deliberately withholding specific instructions on handling the bar, the performance necessitates shared responsibility and resilience, creating a space for participants to actively explore presence and interaction in the moment.
📸 Aurélie Trochard
Within the Veil of Speaking Bitterness and REDEFINE by Ivana Ranisavljević
19:15 - 20:15
On the first night, Ranisavljević will present "In the Veil of Speaking Bitterness", the second part of her diptych "In the Name of the Mother and the Daughter," premiered in 2023 at IMPORT/EXPORT Livorno. "In the Veil of Speaking Bitterness" creates a liminal space where past, present, and future collide, challenging the stability of contemporary patriarchal norms. Using the embroidery technique traditionally associated with women, Ranisavljević invites contemplation and reflection.
The second night Ranisaljević will perform REDEFINE, a work inspired by Barbara Kruger's work on women's reproductive rights. Redefine, part of a larger triptych titled "Shared Skin," emphasizes the urgent need to redefine, reorganize, and reshape societal norms, offering a new perspective on the body and femininity through a subversive process of writing and performance art.
📸 Filip Stefanović
Wounded Rhymes by Chollada Phinitduang and Thomas Rohe
20:15-21:15
"Wounded Rhymes" is a site-specific dance performance taking place in Berlin from September 2024. The performance delves into the bittersweet nature of human, fleeting relationships and the "ghosts"—memories, emotions, and invisible scars—that these relationships can leave behind. In a world marked by chaos and global unrest, the performance explores how people are inevitably connected to one another and how these connections shape our lives in ways we often do not understand until time has passed. The dancers move through various spaces in Flutgraben, with each location adding a new dimension to the performance, creating a dynamic and vivid experience against Berlin's urban landscape.
📸 Jörg Dedering, Samuel Feste Midteide- Editing Andreas Lanesjord
ABOUT CHOLLADA PHINITDUANG / ABOUT THOMAS ROHE
IMPORT/EXPORT is Maria Novella Tattanelli, Tiina Lehtimäki, Enrico L’Abbate, Aleksander Zain, Sharon Estacio, Darius Bogdanowicz (core group of artists and co-creators), Matthias Krause Hamrin, Sina Ahmadi (flutgraben e.V), Claudia Caldarano, Alessandro Brucioni (mowan teatro), Sanda Kalebić (U10 Art Collective). Jovana Trifuljesko, Ana Simona Zelenović, Bojana Jovanović, Dunia Belić, Maja Petrović (curatorial handbook team). Co-funded by Creative Europe.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.