In the accompanying festival exhibition “AI ANCESTORS – Making Kin in the Future,” the 23rd poesiefestival berlin (June 17-23) lets visitors experience what possible futures might look like. Works by K Allado-McDowell (USA), Rike Scheffler (Germany), Himali Singh Soin (India/UK) and David Soin Tappeser (Germany) as well as Louise Walleneit (Germany) will be shown.
Four artistic positions explore animistic myths in Tibet and co-authorship with artificial intelligence, respond to visitors’ heartbeats and whisper poems from the future. The featured voices presented by curator Rike Scheffler draw on decolonial, intersectional, trans- and ecofeminist approaches, non-Western and Indigenous ways of being and knowledge systems.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a related program, e.g. a collective KI writing ritual, performances and artist talks, a writing workshop, and a healing ritual with gongs (details below).
K ALLADO-MCDOWELL: The logocentric wound bleeds into a shared horizon of meaning // Die logozentrische Wunde blutet in einen gemeinsamen Sinnhorizont (2022)
For the exhibition opening on June 14, 2022, K Allado-McDowell will initiate a collective AI writing ritual via live feed from Los Angeles. Accompanied by sounds by musician Debashis Sinha and live visuals by artist Lucas Gutierrez, the audience in Berlin will transmit “poetic provocations” (keywords, metaphors, memories, verses, dreams) to Allado-McDowell via group chat. Allado-McDowell will then arrange these provocations into prompts – instructions for the artificial intelligence language model GPT-3.
Short bio K Alldo-McDowell: https://poesiefestival.org/en/artists/allado-mcdowell-k/
RIKE SCHEFFLER: Lava. Ritual (2022)
In Rike Scheffler’s surround sound and video installation, poems from a speculative future community resound as echoes to us in the present. As in the children’s game of “telephone,” myths and cultural knowledge are transmitted and saved orally, across linguistic and species boundaries, from one living body to another through words, verses, and acoustic signals. In collaboration with the sound artist CROOK, the Icelandic photographer Gunnlöð Jóna and digital artist Arna Beth.
Short bio Rike Scheffler: https://poesiefestival.org/en/artists/scheffler-rike/
HIMALI SINGH SOIN & DAVID SOIN TAPPESER (HYLOZOIC/DESIRES): As Grand As What // So Grandios Wie Was (2019 — 2022)
The video and sound installation by performance duo Hylozoic/Desires addresses the crucial role of rituals and their imagery in both social and ecological systems. Grounded in research about ancestral Himalayan healing rituals as well as a mandala that visualizes the Buddhist system of Kalachakra (Sanskrit for “wheel of time”), this immersive performance offers a new interpretation of this mystical geometry.
Short bio Himali Singh Soin: https://poesiefestival.org/en/artists/singh-soin-himali/
Short bio David Soin Tappeser: https://poesiefestival.org/en/artists/soin-tappeser-david/
LOUISE WALLENEIT: bodycheck (2021)
Louise Walleneit’s sentient sculpture offers visitors surprising insights into other, unknown ways of being. Her sculpture’s reflective, seemingly impermeable walls respond to touch and proximity, beginning to breathe when they detect electromagnetic fields in their environment. The walls record what surrounds them and reflect how they perceive their surroundings through lively acoustic reverberations. But even the work’s nearby and invisible surrounding space (as well as the objects and people within it) are part of the work.
Short bio Louise Walleneit: https://poesiefestival.org/en/artists/walleneit-louise/
23rd poesiefestival berlin
6/17 – 6/23
Festival exhibition
AI ANCESTORS – Making Kin in the Future
BEFORE the festival:
WED 6/15 and THU 6/16 | 1–7 pm
DURING the festival:
FRI 6/17 – THU 6/23 | 1–10 pm
Free admission
Related Program
THU 6/14 | 6 pm Studiofoyer | 8/6 €
MAKING KIN WITH PLANTS AND MACHINES
Collective AI wiriting ritual and artist talk
MON 6/20 | 3 pm Studiofoyer | 3 €
SelbstVERSuche: DEAR FUTURES
Workshop (in German)
WED 6/22 | 4.30/8 pm Sesselclub | 8/6 €
ANCESTORS OF THE BLUE MOON
Healing ritual with gongs
WED 6/22 | 9.30 pm Kleines Parkett | 8/6 €
ECHOES FROM THE FUTURE
Performance and artist talk
Tickets available at poesiefestival.org and at the box offices of the Akademie der Künste (Pariser Platz & Hanseatenweg). See the full program at: poesiefestival.org
The exhibition AI ANCESTORS – Making Kin in the Future is a project of eurobylon e.V. and is funded by the NEUSTART KULTUR program initiated by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM) and kindly supported by the Embassy of the USA in Berlin and the British Council Berlin. bodycheck was supported by the Creative Fund of the Bauhaus University Weimar and a guest performance grant from the Kulturstiftung Sachsen.
The poesiefestival berlin is a project of the Haus für Poesie in cooperation with the Akademie der Künste and is supported by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds.
Presented by ASK HELMUT, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, BÜCHERmagazin, EXBERLINER, KUNSTFORUM International, Literaturport, rbbKultur, taz and tip Berlin.
Contact
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