CW#17 l SEASON 3 l Belonging

Theme: Unbound

22-23 September 2023, Wednesday | Season 3, Episode 17

Flutgraben and online

 

Livestream link: https://youtube.com/live/awprppVFwDg (Friday)

  https://youtube.com/live/m8ADRS9P5PA (Saturday)

 

Organized by the Apartment Project Berlin and funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe, in collaboration with the HIVE International Short Film Festival

 

Belonging

 

Friday

22:00 Performance «Automine» by HYENAZ

 

Saturday

22:00 Performance/Play «Tropical Gate» by Esme Madra & Büşra Albayrak

23:00 Performance by Fezaya Firar

 

 

This edition of «Chromatic Wednesdays» is a collaboration with the HIVE International Short Film Festival. The multidisciplinary festival features a diverse array of audiovisual performances, engaging panel discussions, educational workshops, and interactive Q&A sessions. Its program unites cultural producers and audiences to explore different perspectives on social issues fostering a dynamic exchange of ideas and community building. HIVE strives to create a vibrant and inclusive space and to empower unique voices. The third edition, on the theme «Unbound», focuses on belonging in relation to detachment. How do roots, cultural traditions, geography and heritage shape our lives and our sense of belonging? What are the challenges and rewards of being unbound? How do filmmakers and performers negotiate this in their creative expression?

 

As part of HIVE, «Chromatic Wednesdays» presents three events:

 

In their performance «Automine», HYENAZ explore the role of the body in the digital age. Bodies create value through physical labor, emotional labor and identifying markers such as gender or age that change through space and time. Through music, essay and a critical recitation of queer aesthetics, the performance questions whether the virtual is replacing the body.

 

In «Tropical Gate», Esme Madra and Büşra Albayrak perform an auto-fiction which takes us into the lives of two close friends living in Istanbul in the hectic year 2023. The story unfolds as they exchange voice notes, focusing on their experiences and challenges during this time.

 

In an attempt to echo the sentiments of the films screened during the festival, FezayaFirar will create a live set that evokes different spaces, presence, and absence. Improvising on various synthesizers, the duo weaves together electrical and psycho-acoustic signals, drawing from both their cultural roots and uncharted terrains. Heading into «outer space», they sketch a noisy soundscape that ponders where they belong – or don’t. The performance is accompanied by a sci-fi-like «nature» mockumentary about an insect they encountered last summer in southern Turkey.

 

 

HYENAZ are sonic alchemists Kathryn Fischer aka Mad Kate and Adrienne Teicher who create electronic music and performances to address how bodies are criminalized, managed and controlled. Using interactive dance, somatic exercises, and immersive sonic theater, they investigate how movement shapes our subjectivity and how our subjectivity shapes the way we move. Since 2015, HYENAZ have created a series of audiovisual works, installations and performative interventions titled «Foreign Bodies» that explore relationships between bodies in motion and bodies in resistance, interrogating the notion of the «foreign». They have visited refugee camps, squats, and intentional communities to conduct field recordings, interviews and deep listening workshops.

 

Büşra Nur Albayrak (b. 1996 in İstanbul) studied acting at Kadir Has Universtity. After graduation, she performed in various theatre plays and independent films. She is currently acting in the play «Ama» and teaching pole dance in Tanzlab dance studio in İstanbul. 

 

Esme Madra (b. 1987 in İstanbul) studied acting at Mimar Sinan University. She acted in various independent films that received awards at international festivals and appeared in several theatre plays. She is currently acting in the play «Ama», directs short films and is interested in dancing and drawing.

 

FezayaFirar (Zurich/Berlin) is a duo founded in 2012 in İstanbul, named after one of the first Turkish sci-fi novels «E s c a p e t o o u t e r s p a c e». Their sound world consists of elements that invoke the monstrofobic dimension of space and infinity oscillating between industrial ambient, drone and technorhythmic soundscapes. The live synthesized musical layers build bridges between microcosm and macrocosm. FezayaFirar uses mainly analog and modular electronics, exploring their limits in their endless variety, occasionally accompanied by acoustic and DIY instruments and field recordings.

 

 

«Chromatic Wednesdays» is a bi-weekly event series bringing together creative thinkers across diverse backgrounds. In collaboration with HIVE it shows performances at 22 September 2023 (22:00) and 23 September (22:00 and 23:00) at Am Flutgraben 3 (12354 Berlin). The events can also be followed online on Youtube.