Practicing Futures While Grieving in Eight Movements 1-4

About

As such, it is a mode of inhabiting our shared vulnerabilities and inherently social and political. Practices of grieving may engender a shared sense of sociality and communality, an experience that may even bring joy and pleasure. With the program at Klosterruine, we - the curators Siegmar Zacharias and Christopher Weickenmeier - aim to de-privatize an experience that is universal but not nearly as monolithic as Western societies may have us believe. In a space of a 13th century ruin, artists, grief workers and activists are invited to complicate the idea of grieving and to articulate the collective dimensions of a feeling most of us are all too often left alone with.

PROGRAM 
AUGUST 19, 2022, 6 - 10PM

6PM: GOLDEN GATE (PERFORMANCE)
- ANIA NOWAK W/ FRÉDÉRIC GIES, JUSTYNA STASIOWSKA

Golden Gate questions our normative perceptions of loss and mourning. What is queer grief and in what way can it become a collective movement of melancholy and resistance? Drawing from vanitas, baroque aesthetics around transience and death, the work attempts to make space for erotics of mourning in today´s (post-)pandemic reality.
Ania Nowak and Frédéric Gies create a queer representation of companionship through losing and letting go. They rehearse each other’s deaths and use this morbid play not only to confront systems of injury aimed at queer and other minorities in the past and today, but mainly to develop tactics of care and repair other than the top down tools of control over bodies masquerading as healing strategies. How to endure this endless moment collectively? Are we ready to rest in peace but also in power and joy while we’re still alive?

Idea, choreography, performance: Ania Nowak, Choreography, performance: Frédéric Gies, Dramaturgy: Siegmar Zacharias, Sound design: Justyna Stasiowska, Sculptures: Pakui Hardware, Costumes: Grzegorz Matląg/Wsiura, Production: Ania Nowak, in co-production with SOPHIENSÆLE.
Funded by Berlin Capital Cultural Fund. With the support of Q21 MuseumsQuartier, Contemporary Art Centre Vilnius and Milvus Artistic Research Center.

7PM: SOMETIMES THEY LOOKED LIKE PEOPLE, SOMETIMES LIKE BUILDINGS…. (PERFORMANCE)
- ZEINA HANNA 

The work “sometimes they looked like people, sometimes like buildings…” was created in response to an invitation to join the platform redeem رديم. This platform focused - amongst other things - on thinking together about the aftermath of the Beirut port explosion in august 2020 and confronting the perceived impossibility to process this event artistically. The work is an ode to forgetting, to childhood obsessions and to grieving a place repeatedly.

Made and performed by Zeina Hanna, Sound: Vera Pulido, Sound recordings: Tatiana el Dahdah & Zeina Hanna.
With the support of Senate department for culture and Europe & Partners in Craft. Special thanks to Nada Samaha and Lore de Selys.

8PM: WAILING IS BREATHING OUT LOUD FOR OTHERS- SOMACOUSTIC LISTENING TOWARDS SOCIAL BODIES (LISTENING SESSION)
- SIEGMAR ZACHARIAS, STEVE HEATHER

Inspired by my greatgrandmother’s practice as a wailing woman in Romania and working with the healing powers of the solfeggio frequency 528 we offer a sonic container to acknowledge the grieves present in this time. The listening session is a sound meditation for wandering together into a space where we do not need to be alone. Building on a queer feminist practice of nourishment and regeneration we want to ask: How can we be together otherwise. How can we listen to ancestral voices, unborn voices and voices not listened to. We offer Wailing is breathing out loud for others to practice giving our bodies as resonance spaces for each other to be in the wild space of grief, joy, pleasure, of connection through sound. We invite you to plug into the transformative power of collective grieving, collective listening, collective regeneration and gather the energy we need to keep practicing futures while grieving.

Siegmar Zacharias: concept, performance, composition, hosting, Steve Heather : composition, coproduction: sophiensaele; FFT Düsseldorf, funded by Stepping out NPN Neustart Kultur.

6-10PM: THE GRAVEYARD OF EXTENSION (INSTALLATION)
- UMA BREAKDOWN

PROGRAM 
AUGUST 20, 2022, 6 - 10PM
(SAME PROGRAM AS FRIDAY)

6PM: GOLDEN GATE (PERFORMANCE)
- ANIA NOWAK W/ FRÉDÉRIC GIES, JUSTYNA STASIOWSKA

7PM: SOMETIMES THEY LOOKED LIKE PEOPLE, SOMETIMES LIKE BUILDINGS…. (PERFORMANCE)
- ZEINA HANNA 

 
8PM: WAILING IS BREATHING OUT LOUD FOR OTHERS- SOMACOUSTIC LISTENING TOWARDS SOCIAL BODIES (LISTENING SESSION)
- SIEGMAR ZACHARIAS, STEVE HEATHER
 

6-10PM: THE GRAVEYARD OF EXTENSION (INSTALLATION)
- UMA BREAKDOWN