25.08.2024 / Bonaparte at Kampnagel SommerFestival

Upcoming Gigs

25 August 2024 Hamburg, Germany – Kampnagel Sommerfestival Tickets

Past Summer Festivals

  • 26 Jul 2024 Breitenbach am Herzberg, Germany ⋅ Burg Herzberg Festival Tickets
  • 27 Jul 2024 Megesheim, Germany ⋅ Der Krater Bebt Open Air Tickets
  • 28 Jul 2024 Trebur, Germany ⋅ Trebur Open Air Tickets

Mad Kate in The Quiet and the Riot Tour 2024

photos by George DuBose

photos by Christian Holle

photos by Désirée Pezzetta LAUTdotDE

Fucking Imagination

20-21.08.2024 / PEACHES at OFF DAYS FESTIVAL Berlin / Hamburg

20 August 2024 PEACHES BERLIN

21 August 2024 PEACHES Hamburg

Audibility

Audibility – an audio visual work by HYENAZ featuring Donato Laborante

In their audiovisual artwork Audibility, sound and movement artists Kathryn Fischer and Adrienne Teicher (HYENAZ) delve into the politics of sound, inviting viewers to reconsider their relationship to the audible and inaudible, to silence and silencing. 

Filmed in an ancient man-made cave in the Murgia region of southern Italy, poet Donato Laborante delivers a poetic exploration of different forms of silence(s), holding in his hands the stalk of the Ferula Ferrita plant, an emblem of the Murgia’s unique ecology.. The plant’s presence becomes an integral part of the artwork, questioning the animacy of non-human and even non-animal; inviting into our consciousness this plant’s ability to speak, and more importantly–to provide consent to being part of an artwork.

STREAM or DOWNLOAD HYENAZ Audibility

HYENAZ suggest that audibility is deeply political and involves the willingness of the listener to hear differently; that this process is a mutual co-practice of speaking and listening and challenges the entire sonic environment to relate otherwise. This is intertwined with embodied, somatic experiences, requiring a shift in our listening practices and a willingness to embrace the subtle nuances of sound and language.

Audibility invites us to engage with silence not as a void, but as a dynamic and multifaceted presence. HYENAZ implore us to listen attentively, to seek out the whispered voices that emerge from the depths of silence–even to hear silence as something other than what we think it is–and to recognize the profound interplay between sound and silence in shaping our understanding of the world.

Through their rigorous processes of deep listening and field recording, HYENAZ capture the inherent sonic richness of their environment, transforming these raw sounds into a tapestry of auditory experiences. Their work encourages us to question the neutrality of sound archiving, recognizing the transformative power of manipulating and reinterpreting recorded sounds.

HYENAZ posit that archived sounds, whether human, non-human, animate, or inanimate, acquire a new existence, becoming intersubjective entities with the potential to give or withhold consent. They advocate for a respectful approach towards the auditory realm, acknowledging the agency of each sound source and its place within the broader sonic landscape.

sinews: holding our sh*t together

Tereza Silon and Kathryn Fischer aka Mad Kate

sinews: holding our sh*t together is an immersive sound piece and physical space for deep listening. weaving together over 100 clips of voice notes left between Silon and Fischer over the course of several years, the piece documents the feminist practice of care across kilometers, through sharing and listening, witnessing joys and tears.

PRESS

ARTALK

ARTYCOK

DOCUMENTATION

photos by Peter Kolárčik

Photos by Kathryn Fischer

EXHIBITS

16 December 2023 – 13 January 2024 at Neurotitan Gallery – Berlin – Germany – curator: Viviana Druga URBAN WITCHES not BITCHES: Beast from the East

19 October 2023 – 7 December 2023 at Galerie 35m2 – Prague – Czechia – curator: Anežka Januschka Kořínková

ARTIST TEXT

sinews: holding our sh*t together   

tereza silon and kathryn fischer

if we roll this ball long enough will all the shit transmute to gold? and do we want it or do we just humbly and nobly accept the shit? we are not like scarabs making something so precious we would then have to roll it in front of us till the end of times, but if we want to we could. only – our shit is beautiful – at least to each other. we say it like that. but maybe all shit is beautiful once it is shaped a bit and acknowledged as a part of a truly complex and spectral existence, as a part of human experience that is both metaphysical, expansive and simultaneously falling hard onto the lines of the eco-socio-political matrices. it is not that i burn so much incense i cannot smell its stench. but this shit is quite pure. confusing in beautiful ways, contradictory as in holding generative tensions, but not exclusive. this is why we have such strong sinews. sinews, to hold it. we are the sinews and sinuous – as in not straight. although the way we are together is often quite straight forward.

what are the conditions for audibility? sometimes we put our heads on pillows. we edge adjacent to sleep. sometimes we bend our bodies in stretching shapes, faces close to the ground, or smelling  our skin, close our eyes and lean into the ear. sometimes we are in motion, sight soft focused, an active listening while walking, cycling. these are conditions where my attention shifts to the auditory and i finally listen. 

it is mostly in headphones that i hear your voice. your voice a flame in an infinite darkness. when i feel undone and un-whole your voice is flickering at my inner ear, there where i am most vulnerable. node becomes guide, transcending distance. 

your words like so often flutter around me, haptic. an occasional car and birds outside of the open window. the soundscape implies a non-dual nature of the outside and inside (of the window) and presences and absences that too are not an opposite of one another, intimacy of it all. non-dual and perhaps non-binary. i often miss you but not like i miss other people. yes, a coffee in the same neighbourhood more often would be nice, more touch and embraces would be nice, but it is rare that you would not feel present in my life.

in these porous spaces there is a certain silence emerging from our folded bodies as we listen, as we create proximity. it is the deep listening kind which engenders trust, through which one feels heard, with which one can finally also speak. one speaks because one feels audible. then we can be reflected, challenged, validated, processed. an offering of how we, how i,  could see differently. you ask me, could i shift my perspective? 

and now what’s that strange sound in my throat? i am speaking with the trust of being heard.  

i do not have to deal with your ghosts so much because i can deal with you as a whole human – the ghosts included. i ask you questions because you told me when i asked you what questions are inappropriate that i can ask you anything – hard questions too – and that you will try to answer. this is a game we play. we dare. it could be edgy but it is mostly edgy because i get to feel what i was told to disown. it is edgy but not so sharp. and sometimes we also speak just to share the small uneventful annoyances and joys and pleasures of the everyday. i am aware how dumb some things can sound but you give them space anyways, because you trust my sense-making apparatus. i say them anyways and then something transforms. so many very important moments passed between us as uneventful – but not unnoticed. 

as an equal, sometimes you remind me i too can be held. and that to hold one another in general is a deep and sensuous desire of mine with people who also know (how to carry) their own weight intimately – figuratively and literally. something that grew more and more complex despite me getting more and more skilled in it as i grow older.

we use our collective skin body to hold ourselves together–together together. together despite the individualization of the i that is more than the i can handle. we use our voices to hold our mourning–and our joy. as nodes of trust for each other. as diversified relata, away from the ease of the most proximate warm body. (no one person can hold everything and certainly not only the adjacent her/him/them). that is terrifying–no–its new, always new.  si-new. sí, sí, sí. new. this multitude of nodes holding me, holding them. we hold that. 

i can easily speak of love, my love for you, the love we share, the love we feel for the world and other parts of our network and the pain and frustration and fear and misunderstandings too. there is no denial in it and nothing constructed. you – both in singular and plural. in one body and many. things i have not dreamt possible just a couple of years ago, because it is only understood experientially, over time. it takes time to slowly re-learn to trust and you might have had to watch me wail gutteraly once or twice or thrice. it is experiential, but not ossified the way old friendships might get. we change all the time. but at the same time it is hard to speak (of it), to utter, because it does not belong to neat categories. we use the words we know and we carve them into new shapes. yes it is a very queer experience but at the same time a deeply familiar one, a deeply human one. and yet sometimes all this intimacy feels so alien(ating) in the world that is communicating so much but where sometimes so little gets to be truly cherished. 

you need a familial (or a few, always). a dedication sealed with ´i am still here and staying´ in a world where so many relationships are transactional and based on disposability and yet it is a world which can be very very pained and yet on whose goodness we do not want to ever give up.

we draw thin curtains around our cochlea, around our inner home, our listening home. the thin skin body we call home. this tough yet porous framing  is what we need–or perhaps merely what we have–to hold our space. an imperfect circle we have drawn around our bodies. our bodies are laid bare, vulnerable, splayed in every direction, pulled apart but stretching–stretching because we are holding each other, all of us relata. sinews holding each other in fragile tension. 

but even if the world is held together by the tension, it may be the opposite, some sort of softness and not the tension that undoes us in the end. the suspended undulating timelessness of someone´s very simple presence.

acceptance of discomfort is sometimes the most radical thing and we are both good at it and absolutely useless with it. we still fight. i wish there was time in this capitalist strata to have all THIS with many others, too. the invitation into this for a moment is something to start with.

CURATORIAL TEXT

Curatorial Text by Anežka Januschka Kořínková from Galerie 35m2

Výstavní projekt Sinews: holding our sh*t together Mad Kate a Terezy Silon je druhým příspěvkem ke konceptu radikálního štěstí, který se tentokrát na rozdíl od projektu Rotující štěstí zaměřeného na individualizované hledání štěstí a jeho prožívání obrací k našim vzájemným mezilidským interakcím a jejich kultivaci. Teprve porozuměním a upevňováním našich vzájemných vazeb a vztahů s okolím můžeme dosáhnout určité změny ve společnosti, která bude mít v důsledku vliv na vytvoření lepších životních podmínek pro všechny.

Prostor Galerie 35M2 je prostřednictvím poloprůhledných textilií, dodávajících pocit bezpečí a intimity, přetvořen v místo určené k učení se naslouchání, sdílení a budování blízkosti. K tomuto procesu učení dochází skrze poslech zvukových nahrávek, které vznikaly v průběhu let jako součást osobní korespondence mezi Kate a Terezou sdílející intimní momenty z jejich života ústící v rozhovory komentující společenská témata jako různé modely vztahů, zdraví, nemoc, stárnutí, sexualitu, gender, potlačující a mocenské struktury a mnoho dalších. Vzájemným nasloucháním jedna/jeden druhé/druhému se spolu s námi učí jak být empatičtí vůči odlišné životní zkušenosti druhých a nepřestávat snít či dokonce bojovat za alternativní (možná utopické) prostory budoucnosti. Osobní je politické.

The exhibition project Sinews: holding our sh*t together by Kathryn Fischer and Tereza Silon is the second contribution to the concept of radical happiness, which – as opposed to the Rotating Happiness project that focused on the individualized search for happiness – examines our own interpersonal interactions and their cultivation.

Through the use of textiles, giving a sense of safety and intimacy, the space of Gallery 35M2 is transformed into a place that encourages listening, sharing, and building closeness. The rooms are filled with echoes of the sound recordings – an excerpts of a personal correspondence between Kathryn and Tereza – made over the course of several years. They share (with each other and now with us) intimate moments from their lives, often resulting in commentary about  social issues such as various models of relationships, health, illness, aging, sexuality, gender, oppressive structures and power structures and many more. As simple an act as recording an audio track, allows them to practice and strengthen their friendship through listening and learning about the experiences of others.

It is only through understanding and strengthening of our interconnections and relationships with our environment that we can bring about any societal change that will ultimately result in an improvement of the affective micro-politics. The personal is political.

t𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒛𝒂 s𝒊𝒍𝒐𝒏 (ona/she/they/none&all) is an interdisciplinary artist working mostly as a performer, dancer, occasional facilitator, bodyworker, poet, writer and experimental herbalist with a foundation in clinical naturopathy and a deep interest in reframing healing as less weighed down and discriminatory happening(s). in the long term, they work with embodiment and physicality, feminist queer perspectives, socialnatural ecologies, collective body/ies and a desire to open spaces for generative intimacy/ies despite extractive systems we are forced to inhabit. after years spent working with and in collective settings, tereza is currently working on her first authorial performance with a team and continues as a collaborator with individual artists offering reflective dialogue and mutual learning and practical enhancement of the magic and as a guest in collectives and aligned institutions interested in nuanced conversations. reclaiming the old interest in voicework and bdsm/kink and the non-denominational awe combined with the research of the human, the vegetal and beyond, new pathways for expression are currently taking shape. she has worked with and has been hosted by display, ini prostor, studio alta, can serrat (esp), ways house (hu), outsideininsideout (de, cz), buchapotheke at grüntaler9 (de), y:events series/divadlo x10, kafkárna, the institute of anxiety, plato and others. in the past year she worked with kathryn fischer, marie čtveráčková, sofia rubinstein, victor and lucie králíková, centering both the queer and the folkloric approaches and grassroot origins and craving for more ´useless´ beauty and sensuousness, aware of clichés and some pitfalls, too. their ultimate desire at the moment is the possibility to play in generative ways – for all

sweating together

Performance with Ambrita Sunshine and Mad Kate
Premiere: alpha nova & galerie futura on 6 & 7 September 2023 // 19:00

photo Hanna Schaich

>>sweating together<< is a deep listening experience, duet and discussion-performance that explores the affective and emotional experience of performing work—where work is the labor of care, the labor of survival and the labor of creativity.

Ambrita Sunshine and Mad Kate present a movement dialogue embodying their own somatic discomfort in work and in relation to work. Utilising and celebrating the release of Mad Kate’s EP “SWEAT Kumasi,” a sound work composed from interviews and atmospheres about the topic of labour, they invite the audience not only to witness, but to dialogue as co-conspirators and empaths who may relate as oppositional, as the same, or as something inbetween.

As (always already) racialized, classed and sexualized bodies, we do not sweat alone, we sweat with each other, we sweat beside and in relation to each other. We sweat because it is uncomfortable what can be found there. We sweat together because we work (on being together). We sweat together because the dialogue is difficult. We sweat.

TEAM

Performers: Ambrita Sunshine and Mad Kate
Dramaturgy: Rebecca Ajnwojner
Sound Design: Mad Kate
Photography and Videography: Hanna Schaich
Lights and Sound Technician: Adrienne Teicher
Production Assistant: Dana Tucker

PHOTO GALLERY

gefördert von Musikfonds / funded with support from Musikfonds

Peaches + Clusterfuck Process

With generous support – Prozessförderung – from the #TakeHeart of Fonds Darstellende Künste in the context of NEUSTART KULTUR – Peaches and Clusterfuck were involved in an intensive process during the Autumn of 2022 to learn from each others’ practices and deepen our knowledge of our work together. Thanks to Callie’s for the space.

28 – 30.10.2022 – ArtesMobiles | System Failed

Photo: E. Li

Artes Mobiles : SYSTEMFAILED PROJECT

SystemFailed deals with structures of power in the “smart” age. Algorithmic governance techniques are made playfully tangible and a critical examination of digitalization is initiated. Three performers and a self-developed AI system, represented by moving light and projections, face the audience.

The project is divided into three modules:
SystemFailed:exploration – the technical development
SystemFailed:exchange – the workshop
SystemFailed:experience – the performance

UPCOMING DATES

28. + 29. + 30.10.2022 @ ZiMMT Leipzig

https://www.artesmobiles.art/systemfailed

PREVIOUS DATES

29.Okt. – 30.Okt. 21
SystemFailed:exchange
Hybrid Play Festival @ HELLERAU DRESDEN

26.Nov. – 28.Nov. 21
SystemFailed:exploration
Next Level Festival @ Zollverein ESSEN

03.März. 22
SystemFailed:experience
Permiere
Lindenfels LEIPZIG

04.März. 22
SystemFailed:experience
Lindenfels LEIPZIG

18.März. 22
SystemFailed:experience
ZKM KARLSRUHE

19.März. 22
SystemFailed:experience
ZKM KARLSRUHE

CREDITS

Concept: ArtesMobiles | Performance: Kathryn Fischer, Milena Gürtler, Juliane Torhorst | Direction: Nina Maria Stemberger | Audiovisual direction: Birk Schmithüsen | Sound design: Elisa Battisutta | Light design: Hans Leser | Visuals: Caren Müller | Programming TouchDesigner: Lennart Beese | Programming machine learning (AI): Marcus Ding | Technical administration: Hendrik Fritze | Light operator: Fabian Arat | Tracking: Fabian Luepke | Assistant technical: Sophie Krause | Assistant director: Elisabeth Eichler | Production: Elisa Schulze | Video documentation: Alexander Hector | Photo dokumentation: Caroline Wimmer | Graphics: Sophie Bochert | Intern: Isabella Jahns

HYENAZ | Extraction

Research funded by Fonds Darstellende Künste

HYENAZ (Mad Kate and Adrienne Teicher) are currently engaged in a series of discussions and close reading groups, a continuation of the research for their audio-visual work and performative intervention EXTRACTION, the fifth in their “Foreign Bodies” project. Extraction explores how extractive processes are replicated within the arts, and how we can find ways to resist and mediate those processes. The initial research phase of this project began in June 2021 and was generously funded by Fonds Darstellende Künste. More information about their process can be found here.

The project began with our field work in a rock quarry in Apricena, Italy, where we gathered sounds, images and writing. This scar in the earth – both beautiful and disturbing – illuminated our role as artists in a society structured by extractive forms of capitalism. To develop a performative response, we will focus on accountability practices and proactive techniques to resist extractivist practices—especially looking inwards at the way in which gathering sound can be fundamentally extractive.

The concept of extraction situates all kinds of “innocent practices” as carrying the potential for exploitation and harm. We use extraction as metasignifier—we include the extraction of (creative) labour from (precarious) bodies, minerals, gas and water from the ground, sounds, words and images from sentient beings, as well as the “mining of the exotic” from our very selves. In response we ask: What are the problematics of extraction which appear within (always-already) hierarchical collaborations? How can processes compromised by extractive dynamics resist extraction? How can we name them, rather than erase them? What are the limitations of the extractivist framework? Are there other ways of finding reciprocal relations between artists, subjects, and nature?

We want to especially thank Donato, Maria-Teresa and the community in and around Apricena, Italy.

HOLD

Photo: Alexa Vachon HOLD by Marit Östberg Pictured: Mad Kate and Ambrita Sunshine

Hold, Marit Östberg, DE/SE 2021, 14 min, engl. OV

World Premiere Screening at Berlin Porn Film Festival BDSM Porn Shorts Shortfilm program, 95 min.

A selection of films from this program can also be streamed with the Online Festival Pass. Please find more information here.

Bondage, Discipline, Submission & Domination, Sadism & Masochism: a classic among the Pornfilmfestival shorts programs. This year for the first time with Japanese Shibari bondage by Mistresses Hinako and Kinako and their passive male puppets.

Atrophy Portraits III, Four Chambers, UK 2020, 16 min, engl. OV
Subspace, Matt Lambert, DE 2020, 20 min, engl. OV
Hold, Marit Östberg, DE/SE 2021, 14 min, engl. OV
Click, Charlie Forrest, UK 2020, 6 min, engl. OV + engl. UT
Waiting, Morgana Meyer, IT 2021, 1 min, no dialgue
You Are Not Doing Hard, Ksenia Neph, DE/RU 2021, 12 min, engl. OV + engl. UT
Tatami, Katie Kinako, JP 2019, 25 min, jap.OV + engl. UT