Movement.Bewegung – Chapter 1

According to which patterns do we move? What conditions are necessary for movement? Which sequences of movement are intended for institutional spaces like schools or cultural venues, and which movements are sanctioned? How is movement guided? And what happens when someone resists designated paths? What does it mean to shift the familiar radius of movement? And how can the institution itself be put into motion? Along with protagonists who have different levels of experience and possibilities related to movement, the education programme will traverse four artistic research fields, giving rise to a joint choreographic composition:

  1. Rhythm and pausing: Breathing. Bodies in space. Observing one’s own position. Arriving.
  2. Shifting: Movement in space and time. Shifting meaning. Changing the framework. New vantage points.
  3. Counterpoint: Countermovement. Opening interstitial spaces. Generating friction. Polyphony.
  4. Manoeuvring: Cleverly initiating change in direction. Dodge manoeuvre. With the wind, against the wind. Handicraft.

 Project led by Annika Niemann and Ev Fischer.

INTERLOOP

© Victoria Tomaschko, media resistance, 2017

INTERLOOP
Knowledge Transfer: Practices, Reflections, Perspectives

With INTERLOOP, the ifa-Galerie Berlin is reflecting back on the research and exhibition programme Untie to Tie – On Colonial Legacies and Contemporary Societies. An essential facet of this project was the comprehensive event and education programme that accompanied the four exhibitions. INTERLOOP offers insight into the processes “behind the scenes”, sharing experiences and knowledge while also giving rise to new constellations.

‘to interloop’ designates the (textile) process of intertwining, interweaving, or interconnecting. Open workshops, reading and listening stations, and discursive access points invite one to pick up the various threads of this theme year and weave them into new textures. In weekly settings of practice and reflection, protagonists from different contexts will come together and explore non-hierarchical, collective forms of knowledge transfer: 

Week 1 is devoted to active listening/hearing, to sounds and their resonances. The focus is placed on sound as a subtle, non-material form of transferring messages, intervening in public space, and documenting experiences.

Week 2 explores (un-)readabilities and counter-readings. By experimenting with strategies of reading-between-the-lines, highlighting, erasing, and overwriting, we will be probing the emancipatory treatment of the canon of knowledge mediated through schoolbooks and children’s literature.

Week 3 of INTERLOOP revolves around transition – from body to space, from the art institution into the city, from the theme year On Colonial Legacies and Contemporary Societies to the new focus of Untie to Tie 2018–19: Movement.

INTERLOOP – OPENING

© Victoria Tomaschko, media resistance, 2017

Opening Weekend 

Fri, 27 April 2018, 6pm

Stresspad XXL – Collective Sound Performance

The Stresspad XXL is an analogue sound instrument, a “sound-making thing”, that is controlled by the human body. With hands, feet, or cheeks the electrical circuit is closed so that the small operational amplifier at the heart of the machine oscillates, is overmodulated, and makes noise. Despite the control mechanism, it is no longer possible to master the simple switch after a certain point. The apparatus takes on a life of its own. It generates unspecific reactions of the body, performative gestures, that are repeatedly fed into the sound circuit.

For the opening of INTERLOOP, visitors to the ifa-Galerie Berlin are invited to interact with the Stresspad, to work together in controlling and manipulating it, with the aim of acoustically intervening in the institutional space. It can get loud.
The Stresspad XXL was created in the scope of the education project “media resistance – Strategies of Resistance” (2017–18) and was built by the sound artists Gregor Pfeffer and Lukas Grundmann with pupils from the Oberstufenzentrum Mediengestaltung und -technologie. 

The event is supported by Projektfonds Kulturelle Bildung und Kulturagenten für kreative Schulen Berlin.

INTERLOOP – OPENING

Sat, 28 April 2018, 2-5pm 

Taking Sides: Open Zine Workshop on Solidarity in Resistance 

Zines are small, non-commercial, and self-published magazines or booklets that require little more than an idea, paper, pens, and a copier. Generations of movements devoted to youth culture, artistic activity, and social issues have used zines as a space for self-determination and empowerment. The autonomously published material focuses on topics like feminism, body politics, punk, or racism. 
Based on a view of the history of anticolonial resistance, pupils from the school OSZ Bekleidung und Mode focused on present-day struggles against racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination during a two-day workshop. The main questions were: What does solidarity mean? What effect does it have on everyday, organised struggles? How can I express solidarity and what kind of solidarity do I wish to receive from and experience with others? The personal questions and positions were translated into individual and collective zines.
For the Gallery Weekend on 28 April 2018, the pupils will share their practical knowledge in an open workshop: visitors to the ifa-Galerie Berlin are invited to develop their own zines conveying ideas and practices that express solidarity and resistance. 

Pupils from the school OSZ Bekleidung und Mode with Marlon van Rooyen and Jorinde Splettstößer (artists / art educators) in the scope of the education project media resistance – Strategies of Resistance (2017–18).

The event is supported by Projektfonds Kulturelle Bildung und Kulturagenten für kreative Schulen Berlin.

INTERLOOP – WEEK 1

© Victoria Tomaschko, media resistance, 2017

Week 1
Hearing/Listening 

Week 1 is devoted to active listening/hearing, to sounds and their resonances. The focus is placed on sound as a subtle, non-material form of transferring messages, intervening in public space, and documenting experiences. 

Thur, 3 May 2018, 5-8.30pm

5-6.45pm: Sound Symbols/Drawings – A Sound Workshop

On the basis of playful (listening) hearing and drawing exercises, the act of drawing is experienced as an expanded realm of hearing. Taken as a point of departure are the Sonic Panoramas composed by Saout Radio (Younes Baba-Ali, Anna Raimondo) for Untie to Tie: the programme investigates the universe of sound art, presents different approaches and aesthetic experiences, and also opens up an auditory space of reflection. 
In the workshop we will engage in resonance with the sounds and voices in the listening station and respond to that which is heard with different drawing utensils.

With Rebekka Uhlig (visual artist and voice performer)
If you plan to attend, please contact us by 30 April 2018: kunstvermittlung@ifa.de,  030 2844 9140

Starting at 7pm: Between Fascination and Scepticism: Technologies in the Field of (Music) Education

Following the workshop with Rebekka Uhlig, we will explore digital and non-digital “MusicmakingThings” – instruments, software, and apparatuses – and query the challenges presented to educators by digital musical technologies. For the round of talks, protagonists from the fields of musicology, software development, and mediation practice will be in attendance.

Moderation: Carsten Cremer (ethnologist and media scholar, cultural agent)

INTERLOOP – WEEK 2

© Gregor Kasper, Schulbuchwerkstatt, 2017

Week 2
Re-readings

During Week 2, we will explore (un-)readabilities and counter-readings. By experimenting with strategies of reading-between-the-lines, highlighting, erasing, and overwriting, we will be probing the emancipatory treatment of the canon of knowledge mediated through schoolbooks and children’s literature. 

Tue, 8 May 2018, 5-8.30pm

Schoolbook Workshop: Racism-Critical Perspectives on Schoolbooks and Children’s Literature

During summer semester 2017, Untie to Tie together with the Institute for Art in Context at Berlin University of the Arts dedicated a seminar to the critical (re-)reading of schoolbooks and children’s literature. In dialogue with experts, in workshops, and through personal research, the students explored the following questions:
What visual and linguistic politics prevail in schoolbooks and children’s literature? Who speaks about whom and what in which way? How can we become more aware of colonial, racialized, or segregating methods of representation? And how can we counter them? Which possibilities for criticism may be identified? And what strategies of action can be developed?

In an experimental format combining practice and reflection, an invitation is extended by seminar participants and experts to the gallery audience, teachers, pupils, and educators to engage in an exchange of experience.

5-6.45pm: Practice – Artistic Workshop

Participants are invited to bring their own schoolbooks!
If you plan to attend, please contact us by 4 May 2018: kunstvermittlung@ifa.de, 030 2844 9140

7-8.30pm: Reflection

INTERLOOP – WEEK 3

Acto Ronda Ciega, documenta 14, Kassel 2017
© Archivo Histórico José Vial Armstrong

Week 3
Transition

The last week of INTERLOOP revolves around transition – from body to space, from the art institution into the city, from the theme year On Colonial Legacies and Contemporary Societies to the new focus Movement.Bewegung

Wed, 16 May 2018, 7pm

Gallery Reflection #5 Anthropology, Vulnerability, and Curatorial Practice

A Conversation between Alya Sebti (director, ifa-Galerie Berlin) and Jonas Tinius (anthropologist, HU Berlin)

For this encounter, Alya Sebti and Jonas Tinius speak about the institutionalisation and destabilisation of curatorial and anthropological practices. Highlighting and concluding the Gallery Reflections series initiated in 2016, they are also addressing the complexities of creating such an exchange within the space of an institution itself. This dialogue within the Untie to Tie programme links On Colonial Legacies and Contemporary Societies (2017–18) to the upcoming section Movement.Bewegung (2018–19), for which Jonas Tinius will be coordinating a series of encounters on migration and movement entitled All is in flux, nothing stands still.

Thu, 17 May 2018, 5-8pm

A Dis(under)covering Promenade: Body, City and Celebration 
Workshop and Celebration

Since its refounding in 1952 by a group of architects, poets, and artists, the School of Valparaíso has been organised as a multidisciplinary project dedicated to the encounter between poetry, arts, design, and architecture. In 1970, the Valparaíso group established Open City, sixteen kilometres north of Valparaíso, a space free of any institutional constraints. It serves as a place to explore the relation between poetry and crafts in the unity of life, work, and study.

Since ifa-Galerie Berlin is closing a programme and opening another related to movement, we aim to share parts of the tradition of the Open City that we refer to as “acts of greeting and farewell”: relevant instances that shape the creative ambit of the School of Valparaíso and its pedagogical practices, exploring the boundaries between collective making, learning, playing, and celebrating. 

In the workshop we explore the notions of “dis-cover” and “under-cover”, as two elements that can articulate the relations between body and city, gestures and space, individual and collective. First, a moment of making, constructing with our hands paper elements such as masks and garments that will give shape to our act-game and our celebration. Second, a promenade through the city as a playground: provided with our devices, we will walk through the nearby neighbourhood of the ifa-Galerie Berlin playing a game of “dis-cover” and “under-cover” the city and the bodies. Finally, we will share a fraternal toast or ágape, whose way and form we will improvise, employing our celebration devices to intervene in the gallery space.
with Open City members Daniela Salgado Cofré (industrial designer) and Óscar Andrade Castro (architect), assistant professors at the School of Architecture and Design at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso. 

The workshop will be held in English.
If you plan to attend, please contact us by 14 May 2018: kunstvermittlung@ifa.de, 030 2844 9140.

On Colonial Legacies – Chapter 4

Media Resistance

Exclusion, speechlessness, and the positions that counter these. Which channels are open to me and which language can I still speak? In November 2017, the joint project media resistance – Strategies of Resistance was launched at ifa-Galerie Berlin. Students from the Oberstufenzentrum (OSZ, vocational school) for Media Design and Technology and the OSZ for Clothing and Fashion have been exploring aesthetic practices of resistance and how these can be disseminated‚ in a straightforward and cost-effective way. The focus is on analogue and subversive means of communication and protest culture, be they textile, auditory, or visual. The students use performance to challenge the institutional space. Their large-scale, screen-printed posters and smaller, conveniently sized zines allow them to carry their visual messages into the urban space. They record and remix sounds from around their school’s neighbourhood before reintroducing them into the public sphere. In spring 2018, their results and experiences will be presented both at ifa-Galerie Berlin and online.

Project led by: Carsten Cremer and Annika Niemann  

In cooperation with:
OSZ Mediengestaltung und Medientechnologie, OSZ Bekleidung und Mode,allourmemories. Büro für urbane Kommunikation, Serigraphica and the artists and art educators Joao Albertini, Esra Ersen, Lukas Grundmann, Zille Homma Hamid, Satch Hoyt, Sven Mühlender, Gregor Pfeffer, Marlon van Rooyen, Jorinde Splettstößer and Victoria Tomaschko

Kindly supported by:
Projektfonds Kulturelle Bildung und Landesprogramm Kulturagenten für kreative Schulen Berlin.

On Colonial Legacies – Chapter 3

The topic of colonialism is often a blind spot in the curriculum of
German schools. The art mediation programme at the ifa-Galerie
Berlin has taken this as a point of departure for a critical, artistic
survey. Pupils, teachers, mediators, and university students are invited
to explore the topic of “colonial legacies” with its many perspectives
and voices and to respond with their own comments, ideas for action,
and questions. This will give rise to a transdisciplinary collection of
material for further investigation and reflection in the practice-based
realm of schools. Following a two-part seminar during the 2017 sum-
mer semester in cooperation with the Institute for Art in Context at
the Berlin University of the Arts, during which both current and histo-
rical learning and teaching materials were examined as to their colo-
nial legacies, now the practice-based project “media resistance” is
beginning. It will involve pupils from two Berlin vocational schools
and will be carried out in collaboration with the state-funded pro-
gramme Kulturagenten für kreative Schulen Berlin (Cultural Agents
for Creative Schools in Berlin).

Concept: Annika Niemann 

On Colonial Legacies – Chapter 1

ifa-Galerie art education in cooperation with the Institute for Art in Context / Berlin University of the Arts 

This double seminar in the summer semester 2017 explores, together
with artists as well as students from the university and from schools,
the colonial legacies in contemporary and historical teaching and study
materials. Guest speakers from the fields of general and artistic
education present their approaches to decolonising educational work.

Selected events will be announced for public participation.

Critical (re)readings of school and children’s books 

The seminar
is dedicated to an examination of school books and materials in regards
to their penetrations in social, historical and political terms. Which
politics of image and of language dominate at what time and in which
context? How do we learn to recognise colonial, racialising or
segregating modes of representation?
(Seminar by Claudia Hummel)

“unlearn to learn” – Perspectives of decolonisation in the practice field of school
The
seminar takes as its point of departure this year’s programme of the
ifa Gallery Berlin in order to collaboratively question colonial
legacies in the context of school and to examine the possibilities of
deconstructing them artistically and educationally.
How are colonial
power relations re-inscribed in the space of school and its teaching and
study materials, and how can they be “unlearned”?
(Seminar by Annika Niemann)