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.

Programme

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 Gallery 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.

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

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 Gallery 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

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)

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

Wed, 16 May 2018, 7pm: Gallery Reflection #5 Anthropology, Vulnerability, and Curatorial Practice

A Conversation between Alya Sebti (director, ifa Gallery 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 Gallery 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 Gallery 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. With Daniela Salgado Cofré (industrial designer) and Óscar Andrade Castro (architect), who are part of the Open City project and teach at the School of Architecture and Design of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso.