B-side #1 is the first in a series of dialogic events that sets out to put body-based and visual practices side by side. Curated by Sheena McGrandles and Caique Tizzi, the first invited artists are Dinis Machado, a Swedish based choreographer presenting “Paradigm” and the visual artists Stephanie Comilang and Simon Speiser show their film installation "the smile you are smiling you were smiling then, but I cant remember where or when".
Friday, 30th March
8pm: "Paradigm" by Dinis Machado
9pm: Opening "the smile you are smiling you were smiling then, but I cant remember where or when"
by Stephanie Comilang and Simon Speiser
Saturday, 31st March
7pm: "Paradigm" by Dinis Machado
8pm: "the smile you are smiling you were smiling then, but I cant remember where or when"
by Stephanie Comilang and Simon Speiser
9pm: "Paradigm" by Dinis Machado
10.30pm: DJ-set with Stephanie Comilang
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"the smile you are smiling you were smiling then, but I cant remember where or when"
A film Installation by Stephanie Comilang and Simon Speiser
Stephanie Comilang and Simon Speiser’s collaborative film installation involves Paradise, a fictional character played by a drone. In previous works by Comilang, Paradise surfaces as a disembodied voice who speaks of connectedness through adaptation, bodies as archives, and entangled narratives of possible futurities. In this new work, Speiser's daughter Lotte, who was born in Ecuador, where Speiser's family is from, lends her voice and knowledge to the fictional character of Paradise. For people like Lotte, born in one place and moved to another, home is an amorphous thing. The familiarity of two places creates a feeling of constant-déjà-vu, similar to the card game of Memory, in which the player attempts to pair one card with another. What could this space of deja-vu look like?
Stephanie Comilang is a Filipino-Canadian artist who lives in Berlin and Toronto. In her artistic-documentary work, Comilang conducts important debates of the late capitalist present on the intersectional connection of global exploitation networks with migration and gainful employment. Technologies play a special role in this process and are staged as a natural and organic component of human coexistence. Stefanie Comilang focuses on marginalized social groups and how they can use technologies for themselves or how they can gain access to the privileges of the center. The figure of the drone as an accompanying commentator and catalyst of socio-technological relations in time and space is central.
Simon Speiser born 1988, studied Fine Arts in ABK Stuttgart and Städelschule Frankfurt, with Christian Jankowski, Alexander Roob, Willem de Rooij, Michael Krebber and Mark von Schlegell. He took part in several group and solo shows in institutions, galleries and project spaces including the Frankfurter Kunstverein, MMK Frankfurt, Alexander Levy, Croy Nielsen, Oracle Berlin and MMCA Seoul. In his practice he tries to develop fictional concepts and ideas that merge nature and technology. This often brings various disciplines into dialogue, ranging from writing, sculpture and installation to digital paintings and video.
Paradigm
A performance by Dinis Machado (SE/PT)
With original music by: Hanna Kangassalo (SE/FI), Robert Tenevall (SE), Erik Sjölin (SE) with additional voices by Lillemor Tenevall, Kai Kangassalo, Gonçalo Ferreira, Britta Amft, Dinis Machado Set, light and costume construction: Dinis Machado (SE/PT)
Outside eyes:Pedro Machado (BR/UK), Odete Ferreira (PT), Jorge Gonçalves (DE/PT)
Folklore is the body of tales, music, dance, and so forth, common to a particular population. [New World Encyclopedia]
A ritual is a sequence of activities involving gestures, words, and objects, performed in a sequestered place, and performed according to set sequence. [Merriam-Webster Dictionary]
In Paradigm, we work on a DIY folklore for bodies with blurry identities, created through fictional artifacts, narratives, dances, rituals and songs.Paradigm is a dance of an exoticism from nowhere. A ritual claim for difference and citizenship. A landscape created from a cadavre exquis of paradoxical references coming from the places where we were born, the places where we live, places we have never been, and most of all, from fictional places. All of them glued together with daily practice. The body, as a mechanical piece of a bigger organic body - the stage itself.
This body engages in a ceremony with consequences that are never direct or evident, but it is also a figure of labor coming from a time before the division between the architect and the bricklayer. A working body producing abstract symbols with concrete materials and a complex homemade engineering.A body that through this practice enters a process of abstraction, attempting to escape its own anthropomorphism.To be a human, as to be the theatrical building, disengaged of the pursuit of a (cultural) essence.
Produced by BARCO (SE) and Ballet Contemporâneo do Norte (PT) | with the associate Producer Clair Hicks (UK) With the co-production of Ballet Contemporâneo do Norte (PT), Weld (Stockholm/SE), Teatro Municipal do Porto (Porto/PT), Dance4 (Nottingham / UK) and Gothenburg Dans & Teater Festival (Gothenburg/SE) Created In residency at Weld (Stockholm/SE), MARC (Kivik/SE), Campo Alegre Teatro Municipal (Porto/PT), Alkantara (Lisboa/PT), Gothenburg Dans & Teater Festival + Vitlycke Centre for Performing Art (Gothenburg/SE), Devir/Capa (Faro/PT), Dance4 + Lace Market Gallery (Nottingham/UK)
With the support of Konstnärsnämnden (SE), Kulturrådet (SE), Arts Council England (UK) and DGArtes/Secretaria de Estado da Cultura (PT)
Admission fee for event 3€ with performance 10€ (max. 50 people per session)
Why do we ask for donation?
Agora Collective e.V. is an artist-run and independent organisation that is currently unfunded. The inauguration of B-side not only proposes a dialogue between the disciplines of visual and performing arts, but also attempts to trace a parallel how the actors of both fields operate in terms of discourse and financial strategies. The programme that pairs both disciplines aims to revise how people consume and contribute to the work of freelance artists and self-organised structures in Berlin. All the donation for this 2-days event will be used to pay solely equipment and hours of labour.
Agora
Am Sudhaus 5 - Untergeschoss
12053 Berlin