a collaboration between Schloss Bröllin and Grotest Maru, music by sounding situation.
Landpartie is a mobile audio walk of about 3 h staged into the surroundings of Schloss Bröllin – fields, medows, forests become the scenery of a quite abstract slightly groove based soundscape, which is produced live. The land- and soundscape embed excerpts of interviews from people with migration episodes in their history. The statements range from dramatic, almost traumatic episodes to funny, positive life realizing experiences. Audience itself with its phisical presents become the visual protagonist of the imagination.

direction: Urs Berzborn
dramaturgy: Tom Mustrow
music and sound: Milena Kipfmüller / Klaus Janek
performance: performers of Grotest Maru
tecnical direction: Chris Umney

Landpartie 2023 is funded by the Ministry of
for Science, Culture, Federal and European Affairs, the
County of Vorpommern-Greifswald and the Fonds Darstellende Künste from the Global Village Projects program.

premiere nov 12th at 8pm at Elisabeth Kirche, Berlin. other performances on 13th at 4.30pm and 8pm and on the 14th at 8pm

In the music theater BUZZING BRIDGE, Sounding Situations plays through how the process of learning by perceiving, listening, judging, copying makes us who we are. The performers become sound carriers, turning the stage into a sounding negotiation space. BUZZING BRIDGE is performed in Berlin and Bujumbura: simultaneously and in reverse, artists go in search of what is worth recording.

concept: Sounding Situations
BERLIN
direction, composition, text: Sounding Situations (Milena Kipfmüller, Jens Dietrich, Klaus Janek)
music: Sofia Borges, Michael Thieke, Klaus Janek, Milena Kipfmüller
performance, text: Eric 1key, Katharina Mewes
stage, Video: TÒ SU (Martina Mahlknecht, Martin Prinoth)
costumes: Anja Ruschival
technique and lighting design: Chris Umney
public relations: Hark Empen
production management: Fabia Mekus
assistance: Janka Kenk
BURUNDI
performance, direction: Josué Mugisha, Claudia Munyengabe, Alain Kay Butoyi, Laura Sheila Inangoma
technical direction: Davy Joel Ishimwe

Tickets: 14 €/ reduced 10 €
online via billetto

Everything is connected to everything. Climate change and species extinction are a consequence of our way of life. Limiting ourselves is one solution. But above all, it is about a new relationship to what we like to call ‘resources’: The earth, the plants, the animals, the cultures. GLOBAL AMAZONIA moves artistically to the Amazon region and explores on the outer skin of the Kleist Forum forms of vertical theatre, video projection and live music. In a scenario of impending extinction, how can we find new partnerships with beings that are also becoming extinct – and thus perhaps postpone the extinction?
The piece is produced by Grotest Maru. Premiere september 16th at Kleist Forum Frankfurt Oder

Artistic Director Ursula Maria Berzborn Dramaturgy Tom Mustroph Projections/ (Visual-) Dramaturgy Hanna Zimmermann Costume Design & Masc Production Kathrin Hegedüsch Music/Music Dramaturgy/Audio Editing Milena Kipfmüller & Klaus Jannek – souding situations Choreography Ursula Maria Berzborn, Alejandro Lariguet & Ensemble Performance Ana Carbia, Esther Geyer, Clara Gracia, Anna Vilhelmiina Peltola, Jefferson Preto, Sergio Serrano, Birgit Wieger Wieger Aerial Dance Training Alejandro Lariguet Rigging Technology & set up Emanuel Gillain, Winfried Jungnitz Directing assistant Catia de Almeida Santos Production management/Public Relations Esther Geyer, Anna Vilhelmiina Peltola, Birgit Wieger Production of Costumes Marie Lindemann Video Technology & -support Rico Tscharnke Technical Support Sergio Serrano

GLOBAL AMAZONIA is supported by Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media within the program NEUSTART KULTUR, in cooperation with Kleist Forum Frankfurt/Oder.

at P1 may 26th through may 29th

In a photograph from 1906, a crowd in southern Rwanda gathers for a magical event in front of a small apparatus on a table: deceiving the masses through technology. Behind the table is an official of the German colonial administration. The artists sell their talent without compensation. The funnel is directed at the musicians to the right of the table. A machine that sucks in the sound, carves the voices and the music into the wax rollers.

In the music theater MERGE, Sounding Situations plays out how the process of recording makes us who we are. Those who press the record button have power, framed for themselves and others. Through repetition, sounds, music, language become part of our identity.

In MERGE, the musicians and performers become sound carriers who turn the stage into a sounding negotiation space: Who owns what and who belongs where? Who takes in whom, in himself as the foreign or as his own?

MERGE is performed in Hamburg and Bujumbura: simultaneously and in reverse, Burundian and Rwandan artists go in search of what is worth recording.

concept: sounding situations
P1, Kampnagel, Hamburg
Direction, composition, text: Sounding Situations (Milena Kipfmüller, Jens Dietrich, Klaus Janek)
Musicians: Sofia Borges, Michael Thieke, Klaus Janek, Milena Kipfmüller Performance: Eric 1key, Katharina Mewes
Stage and video: TÒ SU (Martina Mahlknecht, Martin Prinoth)
Technical management and light design: Christopher Umney
Kostüme: Anja Ruschival
Public relations: Hark Empen
Production direction: Fabia Mekus
Assistance: Janka Kenk

Buja sans tabou, Burundi
Direction and Performance: Josué Mugisha, Claudia Munyengabe, Alain Kay Butoyi, Laura Sheila Inangoma

Supported by the Hamburg Ministry of Culture and Media.

Live concert, audio drama and installation: immerse yourself in shared stories between Rwanda and Germany in this walk-in musical theatre piece by Jens Dietrich and Milena Kipfmüller. Rwandan hip-hop artist Eric 1key and Berlin composer Klaus Janek create a soundspace of language, traditional sounds, electronic music, beats and field recordings.

Mention Rwanda, and most people think of the genocide that began in April 1994. But since then, the country has undergone substantial economic development, and has now emerged as an African tiger economy – with a German colonial past. For the younger generation, this raises the question of how to deal with the past.

In this Rwandan-German joint production, Rwandan hip-hop artist Eric 1key and Berlin musician Klaus Janek compose an interactive soundspace of language, traditional sounds, electronic music, beats and field recordings.

Hamburg director and dramaturge Jens Dietrich and Berlin sound artist Milena Kipfmüller have recorded conversations with numerous people in Rwanda and put together a heterogeneous ensemble of voices. Between grandiose visions of the future, and yearnings for disappearing traditions, the immersive musical performance of Rwandan Records blends pre-colonial stories with present-day tales between Rwanda and Germany, presenting a new and unconventional perspective on a globalised self-image. Each evening a new, emotive symphony will be created; visitors can request each individual version as a download link to listen to again after the event.

The SCULPTURE Festival, which takes place as a series in the Georg Kolbe Museum / Berlin, focuses on an unusual artistic aspect: the inherent sculptural quality in the time-based arts of choreography and music.

In the frame of SCULPTURE Edition # 2 Meg Stuart has developed a work entitled “rune”, together with her performer Sigal Zouk.

sculpturefestival.de

rune

SCHWARM – an audiovisual Expedition

Cranes glide through the air. Carried by the wind, they cross the continents. What drives them? How do they plan their flight paths? What obstacles do they overcome?

In an open air production over several stations with more than 3 m high crane figures Grotest Maru reflects about these special birds the longings of us humans for free movement and a place to be. In the form of a visual theater with experimental live acoustics, the urge for freedom, travel, migration, but also control and surveillance are told.

Direction, Artistic Director Ursula Maria Berzborn / GROTEST MARU
Choreography Jefferson Preto & Ensemble
Music / Music Dramaturgy / Interviews / Audio Editing Milena Kipfmüller & Klaus Jannek – [SNDNG STTNS]
Performers Catia Almeida Santos, Ana Carbia, Esther Geyer, Clara Gracia, Anna Vilhelmiina Peltola, Sergio Serrano & Kathrin Hegedüsch,Tom Mustroph, Rico Tscharnke, Birgit Wieger, Hanna Zimmermann
Dramaturgy Tom Mustroph
Costume Design / Production of Masks Kathrin Hegedüsch Projections/ (Visual-) Dramaturgy Hanna Zimmermann
Production management / Public Relations Esther Geyer, Anna Peltola, Birgit Wieger
premiered july 30th at Bärenquell Brauerei, Berlin

Thu, 24.06.2021 19:00
MS Stubnitz / Baakenhafen
Fri, 25.06.2021 19:00
MS Stubnitz / Baakenhafen

When the ships set sail from Baakenhafen harbour for East Africa to deliver troops and material for the colonial war, the soldiers were given gifts of love from the Hamburg Senate at the farewell celebrations, which were accompanied by pompous music: Postcards, cigars, good luck charms, which were supposed to bring the departing soldiers success and a happy return home.

At the same time, people at the court of King Kigeri IV. Rwabugiri’s court in Nyanza was surprised by the gradual arrival of delegations from Europe, who told the king’s officials that they were searching for the sources of the Nile. They torpedoed the white men’s search for the source, so that they wandered confusedly through the East African hills without finding anything, whereupon they were given the name “Musungus”, the aimless wanderers.

The walk-in music theatre piece “Transforming Transmission” combines Hamburg’s colonial past with stories from the area of the East African Great Lakes. The audience itself becomes the orchestra on its way through HafenCity. The soundtrack is created for each performance as a live stream concert with musicians in Hamburg and Bujumbura.

Team Hamburg : von und mit: Sounding Situations (Jens Dietrich, Milena Kipfmüller ,Klaus Janek) & 1key / Ausstattung: Klara Hobza, Chris Schwagga / Technische Leitung: Chris Umney Produktionsleitung: Fabia MekusTeam Bujumbura: von und mit Josué Mugisha, Claudia Munyengabe

Funded by Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Culture Media as well as through the revival and guest performance promotion of Dachverband freie darstellende Künste, on behalf of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, Authority for Culture and Media. In cooperation with Kampnagel and MS Stubnitz.

a production of Thikwa Theater, Berlin
A package is delivered. The contents: body parts that definitely go together, but that don’t function as a whole. A figure of human size stands at the center of the performance. If it is guided, it achieves a personality. If it is studied, an alienation occurs that leads to new abilities. As an object, it provides a metaphorical project surface that invites the viewer to impartial investigation. This can be disturbing, it can lead to unusual situations that cross borders, but also bring new, changeable options into the game. Can we use defects as inspiration for unconventional solutions? Can we bypass defects through cooperations and develop unusual living and coping strategies? A performative encounter of objects and performers with unspoken agreements, cascades of words, the shifting of boundaries and unique rescue maneuvers, accompanied by living jazz singing.

With:
Deniz Dogan, Louis Edler, Alexander Lange, Stephan Sauerbier, Peter Pruchniewitz
Figurine Play:Laura Waltz
Live-Vocals:Mette Nadja Hansen
Directed by:Martina Couturier
Figurine Making:Simon Buchegger
Double Bass:Klaus Janek
Stage Design:Isolde Wittke
Costume Design:Heike Braitmayer
Lighting Design:Katri Kuusimäki
Video:Sebastian K. König
premiere: may 26th, Thikwa Theater, Berlin

(Il)legitimate play by a son of colonialism
EMMANUEL DE CANDIDO . OLIVIER LENEL
Companie MAPS / Théâtre de Liège en ligne

Based on the interviews and research that Emmanuel De Candido carried out in Sicily, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the island of Réunion, this fable with five characters tells the story of a debt. Within the aggressive context of capitalist globalisation, the company MAPS deciphers how macro-economic mechanisms are poisoning how we live together and disrupting lives. The writing borrows Schnitzler’s ‘round-dance’ principle and draws inspiration from the English psychological thriller and the Congolese art of story-telling.

With Benoit Van Dorslaer, Catherine Mestoussis, Sanders Lorena, Hakim Louk’man and Nadège Ouédraogo
Writing and dramaturgy Emmanuel De Candido
Directed by Olivier Lenel
Dramaturgical advice and assistant director Marie Diaby
Physical and choreographic work Anne-Cécile Chane-Tune
Lighting design and technical direction Clément Papin
Scenography Arnaud verley
Carine Duarte Costumes
Musical creation and sound system Milena Kipfmüller and Klaus Janek
Production MAPS Company
Co-production Dc & J Création, Théâtre de Liège, with the participation of the Center Culturel de Verviers

premiere april 24th, Theatre de Liege

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B5Rkih4s9o&t=15s

Bee Dances presents the first collaboration between Indonesian choreographer ninus and Berlin-based choreographer Kareth Schaffer. Originally planned as a live performance with performances in November 2020, Bee Dances has now moved to the digital space for known reasons and will be shown as a live stream at the end of February 2021. The work is an embodied exploration of what cultural exchange can mean in post-colonial times. How do different dance techniques inscribe themselves in the bodies of the six dancers from Indonesia and Europe – and how do the different streams of physical knowledge spread around the globe? Bee Dances maps the connections between contemporary dance, as it is often performed in Berlin, and traditional Indonesian dance techniques, tracing their interrelationships through a series of interventions, interviews, reconstructions and new choreographies. The famous Balinese love duet by I Mario, “Oleg Tamulilingan”, is a key reference, as is the “waggle dance” of the Asian and European honey bees (apis cerana and apis mellifera), which was first correctly described by the German zoologist Karl von Frisch the six dancers with live music by Klaus Janek and the gamelan musicians of the composer I Wayan Gede Purnama Gita, whose digital presences float on movable projection surfaces through the performance room of Uferstudios 1. Developed under the severe restrictions of the Berlin winter -Lockdowns explores Bee Dance’s notions of responsibility and closeness through a probing mutual pollination of movements, concepts, languages, stories, physicalities and performers.

online premiere feb 27th through Tanzfabrik, Berlin

Berlin, born out of swamp and named after him, began to develop its basic shape in the 17th century, which still shapes the city today. Our baroque clichés mostly consist of stucco-decorated facades that now want to shape the cityscape again, of symmetries in the park design or the palatable representation of splendor and abundance. The independent ensemble around the director Lukas Matthaei delves deeper into the conceptual, thought and life worlds of the early modern era and discovers their reverse side: the beginning of colonial history, which still has an impact today, the politics of dances and social codes, the dirt of the city and the agony of plague and war.

The ballroom of the sophiensaele is transformed into an installation between a film set and surround theater. The arched windows of the party tent, this hardware store variant of baroque garden culture, reveal the alchemical cabinet of curiosities with rattling planet models from the East Berlin classroom. The portal of the court theater is flanked by porcelain cats from the Dong Xuan Center in Lichtenberg. In the middle of the stage, a steel trough serves the city as a permanent construction site, either as a fountain in the park or as a Brandenburg cemetery.

The cast with its diversity of physical and biographical backgrounds shamelessly appropriates allegories, emblems, dances, texts and sounds of the Baroque and lets their own portraits shine through between transience and lust for life.

The musicians accompany the scenes live in a mixture of baroque cast and electronic manipulation. While the choreography of a baroque ball unfolds, gradually involving the entire ensemble.

By & with Adrian Navarro, Bati Nehoya, André Nittel, Volker Sobottke, Anne Welenc

Production: Jörg Lukas Matthaei | Dramaturgy: Milena Kipfmüller | Musical direction, composition: Klaus Janek | Set design, costume: Michael Gaessner | Musicians Klaus Janek, Milena Kipfmüller, Michael Metzler | Production management: Sarah Stührenberg | Assistance staging: Sofie Neu | Collaboration with equipment: Lotti Maurer | Technology & lighting design: Chris Umney | Mask: Lilo Reuther | Camera: Florian Krauss | Editor: Federico Neri | Public Relations: Nora Gores | Social Media: Alexandra Lauck | Photography: Merlin Nadj-Torma

A production by matthaei & konsorten in coproduction with SOPHIENSÆLE. Funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe & the Performing Arts Fund with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture & Media

The performer and the musician are working over a time span of 12 years intensively together. As a duo or in collaboration with other performers and artists, the two shared the stage over a 200 times for the aim of composing live, in real time together.  They consider the space and audience, urbanitiy or rurality as equal important on the result, as sound and movement.  The two worked on their interests in researching nature, in the artist research group “Bergdenken”, they examined their artistic practice in residencies, in the Alps and Region of Brandenburg, they cofounded the group “Grapeshade” which toured in Italy, Turkey, Bulgaria, Germany, presenting their arts in performances and festivals. In 2021 the duo focuses on performing and lecturing in different occasions and regions of the world.

Live audio walk with connection to Salvador da Bahia, independently accessible with own smartphone (QR Code) (2020) Errant Sound – 17. Oct. 4:30pm

ZERO, LAND DER ZUKUNFT connects Europe and Brazil referencing two novels: Brasilien, Land der Zukunft by Stefan Zweig, describing his understanding of the country in the 1940s when he fled from German dystopia and projected all his optimism onto Brazil; and Zero by Ignácio de Loyola Brandão, a story situated in the 1960s, during the Brazilian military dictatorship, opening a near visionary dystopian image to what we are politically living today in Brazil.
In connecting two cities, we question dystopian fears and utopian hopes. Applied to the real city, we walk along the Spree with a live-soundtrack directly connected to Salvador, where two musicians, Edbrass Brasil and Andrea May, join the perfor-
mance, thus creating a live acoustic dialogue between two blind visions of our imagination. Sounds and music travel from Germany to Brazil and back, expand, enrich, and transform our walk in Berlin between Errant Sound and the Alte Münze. The acoustic bridge of these geographically separate musical entities performing together in real time creates a condition for a fantastic Utopia: in real space, dystopian elements are acoustically transformed in such a way that they become a possible real world.

Guests in Brazil:
Edbrass Brasil and Andrea May

MACCHINA SOM ALLSTARS (Milena Kipfmüller/ Klaus Janek/Lukas Matthaei, BRA/GER)
develops performative radio and sound-work, combining the live processing of musical material, field recordings, and language, thereby shifting original definitions. Our practice is firmly rooted in a keen interest in aesthetic and political contexts, and creates unexpected links between auditive situations.
sounding-situations.com
matthaei-und-konsorten.de

Andrea May
is a visual and sound artist, independent curator and master student in Visual Arts, with research in the hybridization of artistic languages with emphasis on the aesthetics of noise. Also known as May HD acts professionally as a dj and vj.
linktr.ee/mayhd

Edbrass Brasil
is a sound artist, improviser, and researcher based in Salvador, Bahia. In his artistic practice, he investigates the manipulation and collage of recordings and samples, coupled with the use of unconventional wind instruments, with an emphasis on free improvisation and microtonal music. His fresh music with tubes and leafs, brings a specific «ancient» Brazilian flavor to his live performances.
edbrass.webnode.com

The piece was commissioned by the Dystopie Sound Art Festival – Berlin Brazil 2020

The Agency of Sonic Thinking

Published on December 14, 2020

Last updated on December 15, 2020

2020 September 16 17 | 19.00
2020 September 19 20 | 17.00
im Stadtraum

In German

Berlin has long been built on quagmire. Therefore, it is not surprising that some structures of today’s Berlin have their blueprints in the baroque era – the allegedly grand old times, whose facades are being restored in a way that creates dramatic effects. matthaei & konsorten devote themselves to the humid, sweltering delirium of that epoch. On an expedition into the mucky city, they invite their audience to the remote, exaggerated, hardly beautiful sides of Berlin: How about dancing a sarabande on the sewage fields below the border zone? Or to crack the Mäusebunker with rhetorical rams? In September, matthaei & konsorten launch their new work Die Sumpfgeborene (The Swamp-Born) with wondrous actions in the city, before finally premiering in November. There the shameless affects and magnificent stagings of social abysses will be crossed with the unstoppable narrative apparatus of the telenovela.

Under the label MATTHAEI & KONSORTEN the director Jörg Lukas Matthaei works together with artists from different disciplines. Since 2000, almost 50 works of various orientations have been created: From productions for the stage, installations and discourse productions to the development of new formats for urban landscapes, which have been a focus of the work for several years. Stagings by matthaei & konsorten can be encountered in all places that also occur in the lives of their actors or visitors. Recent works include COOP3000 eine neosolidarische concerngründung (Urban Arts Ruhr), BAILE BASSENA (Vienna Festival), URBAN MAGIC (Bangalore) and with the Sophiensæle most recently Im Apparat der Kriege (2014 Sophiensæle + radio version for rbb and others) and Verschwörung der Idioten. Between 2015 and 2016 they regularly presented the Idiotensalon at the Sophiensæle. matthaei-und-konsorten.de

BY AND WITH Bati Nehoya, André Nittel, Volker Sobottke, Anne Welenc, Frank Willens CONCept, DIRECTION Jörg Lukas Matthaei DramaturgY Milena Kipfmüller MusiCAL DIRECTION, Composition Klaus Janek MUSIC Michael Metzler, Philipp Caspari sCenography, COSTUMES Michael Graessner PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT, DRAMATURGICAL SUPPORT Sarah Stührenberg ARTISTIC CONTRIBUTION Sofie Neu Additional sCenography CONTRIBUTION Lotti Maurer TechniCAL DIRECTOR Chris Umney DoCumentation Florian Krauss PHOtograPHY Merlin Nadj-Torma

A production by matthaei & konsorten in coproduction with SOPHIENSÆLE and with friendly support of Theater Thikwa. Funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Europa and the Fonds Darstellende Künste e.V. Media partner: taz. die tageszeitung

What does tradition mean when the past is tainted by crimes? Who decides what is carried on a collective knowledge and moored in the culture? RWANDAN RECORDS is a sound installation, radio play and live concert. This work of walkable musical theatre by Jens Dietrich and Milena Kipfmüller featuring artists from Rwanda and Germany combines pre-colonial accounts with stories from the present. It invites audience members to immerse themselves in the stories shared by Rwanda and Germany. The Rwandan hip-hop artist Eric 1key and the Berlin-based composer Klaus Janek have created a soundscape of language, traditional sounds, electronic music, beats and field recordings.
#Transculturalism #Klanginstallation #Hörspiel #LiveKonzert #RecordLabel #Tonstudio #Archiv #1000taten #eric1key #Oralhistory #decolonizesound

Ruth Geiersberger: „mit Pflanzen“ |
october 4th 5th und 6th 2019

Ruth Geiersberger & Komplizen
„mit Pflanzen“
art meets science
sound performance in a thinkspace

With Prof. Dieter Volkmann, retired professor of the Institut für zelluläre und molekuläre Botanik der Universität Bonn | Martina Koppelstetter voice, Alfred Zimmerlin cello, Michel Watzinger dulcimer, Klaus Janek contrabass, electronics | Beate Zeller dramaturgy | gardeners.

strategies of communication are not only interesting when they are appearing in between humans or animals. Plants communicate with each other, with each surroundings. Can humans learn from plants communication and gain knowledge for its own interaction? In order to find out, you have to get a close look and a close listen. Its about opening up think space and to develop new sensitivities.

[SNDNG STTNS] – sounding situations staged a performative version of the Echolot project. It was invited by the library of Völs am Schlern/Fié allo Sciliar for its 25th birthday year. It was an outdoor performance and featured and transformed audience book reading into music/soundscape, prospecting into the books as meaning but also sound carrier.

GOLDEN DREAM is an investigation on the concept of limitation. This performance brings to the conscious level the physical and mental limitations that cross us, due to external or internal restrictions, including the social and moral structures and rules that we have incorporated. As the Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han states, the limit in Western society, is often the normative and psychological outcome of the inability to welcome the Other. In the performance, we explore a state of presence that we can experience in the passage between wakefulness and sleep. We explore it together with the audience in a verbal and no-verbal somatic communication.

Concept, choreography, texts: Barbara Berti
Performers: Kareth Schaffer, Barbara Berti
Composition: Klaus Janek
Light: Thomas Cicognani

Co-production for first studio/research Mibac, Ariella Vidach,
Tanzfabrik Berlin, Tir danza, Flutgraben

walkable music theater

Upon hearing the word Rwanda, most people probably think of the genocide that began 25 years ago in April. There has been massive economic development since then and the country now presents itself as an “African Tiger”. But Rwanda’s younger generation, like Germany’s, has to grapple with a difficult legacy. Crossing magnificent visions of the future with yearnings for dispersed traditions, Dietrich and Kipfmüller, the Rwandan spoken word artist Eric 1key and the Berlin-based composer Klaus Janek have developed “Rwandan Records” – a record label, sound studio, bar and archive of personal recollections. The project presents a new and unusual perspective on identity in a global context. In Rwanda and Germany, there is a similar interest in pop culture and the keywords used in public debate – identity, migration, community, integration, home, tradition and prosperity – are the same. But in Rwanda, they are associated with completely different visions and thus gain new, expanded meanings. After recording many conversations with many people in Rwanda, Dietrich and Kipfmüller have created a heterogeneous ensemble of voices. This work of walkable musical theatre is at once sound installation and radio play, concert and staged space, whose acoustic architecture is shaped by the audience. The composition moves between different times and worlds, between traditional songs, pop music and electronic sounds. The voices of the ensemble and its stories become a moving live symphony. The audience’s movements are tracked so that at the end visitors can download and take home with them a personal album of the stories that they heard. Only the files that are listened to will be saved. The others will vanish. Individual decisions thus enable collective knowledge to be preserved or actively forgotten. A narrative that transcends genre and culture will emerge on the basis of a combination of different times, visions of the past and the future, as well as breaks in people’s biographies.
Jens Dietrich works in Rwanda regularly. He was last there for the theatre production “Planet Kigali” that premiered in winter 2018 in Kigali and at Hamburg’s Kampnagel
theatre. Milena Kipfmüller won the Blind War Veterans’ Radio Drama Prize for her radio version of the play “Hate Radio” and she and Klaus Janek won the 2018 Music Theatre NOW Award for their production “Musraropera”. In 2007, Klaus Janek composed the techno opera “Afterhours” for one actor, 3 sopranos, 1 alto, 1 bass, 1 rock singer, a choir and a sequencer, which premiered at Berlin’s Berghain club. Janek’s music explores the boundaries between “serious” and popular” music, performance and installation, noise and music, traditional and contemporary and analogue and digital.

Premiere
21 March 2019, as part of the „Find the File“ festival (HKW), 5-8 PM
Additional Performances
22 – 24 March 2019, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, 5-8 PM
ARTISTIC DIRECTION & TEXT: Milena Kipfmüller, Jens Dietrich WITH:
Klaus Janek und Eric 1key SPECIALIST COUNSELLING Assumpta
Mugiraneza STAGE DESIGN Jelka Plate MUSIC & COMPOSITION Klaus
Janek ASSISTANCE Amina Nouns LIGHT AND TECHNICAL DIRECTION
Chris Umney PROGRAMMING Marco Peise PR Yven Augustin PRODUCTION
MANAGEMENT Annett Hardegen
VOICES Wesley Ruzibiza, Natacha Muziramakenga, Assumpta Mugiraneza,
Eric 1key, Chris Schwagga, Hervé Kimenyi, Jean Marie Vianney Mushabizi,
Deo Munyakazi, Yannick Kamenzi, Odette Mukakimenyi, Paul
Ntakirutimana, Evariste Karinganire, Jean Marie Vianney Mushabizi.
A PRODUCTION BY Dietrich/Kipfmüller IN CO-OPERATION WITH Haus
der Kulturen der Welt and the Iriba Centre for Multimedia Heritage Kigali
SPONSORED BY Hauptstadtkulturfonds and the Goethe-Institut Kigali SUPPORTED BY
Phonogramm Archiv Berlin

pic by Roberto Duarte

Ubiquity

in the major variant of this effect, the sound and movement seems to come from everywhere and from nowhere at the same time. In a minor variant, sound and movement seems to come simultaneously from a singular source and from many sources.

Ingo Reulecke, dance, voice
Klaus Janek, doublebass, electronics

in the scope of the 60_minutes performance series
3 November 2018
20:00
Studio 2/ Mime Centrum Berlin / Mariannenplatz 2, 10997 Berlin

Imagine a nomadic tribe would travel from the future to today’s time to share their lore – the stories, songs and dances that reflect their ways of living together, of practicing labour, care and ritual. Would we look at today’s world with different eyes? Would we be spurred on to sensitize ourselves and experiment with spaces and situations of encounter?

These questions are brought to resonate in Projecting [Space[, an in situ creation by Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods, dramaturge Jeroen Peeters and scenographer Jozef Wouters, made at the invitation of Ruhrtriennale 2017. A motley group of artists, performers and technicians, the company Damaged Goods set up camp in a former mining factory in Dinslaken-Lohberg (DE). There, they build a temporary environment prone to change, adaptation and migration. In real and imaginary spaces they unfold precarious collective practices of meeting and making – with living bodies, with tape and wood, with curated sounds and urban noise.

 

Choreography Meg Stuart
Dramaturgy Jeroen Peeters
Stage design Jozef Wouters
Created with and performed by Jorge de Hoyos, Mor Demer, Márcio Kerber Canabarro, Roberto Martínez, Renan Martins de Oliveira, Sonja Pregrad, Mariana Tengner Barros, Sigal Zouk
Soundscapes and -installations Vincent Malstaf
Double Bass and Live Electronics Klaus Janek
Costume design and props Sofie Durnez
Light Sandra Blatterer
Sound design Richard König

A long table in the room, one seat is free. You are guest, intruder, none of both? And what is the connection from what you see with your self? VANITAS is an intimate play and imaginary tabletalk – a performance about affiliation, identity, becoming and decay in a globalized world for one audience member.

Direction and space: Sebastian Blasius * Sound: Klaus Janek * with: Valentin Stroh, Silvia Westenfelder, Anna Kempin, Michael Sandmann, Eloisa Arreola, Alina Reissmann, Vincent Wodrich, Florin Engels, Miriam Arnold, Nicolay Kaps, Hannah Sampé, Ramon Reinirkens, Lino Jötten * pictures: Therese Schuleit

Funded through the city of Köln and the ministery for family, children, youth, culture and sports of NRW.

Winner of the Favoriten Prize of 2018

MUSRAROPERA is a mobile-radiophonic-opera developed in a historically charged quarter of Jerusalem, laying between fancy shops, the Palestinian area of Damuskus Gate and the ultraorthodox Mea Shearim. Musrara is a mirror of the city, Israel and the complexity of the Middle East, inhabited by people of divers cultural, religious and political backgrounds, keeping the explosive coexistence of the past in motion. Said this, the story recurs to the voices of this neighbourhood and their visions of the future – flanked by joyful kids speaking in Arabic, linking the here and there, the past and the coming.

In the post-truth time we strategically place this pre-truth opera as a fictive rehearsal and master training to transform the uncertain present. The unbalance between global north and global south, exported wars and Eurocentric perspective is revolving and will only be decided by our acts routed in a wide discourse around all near neighbourhoods. The voices are used as musical elements, composed and melted into a fictive disharmonic choir. A miniorchestra moves though the streets and is captured live and composed electronically into a big cast. The theatrical set is created by the usage of FM-Transmitters and Radios, everyday objects, aligned to the local and global discourses, framing the space to a movable, choreographed set design. The finale happens at a soccerfield, where games and fights are played, one wish against another, still friendly, still exhausting but playful.

a portrait sketch of slow silence and loud breaks

In this musical performance of the series “Close-Up”, one of the most famous and musical Thikwa artists, Tim Petersen, meets the actress and vocal performer Ruth Geiersberger as well as Klaus Janek, double bassist and composer of experimental electronic music – a well-practised and experimental trio.

In this fast world we are living in, the pieces sets a counterpoint by producing spaces of silence and comfort, but also disonances, when the slowness hits the walls of the noisy outside. A performative sound installation with lots of singing and a humorous search for the essence of an extraordinary person.

The piece premiered march 14th. Following performances were march 15th through 17, and 21st through 24th.

 

 

A long table in the room, one seat is free. You are guest, intruder, none of both? And what is the connection from what you see with your self? VANITAS is an intimate play and imaginary tabletalk – a performance about affiliation, identity, becoming and decay in a globalized world for one audience member.

Direction and space: Sebastian Blasius * Sound: Klaus Janek * with: Valentin Stroh, Silvia Westenfelder, Anna Kempin, Michael Sandmann, Eloisa Arreola, Alina Reissmann, Vincent Wodrich, Florin Engels, Miriam Arnold, Nicolay Kaps, Hannah Sampé, Ramon Reinirkens, Lino Jötten * pictures: Therese Schuleit

Funded through the city of Köln and the ministery for family, children, youth, culture and sports of NRW.

Winner of the Favoriten Prize of 2018

a sound and space accomplishment

created by/with Ruth Geiersberger, Dietrich Kuhlbrodt, Klaus Janek, Simon Spehr and diverse passerbys

It is a meeting of two intellectuals of very different age, one is 20+ the other 80+.
Both argue and act out of their constructed or lived reality. Kuhlbrodt as a retired german left wing prosecutor, with two grown up kids, the memories of his dead wife,  his comrade Christoph Schlingensief, the times in the Hitlerjugend and much more. He struggles with todays achievements as for example the mobile phone, facebook, and his almost romantic vision of the young people chained to computer and internet. Whereas Simon the young intellectuals reality orientates more versus future and now, and the main questions why Kuhlbrodt referes so much towards past, and why internet and computer seems such a big deal. The setting demands from the two a maximum of honesty and authenticity. They don’t play a role – and in fact they don’t. Their action radius is build by lived experience, intellect and knowledge.

The project is divided into two chapters.
1. the two meet for two weeks in an empty and disused apartment to ask and answer questions, to freely associate, analyze the situation and divide the few furniture and rooms between them selves. The cast involves more active people: Ruth Geiersberger, which moderates and functions as master of ceremonie, inspiring the two by contributing her vision being a 50+ generation member. Klaus Janek 40+, archievs the situation via audio, and follows a structure of 2 min recordings. Additionally he archives auditively the apartment and reproduces the space in the second chapter. Judith Hummel functions as guest carer for the audience and questions and answer through her perspective as 30+ .
The situation offers 4 public days: audience is welcomed to witness the sitation

2.the second chapter is situated in a theatre space at hochX in Munich. The apartment setting is abstractly reproduced on the action space – there is no traditionally stage, but a space which is populated by actors (informed – Kuhlbrodt/Spehr/Geiersberger/Hummel/Janek) and not informed (audience). The archive is organized in the way that the recordings of a specific room in the empty apartment is played back in the part of the space claimed to be the mentioned room. Recordings from the Spehr room played back in the Spehr area of the space. The recordings of the public days in the apartment correspond to the performative days. The 2min recordings dissolve after being played – a form of self erasing archive – and while played display a together experienced situation of NOW. The past NOW is combined to the actual NOW.

An auditive ambience is created by the reproduction of the sound situation in the empty apartment, the atmospheric situation is created by the use of the furniture from the apartment.
The first chapters public opening happend in june for 4 days á 4 hours, the second chapter was a 75 min public situation. “Premiere” of the theatre situation was oct 4th, performances on 5th, 6th and 7th. The project was funded by the Kulturreferat der Stadt München and concieved by Ruth Geiersberger.

podcast

a piece on communication, dealing with the different forms and kinds of understanding or being understood – or not. The main focus of the piece lays on Andre Nittel, an actor in wheel chair and with as many spasms as one can imagine – being almost unable to communicate, at least this is what it seems on the first view.. Communication on different levels are celebrated and misleaded in this piece of humor and hidden darkness: sign language meets bodily communication (gesture, dance), verbal communication finds its dead ends during home episodes and music translates emotion.

With: André Nittel, Louis Edler, Karol Golebiowski, Max Edgar Freitag, Christian Wollert, Martin Clausen, Gal Naor, Gerd Hartmann | gesturecoreografy and translation to signlanguage: Gal Naor | live-music: Klaus Janek | direction: Martina Couturier | co-direction: Gerd Hartmann | idea/concept: Gerd Hartmann / Martina Couturier | stage: Isolde Wittke | costumes:  Heike Braitmayer | light: Katri Kuusimäki | technical direction: Ralf Arndt, Torsten Litschko, Wolfgang Ullrich

supported by  Hauptstadt Kultur Fonds

premiered feb 15th other performances: 16th trough 18th /22nd through25th, main stage  Thikwa Theatre

 

https://vimeo.com/204104775

 

This piece comes from a strong desire to be alone on stage, and physicalize the themes I’ve been researching for the past six years: attention, dreams and imagination.
Raw Light is a tangible, physical, sensational solo journey of the body becoming. It is an elusive attempt to form a constantly shifting experience, and to allow for a flow of flickering images to emerge. It is a proximate presence of a liquid, multilayered, kaleidoscopic body that dances in raw lights between real and imagined, felt and dreamt, courageously pointing to the unseen and unknown. The tongue, the eyes and the limbs reach out for brightness. From the cut of soft tissue of time and space, a persistent trust explodes into being.

jan 26th and 27th, Dock 11, Berlin

Concept, choreography, performance: Anna Nowicka
Music: Klaus Janek
Photo: Katarzyna Szugajew

 

…or this is probably going to be a downer, or in lieu of addressing insurmountable graver circumstances, or best to keep on believing, or giddy-up cowboy, or too old to be new, or some more rituals from the discarded catalogue…the title can change, but nothing is to be taken for granted…that’s another possibility. Each night Frank will be out there on the stage dancing, performing, negotiating. Each night there will be a different musical guest. The situation will shift. The moment will never repeat.

“I wouldn’t call it an improvisation, per se, but there is definitely room for material to evolve, to transform, for an encounter with the moment, with the audience, with the other.”

 

 

 

 

#55 nov 6th: Common Ground, Tanzfabrik, Berlin
#54 oct 14th: Somatische Akademie, Berlin
#53 may 22nd: Uferhallen Studio Dirk Bell, Berlin
#52 jan 29th: Club der polnischen Versager, Berlin

Two years of idiot research culminate in the big conspiracy before Christmas: following the Salons Idiotie & Widerstand and the idiot field research, matthaei & konsorten are creating a series of fluid gatherings with handymen of enhanced idiosyncrasy. On four evenings, performers and the audience will exchange their particular knowledge, which can only be transferred in a live session. Together we will throw the pliant adaptation of the dance around the golden calf off course. Be there or be square!

by and with Polyxeni Angelidou, Jens Baudisch, Niklas Binder, Miles Chalcraft, Jana Donis, Doris Dziersk, Nadja Hermann, Hauke Heumann, Klaus Janek, Milena Kipfmüller, Jana Krause, Lukas Matthaei, Judith Nika Pfeifer, Nefeli Skarmea, Jochen Stechmann, Diana Tørsløv Møller, Michael Vorfeld, Frank Willens and guests
Produced by matthaei & konsorten in co-production with SOPHIENSÆLE. Funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds. media partner: Kulturradio vom rbb, taz.die tageszeitung

the trailer

a 20 min version
https://vimeo.com/204166131

 

all pictures © Merlin Nadj-Torma

 

A live radio show that tests individual resistance in the heart of our rapidly growing controlling society: We are celebrating the proud peculiarity that refuses to conform. We reject the sexually charged nature of efficiency and are hammering out skewed models for the bar at the end of the assimilation. We will eavesdrop on the voices of foreign beauty – in the walk-in studio with various theorists, artists and practitioners of idiocy. Updates here – soon!

 

BY AND WITH Liz Allbey (trumpet, radical objects), Klaus Janek, Milena Kipfmüller, Dagmara Kraus (poets and inventor of languages), Jörg Lukas Matthaei, Lorenz Potthast (inventor of the deceleration helmet) of the  and Morten J Ohlsen on rotating bass drum in a dialog with the ‘as-slow-as-possible’ tone, by J. Cage streamed from the church in Halberstadt.

oct 26th at Kantine Sophiensaele, Berlin

Produced by matthaei & konsorten and SOPHIENSÆLE. media partner: taz. die tageszeitung

 

Example of an existing page converted to columns.
concept/realisation: Sebastian Blasius | dramaturgy: Daniel Franz | media artist: Tobias Rosenberger | sound: KJ

premiered set, 7th in: Ballsaal, Bonn further performed at Muffat Werk, Munich

Chimaira is a dance performance for one audience member. You enter the performance space being welcomed by a white square and liturgical singing. Am I alone? and, the room activity is it created for me or triggered by me? am I subject, object both or none of both? What about a Vienna waltz? or with a slize of Sacher cake without  remorse

supported by: Kunststiftung NRW, Ministerium für Familie, Kinder, Jugend, Kultur und Sport des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen, Bezirk Oberbayern.

An invitation to do music for a

workshop run by Meg Stuart, Pawel Althamer and Artur Zmijewski for the dance webbers from Impulstanz and an

improvisation between Meg Stuart, Keith Hennessy and KJ

This years Impulstanz was curated by Tino Segal focussing on the collaboration between performing and visual arts. Pawel and Artur are working on the idea of social painting, meaning to invite people to contribute to the painting. In this way in the ws week lots of paintings between all participants were created. Every dining situation, debating or just coffee drinking was used for painting.

By the way, I want idiots to be the title of the interview. Not morality. But actually… Write idiots as the title! You’ll see that it looks so much better that way.

Lemmy Kilmister, frontman of the band Motörhead (†)

The live radio show continues! Packed with music, sandwiches, and contradicting experts from the academic and artistic fields, about life and all its margins. How boring the smoothness of functioning systems is, how glowing are the promises of idiots! On the path to the big conspiracy in the fall…

One thing is sure: the 8 o’clock news and the tuba version of “Felicità”. Still unknown: the guests and the outcome.

BY AND WITH Klaus Janek, Milena Kipfmüller, Jörg Lukas Matthaei and Carmen Köhler (analog astronaut), Jerome Segal (scientist, researching cybernethics in GDR), Adrian Navarro (baroque dance specialist, choreographer)

With friendly support by Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung. media partner: taz.die tageszeitung

may 19th, 2016, Kantine, Sophiensaele

 

30 April | 20 h | Mime Centrum Berlin

Elma Riza – concept, performance
Klaus Janek – sound

„Playgrounds“ is a series of improvised solos in which the rules of the game are constantly reinvented. It involves body, space and object and the interplay of action and abstraction. The emerging landscapes are created by movements and rewriting of the rules of the game in the present moment. Space evolves and is undone; an imagined topography of the game develops in the process of improvisation – based on composition, the presence of the body and sound.
“(…) You start to compose a landscape within wich an event can take place without necessarily knowing what kind of event it will be. But as you begin to assemble objects you are already discovering something about it´s dimension and qualities. Shaping and reshaping the landscape is an integral part of improvisation (…)””Body, space, image: notes towards improvisation and performance”
Miranda Tufnell, Chris Crickmay
Dance Books, 1993

is an urban project (Stadtraum Projekt) dealing with the subject of bio tech in the southest rhine valley. This region has the biggest agglomeration of bio tech on humans, animals, plants worldwide. The idea is to make the researching and engineering visible to the inhabitants of the region without necessarily getting into pro or cons of the subject. The setting was created in form of a kick off event, 7 public daylong events through out 7 places inside the city of Freiburg and a concluding event. The pieces was produced by the Theater Freiburg and matthaei&konsorten ( Lukas Matthaei, direction / Daniel Hengst, new media / Doris Dziersk, scenography / KJ, music, sounddesign) The piece happend between april 15th and 23rd.

KJ realized a classical audio communication process of analyzing different parameters and event in order to get as a result a sound DNA, which whom a sound design production could work. The DNA resulted in a soundlogo, audio and video clips, jingles, podcasts, a soundinstallation surrounding the public event installation and a hymn, which was sung before and during every of the 9 events. The sound identity of superkörper was combined to the soundidentity of the city of Freiburg as well as the soundidentity of the specific districts of the city.

Soundobject#1

Soundobject#2

Soundobject#3

Soundobject#4

hymn – this version is the learning sing-along-file for the cast

Score of the superkörper hymn
sk_hymnus_6.pdf

superkörper podcast#1

#51 sept 12th: Gruppe Dekadenz, Bressanone, Italy
#50 aug 4th: improxchange, Berlin
#49 may 31st: Miss Hecker
#48 april 18th: impro.per.arts, Mime Centrum, Berlin
#47 march 9th: Kunsthaus, Meran, Italy
#46 march 8th: Bodennah/Walthersaal, Klausen, Italy
#45 march 7th: Galerie am Dorfplatz, Völs, Italy
#44 march 1st: 18:00, Echo Bücher, Grüntaler Straße 9, Berlin
#43 jan 10th: IMPROV AT GS Movement/Sound/Vision, Gemeindesaal, Berlin

This is not carnival, it’s a spring procession! It’s a celebration of pertinacity and a eulogy to self-abandonment. On the right-hand side is efficiency, on the left-hand side progress – in between are the colorful hordes of idiots.  This time the live radio show is directing its antennas towards autonomy and resistance in digital, as well as, sounds of stupidity. Of course, all with simultaneous interpretation and various theoreticians, artists and practitioners of idiocy.

From and with Naima Ferré, Daniel Hengst, Klaus Janek, Milena Kipfmüller, Benno Lehmann, Jörg Lukas Matthaei, Peter Pankow and guests

nov 11th, Kantine, Sophiensaele, Berlin

Friendly supported by Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung.

Foto © Ars Electronica