Publication launch / readings with Carmen Lael Hines, Jonas Morgenthaler, Morgane Billuart and Masha Ryabova
Thursday, 24 August 18:00–22:00 Readings start at 19:00 ABA Office, Friedrichstraße 23a, 10969 Berlin
Dear,
You feel heavy because you are Lost in the sea of items. Observing others and starting to feel what it could mean to be obsolete. Will you get what you are not actively looking for? Walking around, strolling through time, Passing through mansions and houses, thinking of everything money can buy. What if the life you once dreamed of sucked so bad? What if the people you envy would like to die? I won’t lie in the landscape of sameness, Refusing to be a static object. I know there is this sudden moment where one falls into sudden nothingness, Somehow not coming to the surface [removed]; When is it? Is it the end of the performance? Removing physical beings, love, places, materialities, Leaving you as I would simply exit a chat [removed]; Can you desire a template? Can you decorate a black hole? In this great act of performativity, you have to understand, There is no way I am coming back. The desire to retrieve and become one’s own entity is solely A result of the loss of faith in institutional and ideological support,
There’s just me.
they love the idea of meis a catalogue for world-building through objects and artefacts. It’s an invitation to bump into a range of objects such as clothing, decoration, furniture, and household devices that in sum constitute a material topography paradigmatic of our times. Alongside these tangibles, a handful of writers and artists have contributed thoughts and texts that add to the making and meaning of the work. Through sampling, archiving and collaging, our efforts wonder: What makes a good living? What is so tempting about the consumption of image and object? How do we curate our homes, and what symbols do we, knowingly or not, borrow when doing so?
Berlin, August 2023, self-published
With contributions from Jonas Morgenthaler, Content y Contenido, Masha Ryabova, Mira Samonig, Carmen Lael Hines, Millie Rose Dobree, Klara Debeljak, Anna Rimmel, Enzo Aït Kaci, Morgane Billuart
Supported by Kulturfonds – Swiss Federal Office of Cultura BAK and Pro Helvetia
Sometimes I miss the pillars. They are so pleasant to lean against, nice and sturdy and cooling me down. Unyielding. Just give me a pillar of a few hundred years old (I can have a similar appetite for never ending marble museum stairs). Supporting, seemingly indestructible structures have accommodated me, this body that wants to stay soft and move around freely – it’s as if we’ve kept each other in equilibrium.
Still in reality (if we consider fantasy as reality) I’ve always been swimming around with floating gardens – their entangled roots drifting along – so even though I love those pillars, maybe it’s time to let them go. Being loose on shaky ground. Does that get too muddy, too feeble? Marble museum stairs will not fix it this time (but how was that house actually built?).
Trouble! is a cabaret-style performance evening and exhibition with a curiosity for the social contract. Originating in 2016 in Paris, the first edition of “Trouble!” (then called “An Agreement”) inaugurated a slow but consistent research on the intricacies of affective relationships and how they influence, inform and change our ways of working together. “Trouble!” proposes to look at ways in which we can listen—shifting our production habits from the liberal-adjacent retinal hegemony, towards an economy of the sensorial. The cabaret format interests us for its hospitality, its history in counter-narratives, the theatricality it conveys, as well as how performativity in transactional and non-transactional intimate practices inform our experience of everyday life—at work like at home.
With Costanza Candeloro, Johanna Kotlaris, Inger Wold Lund, Matilda Tjäder, Margaux Schwarz, Sophie Fitze, Jonathan Franz, Aisha Altenhofen and Aurélien Potier. Thanks to Andreas Kalbermatter. Text by Luce DeLire.
Supported by Pro Helvetia
Other news & past events
Alena Kazlova (Anka Upala)
Writer in Residence August 2023
Alena Kazlova (Anka Upala) is a Belarusian writer, translator, publisher, member of Belarusian PEN Center, Belarusian Writers’ Union.