Isabel Lewis and Sissel Tolaas with Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop and Ethan Braun, H_SPACE_H, 2022
11 June, smell & movement
30 July, smell, movement and sound intervention & performance, 14:41 and 15:47 RE3 Train from Südkreuz. This event is held as part of the Exhibition Finissage and Sommerfest. Please register here.
H_SPACE_H commences on 30 April 2022 as a smell intervention on a carriage of the RE3 train from Berlin/Südkreuz to Luckenwalde, produced from the idiosyncratic smell of EW’s production of electricity, which Tolaas sourced while on a site visit to E-WERK. In June the work grows to include subtle movements, gestures, and indications choreographed and created by Isabel Lewis and finally in July an immersive and multi-site sound component performed by Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop and composed by Ethan Braun is brought together with smell and movement interventions. The attunement process that begins on the train continues from the bahnhof in Luckenwalde to the site of the former Mendelsohn Hutfabrik near the E-WERK. Developing techniques of bodily attunement to ecology and practices for transformation of our relation to our biosocial surroundings have long been at the center of the collaboration between Isabel Lewis and Sissel Tolaas. They continue to apply their methodologies in this new collaboration with Ethan Braun and Kaliedoskop.
On 30 July, the third and final train intervention will take place, starting at 14:41 and 15:47 on the RE3 train from Südkreuz. A procession will lead visitors from Luckenwalde train station to E-WERK for tours of the power station and Stadtbad. The tours end at the Mendelsohn Hat Factory where artists Isabel Lewis & Sissel Tolaas, together with Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop and composer Ethan Braun, will create a moving and growing performance that will take the audience on a journey through sounds, movements and noises.
About Isabel Lewis
Isabel Lewis (b.1981, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic) lives and works in Berlin. Trained in literary criticism, dance, and philosophy, Isabel Lewis’ work takes on many different formats: from lecture-performances and workshops to listening sessions, parties (Bodysnatch), gardens, and what she calls “hosted occasions.” Her live art works have been presented contexts of contemporary art, music, dance, and theatre by Kunsthalle Zürich (2020), Sharjah Biennial (2019), Roskilde Festival (2019), Berliner Festspiele-Gropius Bau (2018), Tate Modern (2017), Steirischer Herbst (2017), Ming Contemporary Art Museum Shanghai (2016), and Tanz Im August (2015) among others.
About Sissel Tolaas
Sissel Tolaas (b.1965, Norway) has been working, researching and experimenting intensively with the topic of smell since 1990. She is a pioneer and unique in her approach to smells. She has developed a wide range of revolutionary projects worldwide with smells based upon her own knowledge - organic chemistry, linguistics, and the visual arts. Tolaas established the SMELL RE_searchLab Berlin in January 2004, supported by IFF Inc.Tolaas has special skills in smell recognition, analysis and reproduction. She has researched and experienced with smells in many different ways and in multiple diverse contexts and for multiple purposes.Her research and projects have won recognition through numerous national and international scholarships, honours, and prizes. She is very capable at collaborating intensively with those of other disciplines across the globe.Tolaas has shown her projects in many museums and institutions including Moma, NGV, DIA, CCA, Tate Modern, Shanghai Minsheng. She has worked with universities such as MIT, Nanyang Technical, Tsinghua, Harvard and Oxford Universities. She has built up several types of smell archives such as Smell & Language; Smell & Coding, Functional Smell and is currently working on smell-molecule preservation /conservation archives on the world’s oceans, smell artefacts and smell heritage. Tolaas’ collections of smell molecules and smell structures from 1990 till 2021 include 10,000 samples and formulas.
About Ethan Braun
Los Angeles and Berlin-based composer Ethan Braun creates electroacoustic music composed of processed sound recordings, sampler instrument recordings, and live recordings. A majority of his work takes place in transdisciplinary, collaborative contexts with other artists and has been shown at venues such as The Shed (NYC), Statens Museum for Kunst (Copenhagen, DK), REDCAT (Los Angeles), Hebbel-am-Ufer (Berlin), and Festspielhaus Hellerau (Dresden). His current projects include Swan Songs, an opera for voice, ensemble and electronics commissioned by Contemporaneous (NYC) and the Nemø Ensemble (Ghent, Belgium), and The Seventy Deadly Sins, a music theater with Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop and director Ariel Ashbel in compositions for voice, string ensemble and electronics. In 2017 he was nominated for the Gaudeamus Prize (Composition) and is a PhD candidate at Yale University.
About Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop
Founded in 2006 in Berlin by Michael Rauter & Julian Kuerti, Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop has since its inception dedicated itself to the development of new forms of experimental music theater. With great openness, the ensemble creates new formats in collaboration with international artists from other genres and stages music in current contexts. In recent years, the focus of the ensemble's work has shifted to an examination of the body. The members of the ensemble have developed from pure instrumentalists to musical performers and co-authors of these collaborative productions.
Kaleidoskop explores music theater as a place of encounter, community and as a space that has the power to imagine other futures.
The ensemble collaborates closely with Radialsystem in Berlin and is a guest at renowned festivals such as the Kunstfest Weimar, KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen, Sydney Festival, the Holland Festival, operadhoy Madrid, Wien Modern or the Donaueschinger Musiktage.
