CAST-OFF
Alice Z Jones × Dis Fig


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Sep 15    --:--:--

CAST-OFF
Alice Z Jones × Dis Fig

Dropping as part of the 10th Berlin Network of Independent Project Spaces and Initiatives award ceremony and Berlin Art Week—opening September 15 —the interdisciplinary platform will present one of a four-part video series. Alice Z Jones x Dis Fig’s "CAST-OFF" (2021) premieres and screens at Mitte KUNSTPUNKT BERLIN until September 26. The audiovisual work will be accessible via Creamcake’s 3hdTV channel at the same time, which will act as an online stage, of sorts, becoming a celebratory space for support, community and pop appreciation, in all its diverse and exciting forms. “Pop Psychology” traces the unresolvable tensions between political activism and noise, empowerment and performativity, consumer culture and self-care, making these points of friction visible as therapeutic drives of sustainability and empowerment. Joy is an integral part to maintaining mental health, and now is the time to find it through music.


"CAST-OFF" is a collaborative audiovisual project exploring bodies in crisis, theories of dissent, and potential healing practices through art and music making. Taking Japanese choreographer Tatsumi Hijikata’s notion of a “casting-off” of society-approved notions of identity as a starting point, artist Alice Z Jones and producer Dis Fig (aka Felicia Chen) draw inspiration from butoh, shamanistic rituals, cyberpunk and the techno-poetics of Afrofuturism. They imagine possibilities for fracture—if only temporary—from a past, present and foreseeable future of the affliction of existing under oppressive systems. From social injustice, sickness, and technologically-enhanced violence to the physical and mental weight, an ever-increasing pressure put on those who exist on the margins, “CAST-OFF” converses with its audience through a combination of found footage, improvisational performance, and hypnotic and transitory sound. It moves through a myriad of histories, into the present day, while centering liminal and peripheral states of existence. Are we done yet?

Mixed and mastered by Theo Karon

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HEAVEN’S BLADE
33


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Oct 26    --:--:--

HEAVEN’S BLADE
33

While astrophysicist and mathematician Trillian Astra might feel cold and alone in the infinite void as she hurtles through the stars on a flagship of the blackest black in H2G2, it doesn’t have to be that way. Space is big, which means there’s plenty of room for revelry at the center of an intergalactic war, and Billy Bultheel and Alexander Iezzi are making the most of our own looming earthly calamities as 33. Their “Heaven’s Blade” track release—premiering as part of Creamcake’s 3hd 2022: “Life, the Universe, and Everything” via 3hdTV on October 24, 2022—is a hard techno dance anthem that is as combative as it is perversely cheerful. The track releases with a video work by the artists Margarita Maximova and Shade Theret, made in correspondence to the music by 33.


The video premiere is it’s own vanguard space vessel barrelling through an abyss of enormous adversity in global crisis, while building on Bultheel and Iezzi’s exploration of “queer weaponry” to announce their forthcoming “33 Unplugged” performance for 3hd’s “The Ultimate Question” event happening at Trauma Bar und Kino on Thursday, October 27. The “Heaven’s Blade” music video and the following event culminates in the drop of 33’s explosive 33-69 album debut via Berlin and Porto-based C.A.N.V.A.S. label. It’s a powerful noise, trance and gothic bootcamp that is as rowdy, violent, and mystical as its numerology-referencing, schoolboy humor-recalling title implies. 

Credits
A film by Margarita Maximova and Shade Theret
Music by 33 (Billy Bultheel & Alexander Iezzi)

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WE ARE HERE BECAUSE OF THOSE THAT ARE NOT
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley


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Nov 06    --:--:--

WE ARE HERE BECAUSE OF THOSE THAT ARE NOT
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley

London and Berlin-based Black trans artist, activist, game developer and mother Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley shares their recent work "We Are Here Because of Those That Are Not" (2020)—a film and performance centered on remembering Black Trans ancestors who have been forgotten to time, as well as installing Black Trans existence in the present. Brathwaite-Shirley use electronic sound and animation to create a virtual archive for Black Trans bodies who were wrongly archived or never archived at all. By applying their own lived experience to imaginatively retelling Trans stories, the artist reclaim space for their forgotten forebears.

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THE LYNCHING SONG
M. Lamar


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Oct 27    --:--:--

THE LYNCHING SONG
M. Lamar

"The Lynching Song" (2021) has become central to M. Lamar’s practice. Inspired by the work of black liberation theologist James H. Cone’s bringing together the Christian cross with the lynching tree as a modern form of crucifixion, Lamar endeavors to engage a scared practice of remembrance, praise and sacrifice. Like the ritual singing of hymns, the artist’s hope through the continued performance of these songs is for the deepest spiritual and moral transformation. 

“I have always seen these lynching songs I write as a continuation of the African American Spiritual. These songs are surely how we have maintained the profound connection to our own humanity, as well as to those who have enslaved and oppressed us,” Lamar calls this Berlin Session iteration of the pieces. “There is never, in these songs, a thirst for vengeance or even anger. There is only love and a longing to be free, even if freedom means death.” 


Concept by M. Lamar
Cinematography by Lilith Schneider
Camera by Ink Agop
Editing by Lilith Schneider
Sound recording by Frieder Naumann & Bart Huybrechts
Post sound engineering by Nicholas Djukic Cocks
Video by Fine Freiberg
Lights by Sebastian Zamponi & Lea Schneidermann

Commissioned by Creamcake and HAU Hebbel am Ufer

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鏡中闇夜 MIRROR/ERROR
Yikii


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Aug 03    --:--:--

鏡中闇夜 MIRROR/ERROR
Yikii

Shot, directed and edited by Yikii, "鏡中闇夜mirror/error" (2021) concerns the connection between personal loneliness and society via visual accompaniment to six of her own tracks. The film title directly translates to “dark night of the mirror” in Chinese, where the artist abandons the notion of solitude as relational, instead exploring an alienation completely detached from other people. In doing so, "鏡中闇夜mirror/error" is a vision of an ‘apocalyptic loneliness’ completely absent of another human being. 

The video is replete with metaphors and fast-switching shots, while the dissonant music of tracks like “Don't Forget the Butterfly” and “Poisonous Air 空气毒性” present a flashback of destructive and desolate images, while alluding to the reflective “gaze of others” avoided. At the same time, Yikii emphasizes that such aloneness is not a negative adjective. Clear withdrawal has its own naturally calming power, while still carrying with it a fear of the unknown. Both the sun and moon shine on earth at the same time, after all. In the summer, the sunlight pours gently in the garden where flowers are in full bloom, but the mirror reflects the sticky darkness of the night.

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HEAVEN’S BLADE
33

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WE ARE HERE BECAUSE OF THOSE THAT ARE NOT
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley

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THE LYNCHING SONG
M. Lamar

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鏡中闇夜 MIRROR/ERROR
Yikii

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BROOD X: A GUIDED MEDITATION
unseelie

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GENERAL INTELLECT
Joanna Pope & Steph Holl Trieu

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PLEXAURE'S TOUR DIARY
Fauness

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REQUIEM FOR LOST PLANTS
Alice Yuan Zhang & Alexander Kaye

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BSAD (BUY SHIT AND DIE)
Steph Kretowicz & Ben Babbitt

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