Vorspiel

a citywide programme
by spaces and initiatives
around transmediale
and CTM festivals


Coming soon: Vorspiel 2027



Articles


The Vorspiel Collection brings together artworks, films, photo-essays, texts, graphs, images, podcasts, sound experiments, and more.


Image Gallery

Find some impressions of the 2022 opening here.


Video

Our famous interview Staffette has returned! Watch this year's edition featuring a few of the participating spaces of Vorspiel / transmediale & CTM. The 2022 edition marks the 11th anniversary of our initiative and aim to showcase the richness and diversity of Berlin's independent project spaces and artist initiatives.


Video

A look behind the Shared Frame streamed event for Vorspiel 2021 (pandemic edition).


Essay

How we got there and how important it was for Panke.


Essay Artwork

Postcards from the Metaverse speculates on the value of the popular 20th century medium – the postcard – in providing accessible and underrepresented perspectives on a newly- hyped infrastructure


Essay

Former transmediale artistic director Kristoffer Gansing applies a bit of home-grown numerology to reminisce about the secrets of Vorspiel!


Essay

The reSource network has been an extremely valuable resource in the process of establishing and running SPEKTRUM Berlin. It allowed us to connect with like-minded people in the city, to start up new collaborations, and to learn from those facing similar issues in running project spaces.


Essay

The essay summarizes the Czech-Brazilian cultural theorist and media philosopher Vilém Flusser’s ideas on the apparatus, codes, and programmed and manipulated society. He ends his texts by highlighting the importance of artists who might be able to play with and against the apparatus and challenge mass media and their preprogrammed functions.


Essay

From 2011 to 2014, Tatiana Bazzichelli and a team of others designed a sprawling event program called “reSource transmedial culture Berlin,” which picked up on transmediale-related projects and flung them far further.


Essay

Since 2013 designtransfer – the gallery and communicates interface of the Faculty of Design, Berlin University of the Arts (UdK Berlin) and the public – participates yearly at Vorspiel to present various projects as exhibitions, installations, and talks related to their New Media & Design courses.


Video

Watch a digital interview Staffette with some of the participating spaces of Vorspiel / transmediale & CTM. The 2021 edition marks the 10th anniversary of our initiative and aim to showcase the richness and diversity of Berlin's independent project spaces and artist initiatives in collaboration with transmediale.


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Events Concert, Performance

To Failure: an experiment through sound and rope - Alex Hawthorn

Daruma

Exhaustion.

Endless accumulation under a ceaseless system of extraction, a constant drive to produce.

Make money, make content, and make it look fun. From Depression-era dance marathons, to “touch-the-truck” endurance contests, to the deathly play of Squid Game, capitalism turns precarity into a warped form of entertainment. Even Berlin’s party culture makes hedonism an endurance sport, pushing bodies to the limit. What happens when we can’t anymore?

“The tired has only exhausted realization, while the exhausted exhausts all of the possible. The tired can no longer realize, but the exhausted can no longer possibilitate.” – Gilles Deleuze, The Exhausted

“To Failure” is a 12-hour durational performance experiment using sound, rope and physical touch to push towards exhaustion: the end of possibility. From 19:59 until sunrise, performers spin, levitated and supported, alongside an intertwined soundscape. When every possible note has been played, when every possible knot has been tied, untied, and retied, what is left?

Start: 19:59 Doors open for entry: 20:00 - 22:00 End: 07:59. Or until the last visitor leaves. Or until we can’t anymore. Whichever comes first.

RSVP for day-of entry instructions below or join the Telegram group.

Alex Hawthorn (b. 1986) (they/them) is an artist whose work flows between performance, installation, object-making, and sound-making. They use their work as a lens through which to investigate the natural world, specifically focusing on time: how we experience it, how we have codified it, and how we exist within it. Their live performances build emotion through layered soundscapes that slowly morph over time through a combination of archival audio, home-made instruments, and live electronics. This involves special long evolving sets that can last multiple hours.

Their work in theater has garnered them an Obie award, LA Ovation Awards, and has been exhibited across North and South America, Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, the Middle East, and on the Moon. Hawthorn’s recent research has focused on timescales beyond human perception: from the geologic to the cosmic. They have been a company member with Theater Mitu for more than 15 years and they are currently adjunct faculty at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.

ARTISTS: Alex Hawthorn - Lead artist (@alexhawthorn.studio) Diana Raiselis - Dramaturg (@_wrai) Jessa Bloom - Performer (@jessabloom.me) Noxknot - Performer (@noxknot) Roja - Performer (@roja.ropes) Schnecke - Performer (@schneckelike.ropes) sounds_of_distress - Performer (@sounds_of_distress) Trampa - Performer (@nudotrampa)

Daruma Karl-Marx-Straße 12057 Berlin

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