COVEN BERLIN presents ‘I’D RATHER BE A GODDESS THAN A CYBORG’, a feminist queer art festival that will present the work of artists of various disciplines with a common focus on feminism and technology. Special events, such as screenings, workshops, performances and talks will take place from May 8th to May 22nd 2015.
‘I’D RATHER BE A GODDESS THAN A CYBORG’ is curated by COVEN BERLIN‘s founders Lo Pecado and Judy Mièl and assisted by Angie Kohon. The location is Kleiner Salon, Manteuffelstrasse 42, 10997 Berlin.
Queer cyborgs, non-normative bodies, digital feminist art, social networks, A.I., trans-humanism, avatars, prosthetic enhancements, feminist science, reproduction, virtual sex, net activism and more.
Shatter the boundaries of flesh, soul and machine. Become.
WITH WORKS BY
Louise Trueheart & Costanza Candeloro
Kiona H. Niehaus
Frances Breden & In The Bush
Goodyn Green
Kytten Janae
GeoVanna Gonzalez
Fiona Valentine Thomann
Supported by Kleiner Salon and Mobile Kino
Watch the teaser below:
Join the official event on Facebook!
PROGRAM
Friday, May 8th, 7-11pm – THE GRAND OPENING
Performances:
SKYPE WITH ROBSON by Robson Missau Olbertz, 7:30pm
Live streaming of a magnet implant
ANDROIDIA by Ze Royale, 8pm
A cybersex station, where your wildest erotic phan- tasies become even wilder
S – E’XPRIME by Anarel·la Martínez-Madrid, 9:30pm
On her breasts, citrus are squeezed, so that on your cups, her body language is inscribed.
Saturday, May 9th – UNBOXING CONTRACEPTION: PILLS AND THE POLITICS OF GENDER
ABOUT THE WORKSHOP:
How does the contraceptive pill embody colonialist violences aimed at controlling, containing and assimilating gendered bodies, and how might this change or evolve in the future?
From the silphium of the Roman Empire to the birth control pill, contraception has always been a deeply political subject, where sexual freedom, colonialist fantasies and oppressive understandings of gender all mix into a poisonous brew. This session investigates pharmacological contraception and its profound connection to how we perceive, create and perform gender, proposing a discussion on how might the management of fertility and the economy of hormones in our bodies change in a near future.
TIME: 2pm – 6pm
LANGUAGE: English
PARTICIPANTS: 15
FEE: 12€
ABOUT THE FACILITATOR:
Luiza Prado is a PhD candidate in Design Research at the University of the Arts Berlin, funded by the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). Her research explores how pills act in the construction of third world cyborg identities and in the performance of gender and sexuality, and how their role may change change in the near future.
PLEASE RSVP to hello[at]covenberlin.com
Sunday, May 10th – ABLETON LIVE – MUSIC PRODUCTION WORKSHOP
ABOUT THE WORKSHOP
The hands-on workshop teaches the basics of music production with Ableton Live 9 with a special focus on programming beats and loops, working with audio samples, MIDI instruments and effects. Within the time frame of the workshop the participants will create a short track of their own from start to finish. The workshop also offers participants the opportunity to discuss any individual questions on the topic of music production with Ableton Live. The workshop is a beginner’s course, no previous knowledge of Ableton Live necessary.
REQUIREMENTS:
– Laptop
– Ableton Live 9 (Standard or Suite edition, available as free 30-days trial version: https://www.ableton.com/
– headphones
– optional: audio interface, MIDI controllers
TIME: 12 noon – 5pm (with a break in between)
LANGUAGE: English/German
PARTICIPANTS: 12
FEE: 40€ (ADVANCED PAYMENT – get in touch with us for more details – hello[at]covenberlin.com)
VERY IMPORTANT
Please authorise the demo version at home before the workshop begins, do not quit Live, but only close the laptop. We have only inadequate WiFi at Kleiner Salon and the demo version must be authorized via the Internet again every time.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Madeleine Bloom is a musician, producer, multi-instrumentalist and singer from Berlin with her own label Quixotica Records. She studied Electroacoustic Music at the Franz Liszt Conservatory and employs the acquired methods to create her unique blend of electronica pop. Madeleine’s music has garnered praise from renowned producers like Guy Sigsworth and Rupert Hine as well as a personal invitation from Grammy winner Imogen Heap to support her live. In the last few years she’s worked as a technical support for Ableton. Now she runs Sonic Bloom, continuing to help other people to make music teaching Ableton Live and music production in online courses, workshops and one-to-one lessons. By now she has taught Ableton Live to students on four continents.
http://sonicbloom.net/
http://madeleinebloom.com/
Tuesday, May 12th – UAV SOP BTW DTF – A performance by Louise Trueheart
We connect through screens. This one-on-one performance takes place on Skype, and juxtaposes two extreme screen situations: cam girls and drone warfare. These seemingly different on-screen experiences give perspective on intimacy and how we look for it, politics and how we unwittingly participate in it, objects and their power as autonomous agents, and ethics. The audience is given a military style mission at the outset: connect with a lost drone. When they are faced with a human body on Skype who can only communicate through messages that are pre-recorded on an iPhone, they are given both space and agency to face the screen in a different light.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Louise is a dancer, writer and choreographer. She is based in Berlin, grew up in Paris, and has an American passport. Louise is senior editor of online magazine COVEN BERLIN. Louise mostly makes one-on-one performances and has worked for Hana Erdman, Maria Scaroni, Frank Willens, Miguel Guttierrez, Ruairi Donovam, and is looking forward to working with Tino Sehgal this summer at Martin Gropius Bau.
Please note that there will soon be an addition to the program. Performance collective Quimera Rosa will perform alongside UAV SOP BTW DTF. Anticipate bodies electronic and suspicious behavior.
Performance from 7pm to 10pm – Doors open 7pm
Wednesday, May 13th – ALT-LIT NIGHT with Shabby Doll House Editor and Friends
Lucy K Shaw is the author of The Motion & the founding editor of Shabby Doll House (www.shabbydollhouse.com).
A live readings and poetry videos event with real life participations by Liz Bowen, Sheila Byers, Oscar Bruno d’Artois & Emily Wang.
http://oscarbrunodartois.tumblr.com/
http://www.whitewhalereview.com/issues/4.2/poetry/byers
Readings from 7:30pm to 10pm – Doors open at 7pm
Thursday, May 14th – QUEER CYBERPORN NIGHT
NEUROSEX PORNOIA Eps 1+ 2
by Eric Pussyboy and Abigail Gnash + Introduction + Q&A
Screening starts at 8:30pm – Doors open at 8pm
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Neurosex Pornoia develops as a continuous dark tale trilogy in episodes of 10 minutes each around the technology of ‘neurosex-codes.’ In this alternative reality, people have brain implants that give them access to encoded physiological experiences from other bodies. These implants allow people to obtain information from the brain through monitoring or scanning, and also to send information to the brain in the form of neuro-codes. The neurosex-codes are programmed to provide the user with any imaginable sexual experience by any kind of body, regardless of genitalia or any other physical difference.
http://neurosex-pornoia.squarespace.com
BABY YOURE FROZEN + Q&A
by Sadie Lune
Screening starts at 9:30pm
ABOUT THE FILM
Sexuality is increasingly lived through virtual formats. “babyyourefrozen” is an intensely personal and explicit look at the relationship between virtuality and intimacy; how virtual means facilitate connections of the heart and sex across great distances and time zones, but hinder feelings of closeness through digital obstacles. A raw and real portrayal of coping strategies for long-distance love in the 21st century where Skype sex is the best we get, but making love to a screen never satisfies the need for in-person physical intimacy with all of our senses. TMI: both touching and erotic.
http://sadielune.com/tumblr.com
Suggested donation: 3€
Friday, May 15th – Screening of REVOLUTION, RIOT GRRRL STYLE and Q&A with Director SONIA GONZALEZ
For decades, rock was above all a man’s world. But 25 years ago, punk rock girls started a noisy feminist revolution. They called themselves Riot Grrrl and were rebelling against a society which claimed that feminism belonged to the past. With bands like Bikini Kill and Bratmobile, Sleater-Kinney and many more, Riot Grrrl dynamited a male-dominated musical scene, blew up sexist clichés…and created a timeless language for young people.
Featuring interviews with key artists such as Kathleen Hanna, Allison Wolfe and Tammy Rae Carland, to name just a few, “Revolution, Riot Grrrl Style” tells the story of this fundamental page of punk rock feminism.
SCREENING + Q&A WITH DIRECTOR
Screening starts at 8pm – Doors open at 7:30 pm
SECOND SCREENING at 22:00
Suggested donation: 3€ – 6€
Sunday, May 17th – MECHANISM: EROTIC WRITING WORKSHOP by Ze Royale
Are you turned on by programming language and instructional manuals? Through MECHANISM, you will be inspired to see a ‘mechanical object’ through an erotic lense that will charge your imagination. This data will assist you in creating subjective, erotic, fantasies through free form writing. The challenge will be to use mechanical and instructional terminology in stimulating ways.
Please bring your favorite pen, paper, and a mechanical object (computer, phone, sim card, wires, plugs, vibrator, headphones, remote controls, etc.) to this workshop.
TIME: 2pm – 4pm
PARTICIPANTS: max. 15
FEE: suggested donation 15€ – 20€
LANGUAGE: English
PLEASE RSVP to hello[at]covenberlin.com
Monday, May 18th – SPINNING AROUND & CREATING SPACES
SPINNING AROUND -Performance by Adi Liraz and Nofar Sela
In an interactive performance Adi Liraz and Nofar Sela produce a text recreated by voice and by hand. Like the female spider, the artists weave a new world in which living objects are intagled, but at the same time, each one expresses her/history. As a result, a new matrix of one common and renewed world emerges.
With this performative action, and with a voice which is being heard or misheard from far away, from a different land and a different continent through a skype conversation, we are changing the current story and bringing our heritage to the existing space where we are present at.
“We are no longer silent since we have found new ways to raise our voices.
We are present.
We are here to stay”.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Adi Liraz is a multidisciplinary artist, curator and art producer. The main themes in her work are feminism/post-feminism, craftivism, migration and urbanism, and these are often expressed by intimacy vs. public space. The aim of Liraz´s creation is to instigate communication and exposure through provocation of hegemonic perceptions.
Nofar Sela is an Interdisciplinary artist, mainly working in object theater, performance, visual arts and text. She is constantly traveling between mediums, materials and artistic languages, exploring different options of expression.
Performance starts at 6:30pm – Doors open at 6pm
A RAIL OF ONE’S OWN – CREATING SPACES FOR WOMEN IN IT by Laura Laugwitz
Women* have always been part of Computer Science. They have lain the
groundwork as well as pushed innovations. However, today, they are considered a marginalized group within IT. This talk will analyze how women* create their own spaces for learning and beyond (by the example of Rails Girls Berlin). It is based on participant observation in 2013 (before the presenter was part of the organizers group) but will also integrate newer findings. There will also be time for questions and a discussion is welcome.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Laura Laugwitz is a former Cultural Anthropologist now lost in Computer Science. She’s a Rails Girls Berlin Organizer, plusmum, intersectional feminist.
ABOUT THE ORGANISATION
Founded in April 2012, Rails Girls Berlin is the daughter of the worldwide non-profit organization Rails Girls that started in Finland, trying to close the gender gap in IT. Currently less than 20% of computer science majors are female, leaving women to be mostly consumers of technological products instead of creators and makers.
Rails Girls Berlin is trying to change the gender imbalance by giving women the opportunity and a community to start learning to code. In addition to that, they want to empower women to follow their dreams and put their business ideas into reality without a technical co-founder.
Talk starts at 8pm
Tuesday, May 19th – Screening of I.K.U. This is not LOVE. This is SEX. and Q&A with Director Shu Lea Cheang
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Shu Lea Cheang is a multimedia art pioneer working since the eighties. She has has worked in the field of net-based installation, social interface, networked performance and film production. Her work traverses between hard and soft, sex and politics, fiction and reality, fantasia and earth-bound.
One of her major works, Brandon (1998-1999) gathers its name from brutally murdered young transman Brandon Teena and conveys the “fluidity and ambiguity of gender and identity in contemporary societies.” It was also the first web-based commisioned art work by the Guggenheim Museum in New York. A prime example of cyberfeminism, Brandon utilizes technology as a means to break down social assumptions about gender in both the realm of technology and in society at large.
Cheang’s focus is set on deconstructing the economic machinations of the Internet: its virtual and real exchanges of commodities driven by profit, power, and desire.
ABOUT THE MOVIE
I.K.U. is a 2001 independent film marketed as “a Japanese Sci-Fi Porn Feature”. The film was partially inspired by Blade Runner(1982) and is set in or about the year 2030. I.K.U.’s premise involves a futuristic corporation sending shapeshifting cyborgs out into New Tokyo to collect “orgasm data” by means of sexual intercourse. The title is a pun on the Japanese word iku (行く) which, in sexual slang, is used to express an orgasm.
I.K.U. premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2000. It marks the first time a pornographic film was selected for competition in the festival. According to director Shu Lea Cheang, approximately 40 percent of the audience walked out over the course of the film, predominately during the sex scenes.
Screening starts at 7:30pm – Doors open at 7pm
Due to very limited seats at Kleiner Salon, there will be a second screening May 20th at 10:00pm in Moviemento!
Suggested donation: 3€ – 6€
Wednesday, May 20th – FEMINISM, CYBER/CYPHERPUNK AND THE LIQUID FUTURE OF FLUIDØ with Shu Lea Cheang
Following the acclaimed cyberpunk movie I.K.U., which premiered at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival and screened worldwide, Shu Lea Cheang is set to direct FLUIDØ in 2015 with Juergen Bruning Filmproduktion and Berlin-based crew and cast members.
Set in a post-AIDS past future, while the Government rushes to declare an AIDS FREE era, the mutated AIDS virus gives birth to ZERO GEN. These gender fluid ZERO GENs are the bio-drug carriers whose white fluid is the hyper drug for the 21st century, taking over the markets of the 20th century white powder high. The new drug code named DELTA diffuses through skin contacts and gives an addictive high; a high that pumped up all needle entry points with sen-sexual-sation.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Shu Lea Cheang is a multimedia art pioneer working since the eighties. She has has worked in the field of net-based installation, social interface, networked performance and film production. Her work traverses between hard and soft, sex and politics, fiction and reality, fantasia and earth-bound.
One of her major works, Brandon (1998-1999) gathers its name from brutally murdered young transman Brandon Teena and conveys the “fluidity and ambiguity of gender and identity in contemporary societies.” It was also the first web-based commisioned art work by the Guggenheim Museum in New York. A prime example of cyberfeminism, Brandon utilizes technology as a means to break down social assumptions about gender in both the realm of technology and in society at large.
Cheang’s focus is set on deconstructing the economic machinations of the Internet: its virtual and real exchanges of commodities driven by profit, power, and desire.
To make Shu Lea Cheang’s third film FLUIDØ come to life and start shooting in winter 2015, she is preparing a crowdfunding campaign starting in May. Stay posted with FLUIDØ the movie
https://www.facebook.com/
Talk starts at 7:30pm – Doors open at 7pm
Suggested donation: 3€ – 6€
Wednesday, May 20th – SECOND SCREENING OF I.K.U. + Q&A with Shu Lea Cheang
Due to very limited seats at Kleiner Salon, there will be a second screening of I.K.U. This is not LOVE. This is SEX. and Q&A with Director Shu Lea Cheang at 10pm in Moviemento Kino
https://www.moviemento.de/
ABOUT THE MOVIE
I.K.U. is a 2001 independent film marketed as “a Japanese Sci-Fi Porn Feature”. The film was partially inspired by Blade Runner(1982) and is set in or about the year 2030. I.K.U.’s premise involves a futuristic corporation sending shapeshifting cyborgs out into New Tokyo to collect “orgasm data” by means of sexual intercourse. The title is a pun on the Japanese word iku (行く) which, in sexual slang, is used to express an orgasm.
I.K.U. premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2000. It marks the first time a pornographic film was selected for competition in the festival. According to director Shu Lea Cheang, approximately 40 percent of the audience walked out over the course of the film, predominately during the sex scenes.
Thursday, May 21st – PREMIERE of DESTRUCTION OF DUDE by Lo-Fi Cherry Porn Pics and Q&A with Director
Lo-Fi Cherry produces videos and workshops, focusing on feminist tentacle porn. A feminist examination and play with different takes on the Japanese bondage porn genre. The Japanese sub-genre ”tentacle porn” has developed several ideas of what counts as a tentacle. Octopuses, cyborgarms, alien limbs, hair, branches and roots. The thing they have in common is the fact that they all try to look and act like a human penis. Feminist tentacle porn is science-fiction porn starring a female sex predator, highlights the monster fun qualities of the female body and puts female sensations and desires over beauty. DESTRUCTION OF DUDE is the second film in a series of feminist tentacle porn short after SPACE LABIA, which was shown in the PornFilmFestival Berlin 2014.
Screening starts at 8:30pm – Doors open at 7pm
Suggested donation: 3€
Friday, May 22nd – CLOSING PARTY AT LOOPHOLE starting at 11:00pm
Join us for the closing party of our feminist queer art festival I’D RATHER BE A GODDESS THAN A CYBORG on May 22nd at the former brothel Loophole. With an all-female lineup and a queer interactive performance, this event will be the climax of the event series.
Shatter the boundaries of flesh, soul and machine. Dance.
TIMETABLE:
23:00 – 00:30 Ya Tosiba
https://soundcloud.com/
00:30 – 01:30 ESOC is a social opera, a camera rave. ESOC is the show of the century!
https://www.facebook.com/
01:30 – 03:30 Jessica Polar
https://soundcloud.com/jessica-polar/i-need-a-beat-mix
03:30 – 05:30 Schmitzkatzki
https://soundcloud.com/schmitzkatzki
1 Comment