Kin City Arts · October 17-19 · ZK/U, Siemensstraße 27, 10551 Berlin
Free entry, limited seats, registration required by Oct. 15. Register here.
Chuquicamata: Necropolitics and Autopoiesis of a Mining City
Lecture-Performance + Installation: Constanza Mendoza
Thursday, October 17, 7 p.m.
Location: ZK/U, Siemensstraße 27, 10551 Berlin
Free entry, limited seats, registration required by Oct. 15.
The Atacama Desert in Chile is marked as a colonial and imperial ‘empty’ space, conquered, occupied, plundered, and polluted for centuries. The first mineral extracted was silver, mined by the Spanish Empire in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. In the 19th century, sodium nitrate was ‘discovered,’ which led to the Pacific War with Bolivia and Peru. Atacama and the nitrate industry ended up under the Chilean flag, but in British hands until the late 1940s, when Germany invented synthetic nitrate. The Great Copper Mine emerged in the late 1940s as an alternative to the crisis in the nitrate industry. US private investment developed the Great Copper Mine in Atacama and the creation of the mining town of Chuquicamata. Constanza Mendoza was born in Chuquicamata in the year that President Salvador Allende nationalized copper mining. Using a multi-scalar approach, the artist relates the history and politics of Chuquicamata to her own family, linking times, spaces, and urban ecologies that have been separated for too long.
This event takes place in the context of the Kin City Festival (Oct. 17-19). Register here: https://berlinergazette.de/projects/kin-city
VWagner City-Edda
Oral storytelling: Cata von Noxen, Sara Petrolova, and Model Y. Schrottkiste
Friday, October 18, 7 p.m.
Location: ZK/U, Siemensstraße 27, 10551 Berlin
Free entry, limited seats, registration required by Oct. 15.
A look from the future to the present. Cata von Noxen, Sara Petrolova and Model Y. Schrottkiste tell and decipher the forgotten “VWagner City-Edda.” How will future generations view all the hesitation and procrastination in the face of today’s climate change? How hopeless will the current situation appear from the perspective of the future? Is the city alive, dead, or even undead? Do we really want to know what the smart city thinks about us? Has everything been gambled away? What happened to the belief in the omnipotence of our own actions?
This event takes place in the context of the Kin City Festival (Oct. 17-19). Register here: https://berlinergazette.de/projects/kin-city
The City of Milk, Honey, and Other Leftovers
A Sari-Sari Night: Pepe Dayaw and Special Guests
Saturday, October 19, 7 p.m.
Location: ZK/U, Siemensstraße 27, 10551 Berlin
Free entry, limited seats, registration required by Oct. 15.
A short walk in the streets and around every corner you can find old clothes waiting to find their new emperors. There are renegades of the hunter- gatherer, scavenging food from various surplus coffers. There are recycled ghosts that come alive at night, armed with leftover hunger. The nextdoor neighbor harvests honey from her backyard. Milk is cheap and so is the chance for a new tomorrow. And then there is high-quality coconut oil. The city is a lush forest, all you need is love, determination, and a proper visa.
In an auto-ethnographic pseudo-report cum variety show of sorts, Pepe Dayaw pays tribute to the city that has become their home base for the past eleven years. Since moving to Europe in 2010, Dayaw has been fashioning autofictional performances based on their fluid perspective of a Filipino queer migrant subject. In 2012, Dayaw began a series of leftover dinners in private homes in Madrid, creating impromptu meals out of food found in refrigerators and pantries and what the guests brought. In 2013, Dayaw moved to Berlin and continued to perform cooking (with what is there) as Nowhere Kitchen, eventually traveling to four continents. Working with and queering themes of nostalgia, home, memory, and embodiment, they fuse different folklores; primarily using the arts of flavor, movement, music, and critical hospitality to craft stories through improvised scores and unusual scenarios. In addition to independently developing their own vocabulary of dance and ethics of movement, Dayaw is a textile/fashion/costume designer, writer, and a karaoke-loving amateur singer.
This event takes place in the context of the Kin City Festival (Oct. 17-19). Register here: https://berlinergazette.de/projects/kin-city
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The “Kin City” arts program is part of the “Kin City” festival, celebrating BG’s 25th anniversary. It is organized by BG and funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion, the German Federal Agency for Civic Education/bpb, and Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. The event is a cooperation with ZK/U – Center for Art and Urbanistics. Outreach partners include Common Ecologies, Harun Farocki Institut, Kuda.org, LeftEast, NON, Supermarkt, and Undisciplined Environments. More info on the festival program here: https://berlinergazette.de/projects/kin-city