KW Pogo Bar Podcasts

For "Truth is a Matter of the Imagination", Thea Reifler and Phila Bergmann invited Lou Drago, Isabel Lewis, Ann Mbuti and Omsk Social Club for exchanges of thoughts departing from science fiction quotes. They sat down to talk about how the genre has influenced their ways of thinking, relating, creating art and programming institutions. Within the conversations, they discuss how it changed their perceptions of truth and fiction, dreamtime and world-time, structures and processes as well as change and collaboration. The podcast’s tone is tentative, probing, searching—it presents thoughts that are explored together and conversations that find neither certainty nor a conclusion.

With quotes by: Judith Butler, Octavia E. Butler, N.K. Jemisin, Nnedi Okorafor and Ursula K. Le Guin, as well as text parts inspired by Marge Piercy

Voices (in order of appearance from the beginning of the podcast): Thea Reifler, Phila Bergmann, Omsk Social Club, Lou Drago, Ann Mbuti, Isabel Lewis

Editing and Sound: Kat Merten

Special thanks to: Lou Drago, Isabel Lewis, Ann Mbuti and Omsk Social Club

Thea Reifler (CH) und Phila Bergmann (DE) work as curators and artists in music theater, opera and performance. In the last years they developed and engaged in interdisciplinary projects inspired by queer-feminist concepts. Since 2020, they are the artistic directors of Shedhalle Zürich. With their concept PROTOZONES 2020-2025 they are establishing Shedhalle as an institution for process based art.

Reifler and Bergmann previously showed work at Museum Hamburger Bahnhof—Museum für Gegenwart—Berlin; 3HD-Festival, Berlin; Sophiensaele, Berlin; radialsystem, Berlin; Zürcher Theaterspektakel, Zürich; SpielArt-Festival, Munich; Nowy-Teatr, Warschau; HELLERAU – European Center for the Arts, Dresden; and Opera Darmstadt.

"Mutiny on the Bivalvia" is a radio play about power and relationships. In an interview, a seafarer and previously successful artist delineates her motives for wanting to become a member of the female crew on board of the „Bivalvia“ and her daily life as a seafarer. The interviewer has but one question on her mind: What has lead the all-women crew to shipwreck and mutiny?

Text and direction: Nadja Abt

Seafarer: Mareike Wenzel

Interviewer: Nadja Abt

Music: Alabaster DePlume

Sound: Nadja Abt & Franz Schütte

Nadja Abt is an artist and writer, living between Berlin and Lisbon. Abt studied Literature and Art History at Freie Universität Berlin as well as Fine Arts at Universität der Künste Berlin and the Universidad Torcuato di Tella in Buenos Aires. In her performances, videos and paintings, she constructs feminist narratives that reference the world of literature and film. She is part of the artist collective Michelle Volta. Recent exhibitions and performances include KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Pivô, São Paulo; Casa Triângulo, São Paulo. She has upcoming shows at Bärenzwinger, Berlin (April 2021) and Galeria Diferença, Lisbon (October 2021).

"Anecdotal Through-isms" is a resource-as-podcast/podcast-as-resource. The collection of anecdotal references of phenomena exist ‘through’ the presences and remnants of everyday sonic utterances—including, but not limited to, experiential drum patterns1; songs deconstructed and recreated owing to copyright law limitations2; articulated or musical oral gestures3; migratory toenail reverberations4; and unanticipated splashes5.

‘Through-ism’ is proposed as a way of speaking ‘through’ rather than ‘about’ these said utterances: to indicate how they exist as sources and/or references; to think about the slippages, (dis)associations and distinctions they carry; and to delve into the inexhaustible narrative possibilities they offer.

Simnikiwe Buhlungu is interested in the mechanisms that produce and mediate knowledge[s]; how it is produced and by whom, its dissemination and its nuances as a commonplace ecology. She uses her practice to wrestle between these questions and their infinite potential answers. Lately, she enjoys listening to gospel music and has been thinking about apiaries.

Buhlungu (born in South Africa, 1995) currently is a resident at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam (2020—2022). Recent engagements include Collective Intimacies—Notes to Self: Intimate 1, mural project, The Showroom, London (2019) and Small World Real World, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2020—2021). She obtained her BAFA degree from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (2017).

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1 Ecaweni; esontweni

2 Gal Costa says she loves you

3 Also known as mxm, tchuips, tuipu, suruntu/surunci, tyuri, KMT, mtcheew and steups, amongst many ad infinitum

4 An encounter paralleling umbona (maize, mealies), jacaranda, water hyacinth und Suliram

5 A puddle as pause