Next Level – Festival for Games

Next Level 2020 - Festival For Games

The project began in 2016 as an exploration of real time vocal manipulations developed by Spanish composer / engineer Santiago Latorre. From there The Architecture of Friendship has taken different forms. In 2017, Colombian artist and choreographer Carlos Maria Romero aka Atabey and Santiago began working at the Etopia Center for Art and Technology (Zaragoza) on a performance inspired by the idea of ecosystem. In 2018, singer / composer Colin Self began a residency for FUGA at Etopia where he hoped to bridge the vocal ecology of XOIR with a narrative of singing as resistance. After the abrupt arrival of a spine injury, Colin's time at Etopia shifted toward a process of slowing down and healing. Singing as a form of resistance and care became a theme in Santiago and Colin’s collaboration. The Architecture of Friendship took a new form as a musical project weaving in Atabey Carlos and Nieves Arilla.

Colin Self: Composition, Performance, Direction
Santiago Latorre: Composition, Performance, Direction, Engineering
Carlos Atabey Maria: Performance, Text, Dramaturgy
Nieves Arilla: Performance
Sara Paniagua: Lighting Design
Moisés Horta: Realtime Light and Sound Processing
Hans-Jürgen Müller: Technical Direction

"Architecture of Friendship" by Colin Self is created in cooperation with FMN2020 (WOMAN MUSICA NOVA). The premiere will take place on 18.11.2020 at 19.30 in the Marienstraße, Marienstraße 71-73, 50825 Cologne / 

) With the support of the Etopia Center for Art and Technology in Zaragoza. 

Colin Self is an artist, composer and choreographer based in Berlin and New York. They create music and performance pieces designed to trouble binaries and play with the boundaries of perception. Self works with a broad range of communities using voices, bodies, and computers as tools to interface with biological and technological software. Self is a teacher at NYU’s Clive Davis Institute in Berlin, and has presented work at The Dutch National Opera, HAU Berlin, The New Museum, The Kitchen NYC and Issue Project Room, among many international festivals and venues. They are a Rhizome Commission Grant recipient and a Queer Art Mentorship Fellow, served as an Eyebeam Resident in 2016 and a resident fellow at Etopia for FUGA in Zaragoza, Spain in 2018. Self is a co-founder of the NYC queer performance collective Chez Deep and The Radical Diva Grant. They also work closely with Holly Herndon and has performed with her touring ensemble since 2015. Self runs XOIR, an international non-utilitarian vocal workshop focused on alternative modalities of group singing, and releases solo music on the experimental record label RVNG Intl.

Santiago Latorre is an artist and engineer interested in how the organic and the living participate, and can affect all phases of a sound object, from the moment of conception to perception. This fascination is apparent in his projects including the Sonification of the Human Genome, the private performance A Pie De Cama, which consists of a collection of a cappella songs sung directly into the ear of people lying in bed, and in his two solo albums Órbita (Accretions, 2008) and Eclíptica (Foehn Records, 2011). He has worked on various dance, art, fashion and film projects presented in spaces such as Tate Modern (London), Quanta Arts Foundation (Taipei) and Fundació Antoni Tàpies (Barcelona). In 2012, he composed the music for the film Interior. Leather Bar, co-directed by James Franco and Travis Mathews. Latorre curates FUGA in Zaragoza, Spain, an artist in residency program, as well as an exhibition platform and educational content incubator that fosters community, interconnecting artists, creatives and collectives who, from different angles of music, art and technology work with sound as their tool.

Carlos Maria Romero (aka Atabey Mamasita) is a Caribbean Colombian multidisciplinary artist with background in dance, live art, pedagogy, heritage and architectural activism, cultural engineering and occasionally curating. A founding member of SPIT! - Sodomites, Perverts, Inverts Together!, who, since 2017, has performed a series of queer manifestos; and Vividero Colectivo, whose projects seek to reclaim marginalised social practices and architectural sites as cultural heritage. In 2016, Maria Romero developed Vogue-Chi, a movement practice for people aged 50+ that evolved into a multi-generational queer and allies safe space for self-expression; in 2018, A House of Ecstatic Virality, a dance and conversation practice, in collaboration with Latinx and Polish volunteers, creating a life affirming environment for people to explore HIV related issues; and in 2019, Like a Ghost Dance/The Heartbeat Spiral, a dance meditation to harness constructive aspects of the dying process. Maria Romero’s most recent performances HQ - (I Feel so Mezzaniney), a collaboration with Steven Warwick, and the series Muy Serio, have been presented at Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín, Volksbühne Berlin, London Contemporary Music Festival, Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge, Jupiter Artland in Edinburg and Montréal, Arts Interculturels among other places. Currently Maria Romero is a Postgraduate Student at The Royal Academy of Arts in London, with a shared base in Margate, UK.

Nieves Arilla is a singer and composer. For more than 15 years she contributed with her voice to records and concerts of Spanish artists such as Javier Álvarez, Pablo Guerrero, Diego Vasallo or Jabier Muguruza. She was part of the cabaret project Las Maris with Javier Álvarez and the pop song group Facunda. She has also composed music for audiovisual projects, installations and short films by Amanda Pola, Yann-Loïc Lambert and Pilar Gutiérrez, among others. At present, she keeps active the project A Pie De Cama together with Santiago Latorre.

The Architecture of Friendship is a collective project inspired by the notion of ecosystem and the value of interdependence led by Colin Self and Santiago Latorre, and performed with Carlos Maria Romero (aka Atabey Mamasita) and Nieves Arilla.

Concert & performance: Colin Self & Santiago Latorre

An artist currently based in New York and Berlin.

Architecture of friendship - creation studio

In of course i still love you loss of signal, the audience will be taken on a spaceship trip without mission: The performance begins long after the radio contact to the ground control has been lost. The space station, as an autonomous little microcosmos, moves completely aimlessly through space and time; however the control room keeps on sending: a living Golden Record, a sort of radio station without listeners – if unavoidably alone, then at least with drones and synthesizers. By means of interactive sound objects, a home-made sci-fi orchestra and, most of all, musical live improvisation, the audience will be able to explore the spaceship and to make contact with its crew.

The three members of the paranormal φeer group (Jakob Boeckh & Maria Huber & Ole Hübner) met each other during their studies at the Giessen Institute of Applied Theatre Studies  and have created music theatre and discourse together as an artistic-scientific collective ever since, considering both as inseparably interweaved strategies with political, queer and utopian claim. They appear as a trio as well as in various constellations with collaborators such as the stage director Friederike Blum, the performer Neo Hülcker, the scenographer Tassilo Tesche and the performer Lea König. 

For each project they develop individual working strategies that feed on philosophy, theory and literature and always generate their moving force from the dissolution, amalgamation and rotation of conventional role ascriptions – composition, dramaturgy, scenography, mise-en-scène etc. As a team they function in a radically discursive, non-hierarchical and direct democratic way and consider all parameters of an artistic work as equal and engaged in reciprocal interference. 

Current projects include the lecture performance Staying Broken in collaboration with the composer/performer Neo Hülcker (Festival für immaterielle Kunst, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, September 2020) as well as the first part of the music theatre project of course i still love you loss of signal (Next Level Festival, PACT Zollverein Essen, November 2020).

of course i still love you loss of signal is created by the paranormal φeer group together with the performance artist Amélie Haller, the composer and performer Julia Mihály, the accordionist and jazz pianist Julius Schepansky, and the percussionist and sound inventor Miguel Ángel García Martín. | www.instagram.com/paranormal.phi

In of course i still love you loss of signal, the audience will be taken on a spaceship trip without mission: The performance begins long after the radio contact to the ground control has been lost. 

Performance: of course i still love you loss of signal

The three members of the paranormal φeer group (Jakob Boeckh & Maria Huber & Ole Hübner) met each other during their studies at the Giessen Institute of Applied Theatre Studies  and have created music theatre and discourse together as an artistic-scientific collective ever since, considering both as inseparably interweaved strategies with political, queer and utopian claim. They appear as a trio as well as in various constellations with collaborators such as the stage director Friederike Blum, the performer Neo Hülcker, the scenographer Tassilo Tesche and the performer Lea König. For each project they develop individual working strategies that feed on philosophy, theory and literature and always generate their moving force from the dissolution, amalgamation and rotation of conventional role ascriptions – composition, dramaturgy, scenography, mise-en-scène etc. As a team they function in a radically discursive, non-hierarchical and direct democratic way and consider all parameters of an artistic work as equal and engaged in reciprocal interference. Current projects include the lecture performance Staying Broken in collaboration with the composer/performer Neo Hülcker (Festival für immaterielle Kunst, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, September 2020) as well as the first part of the music theatre project of course i still love you loss of signal (Next Level Festival, PACT Zollverein Essen, November 2020).

of course i still love you loss of signal

https://www.nicolas-berge.de/nextlevelvideowalk

Via tablet and headphones, the audience is guided across the Zollverein grounds and experiences the fusion of both levels in constant comparison of pre-produced audio/video material with the reality/live performance.

Video Walk with Lucia Kilger & Nicolas Berge

As a composer and pianist Nicolas Berge researches in the fields of music in connection with electronics and other artistic disciplines. Collaborating with other musicians, dancers and visual artists he creates transdisciplinary works with video, electronics or choreography. Beyond the pieces themselves he is interested in shaping the context and format in which his pieces appear. Currently Nicolas studies in the composition class of Prof. Michael Beil at the Cologne University of Music and Dance, having already graduated as a pianist in the classes of Prof. Sheila Arnold and Prof. Paulo Álvares. During his piano studies he specialized more and more in contemporary music and interdisciplinary collaborations. He took part in festivals such as Acht Brücken Festival or next_generation festival at ZKM Karlsruhe and has worked with artists like Ensemble Musikfabrik or Pina Bausch Tanztheater Wuppertal. 

Composer, multimedia artist and sound director with a focus on interdisciplinary projects and collaboration

For Lucia Kilger, intermediality is at the core of her practice and a central concept of her compositional work. Her vocational training in media design as well as her work as video and sound technician in a different range of contexts provides a solid foundation for her artistic approach to music, electronics and mediality. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Musikdesign at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Trossingen and completed the practical semester at EXPERIMENTALSTUDIO of Südwestrundfunk in Freiburg. She completed her Master's degree in electroacoustic composition with Michael Beil at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne. Most recently, she was the recipient of the scholarship for Sound Design of the International Ensemble Modern Academy, where she subsequently received a Master's degree in Contemporary Music at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Frankfurt am Main. She works as composer, multimedia artist and sound director with a focus on interdisciplinary projects and collaboration.

We have now often been in the future and are now continuously (re)producing it in this specific moment. Our time and options of action both seem to be crunched between the approaching past on the one side and the progressing future on the other, requiring constant high performance and fast reaction - in an attempt to achieve sufficiently good results. Therefore we continuously compress individual, collective and global perspectives in real time reflecting an already past present. It indeed never was and still is not a piece of cake.

With the performative installation Why Not? Remember The Future, Why Not? Kollektiv showcases excerpts of held presents and attempts to reveal simultaneously running individual and collective processes therein. Their time, options of action and progress is determined by individual perspectives, decisions as well as collective agreements. They may chronologically overlap and emotionally intersect over and over again. As they did in the past, whenever we allowed them to.

Achieving sufficiently good results is not a prerequisite, but remains possible.

by Guy Dermosessian, Alexander Hügel, O. Hyunsin Kim, David Guy Kono, Kioomars Musayyebi, Rasmus Nordholt-Frieling, Sebastian Richau, Nona Siepmann, Romy Schmidt, Muhammad Tamim, Bijan Tavili, Aleksandar Todorovic, Ozan Tekin, Yung-Ju Tsai and the Kolorit Studio

A co-production by Next Level – Festival for Games, Theater im Pumpenhaus, Münster and Schauspielhaus Bochum.. Funded by the Ministry Of Culture and Sciences of Northrhine-Westphalia and Fonds Darstellende Künste. With the kind support of Abacus Electronics and MMT Veranstaltungstechnik. 

A performative installation and concert. A co-production by Next Level – Festival for Games, Theater im Pumpenhaus, Münster and Schauspielhaus Bochum. 

Performance & concert with Why Not?

Between music, dance and media art - between past and present - WHY NOT? unravels new global networks and overwrites old systems.

Since its foundation in summer 2018, the collective WHY NOT? has been dedicated to the central themes and questions of visibility and representation in the performing arts in various formats and productions. In ever-changing constellations of performers, dancers, musicians, composers and media artists, hybrid media, performative and musical works are created that offer the audience multiple and multi-layered perspectives on a complex global present.

Why Not? Remember The Future

Process-oriented, intermedia music performances, which are not performed as "representative works" but rather practice the idea of artistic production, artistic research and open-ended community. Inclusion of the audience through interactivity and inclusion of the audience in the production processes, so that they inscribe themselves in the work being created. Mobile, pervasive and stationary happenings. Curated by componist Brigitta Muntendorf.

Performance

Tejo

Big Brother has arrived - and it’s you. Investigate the lives of citizens to find those responsible for a series of terror attacks. Information from the internet, personal communications and private files are all accessible to you. But, be warned, the information you supply will have consequences.

Orwell

Occupy Mars is a highly technical, open world, sandbox game about Mars colonisation. Build and upgrade your base, discover new amazing regions, conduct mining operations, retrieve water and generate oxygen, grow crops, fix broken parts, learn how to survive on Mars!

Occupy Mars

Democracy4

Voxon

In a gaming corner, visitors can use the switch console to retreat and lose themselves in the playable graphic novel. 

Liberated

Watch Dogs: Legion

Simon will be unpacking themes of extractions, technology, accountability and climate through a Minecraft in-game tour of his last exhibition MINE, currently on show simultaneously at K21, Düsseldorf and on the Minecraft platform. 

Art meets Minecraft

In this session Dirk Meyer looks at the state of ecology and digitally and how their interdependencies are key to designing a vision towards positive futures in both spheres. 

Discussion on Ecology & Digitality

THE AGENCY examines surrogacy as an ambivalent phenomenon: Is the surrogate mother as a figure predestined to mark reproductive work as work?

Welcome to AshramMommies: A VR performance

From #solidarityisforwhitewomen to #MeToo, gaming culture provides an interesting case study to explore the experiences of women within the transmediated spaces of gaming.

Black Streamers Changing the Game

Due to the global pandemic, the digital world becomes the safe space to meet, exchange and work together. What is the new reality? Do we stroll in a park outside similar to how we scroll the internet?

AR-Gaming during Corona Lockdown

Our cities are clean, tidy. Everything is recycled. Wait a minute... In 2018, when China said that the country would no longer accept "foreign waste", we found out that very little plastic can be recycled at all.

Evolution of Fish: Immerse into underwater wasteland

Only a small fraction of the global gaming market is featuring themes that aren't of a fictional nature. In this session Georg Hobmeier will introduce the audience to selected projects. 

On Documentary Games and the Extractive Industries

After everything ended, everything started. MengXuan is closing the festival with a self introduction as an avatar. Followed by a live presentation of her latest piece “Taì Chū 3030” - an after-death digital soul. 