Traumabarundkino

Trauma Bar und Kino announces Songs for Attunement, featuring durational performances from Colin Self, Iceboy Violet, Steven Warwick, Golin & more, Jul 1—3

15 June 2022

Trauma Bar und Kino presents Songs for Attunement, an “exhibition of live works” featuring durational performances on July 1 and 3.

With performative installations from six artists including Colin Self, Iceboy Violet and Steven Warwick, the project will immerse Trauma Bar und Kino in activations spanning spoken word, movement and electronics. Also featuring Golin, Lil Asaf and Stine Janvin, the events explore the terms ‘attunement’ and ‘enaction’—borrowed from psychology and biology—to dissolve barriers of traditional musical performance. As noted in the press release: “Without beginning or end, and without the separation of “stage”, visitors can engage with the artists (and vice-versa) with no predictable linearity or outcome. The live works function individually, but also as a whole, creating a sonic/performative ecosystem, with the body and the voice both medium and artwork.”

See Trauma Bar und Kino’s website for more information and tickets.**

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Examining mystical rites of passage in a technological mediascape with a group show curated by Synchron Magazine at Berlin’s Trauma Bar und Kino

14 March 2022
Chiu Laozhi, Spinning Claw, 旋爪 (2022). Installation view. Image courtesy the artist + Trauma Bar und Kino, Berlin.

Liminal Bridges, a group exhibition curated by Synchron Magazine, is directed by and hosted at Berlin’s Trauma Bar und Kino, running February 19 to March 19.

Featuring work by Claire Barrow, Ben Sang, Chiu Laozhi, Alicia Gladston and more, the exhibition marks the launch of Synchron Magazine, with pieces centred around themes of magic and spiritually explored in the debut issue. Also featuring Kay Yoon, Adam Varab, Johannes Farfsing and Sal Salandra, the show’s installations spanning wood, metal, embroidery and mixed media bring together artists examining mystical rites of passage in a technological mediascape.**

Synchron Magazine’s Liminal Bridges group exhibition is on at Trauma Bar und Kino, Berlin, running February 19 to March 19, with a finissage featuring Emma DJ with Yves Ciroc and ZAH on Saturday March 19, 2022.

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Pandemic era cybernetics & contemporary spirituality in the ritual performances & installation of i8i

11 October 2021

Infinite Scroll, a group exhibition by i8i, is on at Trauma Bar und Kino, Berlin, curated by Madalina Stanescu and running September 17 to October 17.

i8i, Infinite Scroll (2021). Performance view. Photo by Camille Blake. Image courtesy the artists + Trauma Bar und Kino, Berlin.

With live performances, sound and installation interventions, the collective — who formed online and include DÆMON, Ben Sang, Riccardo d’Avola-Corte, FITNESSS, 011668 and more — explore pandemic era digital imaginaries, cybernetics and contemporary spirituality. Also featuring Jæce, S280F, münki, Lag Switch, Pain Party, VVXXII, and Lucid Interval, Infinite Scroll is the collective’s first offline project, in which venue Trauma Bar und Kino becomes “the host body for ritual extraction.”**

The Infinite Scroll group exhibition by i8i, is on at Berlin’s Trauma Bar und Kino, running September 17 to October 17, with a closing event featuring DÆMON + FALSE PRPHT, Bungalovv, and I-VYE on October 15, 2021.

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i8i collective presents an exhibition & performances evoking conspiracy, cybernetic imaginaries & spirituality at Trauma Bar und Kino, Sep 17—Oct 17

2 September 2021

i8i is presenting the exhibition Infinite Scroll at Trauma Bar und Kino, Berlin, curated by Madalina Stanescu and running September 17 to October 17, with opening night performances on the evenings of September 17 and 18, 2021.

Through sound, sculpture and live actions, the collective — formed online during COVID-19 and featuring artists including DÆMON, Ben Sang, Riccardo d’Avola-Corte, FITNESSS and more — evokes conspiracy, cybernetic imaginaries and spirituality for their first offline event in what they dub “General Accepted Reality.” As stated in the press release: “Recent events have caused reality to seize. Time begins to loop indefinitely. A neo archeological site catalogues events occurring within this temporal rift.”

See here for more information, or Resident Advisor to book opening night performance tickets.**

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Ghostly paintings & pop gothic atmospheres in the dungeon-like exhibition environment of Christian Thomsen aka Fjorsk

21 June 2021

I’m In Love With A Ghost, a solo exhibition by Christian Thomsen (aka Fjorsk), was on at Berlin’s Trauma Bar und Kino, running June 4 to June 18, 2021.

Christian Thomsen (Fjorsk), I’m In Love With A Ghost (2021). Exhibition view. Photo by Eneas Bohatsch. Image courtesy the artist + Trauma Bar und Kino, Berlin.

Featuring ghostly airbrushed paintings, metalwork candelabras and ceramic sculptures, Fjorsk’s work plays with the dungeon-like space to create a pop gothic atmosphere. As stated in the press text: “Playfulness underlies a steady darkness, diffusion leads to clarity on the artist’s quest for a soul in the mist.”**

Christian Thomsen aka Fjorsk’s I’m In Love With A Ghost was on at Trauma Bar und Kino, Berlin, running June 4 to June 18, 2021.

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Juliana Huxtable, Ziúr & Theresa Baumgartner’s OFF LICENSE presents a sublime audio-visual poem with sonic pyrotechnics at Berlin’s Traumabarundnino

14 December 2020

Juliana Huxtable, Ziúr and Theresa Baumgartner presented OFF LICENSE at Trauma Bar und Kino, Berlin on October 1 and 2, with a teaser video and documentation premiering on AQNB today. The collaborative performance was the second project by Huxtable and Ziúr presented at the Berlin interdisciplinary space, with the first event discussed in an interview with Huxtable on AQNB earlier this year.

For OFF LICENSE the DJ, musician and artist Huxtable and experimental producer Ziúr join with AV artist Theresa Baumgartner to create a sublime performance that “poses as an audio visual poem” through spoken word, strobing, lava lamps and digital sonic pyrotechnics. See the video above and scroll up for more images.**

Juliana Huxtable, Ziúr and Theresa Baumgartner’s OFF LICENSE was performed at Trauma Bar und Kino, Berlin on October 1 and 2, 2020.

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Rise of the nerd: Mary-Audrey Ramirez, LUKAS8K & Madalina Stanescu on gaming & the aesthetics of disappointment

14 January 2020

“We work exclusively with nerds,” says Madalina Stanescu, half-joking but also dead serious about the changing state of social capital in contemporary art and beyond. The curator behind the QT, UR, EA exhibition at Berlin’s Traumabarundkino is about to realise the ambitious new project that’s been in development for the past year, and she has little doubt about where the hybrid venue’s strengths lie. “Even in club culture, there is a lot of nerdiness going on there. I mean, it’s fantastic. It’s very complex.”

Mary-Audrey Ramirez & LUKAS8K, QT UR EA (2020). Exhibition promo image. Courtesy Traumabarundkino, Berlin.

Mary-Audrey Ramirez and LUKAS8K (aka Lukas Schmeck) are two of these very nerds. They’re the artists behind the QT, UR, EA exhibition, running January 17 to March 14 and incorporating a vast universe of virtual and real world elements. They’re created a space for hosting performance, motion capture and a real-time VR environment, as well as dance, sound, even permaculture, which opens with a free event on Friday night. Along with an eight-week program co-curated with Traumabarundkino and a range of other collaborators, the project is a sensory, generative endeavour working across media and disciplines. It’s an exercise in world-building, inspired by role-playing games (RPG), live action role-playing (LARP) and the fantasy genre. In creating space for escape and community, QT, UR, EA has its own roster of contributing artists and organisations, including choreographer Ali Heffetz and A/V artists bod [包家巷], Alza54 and Simon Goff. There’ll be a dynamic lecture series with independent journal and aggregator New Models and a night of programming by art space Tropez, featuring Ange Halliwell, Jan Vorisek, among other things.

“Lukas and I were thinking of having just the game mindset when we were creating this,” says Ramirez, whose Skype window appears alongside Schmeck and Stanescu’s, who’ve all convened via video chat to discuss the dense and multifaceted project that has been a year in development. Combining her background in sculpture and fabrics with Schmeck’s experience with the more technical and commercial side of CGI and VFX, the collaborative exhibition will be the first realisation of Traumabarundkino’s mission toward full-blown integration. As a multipurpose venue built on what was a parking lot in Mitte’s government district, the space is primed for this multimedia, multi-level and expansive attempt at bringing the immersive and interactive potential of open world video games into IRL space. “The events are part of the installation,” clarifies Schmeck, about the program, that will also include a mushroom workshop and feminist gaming group. “They’re not using the installation as a backdrop.”

It’s with this in mind, that that the three architects speak to AQNB about the thinking behind QT, UR, EA. Running the gamut of topics—from the contemporary gaming scene to the neoliberal problematics of nerd culture— Ramirez, Schmeck and Stanescu introduce a complex, entangled and self-critical approach to a new evolution in bringing the club and the art space together.

Mary-Audrey Ramirez & LUKAS8K, QT UR EA (2020). Exhibition promo artwork. CGI by Tea Stražičić, Anastasiia Holumbovska & LUKAS8K.. Courtesy Traumabarundkino, Berlin.

**Did you both play a lot of video games in the past?

Lukas Schmeck: Yeah, definitely.

Mary-Audrey Ramirez: Yes [laughs]. I think we were also sending each other video games for the aesthetics. Bloodborne was one major one. The Souls series in general, which one else?

LS: In general, we work the most with video game references, more than movies or other gallery artworks, in that sense; more than music references, or all these other media. I think Bloodborne is definitely a huge influence. Other than that, I think the Dark Souls games. Also just the genre of world building games and RPGs in general, with no super-specific examples but just these genres, in terms of creature design and mapping out digital and physical space.

MAR: From the cosplay scene, I’ve always been fascinated with how they try to take these elements from video games and translate it to the real physical world. There’s always a certain disappointment within that translation because, if you do a character that’s burning in the video game, you can’t do it in real life, so what material do you use to compensate for that?

I kind of like this moment where nothing is really satisfying enough with the material that is used because everything is possible in this video game world, in this 3D world. There’s no gravity, nothing. Whereas in the physical world, how do you translate these things? Also, when Lukas and I were talking about doing stuff, Lukas was like, ‘oh, this is great. We can do this and this, and I was like, ‘no, Lukas, it’s not going to work because it’s super toxic, we’re going to die if we do this!’ I really like having this disappointment, and saying, ‘what way can we translate it in the best way in a physical form, in real life?

Mary-Audrey Ramirez & LUKAS8K, QT UR EA (2020). Exhibition promo artwork. CGI by Tea Stražičić, Anastasiia Holumbovska & LUKAS8K.. Courtesy Traumabarundkino, Berlin.

**Also, CGI has its own limitations, where you can’t necessarily translate a real-life gesture virtually. Like, it would be impossible, or very difficult, to achieve the same texture of putting a knife through a piece of soap.

LS: This is actually quite interesting in terms of this ideal called photorealism, which is often used in the gaming industry, as well. It’s a marketing plot and a lot of developers try to make it a selling point, that the graphics are photoreal. But there’s actually more than just the textures and the models that make something photoreal. Given you achieved that, there’s still an animation component and an interaction component that is part of photorealism, which we’re actually super far from achieving, compared to textures and 3D models. If we say ‘photorealism’ and ‘digital imagery’, in CGI or in games, we almost always just mean the textures and the models, and never the interaction between characters, for example. There’s a lot more to photorealism than textures and the models themselves.

**Can you tell me something about how the limitations of IRL, as well as VR, translates into the exhibition?

LS: An interesting point, also, is that we talked about translating elements from digital space and the virtual world into a physical space. We just had a nice talk with the people from New Models yesterday, and they will actually host an event during our install period, as well as many others. They will also talk about this way of translating RPG economic models into real life, which is actually much more progressed than, let’s say for example, the material aspects that Mary was talking about.

Of course, throughout the curation, and throughout the actual work, we’re playing with this translation from real life into digital space, through the obvious things, like the motion capture suits that we’re using with performers at the opening night, as well as the finissage weekend. You don’t really get around this translation aspect, or interaction aspect anymore at all, because the techniques of generating 3D content have become more and more centred around 3D scanning, and all types of capturing—real or as physical—as possible models.

Mary-Audrey Ramirez & LUKAS8K, QT UR EA (2020). Exhibition promo image. Courtesy Traumabarundkino, Berlin.

**Talking about this failure of translation, I’m also curious about how the curatorial program will be transferred into this like augmented space.

LS: Part of our work is definitely also the co-curation of the events, and I think it’s just one part of the trains of thought we’re having. The visual work is one thing, and the other part is the curation. So they don’t necessarily translate but they’re meant to be alongside each other.

MAR: I think they are more adding, rather than translating.

LS: They’re pretty much there to get you in the right headspace to then experience a very visual and a very aesthetically based project. These events function as the downloadable content, DLC [downloadable content], version of what you would get in video games. You could see that as another translation of keeping a piece of ‘content’—in quotation marks—alive over a longer period of time, and keeping people engaged with it. What you do is you actually keep on creating content, but the universe stays the same.

**Online information is only good for as long as it’s being circulated…

Madalina Stanescu: Yeah, and we want to avoid this thing—which you often have with gallery spaces—where you have like 200 people in for the opening, and then maybe somebody comes every Saturday, or something like that, and you have 300 people seeing the exhibition. We have club events where we expect from 300 to 600 people, so I think it will reach the public really well.

When you go to a club, you enter a capsule and you basically enter a world which is not real. Also raves in clubs last for 24, 48 hours because it’s a different universe, it’s a different world. You enter there and you basically forget everything that is outside. You don’t know how late it is. If it’s day. If it’s night. This is pretty much the effect this exhibition will have on its public, I believe.

Mary-Audrey Ramirez & LUKAS8K, QT UR EA (2020). Exhibition promo artwork. CGI by Tea Stražičić, Anastasiia Holumbovska & LUKAS8K.. Courtesy Traumabarundkino, Berlin.

**Video games are an escape. Raves are an escape. The club is an escape. It is also interesting to bring the exhibition into the mix because if there’s any situation that brings the most detachment, it’s an exhibition.

MAR: Yeah. Personally, I find it quite funny because I’m not really a club person, and I believe Lukas also. I think we would both prefer to do a LARP party than go to a club night.

MS: Me, as well.

LS: Everyone hates clubs.

MS: This is why we have an art exhibition inside a place, which is very generically called a ‘club’ because it’s boring to only see an exhibition, or only go to a club night. No matter how skilled the curation of the club night is, it is what it is —you go, it has a peak, it goes down, you go home. But the exhibition is for the moments you want to wander around during a club night. You are not constantly on the dance floor, especially if you are a frequent goer. At a point, you just want to retreat somewhere and watch something, or preoccupy your mind with something else. And when you’re on the bus home from the club at nine o’clock in the morning, you will remember, ‘I’ve seen that video from that artists, those sculptures. It was amazing. It helped me escape more.’

**Lukas and Mary, you’re arounds 10 years younger than me, and when I started writing about art, there were a lot of people drawing on DeviantArt, forums and Tumblr, stuff like that. What you’re doing is representative of a new generation of online culture. I’m interested in what that looks like. Is it pretty mainstream for people to be into stuff like gaming and LARPing, or is it still kind of an alternative culture? When I was growing up, something like Dungeons & Dragons, for example, was reserved exclusively for nerds. Is it still a nerdy thing to do?

MAR: I think it depends on the games. Video games have evolved massively, so I would compare it to reading books, or watching a movie. Whenever I meet a new person and they have a console, I will check their games. By knowing what games they play, I will know what kind of person, or character they are.

Mary-Audrey Ramirez & LUKAS8K, QT UR EA (2020). Exhibition promo artwork. CGI by Tea Stražičić, Anastasiia Holumbovska & LUKAS8K.. Courtesy Traumabarundkino, Berlin.

MS: It’s like looking at someone’s bookshelf.

LS: Also, nerds have pretty much taken over since the days of Dungeons & Dragons. You’ve got people like Mark Zuckerberg running the most successful companies in human history. There are all these people that would’ve been nerds in the 80s and 90s who have a lot of power and influence right now. I’m not quite sure if it’s better or worse than before.

MAR: Yeah. Also, are they still nerds then? That’s something I wonder about…

LS: Obviously, this type of nerd economy is also tying it into neoliberal ideals of being self-sufficient and self-responsible at any point in time. This is actually where I think on a large economic scale, this idea gets dangerous and it’s actually perpetuating a much worse form of capitalism than probably the pre-neoliberal one.

**Hyperindividualism.

LS: It’s like hyperindividualism, a super high sense of self responsibility and just being detached from a community, in an economic sense. It’s actually the dark side of the ‘nerds taking over the world’ narrative.**

Mary-Audrey Ramirez & LUKAS8K’s QT, UR, EA is on at Berlin’s Traumabarundkino, running January 17 to March 14, 2020.

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Motion sickness: Beirut-born producer Thoom talks the rhythm of Iowa’s industry while in the midst of Lebanon’s October Revolution

9 December 2019

“Everything I do is always a reaction to my environment!” exclaims Zeynab Marwan, in reply to the question of whether context is important in her music. If you’ve ever listened to the Beirut-born artist’s production under her Thoom moniker, it’s pretty much a given. That’s whether it’s in the stark and speedy Arabic percussion and clipped crashes, sweeps and oscillations of ‘Mikal Jackzon’, or the clattering rhythm of US American industry in ‘حركت السكوت (No Speech)’ on the Blood and Sand.

Thoom, Blood and Sand (2017). Album cover art. Courtesy Club Chai, Oakland.

Released via Oakland’s Club Chai label in 2017, that EP embodies the furious, nervous energy of change and upheaval; a kind of uncertain though optimistic intensity that also comes through in the artist’s email correspondence. Having been spirited away from Beirut following a performance with Tunisian producer Deena Abdelwahed on the eve of Lebanon’s October Revolution, Marwan is back on the ground in the capital city of her birthplace, having only recently moved to Berlin from Chicago.

Born in Beirut before emigrating to the tiny Iowan town of Ames in the US, Marwan has been moving between the two countries, while maintaining her connection to both. Representing the kind of peripatetic existence of many a diasporic identity, her work sits comfortably amongst the hybrid and international approach to production shared by a number of post-club artists and labels exploring a global sound.

Thoom has worked with the likes of E-Saggila and Scim in the past, is a part of New York’s Discwoman roster and has a couple of new solo and collaborative releases in the pipeline. In the meantime, Marwan will also be performing in support of The Transcendence Orchestra at Berlin’s Traumabarundkino on December 13, where she’ll present a special set using repetitive compositions, utterances and song oscillating between the vulnerable, the playful and the confrontational. It’s that kind of urgent and apprehensive force, that’s clearly a part of Marwan’s area of expertise.

Thoom (2019). Press image. Courtesy the artist.

**You were in Beirut when we were organising this interview, are you still there? Was there any particular reason you were there this time?

Zeynab Marwan: I go back to Beirut as often as I can afford, all of my family lives there. I happened to be there the night the revolution started over a month ago. I was playing a show with Deena Abdelwahed and I had a flight to Milan the same night at 4 am. So as soon as my set ended, my friend was like, you have to leave right now, they are burning all the trash and closing the roads, the airport roads are closing, everyone is calling for a revolution… I left and came back to Beirut because it is an urgent moment right now. For the first time people are assembling together regardless of their sectarian affiliations and religion because they want a new government. Every single day we go down, we are reclaiming public spaces, spaces that have been privatized and diligently excluded the majority of people that live in Beirut. The level of organization in all of this is astounding; there is free food everyday for protesters, discussions and tactful meetings around lebanon every day.

Thoom (2019). Press image. Courtesy the artist.

In compassionate gestures and moments like these, you can really see and start to imagine a world and structure outside capitalism, a possible future. Going from that, it is completely maddening to be standing in a German grocery store waiting in line… “Bitte schon, danke schon…” So yeah, I went back. 

**You mention you are from the area of Tarik Jdideh, rather than Beirut, is there something specifically singular about that district that made you want to distinguish it from the rest of the city?

ZM: It’s a very specific place in Beirut and it feels like I always inherently reference what it means to me and my time there. 

**I ask because I’m interested in this description of you music in your bio as “digital Arabic percussion and rhythm mixed with aggressive arrangements that call forth the metallic repetition of midwest American industry”. Can you elaborate on how this Midwestern industry figures in your sound and approach?

ZM: Yeah, I think as a result of spending so much time of my life in Iowa, living by the train, being surrounded by agriculture, farmlands, industry, there is a certain soundscape you constantly hear. It’s a rhythm like any other rhythms.

Thoom (2019). Press image. Courtesy the artist.

**Tell me about how you work, do you use any hardware and do you sample much? Who are some of your major influences? 

ZM: My influences are pretty broad and not only music based. I was making visual art  for most of my life before I started making music, so I really love and admire artists working in multiple mediums, like Chino Amobi. I use samples, of course. But I haven’t used hardware that much. It has never really been accessible to me. 

**I’ve seen you’ve done a few collaborations with other producers. Do you tend to work remotely or IRL, are there any pros and cons to either of these approaches?

ZM: Both. I don’t really like to make music alone too much. Making music with other people whether through stems or IRL is the most incredible and romantic feeling in the world!**

Thoom is performing in support of The Transcendence Orchestra at Berlin’s Traumabarundkino on December 13, 2019.

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