Teilnehmer*innenverzeichnis / List of participants Joulia Strauss is an artist, activist and multimedia sculptor. She was born in the Soviet Union and belongs to the Mari, one of Europe’s last indigenous people with a shamanistic tradition, and now lives in Berlin and Athens. Her sculptures, paintings, performances, drawings and video works have been presented in solo and group exhibitions, for example, at the Pergamon Museum and Gropius Bau in Berlin, Tate Modern, Tirana Biennale, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Athens Biennale, Kyiv Biennial, Moscow Biennale, ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe as well as documenta14. Strauss is the founder and organiser of Avtonomi Akadimia in Athens. As part of “Down to Earth” she will commemorate indigenous activists in a thirty-day ceremony – with sculptures, actions, lectures and workshops. Strauss’ life mostly takes place on the peripheries where liveable worlds are created and defended. The film about indigenous “practices of grounding” she is currently working on was also made there. Her credo is: “We honour indigenous cultures by transforming ourselves.” For four weeks the artefacts of the film merge into an environment for transformation: Within the framework of an exhibition, visitors experience a jungle dieta as it was filmed in the Amazon, a workshop in Cambodian martial arts as well as recreated hymns and notation systems of European indigenous peoples from Greece before our time, whose music will be played by Strauss on an ancient Greek lyre and is explained with a sculptural zodiac. Texts, drawings and ritual attributes of the exhibition space are accompanied by a four-week academy program. Avtonomi Akadimia can usually be found in the Akadimia Platonos, the public garden in Athens where Plato taught almost 2,500 years ago. Avtonomi Akadimia will take place in Berlin for the first time, within the exhibition. In various workshops and lectures, shamans, masters and curanderos, climate scientists, philosophers and artists will hybridise contradictory forms of knowledge and generate an indigenised academy as the down-to-earth of the European educational system.
David Soin Tappeser
David Soin Tappeser ist ein in Deutschland geborener und in London und Neu-Delhi lebender Schlagzeuger, Komponist und > S. 89 Performancekünstler. Seine Praxis dreht sich vorrangig um das Experimentieren und Improvisieren; seine Klangästhetik vereint Jazz, Neue Musik sowie verschiedene musikalische und perkussive Traditionen, die er auf ausgedehnten Reisen durch Indien, Nepal und Mexiko kennengelernt hat. Soin Tappesers Arbeitsweise ist geprägt von der Vorstellung eines inneren Pulsierens, Konzepten des Abschnitthaften und der Fragmentierung sowie Gedanken zur Manipulation von Zeit und Zeitwahrnehmung durch Musik. Er betrachtet Musik als Mittel des ungefilterten, persönlichen Ausdrucks und Spiels, als etwas Geheimnisvolles und Skurriles. Soin Tappeser präsentiert in der Ausstellung zusammen mit Himali Singh Soin das kollaborative Werk „Boatness“ (2020).
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