This Kiezsalon at MaHalla is co-curated by IKLECTIK, a nonprofit creative organisation from London currently celebrating their 10th anniversary. On Friday, they’re bringing along woodwind wizard Wojciech Rusin for his Berlin debut, plus turntablist Mariam Rezaei and avant-folk singer Martha Skye Murphy.
Wojciech Rusin is a Polish-born, London-based audiovisual artist who draws inspiration from alchemical and gnostic texts, early renaissance choral music and Eastern European mythologies. He conceptualises and creates 3D-printed reed instruments, reworking ancient designs with contemporary 3D modelling technologies.
Wojciech released Syphon on AD 93 in 2022, leading to a profile in The Quietus, who said of the album: “There is, thrillingly, something unpredictable and something at stake in Rusin’s music and objects. It’s what makes his work feel so fresh, despite its archaic influences or renaissance elements.”
Mariam Rezaei is a multi-award winning composer, turntablist and performer. Her music has been described as “genuinely ground-breaking” by London Jazz News and praised for her “high-velocity sonic surrealism” in The Guardian’s four-star review of her 2022 album SADTITZZZ.
In 2023, Heat Crimes released its follow-up BOWN, charted in The Wire and was named one of the top ten albums of 2023 by The Quietus. She previously served as artistic director for the experimental arts project TOPH and in 2022 received the Paul Hamlyn Foundation #AwardsForArtists.
London-based singer-songwriter Martha Skye Murphy has gained recognition for her powerful, melancholic voice, notably as a backing vocalist for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Her solo work includes a string of EPs and singles as well as the opera Postcards Home, which premiered at the Southbank Centre.
Drawing inspiration from Gregorian chant and French Chanteuse, Martha’s avant-folk music blends dark atmospheres with dreamlike singing, showcasing an adventurous spirit that “keeps listeners suspended between euphoria and unease,” as The Guardian put it in their 2021 “one to watch” feature on the artist.
The dramatically repurposed factory MaHalla has been the setting for Kiezsalon events over the past few years, and we’re delighted to return to the iconic industrial location. The vast turbine space located in the city’s historic industrial zone of Oberschöneweide provided the inspiration for Fritz Lang’s masterpiece Metropolis.
