We used to live in a cloud of unawareness. Things happened with sudden, wild, enchanted recklessness. The laws of physics tricked us into delighted complicity with the forces of existence. Then something must have happened.
In the many facets of his work, Olaf Bender tries to capture this moment. As a member of the GDR avant-garde pioneers AG Geige, founder of the seminal Raster label, and ideator of his solo project BYETONE, Bender deals with the primary matter of perception, with science and sense. BYETONE’s music is hypnotic, rhythmically suggestive, a superimposition of minimalism and rebellion that transforms into radiant energy. Which he will gladly demonstrate at Kookoo.
The turning point for all his creative work was his encounter with the medium of film. As a teenager in Karl-Marx-Stadt, Bender began experimenting with 16mm film. The movies of Jean-Luc Godard were an eye-opening experience, especially Le mépris (Contempt), which meditates on the unresolved mystery of before and after, on the inexplicable forces that destroy unawareness, enchantment, and love. Dreams aren’t enough, says one of the characters in the film.
Performer and choreographer MARIA F. SCARONI weaves postmodern dance legacies and embodied altered states of consciousness with queer witchcraft, somatic post-activism, and radical playgrounds for the purpose of cultivating somatic literacy toward a culture of connection. For her first appearance at Kookoo, Scaroni experiments with a solo installation performance, duvetdomme, which intervenes at the rough edges of softness, disguising pleasure, up close, crushed, a close-up kinesthesia conjuring the healing of darkness.
Kookoo’s resident visual artists CARLY FISCHER and YUKIHIRO TAGUCHI present new works—based on sculpture, photography, and installation—that imagine a space beyond the reality of dreams. While your Kookoo hosts MIEKO SUZUKI and ARA attempt to approach and engage with this space through a careful selection of sounds and sensations.
Kookoo w/ Byetone and Maria F. Scaroni
Friday, 3.11.2023
Ohm Berlin | Köpenicker Straße 70 | 10179 Berlin
Tickets are only available at the door
raster-media.net/artists/byetone | Event @ Facebook
