Date/Time
November 21, 2024
3:00 - 6:30

CURVERSATION – Expanding a Non-Anthropocentric Understanding of Space, Translation, Rhythm and Language

Anani Dodji Sanouvi
with Christiane da Cunha
Moderated by Michelle Christensen and Florian Conradi

In the context of the Salon für Ästhetische Experimente
Berlin Centre for Advanced Studies in Arts and Sciences (BAS)

In the form of a continuous abstract-cosmic concave surface, E’TOME is a nomadic performance-state-time-space, a convergence point for animist practitioners and associated artists. Nurtured by the fluidity and intricacy of the Éwé epistemology, it proposes moving curveward in response to unseen forces and territories. Beyond its form, here, the curve is understood as an agent for conjuring and maintaining different rhythms in a continuous flow that calls for a fluid attitude and openness. The curve then becomes a technicity of the threshold, facilitating trans-subjective relationships and a trans-flexible cosmopolitical position in between chronological time and the entrance into a multidimensional experience of time-space.

In this context, in collaboration with Michelle Christensen and Florian Conradi (Berlin Open Lab) a Curversation will take place with Brazilian scholar and artist Christiane da Cunha around her transmedia trajectory Talking with Trees – which unfolds a series of trans-specific interlocutions where speaking is defined as part of a multi-focal attention in a continuous polyrhythmic flux. In contrast to the cultivation of a straight, frontal and unifocal attention that characterizes anthropocentric forms of communication. Entangling different animist practices and contemporary fields, Christiane investigates the creative act as a communicative exercise between the body, the Other and the Earth.

Within this Curversation, a performative-light-sonic experiment will stand on the recognition and appreciation of the presence of sound — audible and/or visual — as a crucial agent in the encounter of diverse epistemologies, ontologies, and ethics. An intra-regulatory active agent, thought to curve our notions of time. Operating as a diplomatic, inclusive, fluid, threshold – E’TOME faces ontological incineration, aiming to expand the possibilities of understanding pre-colonial principles and their potential for disseminating, reframing, and reanimating contemporary creative output in relation to the increasing human estrangement from other forms of life.

Team: Michelle Christensen, Florian Conradi, Jenny Fuhr, Catherine Rose Evans, Anani Dodji Sanouvi, Christiane da Cunha, Ines Weigand, Selenay Kiray, Sidar Torunlo