Polyphrenic Creatures: Softsonic GG

11/04/2017 — 14/03/2017

Softsonic GG, 2017, Photo: Polyphrenic Creatures

Polyphrenic Creatures, Softsonic GG, 2017

Polyphrenic Creatures, Softsonic GG, Performance, Live Audio Drama, 2017, Photo: Emma Haugh

Live Audio Drama
in German and English language

By Polyphrenic Creatures (Ulrike Bernard & Amelie Marei Loellmann) with Cornelia Herfurtner, John MacLean, Ayca Nina Zuch

11, 13 and 14 April, 19 h, Tickets: 7 / 5 Euro

On an impulse I cut away a helix and carried it back to my brain and planted it in the sponge bed

below my tongue. All night it sang to me … telling me of my echos, my shadow and me …

“What are you doing?” She asked and will ask

“Listening.” I answered and will answer

“To what?” She asked and will ask

“The thoughts.” I answered and will answer.

Softsonic GG is a live audio drama by the Berlin based collective Polyphrenic Creatures. By connecting ritual and rhythm with borrowings from performance, installation, music, and radio play, Softsonic GG initiates a journey along liquefactions of mental, linguistic and physical states. Based on their examination of digital communication structures – from post-fact to echo – Polyphrenic Creatures explore new embodiments for thought-formations and rehearse listening as a proactive type of action.

The first bowl on imagination

the second bowl on description

the third bowl on analysis

the fourth bowl on projection

the fifth bowl on interpretation.

…

The sixth bowl on the body

the seventh bowl on the mind

the eighth bowl on the thoughts

the ninth bowl on the nerves

the tenth bowl on the synapses

the eleventh bowl on the memory

the twelfth bowl on the emotion.

The rituals for the novices of the Futurisierende GG Gedankengesellschaft [Futurising GG Thoughtsociety] begin in the artificial water scenery – resort, ecotope, décor, beach – in the garden of Malzfabrik. At the threshold between inside and outside a “Mental Asylum” is being evoked: a type of brain sponge that symbolizes the agglomeration of experience and perception in the head region. Equipped with clicks and scrolls and amplified by a techno-organic choir, shrunk, hybrid bodies straggle through the sponge scape of synapses fields, memory sinkholes and crumbling information facades.

Since 2014 the interdisciplinary collective Polyphrenic Creatures founded by Ulrike Bernard and Amelie Marei Loellmann delves into utopian and phantastic spheres under the guise of reality. In their third production Softsonic GG they examine current communication technologies for their potential to alter edifices of thought and to expand disembodied consciousness. Together with performers Cornelia Herfurtner, John MacLean and Ayca Nina Zuch, Bernard and Loellmann generate a mental-sensual spectrum that echoes Kathy Acker’s exclamation GET RID OF MEANING. YOUR MIND IS A NIGHTMARE THAT HAS BEEN EATING YOU: NOW EAT YOUR MIND (Empire of the Senseless, 1988).

Concept/ Performance: Polyphrenic Creatures (Ulrike Bernard & Amelie Marei Loellmann) with Cornelia Herfurtner, John MacLean, Ayca Nina Zuch; Dramaturgical Advice: Greta Granderath; Technical support: Klaas Hübner, Steffen Friedersdorf; Music & Voice support: Ela Spalding; Speaker Light Sculptures: CoCo, Juliane Henrich; Music & Sound: Cibo Matto – Artichoke, Fifty Foot Hose – Cauldron, People Like Us – Morning, Polyphrenic Creatures

District: Artistic Director: Suza Husse; Production: Kordula Fritze, Naomi Hennig; Curatorial Assistence: Hannah Kauzmann; Communication: Johanna Ekenhorst; Accounting: Annett Hoffmann

With kind support from Dezentrale Kulturarbeit Tempelhof-Schöneberg.

Polyphrenic Creatures: Softsonic GG

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