Performative Symposium

PERFORMATIVE SYMPOSIUM

2025, durational performance, installation


Left & right: video stills from documentation of Performative Symposium,
camera: Priyanka Sarkar, Fiona Ahrens, 2025


Both images: video stills from documentation of Performative Symposium,
camera: Priyanka Sarkar, Fiona Ahrens, 2025

Performative Symposium was an eight-hour durational performance-installation commissioned for the 100th anniversary of the Hamburg State Teachers’ Institute (LI) and the Day of Open Monuments. View works from Performative Symposium

Combining multichannel video, spatial audio and an interactive sculptural interface, the work explored movement, participation and collective perception through a sequence of performative constellations involving four performers. Reflecting on the institute’s history, architecture and social environment, the work approached these themes through a system of metaphorical gestures and spatial translations. While drawing on the formats of lecture performance and symposium structures, Performative Symposium shifted discourse into an embodied and spatial composition.

In preparation for the symposium, three workshops open to the institutes staff, led by invited guest artists explored memorial practices, sonic approaches to architecture and drawing as an embodied practice of proximity to books as physical and imaginative objects. These workshops were part of the project’s broader investigation into collective knowledge production and participation.

Concept/Artistic direction: Christopher Loy

Performance: Black Pearl de Almeida Lima,
Guitar/Voice/Performance: Valerie Renay
Violin/Voice/Performance: Sung Mi Marina Kim
Cello/Voice/Performance: Christopher Loy

Footage captured by Priyanka Sarkar & Fiona Ahrens

Parts of the symposium were directly or indirectly developed within three workshops with the LI staff, led by Franziska Windolf, Raphael Jacobs

Dramaturgic awareness/Event awareness by Dream Nwattu

Projektkoordination LI: Celina Rahman

Footage of Black Pearl:
Director of Photography/Camera: Priyanka Sarkar
Gaffer: Anastasiya Plotnikova
Set assistance: Jaycee Hernandez

Technical direction sound/light: Gabriel Saber
Technical direction video/sculpture FX: Stanislav Glazov
Video assistance: Rike Malottke

Collaboration on interactive sculpture:
Construction and visual design and by Daniel Pietschmann
Technical setup: Stanislav Glazov
Set up assistance: Arjun Panayal

Many thanks to Heinz Grasmück for making the work possible

  • Translating Drawing, still from video documentation of Performative Symposium, 2025

Durational performance (8 h), mixed media, sound, multichannel video, sculptural interface, Hamburg, 2025
Commissioned by LI Hamburg for it’s 100th anniversary

SELECTED WORK FROM PERFORMATIVE SYMPOSIUM
2 string instrument (cello & violin) performers play on two ends of a white sculptural sea-saw platform, with a conductor on top facing one performer.

AXIS

C-Touch screen on the middle of the stage of cleared LI Hamburg auditorium with curtains just opened enough to reveal the screen. The screen shows image of performer Black Pearl de Almeida Lima in close-up shot looking into the camera, filmed in front of the curtains of the very stage the screen is standing on.

WALLS WIDE OPEN

3 performers keep crossing an interactive sea-saw sculptural interface in a choreographed manner, with different speeds and attitudes, sometimey apruptly changing directions. The sculpture has a rectangular, platform like shape, with three steps at the sides.

ENTRY (AUFTRITT)

Sculptural letters in blue, saying "Wört3r" (engl. "Words") are projected on a wall with a raster structure in the auditorium of LI Hamburg.

WÖRT3R/W0RDS

ÜBERMALUNG/OVER-PAINTING

Whilst a cellist is standing on an interactive sculptural interface, a video of a hand drawing an horizontal eight is projected on almost an entire rastered wall in the auditorium of LI Hamburg.

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