- Info
Euromall
Discussions, Performances, DJ sets, and Video Games
with: Alobhe (Berlin), Salim Bayri (Amsterdam), Bleak Roses (Mpls), Fauna/Rana Farahani (Vienna), Anna Hankings-Evans (Berlin), Steph Kretowicz (London/Los Angeles), and Aleksandra Lakić (Berlin), Larry (Berlin), Surabhi Saraf (San Francisco), and Creamcake (Berlin)
Initiated by Berlin-based music and art platform Creamcake, “Euromall” creates space for conversation. The series of two day-and-night events aims to encourage exchange across disciplines and experiences at Goethe Pop Up Minneapolis Goethe in the Skyways, emerging from a belief in the possibilities of political organization and direct action. It is within this framework that “Euromall” calls for solidarity through exploring our differences and by urging active participation in a dialogue around multiple concepts, approaches, and political desires that could reverse or repair undesirable developments inside and outside of Europe.
Creamcake is bound by the belief in creativity as the expression of a will to change social realities. While the main drive for the “Europool” initiative, the predecessor of “Euromall,” came as a response to the dramatic socio-political shifts in the European Union between 2017 and 2018, its concerns are certainly not limited to it. Many of the musicians, artists, and activists making up Berlin’s creative scene may have congregated around the TROPEZ art space and recreation center under the “Europool” banner but they weren’t all strictly European. Instead, their coming together was the result of the online networks formed and cultivated by Creamcake, crossing national borders and uniting through a shared attitude of diversity and inclusion internationally.
The “Euromall” program in Minneapolis showcases and reflects upon the ties between Europe and the United States today by spotlighting grassroots initiatives, cultural collaborations, and artistic practices emerging across borders. Anna Hankings-Evans‘s lecture combines storytelling and legal methodology in discussing notions of empathy and law, while Steph Kretowicz ‘s live reading explores the personal effects of fear, fake news, and new technology across continents. Salim Bayri’s “Road to Schengen” video game follows the insurmountable bureaucracy of global movement, and Surabhi Saraf ’s sound performance questions the risks and possibilities of technological solutionism when applied to emotional labor and social relations. Moderator Aleksandra Lakić will speak on the EU parliamentary elections in her “How soon is the end of Europe as we know it?” lecture and Rana Farahani will present on the right-wing populist movement of Austria’s FPÖ party and the “Ibiza scandal,” followed by participation in a night of music at Honey Club, along with Alobhe and DJ Larry .
It is within this framework that the “Euromall” discussions, performances, readings, DJ sets, video game, and dancing call for solidarity through exploring our differences. By urging active participation in a dialogue around multiple concepts, approaches, and political desires, it is possible to reverse, or at least repair unacceptable developments inside and outside of Europe.
(Euromall Flyer by Riccardo Benassi)
- Info
Euromall
Discussions, Performances, DJ sets, and Video Games
with: Alobhe (Berlin), Salim Bayri (Amsterdam), Bleak Roses (Mpls), Fauna/Rana Farahani (Vienna), Anna Hankings-Evans (Berlin), Steph Kretowicz (London/Los Angeles), and Aleksandra Lakić (Berlin), Larry (Berlin), Surabhi Saraf (San Francisco), and Creamcake (Berlin)
Initiated by Berlin-based music and art platform Creamcake, “Euromall” creates space for conversation. The series of two day-and-night events aims to encourage exchange across disciplines and experiences at Goethe Pop Up Minneapolis Goethe in the Skyways, emerging from a belief in the possibilities of political organization and direct action. It is within this framework that “Euromall” calls for solidarity through exploring our differences and by urging active participation in a dialogue around multiple concepts, approaches, and political desires that could reverse or repair undesirable developments inside and outside of Europe.
Creamcake is bound by the belief in creativity as the expression of a will to change social realities. While the main drive for the “Europool” initiative, the predecessor of “Euromall,” came as a response to the dramatic socio-political shifts in the European Union between 2017 and 2018, its concerns are certainly not limited to it. Many of the musicians, artists, and activists making up Berlin’s creative scene may have congregated around the TROPEZ art space and recreation center under the “Europool” banner but they weren’t all strictly European. Instead, their coming together was the result of the online networks formed and cultivated by Creamcake, crossing national borders and uniting through a shared attitude of diversity and inclusion internationally.
The “Euromall” program in Minneapolis showcases and reflects upon the ties between Europe and the United States today by spotlighting grassroots initiatives, cultural collaborations, and artistic practices emerging across borders. Anna Hankings-Evans‘s lecture combines storytelling and legal methodology in discussing notions of empathy and law, while Steph Kretowicz ‘s live reading explores the personal effects of fear, fake news, and new technology across continents. Salim Bayri’s “Road to Schengen” video game follows the insurmountable bureaucracy of global movement, and Surabhi Saraf ’s sound performance questions the risks and possibilities of technological solutionism when applied to emotional labor and social relations. Moderator Aleksandra Lakić will speak on the EU parliamentary elections in her “How soon is the end of Europe as we know it?” lecture and Rana Farahani will present on the right-wing populist movement of Austria’s FPÖ party and the “Ibiza scandal,” followed by participation in a night of music at Honey Club, along with Alobhe and DJ Larry .
It is within this framework that the “Euromall” discussions, performances, readings, DJ sets, video game, and dancing call for solidarity through exploring our differences. By urging active participation in a dialogue around multiple concepts, approaches, and political desires, it is possible to reverse, or at least repair unacceptable developments inside and outside of Europe.
(Euromall Flyer by Riccardo Benassi)
Creamcake
Creamcake is an open and queer platform and label dedicated to exploring the impact of the Internet on music at the intersection of music, art and technology. Founded by Daniela Seitz and Anja Weigl in 2011, together they initiate and organize concerts, performances, symposiums and digital projects; lectures, workshops, exhibitions and festivals, including 3hd, インフラ INFRA, NextGen, Europool and ” <Interrupted = “Cyfem and Queer>”. Each of these projects question conventional patterns of thought and behavior, create new space for action and reflection, and approach digital change with a fundamental openness and flexibility. Cooperating with a number of community spaces and institutions such as OHM, Südblock, Berghain, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Bob’s Pogo Bar and Goethe in the Skyways, among others, Creamcake presents visionary, nonconformist and experimental sounds, while actively encouraging women and people of all genders to work together on an equal basis.
Euromall Line-up
Alobhe (Berlin)
Alobhe is a musician hell-bent on gutturally stabbing each broken genre she comes across. Based in Berlin and raised in Hamburg,Alobhe’s visceral take on future club music combines elements of electro, black metal, dark ambient and techno to produce foreboding sonic assaults with an underlying impulse toward the industrial dance floor. Recent releases include contributions to Warsaw’s Intruder Alert and a debut EP called State Space, dropped via UK label Tobago Tracks. Alobhe has collaborated with London’s Acolytes (aka Denesh Shan), performing the project live at eminent UK venue Cafe OTO and culminating in a single take recording of “idk demo” for the Nervous System compilation released on London’s Alien Jams this year.
Salim Bayri (Amsterdam)
Salim Bayri is a Casablanca-born artist currently based in Amsterdam. His art functions as a humorous navigational tool to sail through the contexts he left and the ones he is integrating into, touching the liminal points of what he calls “bittersweet ghorba” or “bittersweet abroad-being”. Bayri takes on a multidisciplinary approach to his work, using a variety of media including CGI, drawings, wearables and sound. He is also part of the music duo BAZOGA with his brother Tayeb.
FAUNA (Vienna)
The work of Fauna manifests itself locally in the radical potential of art and music. The Vienna-based producer’s sounds and lyrics are influenced by personal and political events, while her music takes a position and places social clichés into avant-garde beats and rap, hip hop and bass music-inspired tracks.Fauna is also co-founder of the Burschenschaft Hysteria in Vienna, and her second album was released in May 2018.
Anna Hankings-Evans (Berlin)
Anna Hankings-Evans is a German-Ghanaian lawyer and author focusing on international economic law, its power implication, geopolitics and postcolonial theories of justice. Until recently, Hankings-Evans resided at the Centre for Chinese Studies at Stellenbosch University in South Africa as a visiting doctoral researcher. After completing her law studies, she was a research fellow at the Chair of Public Law and Public International Law of Prof. Dr. Heike Krieger in Berlin.
Steph Kretowicz (London / Los Angeles)
Steph Kretowicz is a London and Los Angeles-based, writer, editor and journalist specializing in music, contemporary art and online culture. Her writing appears in Flash Art, Dazed & Confused, Resident Advisor, The Fader and The Wire, as well as The Guardian, Somesuch Stories, and Oxford Artistic and Practice Based Research Platform, among others. Kretowicz is also co-founder and editor of London-based arts publication AQNB.com and author of novel and cross-media narrative Somewhere I’ve Never Been, published by TLTRPreß and Pool in 2017.
Aleksandra Lakić (Berlin)
Aleksandra Lakić is a sociologist with a background in political science. In her current research, she focuses on the role of media narratives in shaping national identity and the problems of labor market discrimination of migrant workers in Germany. Lakić is actively engaged in the Democracy in Europe Movement (DIEM25) and coedits Zent Magazine, an online and printed journal from Belgrade publishing works in political and social theory, art, design and architecture. She is the moderator of Europool.
Larry (Berlin)
Larry is a researcher, author, and DJ from Berlin. As co-founder of Creamcake—an experimental platform dedicated to exploring the impact of the internet at the intersection of art, music and technology—she is dedicated to discovering new online music and sound cultures. Larry’s sets are intended to create human expression transformed into an absurd spectacle of sound, with linguistic elements that do not communicate but are aimed instead at raw emotional effect.
Surabhi Saraf (San Francisco)
Surabhi Saraf is a media artist and founder of Centre for Emotional Materiality, graduating from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) with an MFA in Art and Technology in 2009. Her practice explores our complex relationship with technology through multimedia works that incorporate video installations, sculptures, performances and sound compositions. Surabhi is the recipient of a number of awards, while presenting solo exhibitions and performances in Mumbai, San Francisco, Thessaloniki and Bologna. Her videos have been shown in New York, Austin, Chattanooga and Vojvodina in Serbia, while her work has been featured in The New York Times, Time Out Sydney & Mumbai, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Blouin Art Info, Art Practical, and KQED Arts.