Festival
POWER NIGHT 2019
Edition I: Saturday 14 May 2019
E-WERK Luckenwalde & Stadtbad Live Luckenwalde
Curators: Katharina Worf and Louise O’Kelly
E-WERK Luckenwalde opened its doors on 14 September 2019, with the launch of the first iteration of POWER NIGHT, alongside an extensive exhibition programme.
Taking place during Berlin Art Week, on Saturday 14 September, with performances running from 6pm to midnight, POWER NIGHT reflected on the vision of sustainable futures in the context of a historic power station, whose very fabric carries a wealth of history and collective memory. Taking E-WERK’s position as a new sustainable institution and power station, the performance programme asked us to consider our role in shaping the world that we live in.
Block Universe team: Louise O’Kelly, Katharina Worf, Tatjana Damm and Xica Aires. E-WERK team: Helen Turner, Pablo Wendel, Adriana Tranca, Myrina Andrack, Maike Carstensen, Courtney Russel, Jen McHugh, Clair Boetschi and all EW volunteers.
POWER NIGHT included new commissions and premieres by eight international artists and collaborators:
Performance Electrics, Cecilia Bengolea with Craig Black Eagle, Fernanda Muñoz-Newsome with India Harvey and Josh Antonia Grigg, Nora Turato, marikiscrycrycry in collaboration with Gareth Chambers, Nina Beier, Rowdy SS, Charismatic Megafauna
Performance Programme:
Pablo Wendel (Performance Electrics). Image courtesy of Frank Nessler
Performance Electrics
COAL, 2019, Performative Intervention, 20 Min
14 September 2019 | 18:00–18:30
Turbine Hall and Engine Room
Performance Electrics launched POWER NIGHT and the opening of the new institution with a performative intervention in E-WERK’s Turbine Hall and adjunct Engine Room. Performance Electrics (Pablo Wendel) reactivated the mechanical infrastructure of the 1913 power station in order to autonomously power the contemporary art programme. Since 14 September 2019, E-WERK has fulfilled its long term mission to feed Kunststrom (art power) electricity into the national grid.
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Screening of Cecilia Bengolea, Lightning Dance in the Turbine Hall
Cecilia Bengolea with Craig Black Eagle
LIGHTNING DANCE
Screening of the Black-and-white video. Duration : 6:03 min
14 September 2019 | 17:30
Turbine Hall, E-WERK, Germany
Filmed during floods in Spanish Town, Jamaica, Lightning Dance investigates the influence of the indeterminate electric weather on bodily imagination. The black-and-white video promotes dancehall choreographers culture; Craig Black Eagle, Oshane Overload, Nick Overload, Teroy Overload who, in the company of the artist, perform solo and group dance routines next to a roadside shack, while heavy rain falls and a billowing, turbulent thunderstorm roars, soaking their clothes. Their movements refer to popular Jamaican Dancehall, a highly sexualized dance style, which Bengolea sees as infused with magical healing powers.
Fernanda Muñoz-Newsome, a body rites itself – phases of, 2019. Image courtesy of Tim Haber
Fernanda Muñoz-Newsome
a body rites itself – phases of, 2019. Immersive installation and performance, 30 Min
14 September 2019 | 18:45 - 19:15
EW Control Room
In a body rites itself – phases of, Fernanda Muñoz-Newsome together with artist India Harvey and sound designer Josh Anio Grigg invites the audience into an immersive environment combining movement, sculpture, text and sound. a body rites itself – phases of invokes liminal time and tactile materiality, taking the audience on a sensorial journey. Developed with Producer: Nikki Tomlinson.
‘Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from and where you will go.’ Rebecca Solnit
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Nora Turato, performance, 2019. Image courtesy of Tim Haber
Nora Turato
Performance, 30 min
14 September 2019 | 19:15–19:45
EW Garden
Nora Turato presented a spoken-word performance that harnessed the versatility of language as an artistic medium. Drawing together fragments of advertising, everyday conversations, literature, social media and popular clichés, her performances blur the boundaries between contemporary music and performance while questioning social norms and patriarchal structures.
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marikiscrycrycry in collaboration with Gareth Chambers, He’s Dead, 2019. Image courtesy of Tim Haber
Marikiscrycrycry, in collab. with Gareth Chambers
HE’S DEAD
14 September 2019 | 20:30 - 21:00
EW Turbine Hall
marikiscrycrycry is the performance project of American born, London-based choreographer and artist Malik Nashad Sharpe. Their work operates with an expansive choreographic proposition that utilises dance and live action as a modality that excavates various ontologies around Blackness and Queerness. For POWER NIGHT, they performed an excerpt from their work He’s Dead, which evolves over the course of the performance. Beginning with an impossible question ‘Was Tupac depressed?’ and traversing a fantastical choreographic landscape that cements in many ways the humanisation of marginal experience. Performed alongside dancer Gareth Chambers, the pair investigated defence strategies and the re-cultivation of power through actions and the performing body in the monumental E-WERK Turbine Hall.
Commissioned in partnership with: Block Universe, Theatre in the Mill, The Yard Theatre, New Queers on the Block, Marlborough Pub and Theatre (UK)
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Nina Beier, Class, 2019. Image courtesy of Laura Fusato
Nina Beier
Class, 2019. Freestyle wrestlers, mat. Perfume: Opium, Lynx, Davidoff, Miss Dior, etc. 15 Min
14 September 2019 | 21:15 - 21:30
Turbine Hall
Nina Beier’s work tests how value is constructed and undone, serving as a meditation on the multitude of power structures that make up our society. Disregarding usual martial arts categorisations of age, gender and weight classes, Beier’s performance Class in incorporated freestyle wrestlers from the world-renowned Luckenwalder Sportclub e.V. and RSV Hansa 90 Frankfurt (Oder) e.V., wearing perfumes generally marketed to each their specific demographic. Relying on select rules of the game and the skill sets of the athletes, this charged work bricolages disparate tropes of both violence and identity. While the odours blend, the bodies on display produce a fluctuating image of authority and dominance. The staged nature of Class continues Beier’s recurring interest in the possibility of cohabitation of the real and its own representation in the same object or action.
The 1. LSC of 1897 received international recognition in 1963 with its first European Championship medal. The club's wrestlers have participated in World and European Championships and the Olympic Games. The RSV Hansa 90 Frankfurt (Oder) collaborated with the 1. LSC in the Bundesliga and is a strongpoint for wrestling.
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Rowdy SS, IN/TENSE/MINIMAL/ZERO, 2019. Image courtesy of Tim Haber
Rowdy SS*
IN/TENSE/MINIMAL/ZERO. Immersive installation and performance, 105 Min
14 September 2019 | 21:30 - 23:00
Bauhaus Stadtbad
Rowdy inhabited the derelict Bauhaus swimming pool to create a deep space for entanglement, unravelling, connections and disconnections. Somewhere between a happening, performance and installation, the audience was invited to engage with the space and explore ourselves, our physicalities, and our relationships with technology through a participatory live-soundscape created by the artist for this unique setting.
*The artist formerly known as Rowdy Superstar.
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Charismatic Megafauna, performance, 2019. Image courtesy of Laura Fusato
Charismatic Megafauna
Live performance, 45 Min
14 September 2019 | 23:15 - 00:00
FLUXDOME
Charismatic Megafauna performs a live set of drum-punk-powered missives from their album Semi-Regular as well as more recent compositions. Known for their original costumes, visual projections and anti-establishment energy, the band finds its most vibrant realisation playing live, in the interaction of band, space and audience. Offering a potent mix of girl-gang chants, syncopated drum offensives and mutant synth freakouts, Charismatic Megafauna refract their feminisms through an absurdist lens. This is party music for politically-minded people.
Charismatic Megafauna is Jenny Moore, Georgia Twigg and Susannah Worth, a dance-punk trio from London, UK.
Supported by Kulturstiftung des Bundes and Mondriaan Fonds
With Special Thanks to Edelmat Veranstaltungstechnik and The World Famous Wrestling Clubs: 1.Luckenwalder Sportclub e.V. & RSV Hansa 90 Frankfurt (oder) e.V., Campari, Nordholz, the city of Luckenwalde, Absolut, Feldschlossen