Baba Electronica

Cave music – somatic DJing for horizontal people

People lying on mattresses in circles with blankets over them in a dark pink lit room

Photo: Lars Nybøll

We 2.10.2019, 20:00-21:00, MDT

Th 3.10.2019, 20:00-21:00, MDT

Cavemusic is a tool and live process of Daniela Bershan/Baba Electronica seeking a somatic dialogue with the audience. It is a practice of collective intimacy and care. It is a possibility to receive joint imaginations and affects through abstracted Popscapes and make unexpected collective motions and readings possible.

"CAVEMUSIC" has premiered at Maerzmusik 2016 in the Long Now and has since then had a nice, slow and steady tour in great places. "CAVEMUSIC" is a practice and a research tool – in this sense it is not a piece but rather an ongoing work process that is shared publicly. It connects to my continuous research on love as study/study as care and queer practices around (non-sexual) collective intimacy and care. Projects like "ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE" that I am co-organizing with Valentina Desideri since 6 years at Performing Arts Forum are part of this. But it also connects to my 15 years of research on Pop as a material that has itself inscribed into the social body in quite a unique way and hence holds – once stripped from its capitalist markers – a key methodology of "CAVEMUSIC"; a possibility for a collective point of departure to focus on affect, emotion and intimacy in a room with strangers. "CAVEMUSIC" insists and makes tangible that we are much more resourceful and connected then we allow ourselves to be.

Baba Electronica

Daniela Bershan is a visual artist, DJ, activist and researcher that can best be described as a media-vagabond and fearless sampler. In her work – ranging from sculpture and performance to social organisation and music – she conceptualizes not just the characteristics of her materials but with and through them the skills and objects they can be read with. Sampling and being sampled she dissects choreographies and scores in order to make tangible how they operate; She is committed to create and circulate queering tools. For Daniela object-making, situations, material processes, affective encounters, active study, performance, remixing and choreography are all expressions of sense-making processes, compose potentia-spaces for erotic/aesthetic practices and nonmonotonic thinking. #DJsarelisteners

Bershan co-founded and directed FATFORM (NL), and is co-organizing ELSEWHERE & OTHERWISE at Performing Arts Forum (FR). Her works, projects and performances have been presented at ao. the 29th Sao Paulo Biennale (BR), De Appel Arts Centre (NL), Frankfurter Kunstverein (DE), Museum Katharinenhof (DE), MaerzMusik (DE), KunstenfestivaldesArts (BE), W139 (NL), Portikus (DE), NAS Gallery Sydney (AU), Capacete (BR), Smart Project Space (NL), Paradiso (NL), Künstlerhaus Graz (AT) and Triennale Luxembourg (LUX).

Read More →

Performance and Music

Light/Sound/Set design

Thanks to

Valentina Desideri, Matt Hare and Performing Arts Forum, Berno Odo Polzer and the team of Maerzmusik.