Silent Noise

January 04, 2024

Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi (GHA) & John Herman (DE)

Artivism/Performance (GHAN, GER, LUX), 2023

Following their second collaborative performance, TABLE OF NEGOTIATION, in which Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi [crazinisT artisT] and John Herman explored the constructs and notions of imperfect or non-normative bodies, the two performance artists developed their third collaboration, SILENT NOISE. It is a reflection and a monumental intervention to reimagine the relationship of the body to global politics, power dynamics, time, space, privilege and vulnerability.

As an intervention, the artists will reclaim the invitation of Bert Theis' work PHILOSOPHICAL PLATFORM in Belval (Lux) - said white platform was inspired by the staircase in Raphael's School of Athens in the Vatican Stanze on which the great Greek philosophers are depicted. It invites the public to witness, observe, participate, rethink and contemplate on eclectic bodies and selective solidarity.

Papaya

January 04, 2024

Papaya, 2023 Artivism/Theater/Performance (Lux, BE, UK)

PAPAYA is an afro-feminist project which, among various outcomes, addresses the mental health of people affected by racism and sistemic patriarchy today. The project was launched in 2019 by the artist Jennifer Lopes Santos. Finally, Eric G. Foy for the music and Melissandre Varin for the concept, creation and interpretation were added.

The Afro-feminist performance PAPAYA, premiered at Kulturfabrik, mixes the mediums of dance, text, sound, installation, textile and performative arts. Beyond physical, disciplinary and ideological borders, artists Jennifer Lopes Santos, Eric G. Foy, and Melissandre Varin invite us to think through the body by questioning imagined or real plural identities. By taking the steep paths of their relationships with tenderness, alienation, and intimacy, they offer an immersion in the troubled Afro-diasporic waters. Via their personal experiences, the members of the eponymous collective unearth and weave a sensitive performance in order to transmit without filters the trauma of erasure, of all these masks worn to survive but also the countless processes of creative liberation and emancipation to it. How can we create, nourish, heal and share the conditions of (self) love beyond discrimination and power issues? We are invited to reconsider what art can trigger, repair, and transform.

About the project: The afro-feminist collective PAPAYA is based in Luxembourg, Belgium, and the United Kingdom. After a first residency and workshop “(Black) liberation?” in February 2022 at the Warwick Arts Center (UK); an artistic residency, a speaking circle for and by racialized people, a conference on mental health in art for queer and trans people followed by a first work in progress presentation on 3rd March at Trois C-L (Lux). PAPAYA settles down in Esch for a final residency before a premiere on 12th May, 2023 at the Kulturfabrik.

Living Dunes

March 03, 2021 in Photography, Reportage, GQ, Contacto

The journey goes as far as you trust yourself

OCEAN VIEW

October 15, 2020 in Creative Direction, Photography, Fashion, Music, Ocean View

Inhale & Escape - the story

Around 100 songs exquisitely curated and gathered together as a playlist on Spotify. OCEAN VIEW, has been curated over the final three years and more assiduously over the past year.

The songs featured in OCEAN VIEW have been finger picked and researched to commonly awaken the mood of all these afternoons spent watching the waves and alienating the outside existence.

Unwinding and melancholically “acknowledging, all the dances one was supposed to dance while the music was playing”. -Alan Watts.

Numerous songs forming OCEAN VIEW, have been pinned and collected via Shazam, in various surf-ranches, beach bars, local restaurants and other commerces along the pacific and mostly on the atlantic coast. Other songs have been sent by friends & family. The collection of songs happened very organically with a slow footprint.

In every way, I am happy they came across me.

Today, OCEAN VIEW exists as a free playlist fogging through various musical genres and is not bound to any of these nor to any religious or politically views expressed in these songs. OCEAN VIEW is solely bound to the diversity of its name.

With music as a further ELEMENT, OCEAN VIEW features voices and samples from Detroit over Greece to Guinea pit-stopping in Asia on Electro flairs encompassing some 1972 Bossa Nova to reach Lisbon and Northern London’s hip-hop scene before diving further into numerous other genres, and in time. Music as a fifth ELEMENT.

It was with great love and certainly passion, even therapeutical to focus on getting to know so many new diverse and borderless artists to finally assert the vision OCEAN VIEW to balances for, a vehicle that creates the necessary space to inhale & escape.

An ode to World Music and Music from all Worlds.

Conceptions

May 27, 2020 in Creative Direction, Photography, Fashion

Creativity as a disruptive process

With dance artist and choreographer, Claudia Urhausen.

The series of images below were taken during a project we purposely called-in in May 2020 to challenge our creative expressions on the spot. Almost like a speed date in studio to create !

It was important for us to have NO or very little preparation and leave the creativity to its sharp ends. Emphasizing and training herewith the simplest process of creation. Except for the final result - both of us agreed beforehand the images should come out aesthetically pleasing and unconformed. Colourfull & in colors.

We acknowledged the creative process should be a disruptive one and we would instinctively guide us along or change direction, challenging herewith our creative responsiveness with every decision. For both of us it’s a good exercise to trigger, maintain and expand a certain Momentum, in our forms of expression.

The photographies shall express no particular history, no place, no time. Their only aim is to exist in an aesthetic almost graphic form whereby the viewer is herewith invited to openly expand his thoughts outside the picture frame, as opposed to consume what’s framed.

Shot at 1535 The Creative Hub