Sustainability Booth Time to Listen

“Reality has no inside, outside or middle part.” (Bodhidharma)

The Sustainability Booth stands in the middle of the OTTO-Spielplatz (OTTO playground). Outside the booth are a few simple stools, benches and tables. There is a dog bar and a small buffet for birds. Inside is GIANT: The Mini-Stage in the Booth.Tiny objects and their families perform there every two hours – guided by a magical hand.

A handwritten poster announces the current items on the programme. These “sensations” mainly draw on sounds and texts supplied by artists associated with the festival, though initiatives from Moabit, Berlin and around the world are welcome too. Everyone taking part is focused on the issue of sustainability. Donations of sound, text and performance are also appreciated as spontaneous gifts. In return, the donors will be awarded plenty of sustainability points, which can be cashed at the upcoming aion. We will talk to guests, passersby and spontaneous participants in an impromptu discussion. All of these activities (including sitting in the sun and soaking up its rays) are unplugged. The Sustainability Booth has no electricity supply.

Manos Tsangaris (musician, composer, writer); guests: Kathrin Röggla (writer), Iris ter Schiphorst (composer), Carola Bauckholt (composer), Peter Ablinger (composer) with large amateur speech choir, Ann Cotten (writer), Marcus Maeder (composer), Michaela Vieser/Isaac Yuen (writers), Ulrike Draesner (writer), Marie Glassl (dramatist, writer), Malte Ubenauf (dramatist, writer), and many more.

The programme is part of the Akademie festival Time to Listen, the Month of contemporary Music Berlin and the Moabit “Ortstermin” arts festival.

Programme

Saturday, 2 September 2023

12 pm
Manos Tsangaris, Carola Bauckholt, Thomas Büttner, a small band and guests: Intro

Everyone taking part is focused on the issue of sustainability: what sticks with us and what will endure into the distant future. The event is interspersed with donations of sound, text and performance, also welcomed as spontaneous gifts. A milieu of listening, talking and discussion.

1–2 pm, 3–4 pm, 5–6 pm
Manos Tsangaris: GIANT, die Minibühne in der Bude (2023, premiere)
for two performers

Mariel Jana Supka, Gilberto Moreno Ramos: performers; Philip Kuhne: Sustainability Booth construction and assembly
Commission by Akademie der Künste

Inside the booth, there is a mini-stage, GIANT, on which tiny objects and their families perform. Sometimes it takes a breather. And when the stage is in use, it listens to what is happening outside. The stage is interested in sustainability too, which is why it performs its short, fleeting pieces. Only a couple of people can fit inside the booth. They will be courteous and make space for others at some point so that they can see the GIANT stage too.

2 pm
Mpho Molikeng: Performance with self-made South African instruments

2 pm
Marcus Maeder: Ökoakustischer Soundwalk

Taking participants on a tour through Ottopark, Marcus Maeder elucidates the structure and ecological relationships of the local soundscape. Special audio technology is used to allow life in the soil and the physiological sounds of the trees to be heard on-site – Maeder explains how the sounds are generated and how they can be interpreted in ecological terms.

3 pm
Iris ter Schiphorst: KONZEPTE zu FLÄCHE(N) (2016) for choirs or other groups
Performance at Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg 10

Students of the Albrecht Dürer Gymnasium present their version of the concept play, developed in the school year 2023.

3 pm
Michaela Vieser and Isaac Yuen: Atlas der ungewöhnlichen Klänge, reading

A sonic revolution is underway. The expanding field of acoustics is enabling us to tune into a multitude of invisible systems. Sound artists use vibration sensors to probe into the deepest parts of the world. Sensitive hydrophones are revealing the vibrant chatter in our rivers and oceans. But with this ability to eavesdrop into newfound realms comes a responsibility not only to understand, but to safeguard them—often from ourselves.

4 pm
Iris ter Schiphorst, Cécile Wajsbrot, Jovana Popić, Leon Erhorn of the European Alliance of Academies: Climate Café

How do we experience the climate crisis? And how can society be successfully transformed?We have had over 30 years to take careful steps to address the urgent task of transforming society. Nothing has happened – despite us knowing better! We are now being asked to make major changes in all areas of society.

Because the “habits” we have grown to love are now destroying the very basis of our existence: habitable regions are vanishing, species are becoming extinct, and clean water and food are growing scarce – even in Europe, which is now one of the global warming hotspots. We want to discuss this with you at the Climate Café and put our heads together to consider how we might succeed in transforming society.

6 pm
Manos Tsangaris, Ann Cotton, a small band and guests: Finale 

Sunday, 3 September

12 pm
Manos Tsangaris, Kathrin Röggla, a small band and guests: Intro

1–2 pm, 3–4 pm, 5–6 pm
Manos Tsangaris: GIANT, die Minibühne in der Bude (2023)
for two performers

2:45 pm
Peter Ablinger: Moabiter Chöre 

For the final chorus of the premiere of Peter Ablinger’s Moabiter Chöre, the powerful voices of the volunteer choir will come together around the Sustainability Booth. Headed by the two choir leaders, they will speak texts oscillating between sense and nonsense related to the current climate crisis.

3 pm
Discussion with Marie Glassl and Malte Ubenauf

4 pm
Ulrike Draesner: doggerland (2021)
poem, read with two voices (Ulrike Draesner, Ute Wassermann)

Submerged by a tsunami some 8,500 years ago, the border country and connecting region that is doggerland is the starting point for Ulrike Draesner’s vital questions about what it is to be human: How did communities form? Who had the idea of domesticating animals? What was done to the “alien” Neanderthals? A moving, lyrical search for our roots, liberated from centuries-old notions, conceived mainly by men.

6 pm
Manos Tsangaris, Julia Gerlach, Carola Bauckholt, a small band and guests: Finale