Author: Adrienne Teicher

  • Damage Done // Say Goodbye To

    Damage Done // Say Goodbye To

    Presentations

    21-23 February, 2025Ballhaus Ost

    Welcome to a living room that turns into a smouldering scene of remembering and forgetting. Here, between a grandmother suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and her daughter, worlds collide: an interplay of anger, sadness, despair and disorientation. What remains when memories fade and the past becomes an unreliable companion?

    Damage Done takes the audience on a journey through the fragility of memory and the construction of identity in a world that wants to save everything. The starting point is private video recordings from the family archive that were never intended for the public. But it is precisely this intimate closeness that challenges us to pause and ask questions: What does this material show – and what does it do to us who view it?

    Through a collaborative process, the recordings are dissected, reinterpreted and translated into images, movements and dialogues. Alternative forms of communication emerge, transforming the stage into a multi-perspective space in which remembering and forgetting are negotiated in equal measure.

    Credits

    Concept, Direction:Tobias Yves Zintel
    Sound Design:HYENAZ
    Score:HYENAZ, Daniel Murena
    Performers:Juno Meinecke, Adrienne Teicher, Anatol Käbisch, Janet Rothe, Rasmus Slätis, Karen Zimmermann, Kathryn Fischer
    Director’s Assistant:Karen Zimmermann
    Stage:Sabina Moncys, Tobias Yves Zintel
    Camera:Shane Mcmillan
    Produced by:Tobias Yves Zintel in co-operation with Ballhaus Ost
  • Talks and Panels

    Talks and Panels

    16th February 2025Forever Unlimited Fundraiser
    99 Revaler Str, Berlin
    14th November 2024Kwia
    Maybachufer 16, Berlin

  • Nature

    To create Nature, I drew on the millions of hours of drone footage online that depict the evolution and decay of human settlement. I wanted to touch the horror that is produced from watching human life approach a civilisational singularity, where we either enslave or destroy all other forms of life, and ultimately ourselves. I’m currently working on a multichannel version of the artwork for gallery installations.

    Credits

    Composition, Programming, Sound Design, Lyrics: Adrienne Teicher
    Mix & Master: Steve Voidloss, Black Monolith Studio

  • The Visual Feminist Manifesto

    The Visual Feminist Manifesto

    Presentations

    2nd, 4th & 8th february 2025International Film Festival Rotterdam (Premiere)

    Expressing desire, pursuing dreams, loving oneself, questioning the oppressive confines of patriarchy. Farida Baqi takes us on a lyrical and emotional journey through the life of a young woman from birth to adulthood in an unnamed Arab city.

    The moment of birth, the possibilities of childhood, the growing pains of teenage years, the expectations imposed by society on young women: The Visual Feminist Manifesto explores how a woman’s life is crafted by the world around her. We are witness to the ways in which she makes meaning, both from her personal experience and how she is told she must behave, both deeply shaped by patriarchal structures. Repeatedly told that women are “less than”, her behaviour is made small by the threats of shame, fear, and ostracisation. All the while, she is seeking something more emancipatory.

    Farida Baqi brings us into the fold through the life of an unnamed woman in an Arab city, homing in on the experience of a cisgender woman making encounters with heterosexual desire. But the filmmaker’s ode will resonate with many, united through universal emotions of joy, pain, love, and frustration. 

    Contrasting shots depicting the urbanity of an Arab city and the gentle scenery of the seaside, Baqi makes a woman’s life inextricable from the spaces and places around her, all the while hinting at a more liberatory future forged through solidarity.

    – Olivia Popp

    Credits

    DirectorFarida Baqi
    MusicMad Kate | the Tide, HYENAZ, Lynn Adib
    Sound DesignStudio Mitte, HYENAZ
    ScreenplayFarida Baqi
    CinematographyJanne Ebel
    Principal castAmal el-Hani, Lynn Adib, Rosalie Cella, Gaël Abou Jaoude, Michelle Zallouaa, Norah Toledano, Alice Canzonieri
  • Trish the Weatherwoman

    Trish the Weatherwoman

    //Drag // DJ //

    Performances

    04/10/2024Gieza’s Pokehouse, Tipsy Bear Berlin
    28-29/03/2024König Theater, Delphi Theater, Berlin
    21-22/01/2024König, Tipsy Bear, Berlin

    Bookings: https://adrienneteicher.com/contact/

    A weatherwoman on the verge…

    “Melbourne, is it just me, or is it a little moist down sout?”

    In the tradition of the bleak news satire “The Day Today” and “Brass Eye”, Trish is an ’80s weatherwoman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

    Having just clawed her way from the secretarial pool to present the morning weather on Channel 6 in Sydney Australia, Trish is desperate to get through just one forecast without a single slip.

    But a great stinking hole has opened up in the ozone layer – a rupture in the fabric that holds Trish’s reality in place.

    Can Trish deliver a flawless forecast without her monsoon of aching desire, anxiety and outrage erupting all over her dreams?

    “A Word That Starts with G” was first performed just two months after Israel accelerated its genocide in the Gaza Strip in the wake of the October 7th attacks by Hamas.

    Trish, “lovable, fuckable, yet fundamentally weather girl” in her own little bubble of 1980s Australia, is able to blow a hole through the pervading climate of censorship, primarily self-censorship, that has silenced so many artists and institutions.

    Berlin’s only weather-themed drag dj

    When she’s not on air, Trish channels her meteorological madness into pure dancefloor euphoria. Her deluge of deep house, ravey remixes, and soulful anthems, with impromptu lip-sync performances turn every set into a dazzling spectacle.

    Trish Mixcloud


    You can read an essay I wrote about Trish and the background of self-censorship that birthed this character on my substack here: https://open.substack.com/pub/adrienneteicher/p/a-word-that-starts-with-g-and-ends

  • HYENAZ x Aérea Negrot – Pain is a Place

    HYENAZ x Aérea Negrot – Pain is a Place

    Presentations

    2nd June 2024IT’S LOVER, LOVE – Wake for Lost Ones, Xposed Film Festival, Aquarium, Berlin

    In 2022, director Yony Leyser asked HYENAZ to develop a sound design for his film The Fourth Generation, which starred and was loosely based/not based on the life-force that is Aérea Negrot—singer, producer, DJ, and performer. One morning, Aérea joined us in our studio to help create an auditory mood for the film’s peak, where the protagonist places a cartoonish ticking time-bomb at the feet of Germany’s newly elected dictator.

    Image by Xposed Queer Film Festival

    Aérea took to the microphone and, over twenty or thirty minutes, unleashed a torrent of sounds, tones, voices—an overflow, a rupture that was beautiful, stirring, and at times unsettling. We took only what served the film and parked the rest in our deep memories.

    In 2023, Aérea died.

    For the 2024 edition of the Xposed Film Festival, a memorial for Aérea was arranged by Shu Lea Chang, Jürgen Brüning, and Alex Demitriou, who worked with Aérea on a number of Shu Lea’s films. Seeing the call for contributions, we returned to the material from the film and presented it at the wake.

    Kate remembered that there was more, a great deal more, than what we had used in the film. We opened the project in our DAW and stretched out the audio track, discovering an extended crescendo in which the text “Pain can be a place of future transformation” emerged.

    At times, the words sound like a prayer, at others a demand.

    We arranged Aérea’s voice in layers interspersed with drones formed by stretching out her syllables. Finally, with gentle chords and a melody, Aérea asks the listener to chant the mantra with her into infinity.

  • HYENAZ : Audibility

    HYENAZ : Audibility

    Listen: https://listen.music-hub.com/tXVO4g
    Buy: https://hyenazhyenaz.bandcamp.com/track/audibility

    In their audiovisual artwork Audibility, HYENAZ delve into the politics of sound, inviting viewers to reconsider their relationship to the audible and inaudible, to silence and silencing. Filmed in an ancient man-made cave in the Murgia region of southern Italy, poet Donato Laborante delivers a poetic exploration of different forms of silence(s), holding in his hands the stalk of the Ferula Ferrita plant, an emblem of the Murgia’s unique ecology. The plant’s presence becomes an integral part of the artwork, questioning its animacy and whether it can consent to being part of an artwork.

    HYENAZ suggest that audibility is deeply political and involves the willingness of the listener to hear differently; that this process is a mutual co-practice of speaking and listening and challenges the entire sonic environment to relate otherwise. Intertwined with embodied, somatic experiences, this requires a shift in our listening practices. Audibility invites us to engage with silence not as a void, but as a dynamic and multifaceted presence.

  • A Body Like Mine

    A Body Like Mine

    // Sound Recordist for Short Film //

    Premiere: DOC.BERLIN Film Festival 2023 / Winner: Best German Documentary
    International Premiere: 38th BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival
    Broadcast/Streaming: 3SAT Germany 

    A BODY LIKE MINE is the poetic portrait of a young artist and activist named Puck (they/them). Puck is not their legal name, it is a character the artist has created and transforms into during their performances. As co-writer and protagonist of the film, the artist talks about how Puck’s existence helps them to feel more grounded in a world they experience as overwhelming. While Puck dares to do wild things, such as queer post porn and wrestling, Puck’s creator themself shares their vulnerability. In the film they contemplate the discrepancy between themself and their character: They talk about how they are often misunderstood, judged, and fetishized. How they are assigned gender stereotypes they don’t want to conform to. Puck’s activism consists of their visibility as a proud Black person and of staging themself as part of phantasies and images that bodies like theirs traditionally have been banished from.

    A BODY LIKE MINE is a fairy-tale like documentary. Conceived through the artistic collaboration between Puck and director Maja Classen, the film allows for an intimate and moving glimpse into Puck’s lifestyle, their inspirations, fears and experiences.-

    Team

    Director
    Maja Classen

    Writer
    Maja Classen, Puck

    Director of Photography
    Alina Albrecht

    Cast
    Puck, Bishop Black, Playgirls Mansion Collective, Manon Praline, Torri Lisek

    Editing
    Thomas Krause and Maya Steinberg

    Original Music
    Vanessa Chartrand-Rodrigue

    Sound Recordists
    Koenraad Ecker, Marina Funck, Adrienne Teicher

    Sounddesign & Final Mix
    Uwe Bossenz

    Production Designer
    Miren Oller

    Producer
    Saralisa Volm

    Production Manager
    Anja Neuhaus

    In Co-produktion with
    ZDF/3sat

    A POISON production
    Distributed by POISON

    FESTIVALS
    Doc.Berlin Berlin Documentary Film Festival
    BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival

    AWARDS
    Doc.Berlin Documentary Film Festival: Best German Documentary Film

  • Lulu

    Lulu

    //Surround Sound Design for Theatre//

    24-25.11.2023HochX, Munich
    1-3.23-2023Rampe, Stuttgart
    Image Nora Jacobs

    For Lulu I created a quadrophonic sound design using the voices of opera singers Mireille Capelle and Margareta Klobucar along with quotidian auditory artefacts captured in three days of our studio work in Berlin.

    About Lulu

    Lulu Obermayer’s artistic practice is the staging of encounters with female figures from the canon. Named after the heroine of the title, the artist now confronts her namesake in the solo performance Lulu and reflects herself in the dramatic figure. Lulu is seen as a projection screen for male fantasies, and there seems to be a consensus on who Lulu is: a femme fatale who brings ruin to herself and those around her. Lulu, they say, is a mirror. But which Lulu is looking back when Lulu looks in the mirror?

    In order to create a more complex image of the character, the artist tracks down sources related to Lulu and conjures up a séance-like setting, referring to her predecessors and bringing them into dialogue. The monologue becomes a dialogue. She draws on Frank Wedekind’s plays Der Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora, Tilly Wedekind’s autobiography Lulu, Die Rolle meines Lebens, G.W. Pabst’s film Die Büchse der Pandora, Louise Brooks’ memoir Lulu in Hollywood and Alban Berg’s opera Lulu.

    Credits

    Artistic Direction, Concept, Performance: Lulu Obermayer
    Sound design: Adrienne Teicher
    Video: Nora Jacobs
    Technical direction: Michele Piazzi
    Production management: Dana Tucker
    Make-up: Marlena Fink
    Costume: Predrag Pele Petrovic
    Holograms: Mireille Capelle, Margareta Klobucar

  • Kuzniak Teicher : Drip Drip Drip

    Kuzniak Teicher : Drip Drip Drip

    Performances

    3.11.2023Kasper Theater, Berlin

    Streaming

    Buy

    About the EP

    Drip Drip Drip is the debut collaboration between multi-instrumentalist and producer Bartłomiej Kuźniak and transfeminine artist Adrienne Teicher. The work resides in a landscape of psychedelic post-techno, interwoven with whispered, sung and shouted meditations on what it means to have a body, and the strange ghosts that linger behind experiences of love and desire.

    “Both & Neither” is a fever dream, in which the swarm of forces that animate the “I” of self-identify manifest as deities in the rattle of Adrienne’s voice. The composition’s strong rhythmic foundations intersect with an undercurrent of extended harmonies brought to life by Kuzniak’s saxophone and an array of atonal synthesizers.

    “Ocean” submerges the listener in a world of fluid, undulating textures and subtle, pulsating rhythms. Ostensibly a love song, the text refuses reassuring cliches, seeing love – like the ocean – as a space which resists human territorialisations.

    The sombre, haunting melodies of “My Body Is Not My Own” unearth the paradoxes at the root of bodily autonomy and the tension between self and society that rupture the ostensible freedom to “be who you want to be” in fading liberal capitalist democracies of the West.

    Finally, the cascading, hyper-caffeinated polyrhythms of ‘Hope’ transmit a sense of everyday life accelerated beyond human limits, of bodies burning too brightly and then burning out. Yet beneath this choppy surface, there is a glimmer of joy and serenity. Is it our salvation? Or simply the illusion which keeps us in the game?

    The mesmerising video for the track was created by the visual artist Mariusz Knysak. For this project he designed and built a fully analogue reactor that uses light and sound exchanging their energy through water. The entire installation was created solely by recycling used electronic devices, which is the Knysak’s hallmark.

    About the Artists

    Kuźniak is a prolific composer, multi-instrumentalist and audio engineer. He founded studio333.net, has released over 50 albums and produced 100 more for other artists ranging from minimalistic contemporary chamber music to avant-garde electronic soundscapes.

    Teicher’s work is situated between electronic music, audiovisual art, movement performance and poetry. She is one half of the boundary-pushing duo HYENAZ.

    Mariusz Knysak is an audiovisual artist and performer who explores the edge where light and sound interpenetrate, creating new tools from broken devices and components.

    Credits

    Adrienne Teicher: Vocals, Lyrics, Xronomorph Sequencing, Sound Design
    Bartłomiej Kuźniak: Double Bass, Soprano Saxophone, Electric Bass, Contraphone, Xronomorph Sequencing, Field Recordings, Sound Design

    Music Production: Bartłomiej Kuźniak & Adrienne Teicher
    High Definition Mixing & Mastering: Bartłomiej Kuźniak, studio333.net

  • Oscuro

    Oscuro

    23.10.2023Grrl Haus Cinema, Space Meduza

    In this captivating and dreamy music video by Laura Hyponnen (Electric Blue Films) for Princess Century aka Maya Postepski (TRUST, Austra) I played the role of death. I tried to unmake myself as human or even humanoid. I imagined what it would be like to manifest a force of nature, whose desires to transform us and compost us are borne with neither love nor malice.

  • HYENAZ : Proximity

    HYENAZ : Proximity

    08 & 10 June 2023Hamburg Short Film Festival

    Presentations

    This damp and amphibious track extrapolates from field recordings of an immense network of stuttering frogs, which we encountered on Yorta Yorta country in South-Eastern Australia. The frogs reacted to their presence and movement by altering the intensity and volume of their vocalizations, creating an organic techno. The singular texture of PROXIMITY is the result of this collaboration with wetland wildlife.

    The frogs’ reaction to their sense of [in]security led us to draw parallels to how physical and emotional proximity affect human societal relations, a concept we explore in the slime-covered video for PROXIMITY. Released by the poetry journal Interim, this visual artwork lurches and staggers across bodies in motion to ask the question, “Does our Proximity Bind Us?”

    The movement research for the PROXIMITY video began with the performative installation and praxis PROXIMATE MOVEMENTS, which was first researched during Isabelle Lewis’s immersive spaces exploration at Martin Gropius Bau, which was part of the “Welt Ohne Aussen” festival in 2018. It was later performed at Garbicz Festival Poland with Ambrita Sunshine, Adrienne Teicher, Mad Kate, Federica Dauri, Danilo Andrés, Bishop Black and Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau. The movement research around Proximate Movements later evolved into the group CLUSTERFUCK, whom HYENAZ directed and performed with for PEACHES stage show There’s Only One Peach with the Hole in the Middle.

    This track was particularly rewarding in terms of the field recording process from which it began. One night we were camping on the Barmah Lakes in the lands of the Yorta Yorta nation in south-eastern Australia. We had been invited there by Yorta Yorta elder Professor Wayne Atkinson to go “on country” with a group of students, to learn the cosmology and history of his people and their contemporary struggle for sovereignty over lands that were taken by the settler-colonial nation state.

    As twilight settled over the lakes we began to hear these strange clicks and pulses that sounded extraterrestrial, as if some force was mapping the space through sound. We took our recorder out into the marshy wetlands, to try and record this entity, but wherever we were, the sounds were escaping us, it was as if we had a negative force field pushing away whatever this thing was creating these strange sounds. After moving further and further along the banks, but getting no closer to the sound, we decided to stop moving altogether and just listen.

    It was then that the sounds began to approach us, gradually coming closer and closer, more and more of these clicks and pulses until we were subsumed within them and we saw, at our feet a tiny, tiny frog pulsating in our torch light.

    It’s tempting to think about art as a form of mastery but just as often, creating art is as much about giving up control. Through this experience we realised that sensitivity is at the heart of field recording. The frogs established a set of terms that made it possible for us to share space with them and they also taught us that rather than being in a perpetual state of doing, that sometimes the work is more about un-doing or doing nothing.

    The frogs also got us thinking about nearness, safety, and community. How do safety and care shift in relation to physical proximity; how does the grievability, or the extent to which we value and grieve for other lives, change relative to how close we are to them (physically?). What other kinds of proximities exist besides physical ones and how can they be utilised to create networks of care? In the visual work for Proximity, we invited a team of dancers including Adrienne Teicher of HYENAZ alongside Bishop Black, Tereza Silon, Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau, Danilo Andrés and ROC to explore how closeness—physical proximity—shifts our emotional response to each other.

    PROXIMITY is the first in a series of singles, mixed-reality performances and a/v installations entitled Foreign Bodies. The works surface from an ongoing practice of learning from the individuals and communities who move in resistance to, in spite of, and as a result of, the management and control of bodies by nation-states, corporations and other authoritarian actors.

    Proximity was first published in Interim 35.2 – The Body Issue – April 2018 and was presented at the Hamburg Short Film Festival 2023

    Music, Concept, Design, Styling and Editing: HYENAZ
    Choreography: Mad Kate
    Cinematography: Jo Pollux and Raja de Luna
    Movers: Danilo Andrés, Tereza Silon, Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau, Bishop Black, ROC, Adrienne Teicher
    Audio Mastering: Becki Whitton

  • Chokehole: Drag Wrestlers do Deutschland

    Chokehole: Drag Wrestlers do Deutschland

    One hot summer night in New Orleans a drag collective staged wrestling night. They dressed up as their vibrant alter-egos, and proceeded to beat the living daylights out each other while the audience collectively lost their shit. That night, Chokehole was born. This documentary follows Chokehole as they take the show to Germany, sharing the stories of cast members as they grapple with racism, gender conformism, queer identity and America’s suppression of the arts.

    The film depicts the artists both with and without drag, sharing their larger-than-life and theatrical alter egos while displaying the unique vulnerabilities that lie behind the character. This film explores their loud, vibrant personas alongside their heart-breaking personal stories, and the adversity they’ve had to overcome to be accepted in the US. As the documentary progresses, we learn how each character copes with love, sex, transitions, post-trauma, and socioeconomics while offering a glimpse into their fantastical, vivid world… which is as much an escape for the artists as it is for the audience.

    “Chokehole: Drag Wrestlers do Deutschland” is the story of how disenfranchised, queer performers defeated all the odds to make a compelling theatrical show

    Credits

    Director: Yony Leyser
    Music: HYENAZ
    Sound Recordist: Adrienne Teicher & Kathryn Fischer
    Editor: Ruth Schönegge
    Sound re-recording mixer: Cornelius Rapp

    Selected Festivals

    • New Orleans Film Festival
    • Chicago Underground Film Festival
    • Outfest
    • San Francisco Documentary Film Festival
    • Festival of Nations
    • Revelation International Film Festival Perth
  • HYENAZ at ACT Skopje

    HYENAZ at ACT Skopje

    ACT is a project initiated by 10 cultural operators from 10 European countries, working in the field of performing and visual arts. ACT is a project with the support of the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.

    In 2023 a group of artists and performers gathered in Skopje, North Macedonia for a program organised by the NGO Lokomotiva. HYENAZ represented the Kampnagel theatre in Hamburg.

  • HYENAZ : Signals

    HYENAZ : Signals

    Showings

    15-17 June 2023membra(I)nes:
    12th Annual Conference of the Gender Studies Association and Public Program
    Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle and Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig
    20 May 2023Sivan Ben Yishai: Wit(h)nessing
    Haus der Berliner Festspiele, Main Stage

    Streaming: https://listen.music-hub.com/zW3KfR
    Buy: https://hyenazhyenaz.bandcamp.com/album/signals

    SIGNALS is a new work created especially for Washington DC’s Sound Scene Festival’s 2021 theme EMERGE. Sound Scene Festival is supported by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum.

    Signals explores the notion of performativity in the form of codes, signs, drag, and masks in order to emerge from the darkness as visible.

    Signals become methods of translation, channels through which our voices become audible and understood. Bodies emerge into forms which are recognized and codified; modes through which we can be understood and called into subjectivity. An audio work and a video essay, Signals explores the process of emergence especially as it relates to the a/Artist into cultural spaces of power, those who hold or desire to hold the microphone.

    Using multiple distinct voices and perspectives, both sung and written, Signals explores the process through which one emerges through the implementation of signals like masks, codes, dress, and language in order to achieve audibility, visibility and thus access. What is this process of emergence? Who stands at the gate? What is gained and lost in this process?

    HYENAZ create all their sound works from original field recordings; the particular context for these recordings were an anarcha-feminist anti-military conference which brought together activists from throughout and beyond Eastern Europe and central Asia. Together the members of the conference struggled to bridge knowledges, contexts and experiences. HYENAZ want to especially thank the voices and brave activists who were present there.

    Signals is the 4th audio visual work in our Foreign Bodies series.

  • HYENAZ : Stillicidium

    HYENAZ : Stillicidium

    a workshop with HYENAZ exploring animacy, consent, deep listening and authentic movement, in relationship with stone.

    STILLICIDIUM die tranen des steines I parte:
    SATURDAY, MARCH 4, 2023 AT 3 PM – 6 PM – Poggiorsini, Italy
    https://www.facebook.com/events/3394857770785426
    STILLICIDIUM die tranen des steines II parte
    TUESDAY, MARCH 7, 2023 AT 12 PM – 6 PM
    La Mefite di Rocca san Felice, Italy
    https://www.facebook.com/events/147693294856674

    Documentation by Vittoria Elena Simone

    https://milleniumbrigante.it/

    photo HYENAZ
    photo HYENAZ
    photo Vittoria Elena Simone
    photo HYENAZ
    photo Vittoria Elena Simone
  • The Fourth Generation

    The Fourth Generation

    The Fourth Generation, is a homage to Berlin’s vibrant underground and the communities that breathe life into the city. The film is set in a dystopian future, but the themes explored are very real. Queer identity, feminism, sexuality and the intersection of politics and art. In the near future Professional provocateur and artist Maven Shegula has returned to Berlin after a hiatus in Zürich. She’s back to celebrate her 50th birthday, and to appear on a popular German talk show.

    As she wanders the streets of Berlin with her girlfriend and friend, it becomes apparent that being an artist in this city is no longer acceptable. The humming nightlife has disappeared, and the vibrant creative community pushed to the margins of society. The film is alive with tension, both sexual and otherwise. As Maven’s story unfurls on live television, we learn about her son, her politics, her  heritage and her alter-ego Rosa who champions radical self-expression and  feminism. The interview is dispersed with beautiful and volcanic eruptions from Maven that act as both a denunciation of the city’s leadership and a love letter to Berlin.

    Packed full of vibrant fashion, queerness, dark humour and experimental visuals, The Fourth Generation depicts every artists worst nightmare – and the lengths one woman will go to stand by
    what she believes in. The film features a predominantly trans and non-binary cast.

    Selected Festivals

    Premiere – Vienna Queer Shorts Festival

    Credits

    Directed and Written by: Yony Leyser
    Sound Design: Hyenaz (Kathryn Fischer & Adrienne Teicher)
    Cast: Aerea Negrot, Gigi Spelsberg, Yvon Jansen, Daniel Zillmann, Mano Thiravong, Mathea Hoffmann, Chilly Gonzales
    Cinematography: Paul Faltz
    Editing: Hamed Mohammadi
    Art Director: Darko Petrovic
    Production Design: Jeff Schaul, Victoria Shved
    Costume Design: Alexis Mersmann

  • V – No Return (2022 Remaster)

    V – No Return (2022 Remaster)

    Streaming: https://listen.music-hub.com/dSRtmJ
    Buy: https://vlovescats.bandcamp.com/album/no-return-2

    On a Monday or a Tuesday somewhere in 2012 a new friend called V asked me to play a gig with them on the Thursday of that week.

    Terrified, and with only days to prepare I said, “yes, of course, I would love to.”

    V sent me a demo of the tracks we would play. Armed with a folder of drum machine samples, and a couple of VSTs poached from a friend, I was able to transport V’s punk palette into the synthwave era.

    The songs remain among the work I am most proud of. Having a limited set of sounds and no time to second guess any decision, the work feels integrated, raw and immediate. V’s voice and words are so honest, desolate and heart-breaking and it transports me back to a moment of both naiveté and rapid transformation in my own life: years of joy and uncertainty.

    The gig was a hit. V and I returned to my bedroom studio on and off for the next month or so, re-recording her vocals and bass, and tweaking the arrangements. We released the album and despite my high hopes, the album slipped into obscurity.

    Now Le Petit Signalhas re-released the album on vinyl: a transmission from Berlin 10 years ago, a city in the dying embers of a post-war era that lasted more than 60 years, when there were more squats than start-ups; and know-nothing upstarts could sit in their rooms making music all day and night, for little to no money simply because they wanted to, because it helped them feel alive.

    Credits

    All songs written and performed by V, except for Dawning Day, written by Adrienne Teicher
    Synth Arrangements & Production by Adrienne Teicher
    Remastered by Mikey Young

  • HYENAZ feat Yusuph Suso : Ex Situ

    HYENAZ feat Yusuph Suso : Ex Situ

    Showings

    August 18, 2023Mad Time Warp by party office
    Rehearsing Moves on Hazy Paths
    ZK/U
    July 22, 2023Mad Time Warp by party office
    Nida Art Colony
    June 18 – September 25 2022Mad Time Warp by party office
    documenta fifteen
    1-11 September 2022Sculpture Exhibit at Queer Week
    Maxim Gorki Theater

    Interactive Sculpture: https://youtu.be/VRmLEJC0ffs
    Listen: https://listen.music-hub.com/cbrXhk
    Buy: https://hyenazhyenaz.bandcamp.com/album/ex-situ

    Ex Situ is a project of HYENAZ and Yusuph Suso, with the work of Lau Bau and Rodrigo Frenk. It is an audiovisual sculpture, a music video and a evolving interactive artwork you can contribute to with your phone or laptop. The work maps the fragile technological threads from which human beings conduct transdimensional lives in past, current and future homelands.

    The sculpture consists of a network of scratched and damaged mobile phones counterbalanced against one another as they levitate in space. Each phone loops an audiovisual element at random intervals to generate a musical narrative that is shifting, changing and moving from one moment to the next.

    The work is inspired by Maxine Burkett’s concept of a “Nation Ex-Situ” which highlights the rights to association of the growing number of people who have lost the physical location of their former homes, but who maintain bonds nonetheless as they roam across disparate locations.

    Wherever human beings are in transit, clusters of phones around power banks and electrical outlets can be observed. Phones help us stay connected to where we come from, where we are and where we are going. They help us navigate and they even become a site of home when they contain all your family and friends inside of them. In these contexts, having electricity and having data is gold.

    The phones in Ex Situ carry images and sounds Gambian singer Yusuph Suso whom Hyenaz met on a dusty road to an immigration detention centre on the outskirts of Trapani in Sicily. As part of their ongoing Foreign Bodies project, Hyenaz were mapping the phenomenon of human bodies in motion and the ways that governments and other actors regulate, instrumentalise and profit from this phenomenon. Yusuph, a former refugee, was there to act as an interpreter for migrants navigating the bureaucratic intricacies of the Italian migration system.

    In this serendipitous encounter, Yusuph revealed he is a singer from a long line of court musicians stretching back to the ancient kingdom of Mali. A week later the three artists recorded a series of interviews in English and vocals in Mandinka. Shortly thereafter, Yusuph sent a set of videos from a visit home to Gambia, which he recorded on his phone.

    These musical and visual elements were sampled and transmogrified by Hyenaz and each given their own place on one of the phones hanging from the sculpture. As free movement not only a human right but increasingly a human necessity, anyone with access to a smartphone or computer can contribute their own stories of home and migration which are integrated into the sculpture.

    By drawing us into a collective hive of dreams and memories, Ex Situ reminds us of the importance of connection even as lifeworlds sink, dissolve, or are displaced.

    Along with the gallery installation and launch of the web interface, Ex Situ also manifests as a video and EP, with a remix by Sky Deep.


    Team

    TEXT + VOCALSYusuph Suso
    COMPOSITION + CONCEPTHyenaz
    SCULPTURE DESIGNLau Bau
    VIDEOGRAPHYYusuph Suso
    VIDEO EDITHyenaz
    CREATIVE CODERodrigo Frenk
    REMIXSky Deep

    Supported by

  • Techniques for Auditory Resistance

    Techniques for Auditory Resistance

    Workshop Dates

    30 June, 2022Kampnagel, Hamburg
    16-20 July, 2018CLASTIC – European Performing Arts Residency, Valchiusella, Italy
    13-15 October, 2017betOnest, Stolpe, Germany
    1-7 July 2017Armenia
    19-21 July, 2015Kyiv, Ukraine

    “Techniques for Auditory Resistance” is a workshop and installation in sound design and field recording, facilitated by the renowned sound artists HYENAZ. The workshop invites participants to create their own sound artworks that interact with natural and or urban spaces.

    Our methodology draws upon what is at hand: our bodies, our stories, the materials we find around. With the accessibility of sound recording devices, particularly smartphones, anyone who records a story in a plaza, a song on a river bank, the sound of a frog or discarded trash blowing in the wind is already a sound artist.

    The question that motivates the workshop is: What forms of community do we create when we listen together, and after listening, collaborate on artworks that respond to public space? We perceive sound as we perceive our bodies: not as isolated territories separated by a physical divide between “mine” and “yours,” but as interconnected, multiple, perhaps exchangeable entities. We believe that these interconnections can be actualized through the application of technology to the sonic gifts of the living world and its architecture.

    “Techniques for Auditory Resistance” aims to empower individuals who wish to explore sound as a tool for empowerment and solidarity, distributing lived experience through auditory means. As such, the workshop explores how the spoken word and the lived environment provide a renewable resource for sound artists driven by the urgency of life in the 21st century.

    Sound, in a sense, is animate: it takes a life of its own. It is also produced by entities (such as wind, flowers, metal, bees, humans) that occupy different places on the vast spectrum of “liveliness”. We are interested in the inclusion of these non-human entities in this sonic encounter, and we seek to actively problematise this encounter. A key question we pose when we “take sound” is: How do those human and non-human entities signal that they consent to be part of the artwork?

    While there is no definitive answer, such questions offer immense creative potential for thinking through issues of consent and extraction.

    Curriculum

    “Techniques for Auditory Resistance” comprises the following elements:

    1. Continuous critical-theoretical discussions on the concept of sound and its potential to support forms of human agency and intersectional political movements.
    2. Writing exercises to develop texts that can be integrated into sound artworks and/or compositions.
    3. Education in the theory and practice of field recording using what is present in the environment, such as the body, everyday objects, and improvised instruments.
    4. Sound excursions that utilize the affordances of public spaces to capture the sonic gifts of the living world and its architecture.
    5. Workflow and sound archive management.
    6. Software tools that allow for the manipulation of sounds received from the field into forms of abstract instrumentation and altered soundscapes.
    7. The development of compositions for presentation as interactive “audio walks” created using the “Sonic Maps” system. Sonic Maps and similar free apps utilize geolocation technology to create audio tours in public spaces. In the audio walk we create together, participants will be able to move through public spaces and hear sonic artworks in specific locations using their own smartphones.
  • HYENAZ : Perimeter

    HYENAZ : Perimeter

    Streaming: https://listen.music-hub.com/460z3Y
    Buy: https://hyenazhyenaz.bandcamp.com/album/perimeter

    Perimeter is an audio visual work and interactive documentary by HYENAZ, featuring performances by Mad Kate, Adrienne Teicher, Mmakgosi Kgabi, Martini Cherry Furter and Simon(è) Jaikiriuma Paetau. It asks the question: what does it feel like to understand oneself as “just outside” and yet also “just barely inside” an identity, a concept, a philosophy, a group, a family, a home, a situation, a gathering? What is the feeling of just barely belonging? Both inside and outside? What is it like to be “foreign” to a place which is familiar? What is foreign inside?

    Perimeter was exhibited at Come Alive – a multidisciplinary immersive exhibition on sexualities and eroticism at Het Nieuwe Muntgebouw in Utrecht in 2022.

    Adrienne Teicher chose the perimeter of her semi-discarded Jewishness; Mad Kate delved into their relationship with her assigned-female body and sisterhood; Mmakgosi Kgabi explored her complex relationship with the feeling of joy; Martini Cherry Furter danced between notions of the “real” and “performative” self and Simon(è) Jaikiriuma Paetau, who lives between Germany and Columbia, chose the perimeter of the peripheric body and the intersecting lines of race, gender and class present in each of their homes.

    The core of the work is a sharply cut music video, with stunning artistic direction by Yeorg Kronnagel and cinematography by Robert Mleczko, wherein the five artists perform these unstable territories. What they create with their bodies is emotionally raw, yet hyperstylised, allowing visitors to the gallery to witness how playfulness can emerge even in territories which are traumatic. The music elicits associations with the underground techno scene of the city of Berlin in which all five performers live.

    Presented around this nucleus is an interview with each of the artists, which play simultaneously on five separate screens. It was in these interviews that HYENAZ and their collaborators discovered and elaborated their perimeters, giving themselves space to describe in careful detail, aspects of their existence which normally live beneath the surface of awareness. This gives visitors the unique opportunity to look inside, and behind and beyond the subculture of queer performance in Berlin.

    PERIMETER was composed in Bitwig on Ubuntu Linux. The field recordings were collected on slow movement journeys of volunteering and research for FOREIGN BODIES, a project about bodies in relation to each other, bodies in motion, bodies in repulsion and attraction, bodies in migration, bodies in resistance to management and control.

    Every sound is built from field recordings … a scrap of metal against a metal fence atop a hill in Samothraki… a busy cafe in Palermo, speaking to our collaborator and fellow musician Yusuph Suso … the sounds of labour in a refugee aid kitchen in Dunkirk… saxophone samples by Bartłomiej Kuźniak from an ancient cave in Częstochowa … clarinet samples from Alex Spree in Berlin initially recorded for Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution. All the layers of this composition have a story that we will not forget.

    The EP includes the original track plus remixes by IXA and Maya Postepski aka Princess Century.

  • Sivan Ben Yishai : Like Lovers Do – Memoiren der Medusa

    Sivan Ben Yishai : Like Lovers Do – Memoiren der Medusa

    Written by Sivan Ben Yishai
    German Translation by Maren Kames
    Audiobook Sound Design by HYENAZ

    Book Presentation / Performative Reading: 24.03.2022 / Volksbühne Berlin
    https://www.suhrkamptheater.de/theater/sivan-ben-yishai-like-lovers-do-memoiren-der-medusa-v-40388

    Medusa wird im Mythos vom Gott der Meere vergewaltigt, woraufhin sie sich in eine geflügelte Gestalt mit Schlangenhaaren verwandelt, deren Anblick jeden zu Stein erstarren lässt. Medusas gewaltvolle, kaleidoskopisch angelegten Memoiren sind bei Sivan Ben Yishai eine Widmung an alle Liebenden, die Momente unserer kollektiven Erinnerung auflistet: zwischen Begehren und Gewalt, zwischen Porno und sexuellen Fantasien, zwischen politischen Attacken und familiär eingeübtem Wegschauen. In einem nur scheinbaren Gegenszenario imaginieren fünf junge Mädchen gemeinsam den Traummann ihrer Zukunft, sich selbst unwillkürlich als perfektes Attribut an seiner Seite. Auf einer dritten Erzählspur entwirft die Autorin eine buchstäbliche Umkehrdynamik der tradierten Erzählmuster:

    Eine Frau greift zum Messer, verlässt den Tatort Ehebett, kapert einen vollbesetzten Bus und legt den Rückwärtsgang ein, um die Jahrhundert-Story-Lines und all das zerschundene menschliche Liebesfleisch einzusammeln und zu dekompostieren. Könnte es nicht zum Humus werden für eine Öko-Sphäre der feministischen Narrative?

  • HYENAZ and Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi (crazinisT artisT) : Eku Eku Eku

    HYENAZ and Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi (crazinisT artisT) : Eku Eku Eku

    A Goethe-Institut Virtual Partnership Residency with Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi (crazinisT artisT)

    EKU EKU EKU (a call to death)

    Support

    BUY THE TRACK HERE: https://hyenazhyenaz.bandcamp.com/track/eku-eku-eku-a-call-to-death

    All proceeds from Bandcamp sales benefit perfocraZe International Artist Residency, Kumasi, Ghana. The founder of perfocraZe, Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi aka crazinisT artisT is one of the most courageous and inspiring artists/activists we have ever met. sHit founded and leads the incredible international artist residency in Kumasi Ghana and is a beacon of light as a courageous queer person, performer, speaker, truth teller. sHit also works tirelessly fighting for LGBTQI+ rights in Ghana.


    Credits

    EKU EKU EKU (A Call to Death) is a Virtual Partnership Residency between Ghanaian multi-disciplinary artist Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi [crazinisT artisT] and HYENAZ, with support from Goethe-Institut. Special thanks to Silent Green Kulturquartier Berlin.

    Field Recordings and Performance: Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi [crazinisT artisT] and HYENAZ
    Cinematography by Onsoh Edward (Kumasi) and Sally Dige (Berlin)
    Song in Ewe (Dirge) by Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi [crazinisT artisT]
    Sound Design and Video Edit: HYENAZ
    Costumes (HYENAZ): Juan de Chamié of EXIT Berlin
    Costume (crazinisT artisT): crazinisT artisT studiO


    Methodology

    The field recordings and visual materials for Eku Eku Eku (a call to death) were gathered on the 20th of April 2021 at 14:00 CET / 12:00 GMT simultaneously in Berlin, Germany and Kumasi, Ghana. Using a deep listening methodology that HYENAZ had previously developed during the course of their first Virtual Partner Residency with Detroit-based artist Jova Lynne, both partners spent one hour making a parallel ritualistic and performative journey in their respective cities: Berlin and Kumasi, which were documented by their videographers.

    Prior to the day of the performance, we made several calls to form what would be the central theme to our work, finally deciding on a meditation with death. Death has been and will always be a central theme for the living, but this year due to the global pandemic, meditating on death seemed particularly poignant. HYENAZ decided to enact their end of the ritual in the Wedding Crematorium, at Silent Green while Va-Bene created her performance in one of Kumasi’s cemeteries.

    We decided on the color of red for our project in order to further unify our journeys. Once we were dressed and prepared, we called each other to check in before beginning. At the end of our respective rituals, we made a call again, discovering that we had completed our rituals within minutes of each other.

    We followed this deep listening score for the simultaneous ritual:

    Grounding. Find a comfortable position where you can relax your body into the location. Think about grounding. If you feel comfortable, come as physically close to the ground as possible. Lie on the ground. Let whatever parts of your body that touch the ground sink deeper into the ground. Concentrate on rooting. Capture the ambient sounds located there. Film yourself in this space, becoming grounded. Move the camera very close to your body to get some of the sounds and sensations very close to your skin and to your body against the earth.

    Deep Listening. While letting the recording run, think about the sound that you hear. What sounds do you hear closest to you? What is more distant? What is even further away? Take note. You can also move your body in small micro-orientations to signal that you receive the sound. It could be an arm movement or a very subtle shift in your weight, depending on how you are positioned. Articulations. From this grounded space, what words come to mind. Try not to edit yourself. Just say the first words that come to mind. Say them outloud so that they are captured by the camera and microphone. Don’t worry at first about capturing a good recording, just let the words flow. Once you know what they are, repeat the same words again clearly into the microphone/camera.

    Colour. What colour association do you make or feel as you occupy this space? Does the colour have a sound? Does the mood produced by the colour have a sound? Make a sound offering into the microphone, a squeal, song, gurgle, scream … be free Immediate concentric circle. Stand up and take space. From this specific place, take your camera and move slowly around your location in 360 degrees. This is the immediate circle and site of “home”. Move slowly so that you can notice details around you. Then take the camera and have someone move around you in 360 degrees to get you from all sides.

    Mapping. Travel with your mind in concentric circles starting with the closest circle and moving out further and further like the skin of an onion. Name what is there and what it means for you, what is its significance, personal, political, contemporary, historical, futurological.

    Found instrument. Find two objects within and around this site which can produce distinct sound and “play”. For instance, a wire scraped on a bench, or a tin can on the cement ground. Play your instrument while the recorder is set on the ground in a set location and record for at least 2 minutes. Let yourself record both distinct “hits” of the instrument as well as experiments in rhythm. Film yourself playing this instrument Free

    Movement. As you have called into all directions the sounds and energies, begin to let your body move freely in response. Try to film your movements from different directions. Allow any sounds that rise to emerge from your body. Interact with the space and its objects in any way you feel compelled to.


    Lyrics

    (sung by Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi [crazinisT artisT] in Ewe)
    Mother mother mother / Na Na na, Naye Nayee Nayee
    If you reach the peak of the mountain Agou and hear any voice, you know that I’m the one calling you / Ne do Agou toa nu de maa ne se gbedidia de, nanya be nye le yor wo
    Death doesn’t like good things / Eku me nya nu nyui ooo
    Death doesn’t kill wicked people / Eku me wua amevodi wo
    Death doesn’t pity poor people / Eku me kpor nublanui ne ame dahe woo
    Death doesn’t know good things / Eku me nya nu nyui ooo
    Death doesn’t know beauty things / Eku menya tungbe oo
    Death doesn’t know wealth / Eku me nya hotsuioooo
    Death has caused us a lot / Eku wo nu mi
    Death has wounded our heart / Ekue dabi miafe dzi nu
    Death doesn’t say it will go and come / Eku megblor be me yi ma vao


    Editing Technique

    Key to the emergence of the a/v work Eku Eku Eku was the experimental cutting techniques through which HYENAZ edited and assembled the piece. Normally we begin by composing a work from field recordings, and then cut the video to match this audio work. This time we worked from the video first using a modified version of the JAWA technique developed by the artist Tasman Richardson. When Tasman Richardson creates a/v works, they begin with found footage, scrubbing, cutting and looping to create percussive sounds and melodies using only the audio and visual material present in each fragment of found footage. We attempted the same, utilizing the audio visual field recordings we had each gathered, building the audio and visual composition in one step, from only the sounds and images present in each fragment.

    This process resulted in a composition with an extremely tight relationship between picture and sound, content and form, and allowed us to merge the worlds of Va Bene’s ritual performance in Kumasi and ours in Berlin. However, it was not without challenges: We struggled with the sheer number of audio and visual tracks layered on top of each other. Creating music within a NLE like DaVinci Resolve, which is designed primarily for video editing, lends a fragility to the creative process, a careless key stroke can easily change the relationship between vast amounts of audio and visual material and undermine days of work. In the end we exported the audio stems from the video and worked with them in our DAW Bitwig to finalize the composition and to process and add effects to some of the sounds that were lacking presence in their raw form. We then reconnected the audio and visual before exporting the final work.

  • HYENAZ : Automine

    HYENAZ : Automine

    Showings

    18 May 2024Performatorio, Bergamo, Italy
    12 May 2024Festa Delle Transumanze, Masseria Jesce, Altamura, Italy
    22 September 2023CW / Hive Film Festival
    Flutgraben Berlin
    16 September 2023Bygdapride
    Øystese, Norway
    25-26 May 2022Performing Arts Festival Berlin
    ACUD Theatre Berlin
    18 April 2022Y: N𝙤rmal B𝙤dies
    Divadlo X10
    Prague
    9-10 Dec. 2021Performance + Artist Talk
    ACUD Theatre
    Berlin
    26 Sep. 2021Performance + Artist Talk
    Casa Tranzit, Cluj
    23 Sep. 2021Performance + Artist Talk
    Atelierele Malmaison
    Bucharest, Romania
    16 Sep. 2021
    15 Sep. 2021
    Performance: Cross Attic, Prague
    Artist talk: Synth Library, Prague

    Automine asks: what are bodies worth in the digital age? And answers this question through a performance of the performance through which bodies create value, for themselves, but most likely for others.

    Bodies create value through physical labour, bodies create value by emotional labour, bodies also create value by mining the identifying markers attached to bodies, my gender, my sexuality, my story, all of these markers have value, but the value of these markers change through space and time, as society changes, as politics changes, and as the body changes, ages, decays.

    As the virtual replaces the real, the body should disappear. But does it really? Automine seeks an answer through, music, essay and a critical recitation of queer aesthetics in the third decade of the twenty first century.

    Image: Mirek Fokt

    HYENAZ present their musical works as immersive performance intervention. A performance asks that bodies are present: as performer, as audience, as active interlocutor. The assembling of bodies together for the purpose of performance – and the proximity of those bodies to experience or create together – is in itself a practice of (re)discovery of the politics of sharing physical space and the immanent territory of the flesh. 

    AUTOMINE brings together performative and audio-visual work that has been developed through Foreign Bodies, a 7-year long research project that explores relationships of bodies in motion, bodies in relation, and bodies in resistance. Through the visceral and explicit body, HYENAZ interrogate mechanisms that treat the body as a foreign object—a thing to be managed and controlled, an unknown territory even to itself, an “other” to be feared or annihilated.

    Central to this project is the idea that the body is disappearing: from social interactions blasted into the corporate cloud, to machine intelligence tangled in the systems that govern life, to techno-futurists fantasies of an age where analogue flesh has vanished into digital consciousness. At this uncanny juncture, where surfaces look familiar but everything is shifting, HYENAZ claw to the presence of the body and the knowledge contained therein.

    AUTOMINE pushes Foreign Bodies deeper into questions around a/Arts and extractivism, where “extraction” is utilized as metasignifier for the extraction of (creative) labour from (precarious) bodies; the mining of minerals, gas and water from the ground; the taking and recording of sounds, words and images from sentient beings; the seemingly consensual extraction of digital content, and the “mining of the exotic” from our very identities.

  • Adrienne Teicher : Insecure

    Adrienne Teicher : Insecure

    06.10.2023Mediterranean Rhythms for Mediterranea Saving Humans, 800A, Berlin
    08.09.2023Bygde Pride, Norway
    02.09.2021Loophole, Berlin

    Adrienne Teicher’s “Insecure” is a mixture of poetry, mime, and electronic sound design. It explores the way risk and horror–genocide, climate change, pandemic, crypto–congeal with the ultra-mundane details of everday life.

    Streaming: https://listen.music-hub.com/CYCcmb
    Buy: https://adrienneteicher.bandcamp.com/album/insecure

    Written, recorded, assembled and edited during the pandemic, Insecure 1.0 is an audio EP and collection of music videos drawing on what was close to hand, her own body, her empty apartment and stock footage. The title track features hallucinogenic avatars exploring the anxiety and unfulfilled desires imposed by isolation.

    The live performance works by integrating and disintegrating poems into the fabric of the musical bedrock provided by the EP.

    Credits

    Composition, Programming, Sound Design, Lyrics: Adrienne Teicher
    Mix & Master: Steve Voidloss, Black Monolith Studio

    Insecure 2.0 / Mediterranea fundraiser at 800A Berlin / Original Image by Robin Burke
  • Körper Figurationen Welten

    Körper Figurationen Welten

    Drei Videos zur Einführung in Queer Theorie: KÖRPER, FIGURATIONEN und WELTEN von Antke A. Engel und Filmfetch (Magda Wystub; Tali Tiller), sound design HYENAZ, with English subtitles

    BODIES. FIGURATIONS. WORLDS: Video introductions to queer theory

    Antke A. Engel und Filmfetch (Magda Wystub; Tali Tiller), FernUniversität Hagen 2021

    The videos (german with english subtitles) are freely available as Open Educational Resources (OER) at the following link: e.feu.de/queer-theory-videos or on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh98rBDWATF6bkxKNvpR4gQ

    Radio Sendung: HYENAZ featured on Gerecht Sprechen – Über die Lust auf Gendersternchen, neue Pronomen und Co.” by Sabine Rolf on BR2. https://www.br.de/mediathek/podcast/nachtstudio/gerecht-sprechen-was-wir-mit-gendersternchen-neuen-pronomen-und-co-gewinnen/1812549?fbclid=IwAR322OFGxSflihKjtyuCWFX5DD4EzdCqMk176SbkkvscssZYntZRtiwvt3o

  • Sivan Ben Yishai: Unsere Stadt aus Vogelaugen / Eine Blutung im Dunkeln

    Sivan Ben Yishai: Unsere Stadt aus Vogelaugen / Eine Blutung im Dunkeln

    Unsere Stadt aus Vogelaugen / Eine Blutung im Dunkeln
    Written and Performed by Sivan Ben Yishai
    Sound Design and Musical Performance: HYENAZ

    Visuals Patricia Bateira
    Production Assistance Luise Heiderhoff
    Translation Maren Kames

    Live Appearances

    Weltecho Chemnitz: 03.10.2021 https://weltecho.eu/
    TD Berlin: https://td.berlin/stuecke/unsere-stadt-aus-vogelaugen-eine-blutung-im-dunkeln
    Münchner Kammerspiele: https://www.tdjml.org/event/tdjml-2020-meets-munchen

    On October 3, 1938, just before Pogrom Night, the city of Dortmund ordered the city’s Great Synagogue to be torn down. On October 3rd, 2020, just a few meters from the square of the Old Synagogue, the city theater opened its season with this text. After Munich and Berlin, the writer Sivan Ben Yishai is performing her text in a special collaboration with the electro duo HYENAZ: “Our city from bird’s eyes / bleeding in the dark” is now in Chemnitz. The performative, musical reading is a meditation on the 35 days of repentance, which lie between October 3 and November 9, and draws an arc from the
    Past to the future.

    UNSERE STADT AUS VOGELAUGEN“ / „EINE BLUTUNG IM DUNKELN“Gedenkfeier des gegenwärtigen MomentsLeseperformance von Sivan Ben Yishai und dem Elektroduo HYENAZ
    Am 3. Oktober 1938, nur kurz vor der Progromnacht, verfügte die Stadt Dortmund den Abriss der Großen Synagoge der Stadt. Am 03. Oktober 2020, nur wenige Meter vom Platz der Alten Synagoge entfernt, eröffnete das Stadttheater seine Spielzeit mit diesem Text. Nach München und Berlin performt die Schriftstellerin Sivan Ben Yishai in einer besonderen Zusammenarbeit mit dem Elektroduo HYENAZ ihren Text: “Unsere Stadt aus Vogelaugen/ Eine Blutung im Dunkeln” nun in Chemnitz. Die performative, musikalische Lesung ist eine Meditation über die 35 Tage der Reue, die zwischen dem 3. Oktober und dem 9. November liegen und schlägt einen Bogen von derVergangenheit bis in die Zukunft.

  • HYENAZ x Jova Lynne : Beyond Possible

    HYENAZ x Jova Lynne : Beyond Possible

    Goethe-Institut: Virtual Partnership Residency
    EXP Award: Goethe-Institut Chicago

    Streaming: https://listen.music-hub.com/HP2FJc

    For Beyond Possible, HYENAZ and Jova Lynne gathered field recordings and visual materials in Berlin and Detroit during July and August 2020, with the intention of finding and creating sanctuary. We took a parallel journey in each of our cities, making three stops: 1-Fire/Hearth, 2-Water and 3-Cosmos. In each of these stations we used the following methodology for gathering our sound and visual samples.

    Methodology

    Grounding. Find a comfortable position where you can relax your body into the location. Think about grounding. If you feel comfortable, come as physically close to the ground as possible. Lie on the ground. Let whatever parts of your body that touch the ground sink deeper into the ground. Concentrate on rooting. Put your sound device on the ground and mm press record. Capture the ambient sounds located there.

    Deep Listening. While letting the recording run, think about the sound that you hear. What sounds do you hear closest to you? What is more distant? What is even further away? Take note. You can also move your body in small micro-orientations to signal that you receive the sound. It could be an arm movement or a very subtle shift in your weight, depending on how you are positioned.

    Articulations. From this grounded space, what words come to mind. Try not to edit yourself. Just say the first words that come to mind. Say them outloud so that they are captured by the device. Don’t worry at first about capturing a good recording, just let the words flow. Once you know what they are, pick up your sound recorder and say the same words again clearly into the microphone.

    Colour. What colour association do you make or feel as you occupy this space? Does the colour have a sound? Does the mood produced by the colour have a sound? Make a sound offering into the microphone, a squeal, song, gurgle, scream … be free
    Immediate concentric circle. From this specific place, take your camera and move slowly around your location in 360 degrees. This is the immediate circle and site of “home”. Move slowly so that you can notice details around you.

    Concentric Circles. Travel with your mind in concentric circles starting with the closest circle and moving out further and further like the skin of an onion. Name what is there and what it means for you, what is its significance, personal, political, contemporary, historical, futurological.

    First sound. Leaving the center of your circle, go towards one of the sounds that you noticed during your deep listening. Get as close as possible to it and press record. Try to record that sound for at least 2 minutes without interruption and, if possible, without ambient interruptions

    Found instrument. Find two objects within and around this site which can produce distinct sound and “play”. For instance, a wire scraped on a bench, or a tin can on the cement ground. Play your instrument while the recorder is set on the ground in a set location and record for at least 2 minutes. Let yourself record both distinct “hits” of the instrument as well as experiments in rhythm

  • Sivan Ben Yishai, Maren Kames, HYENAZ : Annies

    Sivan Ben Yishai, Maren Kames, HYENAZ : Annies

    Die Droste Lectures entstehen 2020 im Dialog zwischen zwei Autorinnen: Sivan Ben Yishai und Maren Kames. Zwei der kraftvollsten Schriftstellerinnen der jüngeren Generation sprechen mit uns und Droste über Krieg und Frieden durch die Jahrhunderte und in der Sprache. Produziert von und mit den Sounddesignerinnen und Filmemacherinnen HYENAZ.

  • HYENAZ : Columns

    HYENAZ : Columns

    Showings

    4th November, 2023
    19:00
    Kino Club
    Lapinlahden Lähde, Helsinki

    Lines That Maintain a violent order / Lines that distinguish a violent event / Those lines do not hold / The forest floor / Leaves like our bodies / Scattered in time

    Our nostrils full of earth / Leaves decay / White lines / Feet march / Lines our bodies form / Are scattered by time / Day is gone / Its heat Is gone / Its sounds gone / As all things return / To stillness

    Columns is a response to militarized violence and to History, specifically the historicising mode which focuses on events and important persona, while blurring events and persona deemed unimportant or inconsequential. Though the track sounds like industrial techno, it is built entirely from vocalizations and organic percussion recorded deep within a cave outside the pilgrimage town of Częstochowa, Poland, with Bartłomiej Kuźniak. It is second in the series of audio visual works and performance interventions entitled Foreign Bodies; works that emerge from the sonic shapeshifting of field recordings gathered in refugee camps, migrant transit centers, ancient stations on paths of pilgrimage, indigenous grounds, and intentional communities. These are places where bodies have been explicitly managed, controlled, feared and annihilated.

    The single, “Columns” is out on Canadian techno label OBSKUR MUSIC, with remixes by Lady Maru, Bad Conscience, Consumer Refund and NVRS. The video, created in collaboration with Xenia Østergård Ramm and Old Erik from the Hackstage artist collective, was produced using analogue video processing to deconstruct footage of stalactites, trees and wind turbines collected in the caves of the Harz Mountains.

  • Oder: Du verdienst Deinen Krieg (8 Soldiers Moonsick)

    Oder: Du verdienst Deinen Krieg (8 Soldiers Moonsick)

    Von Sivan Ben Yishai
    Regie Sasha Marianna Salzmann
    Sounddesign: HYENAZ

    Team: Bühne + Kostüme: Cleo Niemeyer, Dramaturgie: Rebecca Ajnwojner, Dramaturgische Mitarbeit: Anna Heesen, Licht: Fritz Stötzner, Ton: Miloš Janjić,Übersetzung: Maren Kames

    Berliner Morgenpost: Das sind die besten Inszenierungen des Jahres

    Eingeladen zum Radikal Jung – Festival für junge Regie 2020.

    Premiere: 8. November 2019 Gorki Studio Я

    Acht Frauen proben in einem Militärcamp den Ernstfall, bereiten sich vor auf den Einsatz, den Krieg. Sie reden und sie träumen davon, nachts auf ihren rostigen Bettgestellen mit den dünnen Matratzen. Die israelische Autorin Sivan Ben Yishai verdichtet die Wachträume und Erinnerungen dieser Frauen zu einem vielstimmigen, drängenden Text, auf dessen sprachliche Wucht Regisseurin Sasha Marianna Salzmann uneingeschränkt vertraut. Aus einer losen Verknüpfung von Stimmen, Körpern und Sound entstehen dabei auf der Bühne Assoziationsfelder, die sich im Kopf der Zuschauer zu Schlachtfeldern formen.

  • Peaches x Clusterfuck

    Peaches x Clusterfuck

    Photo above: Aris Akritidis for INFRINGE | Photo in header: Lydia Daniller

    Showings

    KW Berlin18.09.2021
    Transart, Bozen09.09.2021
    Theaterformen, Hannover28.06.2021
    Volksbühne, Berlin28-31.12.2019
    Musikhuset Aarhus31.08.2019
    Royal Festival Hall, London29.08.2019
    Kampnagel, Hamburg15-17.08.2019
    Deutsche Oper28.06.2019

    The CLUTERFUCK ensemble was born when PEACHES asked HYENAZ to choreograph a group of contemporary dancers for the Deutsche Oper Aus Dem Hinterhalt performance of Don Quichotte. In 2019. The group returned in PEACHES epic stage revue “There’s Only One Peach with the Hole in the Middle” with performances at Kampnagel, Hamburg, Royal Festival Hall, London, Musikhuset Aarhus and Volksbühne, Berlin. In 2021 Clusterfuck returned in a new PEACHES show called Cranky Pants, where they confronted and negotiated the ego that is generated between performers on the stage. Cranky Pants premiered at Theater Formen, Hannover, with additional performances at the KW Gallery 30-Year Anniversary Festival and Transart in Bozen.

    The ensemble comprised artists Adrienne Teicher, Mad Kate, Federica Dauri, Jao Moon, TRAUKO, Ginger Synne, Lori Baldwin, Bishop Black and Martini Cherry Furter.

  • Instinct

    Instinct

    Selected Presentations

    1st June 2024Tom of Finland Art & Culture Festival, Berghain Halle
    2nd July 2021Pornceptual Cinema, Alte Münze, Berlin
    17th September 2021Sexclusivitäten, Berlin
    25th September 2021Queer Art Fest, Rågsveds Folkets hus, Stockholm
    29 September 2020Fusion Film Festival, Oslo
    29 November 2019Dirty Diaries 10 year Anniversary, Stockholm
    24-28 October 2019Porn Film Festival Berlin (honorable mention in the Porn Short Competition)

    Streaming: https://pinklabel.tv/on-demand/film/instinct/#
    Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_p-ydyjIjY

    Instinct is a queer metaphysical love story that weaves itself through real and imagined sexual encounters across darkrooms, forest cruising zones, and highway shoulders. Immersive and deeply layered, the film presents fantastical playgrounds where bodies imagine themselves in a multiplicity of forms and long for encounters without preconceived notions of what other bodies desire, what they will need, or how they should be touched. Instead, Instinct asks: what does it mean to actively (un)learn what we might assume about another body’s sex, gender, and desire?

    A film made by: Ester Martin Bergsmark, Mad Kate, Adrienne Teicher and Marit Östberg
    Starring: Adrienne Teicher, Buffalo Grove, Christopher, Ester Martin Bergsmark, Finn, Jared Gradinger, Liz Rosenfeld, Mad Kate, Mere, MYSTI, Nika, Ocsaj, Paulita Pappel, River Rose, Sadie Lune, Tom Ass, Walter Crasshole
    Edited by: Jasco Viefhues
    Line Producer: Paula Alamillo

  • The MultiVerse in a MouthFuck

    The MultiVerse in a MouthFuck

    A metaphysical trip of self discovery, from the seven principles of Hermetism to the seven keys to master our lives (Inspired by true fuckts)

    Streaming PinkLabel – SexSchool

    Screenings:

    • Berlin PornFilmFestival Berlin, Germany. October 2019.
    • QUEER PORNFILMNIGHT at Compagnietheater Amsterdam, Netherlands. December 14th, 2019.
    • Tsiknotekno Doppelgänger / N Y E Athens, Greece. January 1st, 2020.
    • Excéntrico: Muestra Internacional de Pornografías Críticas Valparaíso, Chile. January 23rd, 2020.
    • ICA Takeovers: INFERNO London, UK. January 29th, 2020.
    • Excéntrico: Muestra Internacional de Pornografías Críticas Santiago, Chile. February 1st, 2020.
    • Hacker Porn Film Festival Rome, Italy. 2020.
    • Hot Bits Festival USA. 2020.
    • Queergestreift Filmfestival Konstanz (Queer Shorts) Konstanz, Germany. September 26th, 2020.
    • Oslo/Fusion International Film Festival Oslo, Norway. September 28th, 2020.
    • Satyrs and Maenads: The Athens Porn Film Festival Athens, Greece. November 20th – 22nd.
    • CineKink NYC, US (online). December 3rd, 2020. HONORABLE BEST MENTION
    • Fairy Tales Queer Film Festival Calgary, Canada. May 21st – 30th, 2021.
    • SECS FEST Seattle, USA (online). September 10th – 12th, 2021. BEST SEX-POSITIVE FILM
    • Porn Film Festival Vienna Vienna, Austria. October 6th – 10th, 2021. BEST INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM
    • Post Porn Film Festival Warsaw, Poland. June 7th – 12th, 2022.
    • Fish&Chips Festival Turin, Italy. September 22nd – 25th, 2022.

    Credits:

    • Cast: Rafael Medina, JorgeTheObscene, Sultan of Filth, Schoko Channel, Tristan Rehbold, Medad Rangay, Jo Pollux, Kate Hole, Candy Flip, Mad Kate, Nicky Miller, Gio Black Peter.
    • Written, Directed and Edited by: JorgeTheObscene
    • Sound Design: HYENAZ
    • Director of Photography: Theo Meow, Jo Pollux
    • Assistant Director: Doxytocine
    • Producer: JorgeTheObscene
    • Producer Assistant: Felipe Carrasco
    • Camera: Theo Meow, Michal ANdrysiak
    • Still Photography: Jo Pollux
    • Lights: Michal ANdrysiak
    • Art / Costumes: Mad Kate, Michal ANdrysiak, EXIT
    • Location Sound Mixer & Sound Design: HYENAZ
  • HYENAZ : Knowbody

    HYENAZ : Knowbody

    Against societal trends to dismiss the body in favour of automation, AI, and digital existence, KNOWBODY investigates the presence and absence of the body and the knowledge contained therein. The investigation is done through the performance of the body and the presence of the body in performance. “A performance” asks that bodies are present; as performer, as audience, as active interlocutor. The assembling of bodies together for the purpose of performance – and the proximity of those bodies to experience or create together – allows us to rediscover the immanent territory of the flesh.

    Premiere: Maxim Gorki Studio Я, 15 June 2019
    https://gorki.de/en/pugs-in-love-queer-week-2019-en

  • W(a)rmholes

    W(a)rmholes

    Photos above: Esra Rotthoff and Ceran Senar

    Five queer Berliners of different generations and backgrounds take the audience on a performative journey through Berlin’s queer history between Pankow and Schöneberg, Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg, Mahlsdorf and Charlottenburg.

    In search for the intersections of queer identities in a collective consciousness, they liquefy time, space, body and gender and connect with ancestors and future generations. The performers have been living in Berlin for generations or have recently moved here. They will channel their icons, ex-lovers and former selves to draw a political-personal portrait of queer Berlin between East and West.

    Text and Direction Yony Leyser
    With HYENAZ, Adrian Marie Blount, Jair Luna & Zazie de Paris
    Dramaturgy Tobias Herzberg
    Stage Design & Video Shahrzad Rahmani, Camille Lacadee
    Costume design Anne Fidler
    Sound design HYENAZ

  • The MILF Next Door

    The MILF Next Door

    Director and performer Sadie Lune takes on the MILF stereotype and “the girl next door” cliché in this XConfessions short film. Mothers need to start being accepted as sexual beings because the truth is, pregnant women may even experience an increased sex drive and that’s what deserves to be captured on film. They have needs and desires, and their sexual appetite doesn’t exist only to serve a man’s fantasy. This erotic film is a call to stop enforcing the MILF stereotype and to start representing the sexuality of moms-to-be as their own – their personal sexual wants, needs & desires.

    Credits

    Director: Sadie Lune
    Music & Sound Design: Adrienne Teicher

  • HYENAZ: Clastic

    HYENAZ: Clastic

    It is in mountains that the deep history of the world reveals itself, and it is in the play of sediments that the consciousness of minerals reveals itself. This consciousness mirrors in some ways the parasympathetic nervous system of human life, with its long neural pathways and preference for homeostasis: we are closer to rocks than we realise.

    The sounds of Clastic emerged from a field recording and electronic production workshop HYENAZ led in the Chiusella valley at CLASTIC – European Performing Arts Residency with the participation of: Durassie Kiangangu, Morena De leonardis, I Patom Theatre, Silvia Ribero, Angie Rottensteiner, Kazalište Nezamislivog Iva Korbar, and Elena Brea Sandin.

  • The Beauty of ReveRso

    The Beauty of ReveRso

    Credits

    Starring: ReveRso
    With Thea Adora Bauer, Chika Takahashi, Julietta la Doll, Yeorg Kronnagel, and Sekou
    Music: HYENAZ
    Make-up Artist: Yeorg Kronnagel
    Costume Design: ReveRso and Yeorg Kronnagel
    Sound Design: Joscha Eickel
    Production Assistant: Leo Carnein, Christoph Brunner
    Director of Photography, Editing, and Postproduction: Lukas Kunzmann
    Written, Produced, and Directed by Brent Adam
    Executive Producer: Rainer Spix @ Who’s McQueen

    Selected Festivals

    • Hollywood International Independent Documentary Award 2018
    • Festival de Cannes Shortfilmcorner 2018
    • Redline International Filmfestival 2018 (4 nominations – winner “Best Documentary Short”)
    • Canadian International Fashionfilm Festival 2018
    • Berlin Fashionfilm Festival 2018 (nominated for “Best Personal Work”)
    • La Jolla International Fashion Film Festival 2018 (7 nominations – winner “Best Cinematography”)
    • London Fashion Film Festival 2018 (2 nominations – winner “Best Accessory Design”)
    • Atlanta Docufest 2018 (winner: “Best Foreign Documentary Short”)
    • Bucharest Fashionfilm Festival 2018
    • White Oryx International Shortfilm Festival
    • Copenhagen Fashion Film Festival 2018
    • Jelly Fest Official Selection 2018
    • Burbank International Film Festival 2018
    • Bokeh South Africa International Lifestyle & Fashionfilm Festival 2018 (nominated: “Best Creative Hair”, “Best Creative Makeup”)
    • International Fashionfilm Festival Sarajevo 2018 (award winner “Best Story”)
  • The Ten Murders of Josephine

    The Ten Murders of Josephine

    // Live Sound Processing for Theatre //

    14-15.12.2017Theater Rotterdam Schouwburg Krijn Boon studio

    About

    Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art is proud to present the premiere of The Ten Murders of Josephine by artist Rana Hamadeh accompanying her exhibition, on view until 31 December 2017. This is the frst manifestation of Hamadeh’s operatic project, which will be continually developed across 2018.

    The Ten Murders of Josephine is an operatic project by artist Rana Hamadeh, structured through several evolving iterations. The theatrical production takes place alongside the concurrent exhibition at Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art of the same name (curated by Defne Ayas and Natasha Hoare), which functioned as the ‘factory’ and ‘assembly line’ for the operatic project, and was preceded by a study group.

    Inherited from the genre of ‘legal spectacle’, and from Hamadeh’s earlier claims regarding “justice as the measure to which one can access theater”, The Ten Murders of Josephine explores the constitutive conditions of testimony and valid speech vis-à-vis the notion of ‘testimonial subject-hood’. Hamadeh proposes a distinction between the two. While she understands the notion of ‘testimony’ as a form of rational utterance that is necessarily tied to the workings of a tribunal, her activation of the ‘testimonial’ attunes to all that is irrational; unspoken and unspeakable; unmarked and unmarkable. Hamadeh approaches the notion of the ‘testimonial’ as pointing to an ‘erased archive of colonial / racial / patriarchal / corporate / state-sponsored etc. erasure’; a violence not attended to, which materializes – phonically – as a monument to absent speech. How can this phonic materiality of absent speech become the organizing principle of subjecthood? What would it require to constitute oneself, or to emerge, thus, as a testimonial subject? And what would it mean to constitute oneself as a testimonial subject not only outside the bounds of the court of law, but even further, in place of the legal subject? Loosely based on Kafka’s mouse songstress, The Ten Murders of Josephine engenders new modalities of readership and spectatorship, and tests performative dynamics of theatrical production.

    Performers

    Claudio Ritfeld, Gerrie de Vries, Mad Kate, Rana Hamadeh, Doortje Peters, Lisa Chudalla

    Creative Team

    Director & Composer Rana Hamadeh
    Assistant Director Gerty Van de Perre
    Sound Co-Designer / Co – Composer & Light Designer Jorg Schellekens
    Programmer of Live Sound Processes, Foley Artist & Piano Software Engineer Arthur Sauer
    Creative Producer Maaike Gouwenberg
    Advisor to the director, Coordination & Research Rik Fernhout
    Associate Producers Patrick C. Haas, Rosa de Graaf
    Live Sound Processes & Night Club Scene Designer Adrienne Teicher
    Telephone System Designer rad0van misovic
    Organbook Text-to-Midi Translation André Castro
    Set Designer Paul van Gennip
    Costume Designer Angelica Falking
    Technical Coordinator Aram Visser
    Sound Technician Marcel Brand
    Decap Company Disklavier & Organbook
    Graphic Design for cover playbill, originally designed for lightbox Jungeun Lee

    Downloads

  • Queercore: How To Punk A Revolution

    Queercore: How To Punk A Revolution

    HYENAZ composed the original score for this Yony Leyser documentary about the emergence of the Queercore scene and the attendant history of queer and feminist music.

    What happens when the community you need is not the community you have? Tell yourself it exists over and over, make fan zines that fabricate hordes of queer punk revolutionaries, create subversive movies, and distribute those movies widely—and slowly, the community you’ve fabricated might become a real and radical heartbeat that spreads internationally. This is the story that Queercore tells, from the start of a pseudo-movement in the mid-1980s, intended to punk the punk scene, to the widespread rise of artists who used radical queer identity to push back equally against gay assimilation and homophobic punk culture.
    Interviewees discuss homophobia, gender, feminism, AIDS, assimilation, sex, and, of course, art. The extensive participant list includes Bruce LaBruce, G.B. Jones, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, John Waters, Justin Vivian Bond, Lynn Breedlove, Silas Howard, Pansy Division, Penny Arcade, Kathleen Hanna, Kim Gordon, Deke Elash, Tom Jennings, Team Dresch, and many more.
    Underscoring the interviews are clips from movies, zines, concerts, and actions iconic to the movement. As steeped in the radical queer, anti-capitalist, DIY, and give-no-fucks approach as queercore itself, the movie reveals the perspectives and experiences of bands, moviemakers, writers, and other outsiders, taking audiences inside the creation of the community—and art—so desperately needed by the same queers it encompassed.

    FESTIVALS/AWARDS

  • HYENAZ : Critical Magic 비평 적 마술

    HYENAZ : Critical Magic 비평 적 마술

    Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/1zSINY70pvrM48HPZKn5pC
    Bandcamp: https://hyenazhyenaz.bandcamp.com/album/critical-magic

    Critical Magic 비평 적 마술 is a mixed reality immersive performance based in physical contact, somatic labor, sound and movement to break physical and mental isolation and to spark discourse that is both critical and utopian. Between 8 June 2016 – and 5 July 2018, the complete score was performed in its entirety 28 times (as phases of the moon) as part of the “Probability Praxis Series,” with the help of spontaneous INTERLOCUTORS (volunteer performers) in each location who played a role in linking HYENAZ with the specific site and community context of each performance.

    It was also performed in many more iterations, both in person and online, as partial and micro offerings up and through the final iteration as an online event at the beginning of the corona pandemic in 2020. Critical Magic challenges how bodies enter and interact within the performance space and the binary relationship between performer and consumer. Each show’s location was conceptually mapped together with the interlocutors ahead of the show, and each show was reflected upon through a process of writing and feedback after the show.

    Following the score together, each show revealed the challenges and joys of being together in a room, accessing consent from strangers and near strangers, and how to collectively build up energy. As a marvellous and messy organizing of bodies, positionalities and perspectives, it was always a new performance.

    Eva Donckers – Strangelove Festival Antwerp – 2017

    Critical Magic 비평 적 마술 emerged from a site specific performance called “Spectral Rite” (2014) commissioned by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Seoul with HYENAZ working under the direction of Korean artist Sylbee Kim. In this performance HYENAZ led a procession through the gallery environment, traversing its exhibits, and engaging its public. HYENAZ invoked a ritual to mourn a industrial accident during the construction of the gallery that had been suppressed in public memory and which had left many workers dead and injured.

    Since this initial performance Critical Magic 비평 적 마술 has evolved into a uniquely interactive performance that integrates electronic music, chaos magic, performance art, digital media, and interactive play; a moment outside of the everyday where HYENAZ blur distinctions between audience/performer and concert/interactive ritual. Critical Magic 비평 적 마술 walks the fine line between theatrical performance piece and sonic concert, critical theory and pop sensibility, bringing its audience into a liminal space of discovery.

    The styling for Critical Magic was designed by Yeorg Kronnagel (makeup design, styling and accessories) and Juan Chamié at House of EXIT (costumes). Critical Magic was mixed by HYENAZ and Bartłomiej Kuźniak, with high definition mastering by Bartłomiej Kuźniak at studio333. We are grateful to Quecke Autonomous Feminist Community for providing the space to conceive the Spectral Rite performance and record the Critical Magic album. We also want to thank our label SPRINGSTOFF for believing in this project and releasing this album into the world, along with Critical Magic Remixed.

    Photo: Claudia Brijbag Urban Spree Berlin 2016

    Presenting this work over two years as an open workshop series called Probability Praxis allowed us to comment and blog about the performances in an effort to improve them, creating a dynamic and unique show every repetition. We want to thank each and every one of our INTERLOCUTORS who have danced live and on screen with us throughout this series. They have helped to create worlds and pictures that they themselves uniquely curated and designed in the moment. Our Interlocutors throughout this series have been:

    Federica Dauri, ReveRso, Valentin Tszin, Nuit Nile, Donato, Savage Slit, David Wampach, Nathalie Mondot, Hana Frisonsova, Tereza Silon, Non la Décadence, Lu, Bishop Black, Olave Nduwanje, Pascal Mourits, Sanne van Driel, Yareth Habermehl, Dennis Snorremans, Lizzie Masterton, Mil Vukovic-Smart, ROC, Simon(è) Jaikiriuma Paetau, Danilo Andres, Yozhi Yazooma, Mojmir Mechura, Ambra Stucchi, Charlotte Busch, Isabel Jagoda, Joschi Rotheneder and Anonymous

    1. RTS-ZI RITOPEK, SERBIA PROBABILITY PRAXIS 1 of 28 – NEW MOON 8 JUNE 2016 (Special Thanks to our host Dragan Ilic)

    2. Red Gate Arts Society, Vancouver, BC Canada PROBABILITY PRAXIS 2 of 28 – WAXING CRESCENT 2 July 2016

    3. Masseria Jesse, near Alta Mura Italy PROBABILITY PRAXIS 3 of 28 – WAXING CRESCENT 12 July 2016 (Special Thanks to our host Donato)

    4. Urban Spree, Berlin, Germany PROBABILITY PRAXIS 4 of 28 – WAXING CRESCENT 21 October 2016 (Special Thanks to our Interlocutors: Federica Dauri, ReveRso, Valentin Tszin)

    5. Cassera, Bologna, Italy PROBABILITY PRAXIS 5 of 28 – WAXING CRESCENT 28 October 2016

    6. Clandestino, Faenza, Italy PROBABILITY PRAXIS 6 of 28 – WAXING CRESCENT 30 October 2016

    7. ARGEKultur, Salzburg, Austria at Open Mind Festival PROBABILITY PRAXIS 7 of 28 – WAXING CRESCENT 19 November 2016

    8. Humain trop Humain, Montpellier, France at Festival EXPLICIT PROBABILITY PRAXIS 8 of 28 – FIRST QUARTER 26 November 2016 (Special Thanks to our Interlocutors: Savage Slit and David Wampach)

    9. La Colonie, Paris, France at MN³ w/ Polychrome – Society of Silence PROBABILITY PRAXIS 9 of 28 – WAXING GIBBOUS 17 December 2016 (Special Thanks to our Interlocutors: Nathalie Mondot and Anonymous)

    10. Underdogs Ballroom, Prague, Czech, with MENU and Hana Frisonsova PROBABILITY PRAXIS 10 of 28 – WAXING GIBBOUS 20 May 2017 (Special Thanks to our Interlocutors: Hana Frisonsova and Tereza Silon and Thanks to our host Zdeněk Konečný)

    11. Het-Bos, Antwerp, Belgium, STRANGELOVE Festival PROBABILITY PRAXIS 11 of 28 – WAXING GIBBOUS 2 June 2017 (Special Thanks to our Interlocutors: Non la Décadence and Lu)

    12. Hedonist International Congress, Rechlin–Lärz Airfield, Lärz, Deutschland, PROBABILITY PRAXIS 12 of 28 – WAXING GIBBOUS 10 June 2017

    13. Commune, Yerevan, Armenia PROBABILITY PRAXIS 13 of 28 – WAXING GIBBOUS 8 July 2017

    14. Ponderosa Movement and Discovery, Stolzenhagen, Germany PROBABILITY PRAXIS 14 of 28 – WAXING GIBBOUS 22 July 2017 (Special Thanks to our Interlocutor: Tereza Silon)

    15. Chateau Perche Festival, France PROBABILITY PRAXIS 15 of 28 – FULL MOON 5 August 2017

    16. Garbicz Festival, Poland PROBABILITY PRAXIS 16 of 28 – WANING GIBBOUS 5 August 2017 (Special Thanks to our Interlocutors: Tereza Silon and Bishop Black)

    17. Loppen. Christiania Denmark PROBABILITY PRAXIS 17 of 28 – WANING GIBBOUS 13 August 2017

    18. AMS St. Georgen im Schwarzwald PROBABILITY PRAXIS 18 of 28 – WANING GIBBOUS 1 September 2017

    19. WORM, Rotterdam, Netherlands PROBABILITY PRAXIS 19 of 28 – WANING GIBBOUS 2 September 2017 (Special Thanks to our Interlocutors: Olave Nduwanje, Manon la Decadance, Pascal Mourits, Lu, Sanne van Driel, Yareth Habermehl, Dennis Snorremans)

    20. Winchester, England. Probability Praxis 20 of 28 15 September 2017 WANING GIBBOUS

    21. COVEN – Underdog Gallery, London, England. Probability praxis 21 of 28 WANING GIBBOUS 16 September 2017 (Special Thanks to our Interlocutors: Lizzie Masterton, Mil Vukovic-Smart)

    22. Zürich. Les Belles des Nuit PROBABILITY PRAXIS 22 of 28 27 October 2017 THIRD QUARTER

    23. Queercore how to punk a revolution UT Connewitz, Leipzig, Germany. PROBABILITY PRAXIS 23 of 28 11 November 2018 WANING CRESCENT

    23A. Urban Spree 17 February 2018 <<48 MINUTE SET >> (Thanks to our Interlocutors: ROC, Bishop Black, Simon(è) Jaikiriuma Paetau, Danilo Andres)

    23B Köpi, Berlin, DE 30 April 2018 <<48 Minute Set>> (Thanks to our Interlocutors: Tereza Silon, ROC, Simon(è) Jaikiriuma Paetau , Federica Dauri)

    24. S L Y // H Y E N A Z // PUNCTUM, Prague, CZ. PROBABILITY PRAXIS 24 of 28 20 May 2018 WANING CRESCENT (Special Thanks to our Interlocutors: Tereza Silon, Hana Frisonsova, Yozhi Yazooma, Mojmir Mechura)

    25. Queer Culture, Thiembuktu, Magdeburg, DE PROBABILITY PRAXIS 23 of 28 26 May 2018 WANING CRESCENT

    26. Torstrassen Festival, Berlin, Germany. 09 June 2018 WANING CRESCENT Berlin (Special Thanks to our Interlocutors: Ambra Stucchi, Simon(è) Jaikiriuma Paetau)

    27. Les Beau est Toujour Bizarre, Parterre Am Ry, Basel, CH 16 June 2018 WANING CRESCENT

    28. Kultur Fabrik, Hildesheim, DE 05 July 2018 WANING CRESCENT (Special Thanks to our Interlocutors: Charlotte Busch, Isabel Jagoda, Joschi Rotheneder)

     

  • Acreaturas : Acreaturas

    Acreaturas : Acreaturas

    Streaming: https://listen.music-hub.com/4sN7as

    Unwind your mind, we are here.

    Released August 5, 2014

    Credits

    Music and Vocals by Clare Andre of ACREATURAS
    Synth arrangements and drum machine programming by TUSK
    Mixed and produced by Adrienne Teicher
    Mix tweaking & high definition mastering by Bartłomiej Kuźniak at Studio333. www.studio333.net
    Album artwork by Clare Andre in collaboration with Lori Shapiro and Jon Jon of the Grease Diner

  • HYENAZ, Slybee Kim, Nico Pelzer : Spectral Rite

    HYENAZ, Slybee Kim, Nico Pelzer : Spectral Rite

    Showings:

    MULTI-ARTS PROJECT II Annyeong! Hello!
    National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul
    27-31.08.2014

    A collaboration between HYENAZ, Sylbee Kim & Nico Pelzer.

    Through the aural and visual act of the procession, Spectral Rite explores the architectural condition and the institutional environment of MMCA Seoul. Berlin-based performance duo HYENAZ incarnate as androgynous celestial beings, beautiful monsters, hybrid street peddlers and warriors for justice. Their presence evokes remote yet acquainted spaces, archaic and future tenses, as they appear within the MMCA as familiar strangers.

    The procession is guided by an analytic approach to the architecture of MMCA Seoul, and implies contemplations around the destiny of a space which could rupture into another field of parallel time that is both history and future.

    HYENAZ presented four musical compositions with lyrics in Korean exclusively composed for Spectral Rite. Each station in the procession is connected by movement transitions and atmospherically sung language. Reacting to the condition of mobility during the procession, the geometry of each costume is embedded with a variety of inventive solutions for acoustic and digital sound experimentation. The pseudo-instruments recall shamanistic tools, weapons of war, futuristic media machines and recognizably mimic existing instruments.

    In Spectral Rite, the voice suggests a pre-linguistic phase of sound, and attempts to overcome language-centered systems as well as the impossibility of translation. The movement visualizes a yearning for a unified hybrid of gender, histories and spaces. Spectral Rite is a wedding of physical bodies and the architecture of the museum. As warriors, HYENAZ intend to prevail over apathy and daily complacency of consumerist and institutionalized city life.

    Credits

    Direction: Sylbee Kim
    Performed by: HYENAZ
    Music: HYENAZ with Nicolas Pelzer, Sylbee Kim
    Lyrics: Sylbee Kim, HYENAZ, Nicolas Pelzer
    Costumes: Juan Chamié for EXIT
    Styling, Objects and Instruments: Yeorg Kronnagel with Rilk Mob
    Projection: Sylbee Kim
    Coordinator: Taejun Kim
    Documentation: Sylbee Kim, Seung-Bum Hong, Nico Pelzer
    Supported by: Korean Cultural Center, Berlin, Mi-Hyun Park (Gayageum)

  • Tusk : Lesbian Vampires

    Tusk : Lesbian Vampires

    Streaming: https://listen.music-hub.com/EvkSFE

    Long awaited return of the synthwave antihero TUSK now reborn as the perennially wandering lesbian vampire of your darkest dreams.

    Lesbian Vampires is a psychedelic paean to impossible love and the weight of desire.

    Credits

    Music written and produced by Adrienne Teicher
    Mix Tweaking & High Definition Mastering by: Bartłomiej Kuźniak, studio333.net
    Video Direction and Editing: Adrienne Teicher
    Cinematography & Styling: Mad Kate

    Lyrics

    Lesbian Vampires

    I wait by your door as the day starts to dawn

    Lonely the night

    I watch the sun cross the sky through the day

    It’s just a dream

    Oh it’s coming through, I’m here for you.

    Oh it’s coming through, I’m here for you.

    Oh it’s coming through, I’m here for you.

    Oh it’s coming through, I’m here for you.

    Liquid Crystal Nirvana

    I miss you bad today

    I miss you bad today

    Don’t why I should feel this way

    When you’re a hundred million miles away

    Memories run through my head like a fountain overflowing

    With my face pressed against the earth, you make me feel like I was dying

    I miss you bad today

    You who gave me my own name

    And I thought happiness like this

    Was not for humans of my kind – humans of my kind

    Memories run through my head like a fountain overflowing

    With my face pressed against the earth, you make me feel like I was dying

    Dance in Acid Rain

    Like silence

    I’m holding for you

    I hope

    It all comes to you

    Endless chase of dreams we can’t satisfy

    Lies we’re told as our needs denied

    I hate everything

    But I have hope, oh for you

    ‘cause there’s nothing more

    I hate everything

    But I have hope, oh for you

    ‘cause there’s nothing more

    Uncertain

    I hold onto you

    Light sails

    Light shining through

    I hate everything

    But I have hope, oh for you

    ‘cause there’s nothing more

    I hate everything

    But I have hope, oh for you

    ‘cause there’s nothing more

    I hate everything

    But I have hope, oh for you

    ‘cause there’s nothing more

    I hate everything

    But I have hope, oh for you

    ‘cause there’s nothing more

    Captive to our Prey

    I deny

    That I ever believed

    Building my towers of fire

    Burning every secret in the library

    I spent months

    Erasing every trace of you around me

    Couldn’t stand to see your face

    Fingers curled at the mention of your name

    I know that you

    I know that you are

    Waiting for me to come out

    And you have got your weapon cocked

    I see it shine in the dark

    Your tailing me

    You’re watching every move

    And every step I take

    There is no end, I can’t defend

    And no beginning

    I know that

    Without doubt you’re surely closing in

    But I take comfort in that

    Life is given to the hunters and the prey

    I know that you

    I know that you are

    Waiting for me to come out

    And you have got your weapon cocked

    I see it shine in the dark

    Your tailing me

    You’re watching every move

    And every step I take

    There is no end, I can’t defend

    And no beginning

    I know that you

    I know that you are

    Waiting for me to come out

    And you have got your weapon cocked

    I see it shine in the dark

    Your tailing me

    You’re watching every move

    And every step I take

    There is no end, I can’t defend

    And no beginning

  • HYENAZ : HYENAZ

    HYENAZ : HYENAZ

    Streaming: https://listen.music-hub.com/nyxmJq
    Buy: https://hyenazhyenaz.bandcamp.com/album/hyenaz

    In their 2014 self titled debut HYENAZ imagined themselves as transgender hyena-humanoids, scavenging on the edges of apocalypse, building bodies and identities from civilization’s detritus.

    HYENAZ are one, defiled and immaculate, their androgynous flesh quivering on the thin edge between the digital and the divine. They believe that all beings and matter are intrinsically connected, that we can choose utopia over dystopia, that time is an illusion. The album is written as an infinite circle. An electro-symphony, it is composed not track by track, but as a whole, adapting sounds and samples from around the world and influences from across time. 

    Music and lyrics by HYENAZ. Recorded and mixed by HYENAZ at D.I.V.O. Institute, Kolin, Czech Republic, EXIT, Berlin, Germany and Pale Music International, Berlin, Germany.

    Mix tweaking & high definition mastering by Bartłomiej Kuźniak at Studio333

    Album Artwork by Lavender Wolf
    Graphic Design by HYENAZ

  • Tusk : Sacrifice

    Tusk : Sacrifice

    TUSK is a trans-dimensional synthwave assassin on a mission to save the world from fiery chaos. The Sacrifice album, released in 2012 through Pale Music, weaves a bittersweet space opera of an anti-hero saving the world amidst the relentless beats of 90s dance and trance.

    Electropop vocals and Byronic lyrics combine to tell the tale of an anti-hero saving the world while on the brink of his own self-destruction. TUSK, an erotic and captivating bounty hunter from the future, delivers a visceral live experience, slipping through worlds and identities like a knife.