The Psychedelic Choir* Seven women. Vocals + bass. 

They intonate haunted ambient sounds in combination with witchcraft rituals. Their bass player Leah (NADJA) provides a mesmerizing sonic foundation of drones and processed sounds.

Psychedelic Choir is a group of Berlin-based improvisers.

 

*A stunning orchestra of alien sounds, at times difficult to believe they emanated from human bodies.
The work ebbed and flowed in intensity, ranging from light breath work, to soft rain sounds, to the cacophonous screeches of exotic animals and the razor blade noises of inorganic materials….
And, indeed, most sounds were abstracted from their clear referents. Though one might try, the experience becomes less about discerning a recognizable soundscape—a forest, for example—and more about allowing the experience of sound to wash over the body. The audience is prompted to reconsider its relationship to sound, relinquishing the categorical impulse to associate sound with phenomenon, and instead surrendering to the psychosomatic experience of abstract noise.

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Zorka Wollny (initiator of the choir) creates acoustic compositions for institutions, factories and empty buildings. Her works inhabit a space between art, theatre and contemporary music, and are always closely connected to the historic and functional context of specific architectural sites. She collaborates—in a director-like mode—with musicians, actors and dancers and, each time, with members of local communities as well. Her works have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, the ICA in London, CTM Festival in Berlin, Savvy Contemporary in Berlin, De Appel in Amsterdam, etc.

Leah Buckareff is a Canadian musician, currently based in Berlin, Germany. Since 2005, she has been the bassist in the duo Nadja, with whom she has released multiple albums on such labels as Alien8, Important Records, Conspiracy Records, Hydrahead, and Daymare Recordings. She has toured extensively around the world, including performances at such festivals as FIMAV, Unsound, Donaufest and CTM.

Lyllie Rouvière is a dancer and choreographer. She dances with Doris Uhlich, Boris Charmatz, collaborates with Julian Weber and Suddenly collective and also makes work in a variety of formats such as video and performance. She continues to explore interactions between space and body in recent singing performances with Colin Self, gathering voices and the Psychedelic Choir.

Karoline Strys is a performance artist working at the margins of voice, dance and text. Her work is characterized by a philosophical perspective that is permanently engaged in the complexity of a possible translation into and out of the body, regarding the interrelation of different modes of performativity and always with a focus on the specificity of listening. She is the co-founder of the make a move collective – a site-specific performance group working with elements of contemporary dance and parkour in urban architecture.

Pauline Payen is a performer, dancer, artist. She has recently performed and exhibited e.g. at Palais de Tokyo-Paris, Platforma HR-Zagreb, Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature-Paris, Uferstudios Berlin, Gallery Ida Schmidt-New York. Over the past several years, Pauline developed a particular interest in sound material, conducting physical research in the studio on psychological sound techniques such as Musak, super-charged-positive-affirmations and binaural beats.

 

Born in Havana, Cuba, Ana Kavalis is a performer, dancer, actress, and educator based in Berlin since 2004. Her distinctive artistic career has been characterized by its crossing of boundaries, the disruption of theatrical stage language, the experimentation with new forms of exchange with the audience and the continuous questioning of identity. Her work is developed on the terrain of physical theater, dance, and performance.

Irina Gheorghe works primarily with performance, in combination with collage, installation and video, to address the tensions which appear in the attempt to speak about things beyond our possibilities of observation, from extraterrestrial life to hypothetical planets. Irina also works with Alina Popa as part of the artist duo The Bureau of Melodramatic Research to investigate how passions shape contemporary society. Her work was shown at Swimming Pool Sofia, Changing Room Berlin, Centre for Contemporary Art Derry, Glasgow International, HOME Manchester, Contemporary Art Center Vilnius, etc. 

 

Gosia Gajdemska is a choreographer, dancer, dance educator and performance artist. In her artistic practice, she combines contemporary dance, improvisation, contact improvisation, somatic techniques and influences from video art and film, touching upon such notions as (re)presentation, image, and identity. She is also co-founder of the IN.TO Collective, which creates works around choreography, fashion, and visual arts.

Florence Freitag is a Berlin-based artist, writer & curator working across performance/dance, video and voice. She is currently listening to mourning voices and bird sounds, collaborates with Sandhya Daemgen on the series What’s That Noise?, hosts camerabodyeye workshops with Camille Käse and facilitates collective sensorial journeys with Lisa Stewart. Florence is part of the queer feminist collective Altes Finanzamt e.V. and co-founder of TanzRaumGörlitz.