Sophiensæle

“Main character syndrome” is a social media/pop culture invention in which a person behaves as if they were the main character of a fictional story. The performance uses this notion to explore and challenge senses of selfhood and togetherness in times of pornographic narcissism. It blurs the lines between personal and fictional, experienced and represented, individual and relational.

Criptonite is a crip-queer theatre project by Edwin Ramirez and Nina Mühlemann. In their current manifestations as Dionysos and Medusa, they invite the audience into the underworld. Surrounded by the rivers of hatred, wailing, fire and oblivion, we find ourselves on the islands of pleasure, celebrating the intersection of pain, pleasure and kink. What does it mean to negotiate consensual giving and receiving together in a pleasurable way, through movement and care? Where do we find moments of pleasure despite pain or exhaustion? 

With the Sophienstraßenfest we call the neighborhood around the Sophiensæle into the street. For one day we celebrate the neighborhood of Spandauer Vorstadt, its residents and their stories. In the afternoon, neighborhood choirs (Kiezchöre) sing in Sophienstraße and a photo exhibition shows its transformation. For the crowning finale, we invite you to a joint street dinner in the evening: everyone brings their own seating furniture, dishes and culinary delights of choice – with just enough for your direct neighbors to enjoy as well. Together with neighbors and guests, we form the longest dinner table in Berlin.

After the success of The River I in the summer of 2022, this special boat tour now returns on Berlin’s waters. The team surrounding Aimé C. Songe invites you to an encounter in a rowing boat, alone or in pairs with a friend or loved one, just in time for sunset. Together with various artists, participants embark on a dreamlike journey to question the concept of an active and productive life, while to taking time to unwind.

Sickness Affinity Group (SAG) is a group of art workers and activists who work on the topic of sickness/disability and/or are affected by sickness/disability. In a cozy installation – with places for rest and hanging out, stimming and wiggling – SAG now looks back on their six years of existence. At the Zine-Library, in collective co-writing and co-reading sessions or group meditations: We invite you to share sick, sleepy, caring crip time with us.

Lay Me Low looks at the terror of standing still and standing up for yourself or others when physical and emotional balance is a struggle. The performance also ponders on why taking a break, resting and cutting oneself some slack is such a pain today. Hence it looks at the techniques, as well as joys and fears of going down and feeling horizontal.

EveryBody’s Fantasy explores erotic fantasies and questions how we look and experience them. The performance is inspired by Gertrude Stein’s 1937 Everybody’s Autobiography. Considering the biographical, the life-lived as an accessible format for others to enter, visit or witness with care and understanding, this work looks toward what would happen, what we could anticipate happening again and the fantasy that rests just beside.

The collaborating queer BIPoC disabled group KIWI – Knowing institutions from within invites to an open meeting in the SAG space on Wednesday June 14. The group, hosted by Tizo All, is an attempt to bring folks to share their experiences in working with institutions.

This self-governed talk between Liz Rosenfeld and Jen Rosenblit offers an encounter to reflect on what it is to hold one’s own flesh and what it is to witness that intimacy. What these two artists show and how they show it in their work. The functions of their bodies as desired objects and how they approach similar topics from completely different practices and perspectives. What are their magics and how do they enact them?

Planets, water, plants, inanimate objects, human animals – everything vibrates and resonates with each other. In different states we vibrate differently: in sadness differently than in joy, in fear differently than in ecstasy. Siegmar Zacharias, together with scent alchemist Liza Witte, textile artist Lea Kieffer, and musician Steve Heather, invites us to listen with our whole bodies and become a space of collective transformation as resonant bodies for one another.

h0chbegabt deal with social structures and translate them into humorous fantasy worlds. Their latest work, VAMPIRE(N), is a mockumentary about the casting and production process of the new vampire film “Vampires in the Dark”. The mockumentary portrays two potential protagonists – real vampires – and provides insight into their lives. We accompany the two and the beginning of their special friendship in the face of discrimination and prejudice.

Who has always used the night as a place of resistance? What rituals were and are practiced under the protection of the night? Inspired by the “Take back the Night” demonstrations
that have been taking place on Walpurgis Night since the 1970s, the result is an interactive audio night-walk about nocturnal politics of pleasure and lust. Inspired by the figure of the witch, the young ensemble explores the allure of the night in hidden places in Berlin’s urban space, re-enacts various rituals, tests utopias and conquers the night.

Since 2021, Sickness Affinity Group (SAG) has organized a regular reading group engaging with critical thinking in queer and crip studies. In their first in-person reading group session, to be held at Leisure and Pleasure, they will collectively investigate ideas and feelings around different experiences intertwined with walking.

Hans Unstern's lyrics oscillate between modern fairy tales, criticism of the myth of the binary gender system and of their own working conditions in capitalism. A concert between lyrical softness and punk moments, from pompous slide harp clouds to improvised free sequences.

In Vanilla three performers explore the relationship of pleasure, sexual desire and food to question normativity in sexual practices.Through the intimate and vulnerable sharing of personal and fictional sex stories, the performance conducts a warm and soft exercise of imagination.

In this immersive live work, fragmented landscapes are built and unbuilt; transforming the basement of Sophiensæle into a dark room where people are invited to move through, cruise and lounge together. Inspired by the defiance of communal gatherings, public sex and specifically the politics of taking up space, an*dre neely and Liz Rosenfeld consider their own differently-gendered, differently-aged, differently-transitioning bodies and relationships. They are bound by notions of chosen family and resonating with desires of how to care for and be cared for by one another, or how to carry and tell each others stories.

Colonastics is the world’s first fitness workout without the exoticizing bullshit of Zumba, the pseudo-spiritual, esoteric shenanigans of white yoginis and neo-colonial appropriations! Why? Because it feeds solely on the physicality of white cultural practices. Stiffen your joints, throw your limbs around uncontrollably and perfect your air guitar. Feel white supremacy flowing through our collective consciousness and become part of a movement that will revolutionize the fi tness world!

Orientation is the perception of space through the body. Ceylan Öztrük, who received the 2022 Swiss Art Award, proposes a rethink of spatiality through disorientation. As disorientation involves becoming an object or a sculpture, a dreamy perception is created by text, choreography, costumes and an impressive stage installation. A narrative unfolds about the collision and fusion between the body and the building, the person and the institution, the bent and the stiff.

In the Leisure Garden of Sophiensæle, a temporary island of the unblessed is being created. Nuray Demir invites to bar-chat conversations about loss, death, collective melancholy, and resistance.

Rest Rebellion sets up a space for rest in a calm, low-stimulus environment and offers a training camp for those who want to learn more about the transformative quality of resting. 

In 2020, a group of suddenly unemployed Berlin-based dancers started to regularly meet in public space to play Double Dutch – a rope-skipping game played with two ropes swung in opposite directions. What started as a response to the Corona lockdowns, has since blossomed into an ongoing practice where five artists regularly explore the jumping game’s connection to club culture – from early hip hop to techno; but also joy, creativity, non-productive artmaking, playfulness and togetherness as a safe haven within the twisted lifestyle of freelance dancers.

For the festival and season closing, the Sophiensæle open their backyards and bars to everyone from 15 h. There will be an artistic program, drinks, snacks – and from 20.30 h also major and minor gala moments and surprises with artists, the Sophiensæle team and many friends.