„I AM THE SACRIFICE OF THE ALTAR OF PARADOX“

May today’s death be the compost from which tomorrow’s life can grow.

An art installation and ritual space to contemplate death and grief.

On the evening of Samhain (31.10.), multi-disciplinary artist and ritual weaver, Katharina Louise, will open the doors to a 6 day space dedicated to the threshold.

Informed by the pre-christian pagan traditions of Europe, this installation is following the celtic calendar, in which on Samhain and the 6 following evenings, the new year is being celebrated and the dead are honored and fed.

In the animistic cosmology, the earthly and spiritual realm are interconnected and the feeding of the forces beyond our physical perception are vital to maintain balance in the world. Western death-phobic culture has brought a severe paradoxical imbalance to the intricate web of life: the fear of decay of the human body and the obsession with the idea of infinite physical resources, have actually summoned more destruction, externally and internally.

With this notion, the space which will be created, invites to confront the duality of life and death and the necessity to tend to the pathways of becoming and unbecoming, interwoven with plants and sound as gateways between the worlds.

“Life is growth in the art of loss”

John O’Donohue

PROGRAM:

31.10.

18.00 Opening of the Installation

19.30 Consecration of the Altar / Performance by Katharina Louise “Das Klageweib”

01.11.

18.00 “Feast for the Dead “

Mexican-European Fusion Food by Simon Knab, Hannah Withlow, Jurmala

Ceramics by Luis Gabriel Sanabria & Santiago Álvarez:

As part of the Master’s program of Cultural Management and Administration feom the University of Puerto Rico, Luis Gabriel Sanabria developed an internship project to be presented at Moos Space in Berlin. The project consists in working alongside artist Santiago Álvarez and Pumpwerkstatt ceramic studio ran by Maximilian Thiel & Luis Ortega, as well as other artists in collaboration, Renné Rosas and Blanca Lecube. Together the artists collected clay and processed it, engaging in a series of experiments to find out the right mix of clay for the pots. The idea is to explore the possibilities of the material and come up with cooking pots and plates. After, Luis Gabriel Sanabria and Santiago Álvarez hosted several sessions as open workshops to test the clay and create the pots. After that the pieces were fired at thé Pumpwerkstatt studio and then taken to an open fire for the final part of the look. The goal is to use the pottery and present it in one of the community dinners at Moos the Halle für Alle.

Embodied Poetry by XTINA “What the water gave me”:

X straddle’s many queer intersections and regards themselves as a borderland. Their work seeks to bridge our shared emotional, sensual and cognitive understanding of all bodies by breaking the dam of logic with the power of poetics to glimpse the psychospiritual consciousness of earth.

Live Music tba.

02.11.

19.30 “Let´s talk Death”

Conversation with death workers from palliative care, end-of-life-care, grief work.

Julia Müller, is a Relaxationtherapist, Naturopath & Deathworker. This year she finished the Training in Deathcare with Bodhicharya Berlin & Horizont Hospiz and combines her values of alternative Medicine with buddhistic Tools & Wisdom about death.

03.11.

19.30 “The Thickened Thin” by Lea Fulton:

A solo movement ritual knitted to ancestral healing. It is a solo performing in progress.  In it, the artist prioritizes the more-than-human audience, de-centering the human gaze and gathering information from the audiences of Spirit, Ancestors and Elements through polyphonic listening and responding. Currently the work has been performed in the terrains of:  the shore of Long Beach, New York;  Holderness Cemetery, New Hampshire; Williams Grove at Humboldt Redwood State Park in Northern California; under the McDonough Oak in City Park, New Orleans, Treptower Park, Berlin amongst others.  Every so often the artist invites the human witness to a seat at the table. In this way the artist charts the course relationally, coming home to an audience that is at once familiar and always complicated.

In the work, the artist asks:  Who are my relations? Can physicalizing an archeology of the past provide a way into the present that opens up other possibilities of relating to time? Can an animist perspective be truly embodied when we live in a cultural milieu that insists that human beings are the only beings worth attending to? What do the dead want from us, considering there are more of them than there are of us. 

In the thin liminal space of Samhain week, the artist puts flesh on to the thin, thickening the ways in which we re-member, see and transit. 

20.00 "“Das Klageweib” by Katharina Louise

04.11.

20.00 Gong & Cacao Evening with Sandra Chormann.

Tuning into the field of frequency as a bridge between the seen and the unseen and allowing our vibrational composition to be re-aligned to the intention of honoring change in its infinite forms.

Raw Cacao Bar by Bloom Cacao on all 5 evenings.

Apart from the program, the installation is open for visit every day from 6pm on.

Part of the installation will be an interactive altar, to which you are encouraged to bring photos - representations of beings - circumstances you are currently grieving and want to honor, offerings in the form of food, flowers or alcohol are also welcome.

31.10.-05.11.23

MOOS Halle, Moosdorfer Str. 7-9