Neues Forum der Töne

Performative Installation: Anna Zett
Curators: Anna Zett and Joshua Wicke
With Waltraud Blischke, Jule Flierl, Matti Gajek, Agathe Israel, Elske Rosenfeld, Manuel Sekóu, Günter Baby Sommer and further guests

Waltraud Blischke has been a DJ for over two decades, working with Cologne music institutions such as a-Musik and the music label Baumusik. She is a lecturer at the Institute for Music and Media in Düsseldorf and for other projects, was author and co-editor for Testcard, organises parties and concerts, framed by the independent cultural scene. She loves eclectic, experimental DJ sets and subwoofers, but maintains a strong modesty for dancing bodies.

Jule Flierl is an artist based in Berlin whose choreographic and performative work focuses on the voice as a medium. Using somatic singing methods, her practice questions the correspondence between seeing and hearing: what can be seen is not always what can be heard, and vice versa. In her work, Jule Flierl refers directly and indirectly to Valeska Gert, an avant-garde dancer of the 1920s who conceived the genre of sound dance – a form of dancing with the voice. Since 2024, Jule Flierl has given several political speeches at demonstrations in Berlin, developing slogans and gestures against conservative art policy and funding cuts.

Matti Gajek produces and performs electronic music under the stage name GAJEK. Born in the GDR, Gajek reflects on the emotional echoes of ruptures and discontinuities: music about strange timelines, grief and ecstasy, weird youth cultures, hidden fashion codes, personal tragedies and strange haircuts. He composes music for films, theatre, exhibitions and performances, most recently for the critically acclaimed film ‘The Investigation’ by RP Kahl and the award-winning short film ‘Afraid doesn't Exist’ by Anna Zett. In 2022, Gajek launched the mix series Socialist Realness on the British radio station Resonance Extra, which focuses on avant-garde music produced in the GDR and shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Günter Baby Sommer, born in Dresden in 1943, is one of the most important representatives of contemporary European jazz, who has developed a distinctive musical language using a highly individualised set of percussion instruments. His musical contributions to the most important jazz groups in the GDR, such as the Ernst-Ludwig-Petrowksy Trio, the Zentralquartett and the Ulrich Gumpert Workshop Band, enabled Sommer to break into the international scene. Sommer's discography includes over 100 published recordings. As a professor at the Dresden University of Music, he influences the professional teaching of contemporary jazz to future generations.

Joshua Wicke is a curator and dramaturge working in performance, dance and theatre. Most recently, he curated the series ‘Poetics of Refusal,’ which explored artistic and political strategies of withdrawal, non-performance, and negativity; the symposium ‘Risking Repetition’ on the aesthetics of “surviving” sexualised violence; and the closing festival ‘Tune In Drop Out’ at the Gessnerallee in Zurich. As a dramaturg, he has worked with Moved by the Motion, caner teker, Carolina Mendonça and Alexander Giesche, among others. For several years, he co-organised the platform for emerging performance artists ‘Dirty Debüt’ in Berlin. Joshua Wicke has taught at the Zurich University of the Arts, the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, the Free University of Berlin and Castro Projects Rome, among others. After working as a dramaturg at the Schauspielhaus Zurich, he was curator at the Gessnerallee Zurich until summer 2024.

Anna Zett is an artist and author who works across media as a witness, host and performer of dialogical encounters. Rooted in dissident and queer perspectives and the broader humanities, film, dance and group analysis, she questions repressive structures and opens up spaces for free association and physical experience in the present. This results in pulsating videos, experimental radio plays, performative texts, tactile installations and participatory live formats, such as her most recent choreographic research project, ‘Post-Socialist Group Improvisation’. Since the release of her first two video works in 2014, her work has been shown in international contexts of contemporary art, research, film and performance, in self-organised and institutional spaces. Since 2024, she has been teaching in the class for performative arts at the HGB Leipzig art academy. Anna Zett was born in Leipzig and lives in Berlin.

Tamara Antonijević studied dramaturgy at the University of Arts in Belgrade (Serbia) and holds an MA from the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Giessen. She writes and works as a dramaturge and artistic collaborator in the fields of performance, theatre and dance. Her interests and research focus on the role of text in collaborative processes. She teaches dramaturgy and is co-organiser of the Master's programme in Live Art Forms at the ADBK Nuremberg. Tamara Antonijević is a doctoral candidate at the Institute for Language Arts at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna.

Waltraud Blischke is a DJ for over two decades, who cooperated with Cologne music institutions like a-Musik and the music label Baumusik. She is a lecturer at the Institute For Music And Media in Dusseldorf and for other projects, was author and co-editor for Testcard, organizes  partys and concerts, framed by the independent cultural scene. She is in love with eclectic experimental DJ sets and subwoofer but keeps a strong humility for dancing bodies.

Taking a collaborative approach, artist Anna Bromley sends her radio voice in search of polyphonic memories beyond state-sponsored broadcasters and narratives. She often combines auditory essays with process-based drawings. She repeatedly revisits her secret radio listening as a teenager growing up in the crumbling GDR. Bromley's ephemeral radio work ‘A Voice Exists in Voicing,’ produced by Manifesta in Priština, forms the core of her artist's book ‘I Speak Radio,’ published in Berlin in 2024. She teaches at the KHM – Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln. www.annabromley.com

Jule Flierl is a Berlin-based artist in whose choreographic and performative work the voice plays a central role as a medium. Using somatic singing methods, her practice questions the correspondence between seeing and hearing: what can be seen is not always what can be heard, and vice versa. In her work, Jule Flierl refers directly and indirectly to Valeska Gert, avant-garde dancer of the 1920s, who conceived the genre of Tontanz – a form of dancing with the voice. Since 2024, Jule Flierl has given several political speeches at demonstrations in Berlin, developing slogans and gestures against conservative art policy and funding cuts.

Matti Gajek produces and performs electronic music under the stage name GAJEK. Born in the GDR Gajek reflects on the emotional echo of ruptures and discontinuities: music about odd timelines, grief and ecstasy, weird youth cultures, hidden fashion codes, personal tragedies and strange haircuts. He composes music for films, theatre, exhibitions and performances, most recently for the critically acclaimed film ‘The Investigation’ by RP Kahl and the award-winning short film ‘Afraid doesn’t Exist’ by Anna Zett. In 2022 Gajek launched mix series Socialist Realness on UK radio Resonance Extra focusing on avant-garde music.

Agathe Israel, born in Jena in 1949, is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and author. Her research and work focus on the psychology of premature babies, infants and parent-child relationships. She began publishing on the effects of state-run nurseries and early childhood education in the GDR in 1990, making an important contribution to public awareness of a system with far-reaching consequences. Until 2000, Agathe Israel worked in inpatient child and adolescent psychiatry. She was heavily involved in the further development of therapeutic training and, together with colleagues, founded the Institute for Analytical Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy in Berlin in the late 1990s. In recent decades, she has worked in her own practice, focusing on psychotherapy for infants, toddlers and parents.

Dana Kavelina, born in 1995 in Melitopol (Ukraine), is an artist who works primarily with animation and video, but also with installation, painting and graphic design. She studied printmaking at the Polytechnic University in Kyjiw and now lives between Lviv and Berlin. Her work often addresses military violence and war in relation to the political subject position of the victim, as well as the relationship between historical and individual trauma, memory and misrepresentation. Her video works have received numerous awards and have been shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Kyiv Perennial in Vienna, the 60th Venice Biennale (2024), the MHKA Antwerp, the Steirischer Herbst Festival in Graz and the BFI Film Festival in London, among others.

Elske Rosenfeld, born 1974 in Halle an der Salle (GDR), works in different media and formats. Her primary focus and material are the histories of state-socialism and its dissidences, and the revolution of 1989/90. Documents and archives are starting points for organising spaces in which these hi/stories can come to be present. Her ongoing project ‘A Vocabulary of Revolutionary Gestures’ investigates how political events manifest and come to be archived in the bodies of their protagonists. It currently takes the form of the online/offline research and presentation platform Archive of Gestures.

Manuel Sékou, born in Dresden in 1991, studied media art at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design and art history and German studies at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena. His artistic work moves between media art, music and self-publishing. His approach is based on the associative collection of artefacts in the field of tension between everyday and high culture. Using strategies of translation and decontextualisation, he approaches the complexity of realities in an essayistic manner through sound, image and text. Exhibitions / Participation (selection): ‘States of Rebirth’ (Deichtorhallen Hamburg, 2025); ‘etcetera 4ever’ (Kunstverein Eislingen, 2024), ‘I LOST MY GEMS’ (Gold+Beton Cologne, 2024), “HEX” (Kunsthalle Memmingen, 2024), ‘Mixed Feelings’ (Galerie Stephanie Kelly, Dresden, 2024), ‘Solarity Prospects’ (ACUD Galerie Berlin, 2023). Sound / performances (selection): Salon des Amateurs, Düsseldorf, Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, Staatsoper Stuttgart, Le Chinois Paris, Lausanne Underground Film Festival, Tresor West Dortmund, ZKM Karlsruhe. www.manuelsekou.com

Shelly Silver is a New York based artist working with the still and moving image. Her practice explores contested territories between public and private, narrative and documentary, and--increasingly in recent years--the watcher and the watched. Spoken and written language, collaged narratives, framings in time and space, all become clues into shifting locations of power, identity and desire. To speak and to listen, to look and let oneself be seen, is, or should be a pleasure, and like all pleasures, tinged with ambiguity and risk. 

Günter Baby Sommer, born in Dresden in 1943, is one of the most important representatives of contemporary European jazz, who has developed a distinctive musical language using a highly individualised set of percussion instruments. His musical contributions to the most important jazz groups in the GDR, such as the Ernst-Ludwig-Petrowksy Trio, the Zentralquartett and the Ulrich Gumpert Workshop Band, enabled Sommer to break into the international scene. Sommer's discography includes over 100 released recordings. As a professor at the Dresden University of Music, he influences the professional teaching of contemporary jazz to future generations.

Gabriele Stötzer (formerly Gabriele Kachold), born in Emleben in 1953, is an artist and writer. In the GDR, she was imprisoned for political reasons, ran an illegal gallery in Erfurt and made a name for herself as a non-conformist photographer, writer, performance and video artist, co-founder of ‘Frauen für Veränderung’ (Women for Change) and co-initiator of the first occupation of a Stasi district administration building in December 1989. For several years now, her video and performance works have been re-evaluated and shown internationally. She lives in Erfurt and, in addition to her work as an artist, teaches and speaks publicly on feminism and GDR history.

Joshua Wicke is a curator and dramaturge working in the fields of performance, dance and theatre. Most recently, he curated the series ‘Poetics of Refusal’, which examined artistic and political strategies of withdrawal, non-performance and negativity, the symposium ‘Risking Repetition’ on the aesthetics of ‘surviving’ sexualised violence and the closing festival ‘Tune In Drop Out’ at the Gessnerallee Zurich. As a dramaturge, he has worked with Moved by the Motion, caner teker, Carolina Mendonça and Alexander Giesche, among others. For several years, he co-hosted the platform for emerging performance artists ‘Dirty Debut’ in Berlin. Joshua Wicke has taught at the Zurich University of the Arts, the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, the Free University of Berlin and Castro Projects Rome, among others. After working as a dramaturge at the Schauspielhaus Zurich, he was a curator at the Gessnerallee Zurich until summer 2024.

Anna Zett is an artist and author who works across media as a witness, host and performer of dialogue encounters. Rooted in dissident and queer perspectives and drawing on humanities, film, dance and group analysis, she questions repressive structures and opens up scope for free association and physical experience in the present. This results in pulsating videos, experimental radio plays, performative texts, touchable installations and participative live formats, such as the recent choreographic research Postsozialistische Gruppenimprovisation. Since the publication of her first two video works in 2014, her work has been shown in international contexts of contemporary art, research, film and performance, in self-organised and institutional spaces. Since 2024 she teaches in the class for Performative Arts at the Kunsthochschule HGB Leipzig. Anna Zett was born in Leipzig and lives in Berlin.

Information about the venue

Spatial access

Event takes place in different rooms at TanzFaktur Köln.

The WerksHalle is at ground level and can easily be visited with a wheelchair.
The main building with BühnenSaal, studios and stage in the basement is barrier-free accessible by lift.

There is a disabled-accessible toilet in the basement.

Distance

Limited free parking available directly at the bulding

Distance to the tram stop ‘Köln Poller Kirchweg’ approx. 280 metres. Above-ground stop with ramp.

Audience situation

Various audience formats with installation, exchange formats, lectures and panel discussions.

Informationen on Comprehension and Perception

Language

German or English spoken language, depending on the format.

Informationen on the general organisation

Assistance on site/pick-up service

If you require a pick-up service from the nearest public transport stop or car park, please contact us before your visit at the festival.

Tickets

Entry is free of charge.

Contact

We would like to cater for individual requirements for a festival visit (seating, early boarding, pick-up from public transport, etc.) as best we can.

As a festival team, we have irregular working hours, so our availability is not guaranteed at fixed office hours:

• E-Mail: barrierefreiheit@impulsefestival.de
• WhatsApp-Messenger: +49 (0) 1575 5804 172
• Telefon: +49 (0) 202 698 27 280 (You’ll reach an answering machine to arrange a return call. Please leave your name, telephone number and your request.)