symposium series

On Saturday 4 May 2024, the second edition of the contemporary art festival Earth Bonds II returned to Rupert in May 2024. The programme included an international group of artists offering an unforgettable day of discussions, workshops, and performances.

Earth Bonds II continued to scrutinise the intensifying climate crisis, focusing this year on visions of humanity’s future—countering the anxiety of our overwhelming conditions with optimistic dreams, reinforced by the dawn of spring.

Artists and creators Marijn Degenaar, oxi peng, Kim Kraczon, Calum Bowden, monica maria moraru, and Eglė Kliučinskaitė invited you to explore the themes of human connection to the landscape and society’s speculative futures.

Their contributions highlighted the critical importance of calming, breathing, and concentration rituals as we face the stress of sustainability in all its forms—political, social, economic, and ecological. Eclectic artistic practices will be transformed into discussions, workshops, and performances, building the present while dreaming of a future that is still to be imagined.

The festival culminated in a new opera performance by bones tan jones, ‘Sacrificial Tripod (Parasites of Pangu 2.0)’, created during their Rupert residency.

When darkness fell, the audience were invited to join the Earth Bonds II night programme of international DJs, organised by the music and art space Draugų vardai to recover from the day’s exertions, converse about new experiences, and sip soothing tea. Music selected by Draugu vardai also accompanied the programme.

Please find more information here.

On Friday 3 and Saturday 4 May 2024, E-WERK presented a weekend of day and night time events. Inspired by author and art critic Martin Herbert’s collection of essays Tell Them I Said No (2016, Sternberg Press), the programme considered the implications of resistance, what radical models of self-sufficiency look like, the political connotations of counterculture (or cancel culture), who has the privilege to say no, and artistic vulnerability.

To view a trailer of the event click here

The event took place across E-WERK’s 25,000 metre square site, including the historic Turbine Hall, the adjacent Bauhaus Stadtbad and E-WERK’s outdoor geodesic dome, and included concerts, performances, panel discussions, karaoke, and sauna sessions. A global list of artists, thinkers, performers, and cultural commentators who contributed included Lamis Ammar, Sascia Bailer, Mirthe Berentsen, Candice Breitz, Eglė Budvytytė in collaboration with Fernanda Muñoz-Newsome, JJJJJerome Ellis, Hettie Judah, Prem Krishnamurthy, Zoe Claire Miller, Eve Stainton & Florence Peake, Nástio Mosquito, Asad Raza, Lauryn Youden, Abbas Zahedi, SERAFINE1369, Pussy Riot, Fatoş Üstek, and Melanie Jame Wolf. Many of the contributors shared their work in Brandenburg for the first time.

Watch a trailer of the event here.

Watch the keynote Hospicing Modernity between Vanessa and Lucia here.

Watch the impulse presentation between Sinthujan, Pablo and Florine here.

Watch the panel discussion Symbiotic Earth here.

Listen to the panel discussion Exhausted here.

The symposium invited transdisciplinary speakers to present their individual research on specific themes related to human sustainability including climate and capitalism, de-growth and environmental imperialism and raise questions including how can we begin to enact radical care on an immediate, local and global level to repair colonial exploitations? Who does the green transition exploit? What are the limits to degrowth? Performances will be splintered throughout the programme to create pockets of non-didactic reflection to champion art as an equally valuable form of knowledge transmission.

The symposium featured: Opening speeches by Frau Faber-Schmidt, Kultur-Abteilungsleiterin im Ministerium and Helen Turner, Artistic Director and Chief Curator, E-WERK Luckenwalde; stand-up comedy by Tamika Campbell and Carmen Chraim hosted by Mila Panić Panel discussions with Alison Midgley, E-WERK Luckenwalde, Klaas Kuitenbrouwer, Researcher at Het Nieuw Institut, Viktorija Siaulyte, Director at Rupert Centre for Art and Education, Rebecca Salvadori, Artist

Cem A. Artist and Freeze Magazine, Jakob Stenger, Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, Kim Kraczon, Conservator, Jan Boelen, Atelier LUMA Artistic Director, Mae-ling Lokko, Architect, Designer, Educator, Manuel Cirauqui, Curator, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Giulia Bellinetti, Head of Nature Research at Jan van Eyck Akademie; impulse presentations by Political Geographer Sinthujan Varatharajah, Artist and E-WERK Luckenwalde Co-Artistic Director, Pablo Wendel, EW Creative Producer, Florine Lindner; keynote in conversation between Vanessa Machado de Oliveira Andreotti and Head of Ecologies Serpentine Galleries, Lucia Pietroiusti with a furniture workshop by TU-Berlin Students and Stammtisch by Kunststrom Labor (Livni Holtz and Sebastian Reinicke). With music by Epsilove, Coby Sey, ABIBA, Sandro Mussida performs Portraits Of Friends (Rebecca Salvadori, 2021), Jozef Van Wissem, Valentina Magaletti, Juba, FM Einheit Performance in collaboration with Siegfried Zielinski, Rica Blunck, Saskia von Klitzing & Volker Kamp.

Atelier LUMA, a programme of LUMA Arles, has been conducting a research project that focuses on the construction of architectural projects designed for the challenges of the 21st century, Building for Uncertainties since 2019. The architects and designers are developing a building approach guided by two key concepts: frugality and resilience. In this context, Atelier LUMA held a symposium around sustainable and locally sourced design, architectural and scenographic practices. Frugality involves limiting the use of resources and energies. Resilience is pursued by integrating climate, social, and economic uncertainties into the building’s structure, spaces, and uses. Conferences, presentations, and site visits provided a platform of exchanges between experts, practitioners, and students in Arles on the Parc des Ateliers. Featuring: Salima Naji, Maja Hoffmann, Jan Boelen, Joe Halligan, Laurens Bekemans, Guillaume Habert, Maria Finders.

The event was kicked off with two keynote lectures at Composers’ House (A. Mickevičiaus st. 29, Vilnius) by R&D Strategic Lead of Serpentine Galleries, Victoria Ivanova, and TBA21–Academy Curator Sofia Lemos. Taking place in the iconic modernist building designed by Vytautas Edmundas Čekanauskas that exemplifies the relation between urbanity, architecture and environment in Žvėrynas’ former hunting grounds, the keynote lectures delineated two key threads of the symposium: environmental concerns as well as technological and organisational infrastructures. The symposium raised questions on how advanced technologies like blockchain and DAO can remodel our perception of the environment and reconfigure the operations of art institutions. New, emerging-technology-based futures, environmental concerns, institutional forms and the alignments of these complexities with the idea of sustainability within volatile geopolitical realities was further explored in depth through the workshop programme led by TRUST (Lina Martin-Chan and Calum Bowden) and Gallery Climate Coalition (Aoife Fannin) at Rupert.

On the third day of the event, 22 April, when the World celebrated the annual Earth Day, the audience was invited to reconvene at Rupert’s premises in Valakampiai and wrap up all the emerging thoughts and practices in the concluding discussion of the symposium. Following the rhythm of the dusk settling in, an artistic programme unfolded together with artists Jasper Griepink, HASHIA, Jenna Sutela, Barnett Cohen, Marissa Lee Benedict and David Rueter, and Ngoc Nau. Earth Bonds’ performance programme explored spaces of confabulated survival, where ongoing memories of economic anxiety are supplanted by sympoietic tales of kinship. The artists who was performing utilised Rupert’s infrastructure and its serene surroundings, addressing creative tensions between technoscience and naturecultures. Grasping soil and sifting through decentralised particles, the event guided the audience through worlds in motion.

Featuring performances 𝖗𝖔𝖙𝖙𝖙𝖙𝖙𝖙𝖙𝖙𝖙𝖙𝖙 by Barnett Cohen; HMO nutrix / Secrete Garden by Jenna Sutela; Ngoc Nau by Ritual Object 1 and OAKbaLLZ and EELskin (Murky Murky, Little Witch Bitch) by Jasper Griepink.

For more information please click here.