12. September II from 5 p.m. II free admission II
Technology Campus 6, 09126 Chemnitz
With FUNKEN Mesh, we are bringing the Funken Kolleg to a close. Over the past six months, participants from the arts, business and science have worked together on issues in the context of high technology. In this review, we look back at the lessons learnt from this cross-sector collaboration.
We not only look back, but also forward: we visualise the key learnings from cross-sector collaboration, provide insights into ongoing projects and present the accompanying documentation.
At the same time, we take our most important learning seriously: informal dialogue is a key driver for creative processes. That is why we are transforming the FUNKEN Space into a club room – as a stage for encounters, discourse and spectacular moments at the interface of art and technology.
What can be teased out of the FUNKEN Space? We’ll find out together.
You can expect:
🔹 Insights into creative, interdisciplinary collaboration
🔹 Publication of a joint publication
🔹 Interactive installations & performances
🔹 Live concerts & DJ sets
🔹 Chill-out zones & dance floor
PROGRAMME
From 17:00 – Open House with interventions
17:30 – FUNKEN Kolleg – Review of cross-sectoral collaborations with creatives
18:00 –
Experience and deepening: Continuation of the collaborations
Pinpoint GmbH – Matthias Millhof – Team Frederike Moormann as well as Fraunhofer IWU and Kollektiv Plus X report on their experiences and their further collaboration.
19:00 – Concerts: Elva Skyn, Selma and Krachym
with visual accompaniment by light artist Sanja Star
23:00 – BUMBUM with Malibu Stacy, [to:n], Neuronal Division
FUNKEN Space also presents installations and actions by Licia Lumen, gyroscalzone, Denise Lee, Anne, Schädlich Giulia Cabassi, Jamie Mulcahy and Pony Pracht.
Guests, DJs and artists
Malibu Stacy
Between dark basslines, broken rhythms and synths: the sets are open to genres, but with an edge. Uncompromising – sometimes pushing, sometimes bulky – the Chemnitz DJ proves her feeling for the unpredictable.
[to:n]
The DJ and producer [to:n] combines a club-orientated approach with experimental electronic music in his set. Inspired by both contemporary and classic pop music, [to:n] creates a modern soundscape with unexpected twists and conceptual depth that invites you to sink in and digress.
Neuronal Division
Neuronal Division characterises an unmistakable sound that oscillates between electro, acid, jungle and techno. With a razor-sharp focus on the dancefloor, the Leipzig native leaves no tempo, no mood and no genre untouched. As part of the nonirritating collective, he also pushes the boundaries of electronic music with his own productions and live sets.
Denise Lee
Denise Lee / 李筑 (lǐ zhú) (USA / Hong Kong / Taiwan) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Leipzig, working in the fields of sound, intervention and film. With a background in public art, political education and design, she creates spaces for dialogue about diaspora, belonging and the digital age.
Her project The Trickster draws on global mythologies of shape-shifting and pranks to explore tactics for dealing with an uncertain future. Through mask making and card reading, visitors are invited to discover the powers of trickery and transformation for themselves.
(c) Natalie Bleyl
Jamie Mulcahy
Jamie Mulcahy and her art are loud, questioning and challenging. With her vulva prints, video collages and multimedia room installations, Jamie makes feminist statements in her art and invites us to reflect on norms, shame and how we live together.
In contrast to the usual excess, Jamie Mulcahy’s spatial installation Balance invites you to enter a place of retreat in a sky of soft lights, delicate colours and soft textures, where time flows more slowly and breathing becomes deeper. An atmosphere of security and deceleration is created here, in which peace, closeness and happiness are experienced not through intoxication, but through silence and encounter.
Those who let themselves go can rediscover themselves – in conversations, in silence or in the glow of the light that gently surrounds everything. The space invites us to ask ourselves and each other how we can experience real peace and connection in the midst of all the fast pace of life.
Anne Schädlich
Anne Schädlich (@studio.aeynee) works with her hands – sewing, painting, crocheting or building. Her art is created from impulses and in intensive dialogue with material and process.
For her current work, she processes collected old clothes from Chemnitz into a large-scale textured body. The elaborate process of yarn spinning and crocheting transforms the supposedly worthless into an object with a strong presence. Complemented by textile seating objects, the installation invites us to be mindful and to perceive material and value in a new way.
(c) Natalie Bleyl
Giulia Cabassi
What better way to start a conversation than over a cigarette? With her award-winning work take my breath away, the Rome-born artist Giulia Cabassi impressively illuminates the ambivalent relationship with smoking – between attraction and dependence, habit and self-destruction.
Cabassi addresses how deeply anchored smoking is as a supposed means of coping with stress in everyday situations: after eating, when driving, in moments of waiting or boredom. In doing so, she poses the central question of whether smoking does not condition us through this very omnipresence – and thus make quitting smoking an even more difficult process characterised by relapses.
Sanja Star
Sanja Star is an interdisciplinary artist from Berlin whose works are created at the interface of sound and image. Using digital media such as 3D animation, visual programming and sound, she explores how frequencies influence our visual perception.
In her performances and installations, she combines improvisation with technology and creates immersive, often unpredictable experiences. Inspired by quantum physics, pareidolia and visual abstraction, she develops an audiovisual language that interweaves perception, intuition and digital aesthetics.
At this event, she will accompany the concerts with her live visuals.
Lisa Meinig
In her artistic practice, Lisa Meinig deals with the effects of social media, the influence of political content, bots and propaganda as well as feminist perspectives and role models. With her work, she aims to visualise power structures and encourage reflection and exchange.
After her initial studies in media informatics and interactive entertainment, where she acquired skills in 3D modelling, animation and game design, she shifted her focus to video, projections and procedural visuals. Today, studying at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich under Hito Steyerl, she is deepening her engagement with ethical questions of machine learning and the use of artificial intelligence.
Her visuals can be seen on the dance floor, in which spaces are explored as point clouds – spaces slip into abstraction and open up new perspectives.
(c) Ludwig Danner
gyroscalzone
gyroscalzone works with a specially configured video feedback chain as an experimental tool for image design. Between analogue noise and digital artefacts, an aesthetic exploration of distortion, repetition and transformation is created. A complex chain of image processing devices is used: From the Roland Edirol V-4 video mixer to upscaler, downscaler, several analogue video processors and back to the output mixer. The image signals pass through these stations in an endless loop – each device changes, distorts or amplifies certain properties of the signal.
(c) gyroscalzone
krachym
Krachym blows into the microphone as if we were standing on the beach. He walks through the audience with his midi guitar, dressed like an astronaut. An electronic beat kicks in while he plays the drum pads and guitar at the same time – as if there were a whole band on stage.
In his experimental pop symphony, synthesiser, midi guitar and electronic beats merge into a dense, energetic soundscape. His musical influences range from danceable 80s pop to electronic soundscapes and rock elements – a hybrid of nostalgia and futuristic sound.
Elva Skyn
Through her music, Maria deals with her insecurities, weaknesses, feelings and fears and questions existing stigmas. Her current music project ELVA SKYN, which was created in collaboration with Leipzig-based artist Arno Selle, serves as an important medium for her to express herself authentically. On stage, Maria experiments with her voice and pushes her own boundaries. In her performances, she seeks to connect with herself and her audience – to provoke thought, evoke deep emotions and inspire courage.
Pony Pracht – Aics, the Game
Pony Pracht has made her music playable – and invites you to experience sound and image in a new way with her interactive work. In a small game that she has developed especially for her music video, sound, animation and interaction merge into a multi-sensory experience. What begins as a music video is enhanced by playful elements: visitors can immerse themselves in the audiovisual world, move through sound spaces and become part of the rhythm themselves. The artist combines digital aesthetics with an intuitive approach to music, turning listening into an active, personal moment.
Selma
Selma is a singer, songwriter, electronic music producer and performer. She studied pop music design with a focus on singer-songwriters and creates soundscapes between cinematic, spherical textures and dark, bass-heavy alternative pop. Her music combines intimate emotions such as sadness, love and anger with socio-critical themes such as beauty norms and patriarchal structures. Selma creates spaces where vulnerability and strength coexist and listeners can find self-empowerment.
Nada Tshibwabwa
Nada Tshibwabwa is a multidisciplinary artist who works both in the visual arts and as a musician. In his work “Homme Tshombo”, he deals with the social, ecological and political effects of coltan mining. The Democratic Republic of Congo is the country with the largest coltan deposits in the world. Coltan is used to manufacture mobile phones and other electronic devices and is also at the centre of one of the most brutal wars in history. Between 1996 and 2016, six million people died in the north-east of the country alone. Due to growing demand and worsening conditions, more people are still dying today. At the same time, a large proportion of the world’s electronic waste is exported back to Africa and other continents.
“Homme Tshombo” draws attention to these problems – out on the streets and in public spaces. The performance combines ritual forms with contemporary artistic means.
Produced by Christoph Papendorf and Ewa Meister.
