HACK THE PANKE Festival

Art Laboratory Berlin welcomes you to the HACK THE PANKE Festival on art, science and sound in Berlin Wedding during summer 2022. The HACK THE PANKE Festival takes place as a part of Draussenstadt Call for Action program. All the events are free. For taking part in the workshops, it is necessary to sign up.

In 2018 ALB initiated the research project DIY Hack the Panke applying artistic and scientific research at, in and around the river Panke, and promoting Citizen Science projects bringing together artists, scientists and the public along the Panke river in the north and central Berlin. As a continuation of our long-term research project, the HACK THE PANKE Festival brings together artists and scientists to realise encounters in the form of workshops, performances and Walk & Talks along the Panke river. Contributions by artists Ariel Orah, Johanes “Mo’ong” Santoso Pribadi (Soydivision Kollektiv), Cammack Lindsey, Tad Ermitaño, Sybille Neumeyer, Nenad Popov, Martin Howse and Saša Spačal as well as biologists India Mansour, James Whitehead and Matthias Rillig.

PROGRAM | Short Version

19 – 21 August 2022 | Workshop and Performance
Ariel Orah & Johanes “Mo’ong” Santoso Pribadi (Soydivision) – Leftover Klangwerk

3 September 2022 | Workshop
Cammack Lindsey – Methods of Extraction: Exploring Piezo-Electricty and Hydrophones for Non(Less) Invasive Uses for Data Collection

3 September 2022 | Film and Video Screening
Tad Ermitaño – Tales of Weird Science and Cosmic Covenants

4 September 2022 | Sound Exploration Workshop
Tad Ermitaño – From Here to Ear

11 September 2022 | Walk & Talk
Sybille Neumeyer & India Mansour – Meandering – Or, the Rights to Flow

18 September 2022 | Walk & Talk
Nenad Popov & James Whitehead – Rituals and Reflections

24 – 25 September 2022 | Workshop and Performance
Martin Howse – Mycelium Radio

3 October 2022 | Walk & Talk
Saša Spačal & Matthias Rillig – Reflecting Symbiosis

Saša Spačal: Mycomythologies. Patterning, biotechnological installation, 2021

PROGRAM | Long version

Leftover Klangwerk
Workshop with the artists Ariel Orah and Johanes “Mo’ong” Santoso Pribadi (Soydivision)
19 – 21 August 2022, 10:30 – 16:00, starts at Café Ana Conda, Uferstudios

Leftover Klangwerk is a socially engaged and sonic art creation activity in the form of a participatory workshop and collective improvisation performance. The title is inspired by the English word “Leftover” refers to waste and the German word “Klangwerk” which means “sound creation”. The workshop is divided into three major parts. In the first part, participants will collect different kinds of waste objects from specific neighbourhoods (based on the understanding of the characteristics and also the social-political history of that specific neighbourhood). The second part will be building those waste materials into several self-made instruments. The third part will be presenting the instruments in an improvisation music performance. Inspired by circular design/ upcycling methodology, both workshop and performance will introduce and invite the community to channel a form of freedom in the form of sound through the sound-making object, without the limitations of conventional music.


Methods of Extraction: Exploring Piezo-Electricity and Hydrophones for Non(Less) Invasive Uses for Data Collection
Workshop with artist Cammack Lindsey
3 September 2022, 11:00-17:00, starts at ALB, Prinzenallee 34, 13359 Berlin

Discovered originally by the J. and P. Curie, using single crystals in 1880, and perfected by Paul Langevin in underwater applications using quartz, a piezoelectric crystal, and much of its improvements, research and implementation was done by and for the military. In this technical workshop, we reclaim this topic for public use, and think critically about the development of these tools and their outcome as well appearance. When collecting data, we are extracting from and entering a watery space that is not ours, but that of non-human organisms and life. Considering this, we will design new bodies for the hydrophones, questioning what is hydrophones purpose of functionality, permanence and becoming, while imagining less or non-invasive ways to observe sound and vibrations from water environments. In the process, we will as well build our own pre-amplifiers, and experiment with the different methods and materials used to construct piezo hydrophones, such as ceramics, crystals, polymers, and/or composites, as well exploring non-traditional alternatives.


Tales of Weird Science and Cosmic Covenants
A screening program featuring film and video works by Tad Ermitaño
3 September 2022, 20:30, Make-up, Papierstraße. 11, 13409, Berlin

As a self-described “refugee from the sciences” Ermitaño’s film work sketches an uneasy field in which a facility with technology collides with a kind of postcolonial guilt slamming its head against the limits of empiricism. The films selected for this program complement a practice that searches for correctives to technocratic hubris. Tropes from Science Fiction, Jungian metaphysics, experimental film and Folk Catholicism sketch a sense of a world deformed by forces corroding its underlying structures. Film program (total running time ca. 75 min.): The Retrochronological Transfer of Information (10’ 33”); Dumi​​​​​​​​ (4′ 11″); Tributaries​​ (11’ 24”), Eisenstein’s Monster​​​​​ (4’ 18”); Sausage​​​​​​​ (14’05”); Local Unit​​​​​​ (9’11”); Buddha Mayatronic (20’).


From Here to Ear
Sound exploration workshop with artist Tad Ermitaño
4 September 2022, 14:30-17:30, starts at ALB, Prinzenallee 34, 13359 Berlin

From Here to Ear is a sound art creation activity designed to encourage participants to listen to their environment with intention. In connection with Tad Ermitaño’s ongoing exhibition Radyo Somatodelia: Experiments in Sonic Animism the workshop reframes listening as a way of thinking towards an act of reflection, both in the sense of thinking, and in the sense of what a mirror does. Sonification is a way of experiencing data and the world anew. How can the act of listening reflect the world, to be the place where the world is heard, simultaneously where the world hears itself? Using sound to investigate and empathise with the other beings in our environment, it entwines with the idea of exploring the unfamiliar with the practice of entanglement, with the potential to widen the scope and definition of empathy. Listening as presence. Listening as absence.


Meandering – Or, the Rights to Flow
Walk & Talk with artist Sybille Neumeyer and biologist India Mansour
11 September 2022, 14:00-16:30, starts at ALB, Prinzenallee 34, 13359 Berlin

Together with microbial ecologist India Mansour and artist Sybille Neumeyer participants will trace the constant transformations that surround the Panke, meandering with the past, present and possible futures of the river. Considering the cycles of biological, cultural and political matters, the group will tune into the multiple voices of, in and around the water, and encounter the Panke as a dynamic community of multiple organisms – a body of water that is neither a closed system nor a singular entity. After culturing modes of c–a–r–e (collective attunement into relational ecologies), we will draw together what the absence and presence of organisms can tell us about ecosystems and human impacts on them, cowrite a Panke manifest, and consult a microbial oracle.


Rituals and Reflections
Walk & Talk with artist Nenad Popov and biologist James Whitehead
18 September 2022, 14:00-16:30, starts at ALB, Prinzenallee 34, 13359 Berlin

With media and sound artist Nenad Popov and biologist James Whitehead participants will investigate the impact of drought and climate stress on the Panke river. How have low water levels effected nearby soils and vegetation? What signs of urban civilisation – like trash, but also river engineering – are being uncovered? The artist and the scientist, who are both part of the ongoing research group DIY Hack the Panke will invite participants to take part in experiments and in creating subtle soundscapes to investigate the friction between society and nature along this urban waterway.


Mycelium Radio
Workshop and participatory performance with artist Martin Howse
24 – 25 September 2022, 11:00 – 18:00 daily, starts at ALB, Prinzenallee 34, 13359 Berlin

Radio Mycelium proposes the construction of a series of experimental situations examining a new networked imaginary, the single organism of the fungal mycelium, in relation to local, global and universal electromagnetic signals. Within this two-day workshop we will build DIY radio receivers and sculptural antennae, testing the reception of signals and interfacing with open examples of the various growing mycelium and mushrooms. We will learn and share knowledge and techniques concerning inter-species communication between humans, mycelium and their environments – through sound, radio, touch, smell and ingestion. A closing collective performance will manipulate live signals captured from intact mushroom bodies, with deep earth recordings from Tegel Forest harvested during the workshop.


Reflecting Symbiosis
Walk & Talk with artist Saša Spačal and biologist Matthias Rillig
3 October 2022, 14:00 – 16:30, starts at ALB, Prinzenallee 34, 13359 Berlin

During the Walk & Talk artist Saša Spačal will introduce us into her artistic research about symbiosis and interspecies entanglements. She has developed technological interfaces and relations with organic and mineral soil agents, addressing the posthuman condition that involves mechanical, digital and organic logic within biopolitics and necropolitics of our times. Matthias Rillig will give us an insight into his research on soil and plant ecologies especially on the symbiosis of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi with plants and its effects on soil aggregation. In autumn 2022 Spačal will realize an art residency at the Rillig Lab at Freie Universität Berlin.