Calendar

Friday 18 March 2016, 7pm

Celebratory launch of the publication “French Kisses: On Tips of Tongues, and Feeling as Taste”, edited by Amal Alhaag and Maria Guggenbichler (Side Room)

With the Touchy Sound-Lecture “Touching Tones with Tender Buttons” by Olive Michel and Fred Hystére

The publication “French Kisses: On Tips on Tongues, and Feeling as Taste” emerged out of a project of the same title, which Amal Alhaag and Maria Guggenbichler hosted last autumn at the art space District and other homes and places across Berlin. French Kisses was a four day gathering of a group of international cultural practitioners, friends, guests, audiences and organizers. During the four days, we thought about forms of taste which do not stem from separateness, social distance or distinction, but are based on tasting as touching, being in touch, being touched and affected.

 

Edited by Amal Alhaag and Maria Guggenbichler, with a poster by Felicia von Zweigbergk, a script by Olive Michel and Fred Hystére, and contributions by Aline Benecke, Hannah Black, Lotte Meret Effinger, Karlijn Eskens, Anna Frei, Max Göran, Amelia Groom, Janine Halka, Emma Haugh, Isa Hönle, Suza Husse, Fred Hystére, Andrea Caroline Keppler, Lary, Witold Leynse, Anja Lückenkemper, Olive Michel, Gabriele Netzer-Guggenbichler, Nana Owusu-Ansah, Andreea Pavel/D.R.E.E.A, Romy Rüegger, Sodi St. Jean, Lorenzo Sandoval, and Felicia van Zweigbergk.

 

During the launch event, Olive Michel and Fred Hystére will present a performance which they developed for the French Kisses days: the collective listening session – with black light and non-newtonian fluids – “Touching Tones with Tender Buttons:”

“Is it us who touch the tones or is it the tones touching us? Through the nightmares of reduction, the dreams of queer seduction, the staying-in-touch and letting go. Of ringing bodies, the languages of joy and fluidifying modes of representation. Hearing as a way of touching distance, distance as a way of listening closely.”

Fred Hystère/Anna Frei lives and works in Zürich. She worked and works in collaborative art- and music projects, as a freelance graphic designer and as conceptrice of publications and editions (Edition Fink, Les Complices*, OOR Editions…), gives weekly Risograph workshops, organizes and curates several discursive experimental audio formats and concerts, and is a passionate vinyl-researcher and DJ. In 2014 she’s co-initiated OOR (One’s Own Room), a record- and art bookstore, soundspace and sound related production context that is collectively run in Zürich. The OOR Saloon Series seek to create collective and discursive spaces for negotiations of emancipatory, contemporary artistic practices related to sound.

Olive Michel lives and loves in Marseille. Involved into several collective writing and performance practices on passing, passing names, naming, intimacy and the politics of dissolving.

The Side Room is the awkwardly shaped side room of the micro-brewery and bar Butcher’s Tears in Amsterdam. Since two years, Amal Alhaag and Maria Guggenbichler host various kinds of events, gatherings, and conversations there, which all have in common that they investigate, share, and nurture intersectional feminist, queer, anti-colonial and anti-racist discourses and practices.

The performance “Touching Tones with Tender Buttons” is kindly supported by the Swiss Art Council Pro Helvetia.