ENCOUNTERS X 1-06 / CASE NOTES
What happens when a room becomes a community?
Two days of music, microscopic worlds and the people who brought them together.
01 / THE INVITATION
We had worked together.
We had never met.
Magnificent Matter had been collaborating with Robot Koch since our early days, but we had never met in person. When he got in touch about coming to Berlin and performing together, the invitation opened a much bigger possibility.
I began reaching out to people in our network: artists we had performed with, and others we had always wanted to bring into the same room. Over two or three months, that first conversation grew into a two-day gathering at Wilhelmine in Oberschöneweide.
Encounters became a Catatumbo Lab project, initiated by Magnificent Matter. The idea was to give music, microscopic imagery and new-media art a shared setting, with space for the relationships between them to shape what happened.
An existing collaboration / an open invitation / a growing network
02 / MAKING IT HAPPEN
An artist’s idea.
A producer’s responsibility.
As the project grew, I took on the production lead and responsibility for the event, alongside Anja from 1-06 on the venue side. Within Magnificent Matter, Alex and I brought our work as artists together with creative direction and production.
Our live microscopic visuals sat within a wider exhibition of new-media work. Sound, projection, installations and performances had to share a building and an audience. My role moved between the artistic perspective and the responsibility of bringing that larger programme into being.
Wilhelmine already carried a history of gathering. Built in 1912 as a welfare building for factory workers, it became a cultural centre in 1948. In 2024, 1-06 reactivated the hall for events. Its scale and visible layers of history became part of the experience we were creating.
Production leadership / collective creative direction / a historic cultural space
- ART
Make the hidden visible.
Our microscopic image-making became a live element of the wider artistic programme.
- DIRECTION
Bring different practices together.
Creative direction and production with Alex, alongside an expanding community of collaborators.
- PRODUCTION
Take responsibility for the whole.
I led the event production; Anja held the responsibility for the venue and location.
03 / WHAT REMAINS
The event ended.
The connections stayed.
For two days, the hall held live music, microscopic worlds and a new-media exhibition shaped by many different artists. The works gave people reasons to slow down, look closely and spend time together.
For me, it was the largest project I had led up to that point, and an emotional rollercoaster. What stays with me most is the response in the room: people moved to tears, artists deeply touched by the experience, and the sense that a community was forming around what we had made.
Encounters brought together the different sides of my practice. I was part of the artistic work, helped give the whole its direction and carried the responsibility of production. Its meaning lives in that shared effort, and in the connections that continued beyond those two days.
A collective work / a personal turning point / a continuing community
THE ANSWER, SO FAR
Make space for people to encounter one another.
An invitation from Robot Koch grew into two days of music and new-media art at Wilhelmine. I brought the network together and led event production, alongside Anja on the venue side and Alex in our shared artistic work. What stayed with me was the community that formed around it.
