MA Symposium 2024: Art/In.formation

As our Creative Production (Film) and Creative Production (Music) MA students approach the end of their second semester, we provide them with a platform to present their work-in-progress to a wider audience. Our annual two-day symposium showcases some of the best work by our MA students as well as insights from industry-acclaimed guest speakers working in Berlin. This year, we welcomed artist Satch Hoyt, composer and sound designer Aimée Portioli (Grand River) and multidisciplinary artist Kris Limbach to deliver keynote talks and panel discussions. This year’s symposium also opened up space for master’s students from other Berlin institutions to present their projects.

Our keynote speaker this year was Berlin-based interdisciplinary artist Satch Hoyt. Born in London, with British and African-Jamaican heritage, Satch makes sculptures and installations often accompanied by sound. Satch presented two inextricably linked projects: “Afro-Sonic Mapping” and “UnMuting”. 

“UnMuting” is the process through which Satch brings phonogram recordings and instrument collections captured during the European colonial period back to life. His practice intervenes with those collections and awakens their sonicity, releasing them from museological silence. Satch’s sonic interventions have so far been performed at The British Museum London, The MARKK Museum Hamburg and the Brücke-Museum Berlin, on instruments primarily from the Congo region.

Three Creative Production (Music) students and two Creative Production (Film) students presented installations at the symposium. Ecological thought fed into three of these projects, some more explicitly than others. Charlie Black’s “Dirtscape” translated the voice of a city crying out. Through foley, field recordings, image projection and installation, “Dirtscape” used image and documentation to reframe the urban landscape as part of nature rather than beside it. Connor Oman’s "Co_evolve" project gets down to a molecular level – fusing biology, technology and art to create a multisensory experience that points towards data collection and privacy in our increasingly digital world.

Karo Pelc’s photographic installation, “Land Mother”, explored the relationship women have with their motherland and the similarities to their relationships with their mothers. The project engages all senses to explore our relationship with land, memories and the connection with our home countries.

Gaining a deeper understanding of the context surrounding your project is a key aspect of the MA programme. To reflect this, and to facilitate further discussion, we set up three panel discussions during the symposium. Guest speakers Satch Hoyt, Aimée Portioli and Kris Limbach sat on one panel, moderated by Emma Lo, discussing the question: “Can artistic research define the undefinable?”

Watch a recording of the panel discussion here:

The panel discussion titled “Artistic practice within installations” explored the intricacies of spatial storytelling and the creative processes behind installation art. Featuring University of Europe student Marta Torres, Creative Production (Film) student Charlie Black and Creative Production (Music) student Yuxin Mei and moderated by Film Production Certificate Lead Juli Saragosa. Mei focused on the politics of surveillance, sharing her experiences during the pandemic lockdowns in China, while Charlie centred her responses around the Berlin experience.

Our third panel discussion was titled “Artistic practice within performance”. The discussion dug into the unique experiences, challenges and perspectives panelists brought to their art, particularly the role of gender and how this has impacted their performative practices. Featuring Creative Production (Film) student Evgenia Papazisi alongside Creative Production (Music) students Maria Mondragón and Poma and moderated by Creative Production (Music) tutor and dissertation advisor Ricardo Mateus Tovar, they examined the impact of gender on their performative practices and shared insights into how these factors influence their art.