Anti-Authenticity: (Diasporic) Artistic Research Between Spaces and Belongings

Living in diaspora continuously challenges the artist with the instability of authenticity—where identity is neither fixed nor fully knowable, but negotiated across fragmented geographies, inherited trauma, and imagined futures.

In this keynote, Ariel William Orah reflects on a transdisciplinary artistic research practice, tracing how collective memory, performative formats, and socially engaged processes shape and are shaped by place. Anchored in the project Tahanguentar—a sonic and poetic investigation into historical trauma, nationalism and political silence—this work explores how performance can function simultaneously as research, resistance and repair.

Tahanguentar emerged from Jendela Sonorama, a performative lecture series blending sound, archival material, and embodied storytelling. Developed through Soydivision—a Berlin-based collective that fosters dialogue and cathartic exchange among Berlin’s pan–Global South diasporic communities—these works exemplify how informal, grassroots collaboration and diasporic conditions become critical grounds for artistic inquiry.

Engaging with the theme of Multipli-Cities: Exploring Artistic Research Across Places and Practices, this keynote expands the notion of “city” beyond the urban to include networks of memory, sonic ritual and diasporic assemblage. The “multiple” in Multipli-Cities also gestures toward the layered emotional geographies of diaspora—drama, euphoria, displacement, and resilience—that must be navigated collectively.

This keynote invites reflection on how art as social practice traverses geographic, cultural, and disciplinary borders to shape new understandings of place and belonging. Through collaborative and performative processes, it proposes alternative maps—fluid, contested, and affective—for navigating the complexities of diasporic existence.

/// About Ariel William Orah

Ariel William Orah is an Indonesian artist, community catalyst, and cultural practitioner based in Berlin. Originally from Bandung, his practice merges sound and performance art with socially engaged projects to explore themes of diasporic identity, memory, and scarcity. Grounded in a background in economics, sustainability, and empathy design, Orah critically examines systemic structures and cultural displacement. He is actively involved in collaborative platforms and artist groups, including sōydivsion—founded in 2017—Mutating Kinship Lab (a lab for Asian diaspora artist-led initiatives), and L-KW, an empathy-driven sonic syndicate. In addition, he engages in curatorial and artistic research, particularly within performing art and sound.

Ariel William Orah, James Perley + guests TBA.

Our closing panel examines the multiplicity of practices, disciplines, methodologies and frameworks that inform contemporary artistic research. Featuring practitioners working across diverse fields, the panel emphasises reflective artistic practice, contextual awareness and conceptual engagement. Through this lens, the discussion aims to illuminate the multi-valent, multi-dimensional and multimodal nature of artistic praxis.

12:00: Doors open 

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Social Stage 

12:30–13:00: Claire Dickson, Creative Production (Music) MA, Catalyst. Sounding the Moment: A Performance-Lecture.

13:30–14:00: Martin Heslop, PhD in Creative Writing and Music, Newcastle University, UK. Sonic Sanctuaries: Finding poetry in the sounds of a new city.

14:30–15:00: Oguz Baran, Scientific Artistic Research, Filmuniversität Babelsberg Konrad Wolf/ The House of Asterion: Memory, Space, and the Affective Labyrinth.

15:30–16:00: Shoshana Simons, Kaixiang Zhang, Creative Production (Film) MA, Catalyst. Expanding artistic practice in filmmaking.

17:30–18:00: Fede Ciotti, MA Computational Arts, Goldsmiths University London. Sonic Maze.

18:30–19:30: Arial William Orah, Keynote presentation

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Theatre 

13:00–13:30: Pablo Muñoz-Barragan, Creative Production (Music) MA, Catalyst. Exploring Extended Techniques in the Saxophone and its Role as Part of an Ensemble

15:00–15:30: Elisa Pereira Martins (with Lara Khattar), Creative Production (Music) MA, Catalyst. Echoes

16:30–17:10: Federico Torres & Alp Seyrekbasan, New Media Design MA, University of Europe for Applied Sciences. Transit Cadence

17:45–18:15: Morgan Hickinbotham, Creative Production (Music) MA, Catalyst. Relativity

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Cinema

Film block 1: 12:15–12:40, 13:45–14:05, 15:15–15:40, 16:45–17:05, 18:15–18:40

• Marta Tiana, Creative Production (Film) MA, Catalyst. Looking For The Self,
• Benjamin Green, PhD by Practice, Manchester School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University. Points of View, 19’49”

Film block 2: 13:00–13:25, 14:30–14:55, 16:00–16:25, 17:30–17:55, 19:00–19:25

• Paula, Creative Production (Film) MA, Catalyst. LOVE, 3’38”
• Shoshana Simons, Creative Production (Film) MA, Catalyst. Esther, Rivke, Chayale, 5’58”
• Chen Wang, PhD in Music, University of the Arts London. Beyond the Output: Exploring the Dynamic Feedback Loop of AI-Human Co-Creation in Music, 6'26"
• Thais Mancini, Paula Okuneva, Shoshana Simons, Lia Lyutakova, Creative Production (Film) MA, Catalyst. Pay & Erase, 6’47”

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Ensemble 

10:00–20:00 Dárida Rodrigues, PHD Program in Performing arts and moving image Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon. Dream Forum – Collective Dreaming as Urban Cartography (Installation) 

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K13, Dolby Atmos Studio

10:00–18:00: Juli Saragosa, Film Production Programme Certificate Lead, Film Sound Tutor, Catalyst. Reasons to Scream!, Listening session (Excerpt) 

12:00 Doors open 

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Social Stage 

12:30–13:00: James Perley, Emulating Space: Orchestration in MIDI Polyphonic Expression and Physical Modeling. 

13:30–14:00: Abla Abdelnaby, Master in Media Design, The German University in Cairo. Cairene Car-Culture: How are Automobility and Social Behavior Linked to The Development of The Soundscape and Urban Fabric of Cairo.

15:15–15:45: Kaixiang Zhang, Creative Production (Music) MA, Catalyst. Ritual as Multi-Dimensional Architecture - Holding Space, Sensing Form and Flow, Enabling Participation.

16:30–17:00: Anita Araujo & de_colonialanguage, Commissioning and Curating Contemporary Public Art, University of Gothenburg/University of the Basque Country. Fence Choreographies.

17:15–17:45: Juli Saragosa, Film Production Programme Certificate Lead, Film Sound Tutor, Catalyst. Reasons to Scream!

18:30–19:30: Ariel William Orah, James Perley + guests TBA, Closing panel. Multipli-cities in artist research practice.

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Theatre

13:00–13:30: Kostis Fanaras, Creative Production (Music) MA, Catalyst. An Improviser's Guide to Film Music.

14:00–14:30: Ivan Chaparro, PhD in Music, UdK. Epistemic Empowerment through Participatory Music-Making: A Decolonial Approach with Newly Arrived Teenagers in Germany.

15:45–16:15: Juan Duarte, PhD in Arts and Design - Department of Art and Media, Aalto University. Smoking Mirror: Aethereal Resonances.

17:45–18:15: Zaak Kerstetter, Creative Production (Music) MA, Catalyst. void•form.

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Cinema

Film block 1: 12:15–12:40, 13:45–14:05, 15:15–15:40, 16:45–17:05, 18:15–18:40

• Marta Tiana, Creative Production (Film) MA, Catalyst. Looking For The Self,
• Benjamin Green, PhD by Practice, Manchester School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University. Points of View, 19’49”

Film block 2: 13:00–13:25, 14:30–14:55, 16:00–16:25, 17:30–17:55, 19:00–19:25

• Paula, Creative Production (Film) MA, Catalyst. LOVE, 3’38”
• Shoshana Simons, Creative Production (Film) MA, Catalyst. Esther, Rivke, Chayale, 5’58”
• Chen Wang, PhD in Music, University of the Arts London. Beyond the Output: Exploring the Dynamic Feedback Loop of AI-Human Co-Creation in Music, 6'26"
• Thais Mancini, Paula Okuneva, Shoshana Simons, Lia Lyutakova, Creative Production (Film) MA, Catalyst. Pay & Erase, 6’47”

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Ensemble 

10:00–20:00 Dárida Rodrigues, PHD Program in Performing arts and moving image Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon. Dream Forum – Collective Dreaming as Urban Cartography (Installation) 

14:45–15:15: Dárida Rodrigues. Dream Forum – Collective Dreaming as Urban Cartography (Presentation)

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K13, Dolby Atmos Studio

10:00–18:00: Juli Saragosa, Film Production Programme Certificate Lead, Film Sound Tutor, Catalyst. Reasons to Scream!, Listening session (Excerpt) 

Master's in Media Design, The German University in Cairo

Cairene Car-Culture: How are Automobility and Social Behaviour Linked to The Development of The Soundscape and Urban Fabric of Cairo (Virtual presentation with Q&A)

Cairo’s soundscape has changed due to ongoing urban development that accommodates the increasing number of vehicles in the city. The soundscape created by this growing automobility is influenced by vehicles and their owners' behavior. Cairenes use their cars as tools for communication and as extensions of private space. By considering vehicles as soundscape components and spaces that filter sound, this study examines the synergy between social behaviour, automobility, urban structure, and their interdependent relationship with Cairo's soundscape. This study identifies the private passenger car with an internal combustion engine as a focal point in both theoretical and practical research. It engages with literature on acoustic ecology, car culture, urban structure, and social behavior. The methodology employed in this study follows practice-based phenomenological research while documenting and reflecting on car cultural practices in Cairo from an aural perspective. Grounded theory contextualises the analysis of archived audio and video material, semi-structured interviews, and performances. Performances serve as a form of action research to gather public responses and as a reflective outcome where selected participants are observed during a staged performance.

/// About Abla Abd El Naby

Abla Abd El Naby is a media researcher, academic, and experimental artist who seeks to explore and comprehend the world through media practices. She is motivated to gain and share knowledge within educational and creative backdrops. Her work typically encompasses experimental audiovisual projects, text, and performance art. She has been in academia for nine years and pursued a master’s degree in media design with a focus on acoustic ecology. She actively participates in the art scene in Cairo and academic settings both locally and abroad.

PhD-Candidate in Research in Contemporary Art/University of the Basque Country and de_colonialanguage - transfrontier art-collective

Fence Choreographies (Spoken presentation with Q&A)

Our project explores how fences shape relationships between bodies and space in urban contexts. By comparing two distinct locations—a fence in Alexanderplatz, Berlin (de_colonialanguage collective), and one in the Swedish countryside (Anita Araujo)—we examine the boundaries between public and private and how these influence everyday choreographies and spatial negotiations. Through a month-long correspondence between a collective focused on public interventions and an artist-researcher investigating spatial boundaries in residential areas, we aim to draw connections between neighbors in both settings. The project culminates in public interventions inviting passersby to participate, transforming the fences into spaces of dialogue and reflection. The outcome will be a shared narrative on borders, access, and coexistence across contrasting landscapes.

/// About Anita Araujo

Anita Araujo is a PhD candidate in Research in Contemporary Art of the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU and postgraduate in Commissioning and Curating Contemporary Public Art at the University of Gothenburg. She holds a Master's in Theater and Performance Art from the National University of Arts in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

/// About de_colonialanguage collective

de_colonialanguage is a transfrontier art-collective, operating in the sphere of critical language studies with decolonial method of radical solidarity. It is a community of artists, curators, researchers working with power relations embedded in languages. The aim is to de_un_co_render hidden power structures.

PhD by Practice, Manchester School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University

People, Place and the Socio-Political: understanding how collaborative methodologies in documentary filmmaking can be used to explore the relationship between social-mobility and personal identity in the North Midlands (Screening)

Points of View (2024). Co-produced using radical methodological approaches to collaborative documentary making between Ben Green and a group of Year 13 students at Friesland Sixth Form in Derbyshire, Points of View is an expressive and poetic meditation on the links between place, identity and coming of age. The film was produced throughout the students' final year and all audio-visual material was either produced by the students or under their direction. The process aimed to challenge existing models of practitioner/participant interactions with the hope of creating a more active collaborative relationship.

/// About Benjamin Green

Benjamin Green is a visual artist, PhD student and educator based in Manchester, UK. His moving image practice combines elements of artist film, poetic documentary and landscape photography to engage with themes including surrounding place and identity. Born in Derbyshire in 1995, he has close family links to the post-industrial North Midlands and coastal North Wales, and is frequently inspired by the topography of both landscapes in his work. His recent research has focused on radical approaches to collaborative non-fiction filmmaking practice, co-creating both with participants and the landscape itself natural approaches to analogue image making as a method for exploring, and understanding, place.

PhD in Music, University of the Arts London

Beyond the Output: Exploring the Dynamic Feedback Loop of AI-Human Co-Creation in Music (Screening)

Cyber Maze (2024, 6'26", stereo) is a sonic exploration of AI-human co-creation, examining the shifting boundaries between human expression and machine intelligence. Using generative AI as a collaborator, the piece merges improvised vocals and AI-processed material into an evolving soundscape shaped by granular synthesis, texture manipulation, and stochastic harmonisation. The result is a constantly shifting sonic environment that mirrors the unpredictable, recursive nature of digital creativity. Audio-reactive visuals—crafted to respond to spectral and rhythmic elements—reflect the tension between organic expression and technological precision. The “maze” serves as a metaphor for navigating authorship, agency, and identity in an AI-mediated world. By transforming the voice—a personal marker—into AI-altered echoes, the work explores both the erasure and reassertion of human presence. Cyber Maze invites listeners to reflect on the fragile symbiosis of human and machine, and the complex dynamics of artistic authorship in the age of generative technology.

/// About Chen Wang

Chen Wang is a Chinese vocalist, composer, producer, and sound artist based in London, and a PhD candidate in electronic music composition at CRiSAP. With a background in electronic and pop music, her work explores openness and human-AI collaboration in music creation. Her performances and compositions have been featured at festivals and exhibitions including NYCEMF, ICMC, ACMC, Ars Electronica Forum Wallis, and The Engine Room. She has received awards from the Denny Awards and Best Fusion Electronic Music. Recent performances include The Crypt Gallery and Great Sound Seeks Silence 2023.

Creative Production (Music) MA, Catalyst – Institute for Creative Arts and Technology 

Sounding the Moment: A Performance-Lecture (Hybrid presentation with Q&A)

Starting on July 27, 2024 and concluding on February 15, 2025, I recorded myself singing or interacting with my environment for around 30 seconds each day. My conditions were intentionally unambitious and open ended - the audio I gathered would simply be records of embodiment. Over the course of these 200 days, my recording exercise attuned me to relational listening and sounding. This performance-lecture explores recording practice and how it informs artistic development and composition, and uses affect theory to describe a relational creative process that coalesces in song.

/// About Claire Dickson

Claire Dickson is an experimental vocalist, composer, improviser and producer based in Berlin practicing emergent embodied songwriting. She considers song to be an artistically flexible modality that can encompass poetry, melody, harmony, rhythm, theater, philosophy, and any other idiom catalyzed by voice. She creates interdependently with the Berlin and New York experimental music communities as an improviser, and in her ongoing collaborative project Myrtle, with Camila Ortiz (Otracami) and Lex Korten’s Canopy. She has released two albums, Starland (2022) and The Beholder (New Amsterdam Records, 2024). 

Photo credit: Boris Seewald

Doctorate in Performing Arts and the Moving Image, Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon

Dream Forum – Collective Dreaming as Urban Cartography (Performative installation with Q&A)

The Dream Forum is an immersive installation and participatory performance exploring shared dreaming as a mode of urban and poetic inquiry. Expanding the ongoing artistic research ‘Oracle: Dreamlike Scores and Insurgency', the Forum is a liminal space where rest, sound, image, and storytelling converge. Through “oneiric scores,” dream circles, and collective fabulation, participants inhabit a sensorial landscape shaped by decompression, fable, and relational reflection. Framed as a transdisciplinary dream laboratory, the work engages with cosmologies—including Indigenous perspectives—that understand dreaming as cognitive technology and embodied knowledge. This social-yet-introspective experience invites new cartographies of the unconscious, navigating contemporary urban crises such as displacement, exhaustion, and housing precarity. Around a figurative fire, the Forum becomes a shelter for insurgent imagination and alternative ways of co-existing.

/// About Dárida Rodrigues

Dárida Rodrigues (São Paulo) is a multimedia artist and researcher, whose work spans audiovisual and performative installations that engage with consciousness expansion and the interplay between subjectivity and contemporary hegemonic systems. Her work delves into the insurgency of marginalized voices, reconfiguring micropolitical landscapes through a mix of voice, temporal space, and dream-like poetics. She is currently developing the project "Oracle. Oneiric Scores and Insurgency" as part of her PhD at the University of Lisbon (funded by FCT - Portugal) focusing on the micropolitical dimensions of the body and subconscious and on the (re)activation of practices to foster new modes of coexistence within performance and audiovisual arts. Dárida holds a Master’s in Multimedia Art from the University of Lisbon, graduated in Film - FAAP, São Paulo and has studied Set Design at the National Film and Television School, UK. In addition, she works in audiovisual and cinematographic production, as a production designer and art director.

Creative Production (Music) MA, Catalyst – Institute for Creative Arts and Technology

Echoes (Screening and Q&A)

Echoes is an experimental non-fiction short film that weaves together scenes from fictional movies with audio excerpts from documentaries, interviews and podcasts. It delves into shared human experiences of war-related trauma, the meaning of home and our deep connection to it. This film seeks to act as a witness to these events while inviting the audience to become witnesses themselves. The music for Echoes was composed in an attempt to intensify, rather than soften or distract from, the affective landscape of the film.

/// Elisa Pereira Martins (original score)

Elisa Pereira Martins (elisanyhm) is a Swiss-Brazilian composer, dj and sound artist. She completed a BA in Sound Arts at Bern University of the Arts and is currently pursuing an MA in artistic research at Catalyst in Berlin. Her research pursues the relationship between psychoanalysis, negativity, critiques of social domination and music. Martins’ compositions and dj sets as elisanyhm are a blend of different genres, including experimental, electronica, and ambient. Martins has performed at venues such as Reethaus, Neue Zukunft, and Zur Klappe and at events such as Signals Festivals at Funkhaus and TAG DER CLUBKULTUR at backsteinboot.

/// About Lara Khattar (director)

Lara Khattar is a Lebanese video editor currently based in Berlin. Over the past few years, she has collaborated with renowned film directors in Lebanon and gained valuable experience in television. She holds a diploma in Film Editing from Roma Film Academy and an MA in Creative Production (Film) from Catalyst – Institute for Creative Arts and Technology. Lebanon’s intricate and tumultuous history has profoundly influenced Lara’s storytelling, weaving its cultural heritage into the very fabric of her creative vision, transforming each narrative into a vivid tapestry of identity, resilience and memory.

MA Computational Arts, Goldsmiths University London

Sonic Maze (Spoken presentation with Q&A)

Sonic Maze is a modular exploration of drawing as a performative, multisensory process. Across three connected iterations, it investigates how gesture, pressure, and movement can shape sound and space in real time. Using Max/MSP and sensor-based interaction, it transforms mark-making into sound and visual dynamics. Rooted in semiotic thinking and process-based practice, Sonic Maze shifts between sketch, instrument, and installation - unfolding through interaction, evolving through sound.

/// About Fede Ciotti

Federica is a London-based artist and facilitator working across drawing, writing, and computational technologies. With an academic background in semiotics and a career in graphic facilitation, her practice explores how hand-drawn, symbolic systems can become interactive tools, performances, or speculative environments. Currently completing an MA in Computational Arts at Goldsmiths, she investigates how physical gesture and multimodal data translate into spatial, sonic, and narrative experiences - grounded in embodied, craft-based processes.

New Media Design MA, University of Europe for Applied Sciences

Transit Cadence (Performance)

Transit Cadence is an audiovisual performance that reinterprets language and explores the rhythmic, and phonetic qualities of urban spaces. It abstracts the city's essence, carrying it into a speculative domain. Mirroring the structured disorder of the metropolis, the performance blends structure with improvisation, evoking a sense of dérive. Sound and visuals interact—complementing, contradicting, and reshaping meaning through digital processing.  As the performance unfolds, a speculative city emerges, blurring the conceptual and the material. Natural, human, mechanical, and digital elements synchronize, only to unravel at the last moment.

/// About Federico Torres

Federico Torres is a New Media Artist working in the fields of Sound, Interactive Installations & Performance, Audiovisual & Experimental Film. He studied Interactive Design in Mexico City and later focused his studies in New Media and Media Spaces in Berlin. In the last years Federico's work has been shifting to a more performative aspect, by emphasising a layered and transmediatic work process.

/// About Alp Seyrekbasan

Alp Seyrekbasan is an artist/designer/musician from Istanbul based in Berlin. He received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2018. He is currently producing and performing live electronic music under the alias Basan. His approach to music and sound design is intuitive, exploratory, and experimental, always with the aim to evoke the senses and emotions.

PhD in Music, Universität der Künste Berlin

Epistemic Empowerment through Participatory Music-Making: A Decolonial Approach with Newly Arrived Teenagers in Germany (Hybrid presentation)

This contribution shares insights from a participatory music and design project with newly arrived teenagers in Germany who have experienced forced migration. Drawing from Participatory Design and Decolonial Applied Ethnomusicology, the project created a co-creative space where youth from Syria, Palestine, Kurdistan, Ukraine, and Chechnya explored rhythm, storytelling, and visual expression. Through a series of workshops, participants composed and performed a multilingual music video that wove together personal narratives and diverse cultural influences.  The process foregrounded collaborative authorship and challenged dominant narratives around migration and belonging. By centering the teenagers' lived experiences, the project fostered epistemic empowerment and creative agency, using music-making as a tool to reimagine social inclusion. Artistic practice here becomes a way of enacting the "right to the city"—a shared, transformative space shaped by movement, collaboration, and collective storytelling.  This presentation will highlight how participatory and decolonial approaches can support young migrants in reclaiming their voices and imagining new forms of community. It invites reflection on the role of artistic research in cultivating belonging across shifting landscapes of displacement and resistance.

/// About Ivan Chaparro

I am a musician, artist, designer and researcher committed to fostering participatory art, political activism, electroacoustic music, and storytelling. I am the creative director of Resonar Lab, an international collective of artists, designers, musicians, and activists dedicated to promoting ecosocial transformations. I have experience as a professor at several universities and have guided multidisciplinary projects with a social impact, integrating art mediation, community engagement, and collaborative approaches.   My current PhD research at the UdK revolves around the intersection of ecosocial activism, participatory art, electroacoustic music, and alternative epistemologies such as decolonial, Afro-Indigenous, and queer perspectives, among others. My work takes the form of performances, music, writing, and community-based projects.

Guest presentation and closing panel

Emulating Space: Orchestration in MIDI Polyphonic Expression and Physical Modelling (Demo-lecture)

James Perley is an American composer and interactive media artist whose interdisciplinary practice merges music composition, electronic media, and multimedia installation. He holds degrees from Columbia College Chicago (BA in Audio Arts and Acoustics), San Francisco Art Institute (MFA in Design and Technology), and Mills College (MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media). He has studied and collaborated with renowned composers Pauline Oliveros and Roscoe Mitchell. His research in music technology addresses advanced gestural performance and physical modeling synthesis, with a focus on MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE) and Audio Modeling technologies. Perley’s recent album, HELENS (2025), employs MPE-enabled controllers using the SWAM engine to create hyper-expressive, nuanced orchestral textures. His installation work explores themes of surveillance, agency, and spatial interactivity, as seen in site-specific environments that employ camera-based triggers and live video feeds to engage audiences in reflexive observation. His installation HASNT HAPPENED SINCE (2012) evokes the persistent surveillance, marginalization, and erasure that shaped American Queer life during the mid-20th century. In addition to interactive media, Perley has composed original scores for independent films by directors George Kuchar and Eliane Lima (Esquizo Filma), demonstrating experience with multiple audiovisual forms. James Perley also owns and directs The RendezVU studio in Portland, Oregon, and remains active as a technology director, educator, and organizer in contemporary music and media arts.

Doctoral Programme in Arts and Design, Department of Art and Media, Aalto University (Finland)

Smoking Mirror: Aethereal Resonances. A performance-lecture exploring atmospheric listening through artistic research (Hybrid presentation)

A performance-lecture exploring Atmospheric Listening as an artistic method to delve into the relation between sensing weather and divinatory rituals inspired by the mythology of the Smoking Mirror (Tezcatlipoca). Drawing upon obsidian elements and copper traces as interactive materials, the presentation transforms weather dynamics into immersive soundscapes. The aim is to foster attunement with our natural environment through a multi-sensory experience, blending vibro-tactile and aural sensations. Through my ongoing artistic research, I design meteorological and sonic technologies that revive pre-colonial knowledge of weather divination from ancient Mexico and other Mesoamerican cultures. This knowledge is shared through practices involving crystallised mineral artefacts, echoing contemporary divinatory techniques such as scrying and aeromancy. 

Smoking Mirror is an immersive performance that combines sound, visuals, and interactive components. A video presentation and generative soundscapes, derived from real-time weather data, enhance the narrative. At its core, the performance utilizes an obsidian mirror infused with copper traces, connected to touch sensors. These sensors detect tactile interactions, triggering sounds, visuals, and smoke to create an immersive experience for the audience.

/// About Juan Duarte

Juan Duarte (MX/FI) is an artist-researcher. His investigation is the relation between the atmosphere, the act of listening, and the profound concept of attunement. His mission looks beyond conventional, extractive, or deterministic approaches to understanding the relationship between nature and technology. Instead, it ventures into ecological perspectives on our weather systems, granting voice to the natural agencies at play within the realm of weather. He has presented his work at ISEA, the Media Art Histories, and the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, Xcoax, NIME, PACT Zollverein, Medialab Matadero, Valssaamo-Cable Factory, Röda Sten Konsthall, Goethe Institute – Beijing, Titanik Gallery, Nida Art Colony, and Klaipeda Culture Communication Center.

Film Production Programme Certificate Lead, Film Sound Tutor, Catalyst – Institute for Creative Arts and Technology

Reasons to Scream! (Spoken presentation with Q&A)

A collective of queer-feminist superhero*ines make use of their different identities, backgrounds and experiences to fight back against sexual and gender-based violence – a fusion of science, technology, magic, and ritual. Clashes and conflicts arise as they negotiate and try to come to consensus in their aim of disrupting toxic hierarchies.  In the collective writing of a script for an imageless film (from Oct. 2021 to May 2022), the collaborators on this ‘Audio-Film’ attempt to deconstruct some hierarchies of filmmaking that enable sexual violence – the image-sound relationship and its part in the Gaze, as well as those of film production itself. The final imageless film will be screened in Dolby Atmos* surround.

/// About Juli Saragosa

I am a media artist who likes to do things with my hands, taking time to be in the process of creating, sharing and exploring. I was born in Tkarón:to, the traditional territory of many nations. I grew up in a multi-cultural diaspora. BA from U of T, MFA at SFU, now living in Berlin. My loving family’s DIY approach, doing things together and openness to difference is the foundation of my creative practice. The stories they shared with me, as well as my own queer identity are subjects in my earlier work. Recently more towards a social practice of teaching and polyvocal collaboration.

*A segment of the work will be available to listen to in Catalyst's Dolby Atmos studio during the symposium.

Creative Production (Music) MA, Catalyst – Institute for Creative Arts and Technology

Ritual as Multi-Dimensional Architecture - Holding Space, Sensing Form and Flow, Enabling Participation (Spoken presentation with Q&A)

This project is a ritual-based participatory music performance that treats ritual as a form of multi-dimensional architecture—shaped through space, time, and sensation. Informed by embodied traditions such as Capoeira and participatory art, it explores how rituals can hold space for collective agency and individual creative expression. Using custom-built instruments, multi-sensory cues, and structured improvisation, the work invites participants to actively shape the performance through their own gestures, rhythms, and responses. The artist acts not as a performer, but as a space-holder, attending to form and flow rather than directing outcomes. This presentation offers a manifesto-driven reflection on ritual as an artistic methodology, accompanied by documentation excerpts from a recent performance test. It proposes ritual as a living structure for composing relation, presence, and participatory knowledge.

/// About Kaixiang Zhang

Kaixiang Zhang is a multidisciplinary artist and capoeirista from Beijing working across music, design, sound art, and performance. Since 2017, he has been creating solo music under the alias Noooodle King, blending electronic foundations with diverse influences through fragmented, collage-style compositions. His current artistic research explores ritual as a participatory and multi-sensory form, integrating custom-built instruments and collective improvisation. Bridging genres, cultures, and embodied practices, his work focuses on creating spaces for shared presence, sonic exploration, and individual agency within collective experiences.

Creative Production (Music) MA, Catalyst – Institute for Creative Arts and Technology 

An Improviser's Guide to Film Music (Hybrid presentation with Q&A)

This research project is exploring the connections between improvisational music, open form notation and film. Inspired by the artistic tradition of photoplay music and Ernö Rapée’s Motions Pictures Moods for Pianists and Organists(1924) a book that consists of sheet music in relation to specific film scene types, I have created a book of open form scores aimed to be played with a specific film. The film is a contribution of filmmaker Evgenia Papazisi and is titled Five Firsts. Another major aspect of this exploration is the use of this book of scores in performance along with a screening of the film. The process towards the materialization of this idea contains sizable experimentation with improvising along with film and engagement with the wider theoretical and artistic context. Topics discussed in this research include ideas about film scoring, history of cinema, improvisation, and alternative notation.

/// About Kostis Fanaras

Kostis Fanaras is a Greek guitar player and improviser. Kostis is currently enrolled in the Creative Production Music Master’s programme at Catalyst – Institute for Creative Arts and Technology in Berlin. Kostis is an alumni of the Ionian University, having spent his time there studying jazz guitar performance. He has performed with multiple jazz groups throughout Greece. Kostis is also interested in film music, as well as improvisation outside of the scope of jazz. He is currently exploring the connections between improvised music, film and open-form notation, through his artistic practice and research process.

Creative Production (Film) MA, Catalyst – Institute for Creative Arts and Technology

Looking For The Self (Screening)

What creates the idea of the self? Through a self-directed exploration that merges academic inquiry with experimental audiovisual storytelling, this short poetic docfilm raises questions around identity, perception, memory, context, and the influence of personal and collective narratives. Is the self defined by what we remember, what we experience, or by the stories others tell about us? Through a non-linear, sensory-driven narrative, this film explores how stories—both lived and inherited. A project that emerges as both an artistic investigation and the creative experiment of self-discovery. The film was produced in collaboration with Flavs, a sound artist and BA student in Sound for Audiovisual Media, whose immersive sound design forms a vital layer of the piece’s emotional texture. Together, they craft a work that challenges conventional storytelling and invites audiences to engage in a sensorial, reflective experience.

/// About Marta Tiana

Marta Tiana is a Barcelona-born, Mexico City–raised independent journalist and writer based in Berlin. With a background  in Cultural Sociology and Anthropology (KU Leuven), her work blends rigorous research with poetic storytelling. She honed her narrative skills as a TV reporter for Mexico’s ADN40 before shifting into creative non-fiction film. Currently developing a documentary project at Catalyst Institute, Marta explores identity, art, and society through experimental, impact-driven narratives. Her work challenges dominant perspectives and invites viewers into nuanced, sensory experiences rooted in cultural depth and personal resonance.

PhD in Creative Writing and Music, Newcastle University, UK

Sonic Sanctuaries: Finding poetry in the sounds of a new city (Hybrid presentation with Q&A)

This spoken presentation will reflect on a series of listening sessions with newly-arrived sanctuary-seekers in Newcastle, UK. Together, led by our ears, we walked the city, making field recordings and writing pieces of site- and sound-responsive text. Our research encountered the different agencies of the voices within the urban landscape. Public space is key for people that live in extremely temporary accommodation: their lives are lived within urban space in a very different way to more settled residents. Together, we are putting sound at the centre of this urban experience. We have taken an entirely collaborative approach to our work, introducing the group to field recording practices, and providing the technology for people to record on their own: honing their own listening techniques. We have edited and mixed audioworks in the studio together and exhibited them as sound installations. This is an ongoing, long-term project with a well-established refugee charity.

/// About Martin Heslop

Martin Heslop is a writer and composer/sound-artist from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK. He has written text and created sound-works for the stage and radio, for publication, for gallery/site-specific installations, and for release on record. His work has featured on many platforms including BBC Radio 4 and Resonance FM. A sound/text work, ‘To the end of the land’, is forthcoming from Longbarrow Press in 2025. He was awarded a Visiting Fellowship at The Eccles Centre of the British Library during 2022-2023. He is undertaking a practice-based PhD in Creative Writing and Music at Newcastle University based around listening and recording the city.

Creative Production (Music) MA, Catalyst – Institute for Creative Arts and Technology

Relativity (Performance)

In May 2022 Morgan was invited by the Icelandic Glaciological Society (IGS) on an expedition across the largest glacier in both Iceland and Europe, Vatnajökull. While on the glacier Morgan created an archive of field recordings, recording the sounds of the glacial mass while also witnessing first-hand how the IGS measure and record the shifting and receding glacial landscape. Relativity is a compositional reflection of how we can comprehend and relate to the monumental environmental changes, accelerated by climate change, happening on timescales beyond our natural lifespans. With the conceptual restriction of creating the composition using only the original field recordings, the composition moves between two different timescales or ‘states’. The first representative of short term observable environmental change and the second representative of long-term unobservable environmental change. Relativity aims to find a point of expression that lies beyond a human-centred experience of  environment movement and change.

/// About Morgan Hickinbotham

Morgan Hickinbotham (b. 1989) is an Australian composer, producer and image maker who works within the mediums of sound, image and motion picture. Morgan’s compositions focus on the creative manipulation of sound and image through exploring and expanding on minor imperfections or mistakes inherent in artistic experimentation. He creates experimental, minimalist compositions inspired by experimental composition processes and influenced by drone, noise, classical minimalism and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

Scientific Artistic Research, Filmuniversität Babelsberg Konrad Wolf

The House of Asterion: Memory, Space, and the Affective Labyrinth (Hybrid presentation)

The House of Asterion is a scientific artistic research project exploring how memory, affect, and identity unfold across space. Rooted in a childhood home, the work constructs a rhizomatic map of rooms, windows, and objects that link Antep, Gelsenkirchen, and Berlin—cities entangled through lived experience, imagination, and inherited memory.  Drawing on Deleuzian philosophy, affect theory, and the mytho-poetic figure of Borges’ Asterion, the house becomes a conceptual and affective labyrinth—one where past and future coexist as virtual intensities. Through essayistic film, poetic fragments, and diagrammatic mapping, the project examines the house as both an intimate interior and a multiplicity shaped by cultural, historical, and emotional forces.  In line with the theme Multipli-Cities, the research asks how cities are carried within the body, how memory creates translocal connections, and how spatial imaginaries emerge at the intersection of the personal and the political, the architectural and the affective.

/// Oguz Baran

I am a scientific artistic researcher and PhD candidate exploring the interplay between memory, space, and affect. My practice weaves together essay film, poetic writing, and spatial theory to investigate how identities are shaped through lived environments and imaginative geographies. Drawing on Deleuzian philosophy, affect theory, and personal archives, my work often engages with houses, rooms, and objects as dynamic nodes in a larger relational map. Currently, I am developing The House of Asterion, a research project that traces the rhizomatic connections between Antep, Gelsenkirchen, and Berlin through spatial memory and affective intensity.

Creative Production (Music) MA, Catalyst – Institute for Creative Arts and Technology

Exploring Extended Techniques in the Saxophone and its Role as Part of an Ensemble (Performance)

During the development of the MA project "Exploring Extended Techniques in the Saxophone and its Role as Part of an Ensemble" Pablo Muñoz-Barragan has found in improvisation an ideal vessel to explore the creative affordances of the techniques he is researching. Extended techniques, being non-conventional ways of playing an instrument, open the options of timbre and texture of the instrument. Improvisation offers a space where the instrumentalist can experiment and try out different combinations of these techniques while trying to compose something in real time. The project has also seen Pablo reunited and forming a duo with his sister and electronic musician, Aura Danielle. In their duo they defy genres through free and guided improvisations. They draw from their common background of minimalism, electronic music, free improvisation, and other styles. Their music finds them in a seamless creative dialogue of patient development.

/// About Pablo Muñoz-Barragan

Pablo Muñoz-Barragan was an active member of the independent music scene of Bogota-Colombia for over 15 years, playing in a diverse group of bands and recording over 20 albums. Fluent in Jazz, Salsa, Rock and Colombian music, he is constantly looking to expand his musical horizon and continue to learn from different genres and styles. He was nominated to a Latin Grammy award with the band Burning Caravan in 2019. His noise-rock project Pleura has recorded and released two albums. In 2024 he moved to Berlin to study and look for new opportunities in the European music scene.

Creative Production (Film) MA, Catalyst – Institute for Creative Arts and Technology

LOVE (Screening)

This film explores how the urban environment of a new city can become a vital creative space for profound personal inquiry. Moving beyond a context where full self-expression was challenging, coming to Berlin allowed me to recognise a hidden part of myself. This 4-minute piece of work is less a statement and more a personal journey back, an attempt to grapple with the question of what creates the idea of self. The only answer I’ve found is love. It wasn’t just about discovering a part of me that remained unseen; this film provided the space to be genuinely honest with myself and openly share my feelings. 

/// About Paula

Cinema is my passion, my driving force. I'm a creative producer and director with five short films under my belt, some even screened at international festivals. For three years, I honed my skills as an assistant producer on massive advertising projects in Moscow. I worked with global and local brands, learning the art of compelling storytelling and visual impact. 

Creative Production (Film) MA, Catalyst – Institute for Creative Arts and Technology

Esther, Rivke, Chayale (Screening)

How do we understand ourselves through those who came before us? This short poetic, experimental film explores the relationship between living Jewish women today and their ancestors. A young Jewish woman brings back to life images of her ancestors across the archives of YIVO and the South African Jewish museum. As she takes on their facial and bodily expressions, we hear a poetic meditation addressed to Jewish women of the past. Changes since their lifetimes are shared; questions about how suffering/liberation is intertwined across generations are asked. The film features English, Hebrew, and Yiddish and original music by Kaixiang Zhang.

/// About Shoshana Simons

Shoshana Simons is an emerging filmmaker currently pursuing her masters in film at Catalyst. She has lived most of her life in the United States. Her current work centres around the themes of freedom, migration, ancestral connection, culture and modernity. A lover of folk music from across the world, she often takes music as the starting point for her filmmaking. She is also a lover of Jewish languages and has been a recipient of fellowships across the world to support her studies of Yiddish and Hebrew. A graduate of Brown University, she has a background as an award-winning researcher and teacher.

Creative Production (Film) MA and Creative Production (Music) MA, Catalyst – Institute for Creative Arts and Technology

A methodological window into The Shtetl Multiverse (Hybrid presentation)

In this interactive presentation and performance, Shoshana Simons will give us a window into the making of her upcoming, genre-crossing film, The Shtetl Multiverse. As part of her research process, she has conducted over 40 hours of interviews with Jewish women across the diaspora about their experiences and beliefs with respect to liberation. In this presentation, the audience will have a chance to experience firsthand Shoshana’s methodology with interactive reflection activities on the themes of freedom, migration, and ancestral connection. Also included will be a collaborative performance by Shoshana and Kaixiang Zhang featuring a poetic synthesis of the interviews Shoshana has conducted alongside Zhang's original ambient music.   

/// About Shoshana Simons

Shoshana Simons is an emerging filmmaker currently pursuing her masters in film at Catalyst. She has lived most of her life in the United States. Her current work centers around the themes of freedom, migration, culture, and modernity. A lover of folk music from across the world, she often takes music as the starting point for her filmmaking. She is also a lover of Jewish languages and has been a recipient of fellowships across the world to support her studies of Yiddish and Hebrew. A graduate of Brown University, she has a background as an award-winning researcher and teacher.

/// About Kaixiang Zhang

Kaixiang Zhang is a multidisciplinary artist and capoeirista from Beijing working across music, design, sound art, and performance. Since 2017, he has been creating solo music under the alias Noooodle King, blending electronic foundations with diverse influences through fragmented, collage-style compositions. His current artistic research explores ritual as a participatory and multi-sensory form, integrating custom-built instruments and collective improvisation. Bridging genres, cultures, and embodied practices, his work focuses on creating spaces for shared presence, sonic exploration, and individual agency within collective experiences.

Creative Production (Film) MA, Catalyst – Institute for Creative Arts and Technology

Pay & Erase (Screening)

"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." - George Orwell, 1984. This satirical film explores a technology offering the ability to wipe from history the crimes of one’s ancestors. A young woman undergoes the procedure. An infomercial enthusiastically advertises a deep cleanse. What is the relationship between technology, memory power, and how far is our world from the absurdity of this technology?

This collaborative project was written, shot, directed and edited by four Catalyst Creative Production (Film) MA students.

/// About the filmmakers

Paula Okuneva is inspired by the visual arts. Since 2019, she has directed seven short films, some of which have gained international festival recognition. 

Thaís Mancini is an architect and urbanist who, instead of choosing to intervene in the tangible world, chose to create universes. She currently leads Hidden Hat, a company specializing in visual treatments for advertisement, and is pursuing a master’s in film with Threading Pasts, her first art installation.

Shoshana Simons is a master's student in film at Catalyst. She is currently making an experimental documentary called The Shtetl Multiverse, centered around three Jewish women across the diaspora gathering together in the place of their shared ancestors and exploring their different meanings of liberation.

Lia Lyutakova is a filmmaker, currently studying at Catalyst University.

Creative Production (Music) MA, Catalyst – Institute for Creative Arts and Technology

void•form (Performance)

void•form is a live performance system that merges generative algorithms with tactile human interaction, creating an evolving dialogue between control and surrender. Operating within a framework of structured unpredictability, the system explores the tension between spontaneity and constraint, offering a space where sonic events emerge, shift, and dissolve in real time. Through a responsive design that emphasizes material engagement and embodied expression, void•form foregrounds the performer's attunement to the moment—risk becomes a method, and presence becomes a practice. The result is a dynamic interplay of intention and accident, where each performance is singular, unreproducible, and charged with potential. By embracing instability and cultivating resonance between performer, machine, and audience, void•form aspires toward a transcendent musical experience rooted in nowness, unpredictability, and the fragile freedom of becoming.

/// About Zaak Kerstetter

Zaak Kerstetter is an artist, producer, DJ, and educator from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  For nearly two decades, he has created and toured under the name Zenotope, as well as with the spacecore duo The Glitter Conspiracy. He enjoys Thai food, cryptozoology, witches, triangles, and his dog Leeloo. Zaak is currently an MA candidate in Catalyst's Creative Production Music programme.