THE CASTLE OF CROSSED DESTINIES
2021– 2022
Sonic project and podcast series
︎Episode 1: Tarot
︎Episode 2: Open Weather
︎Episode 3: Raw Cacao
Sonic project and podcast series
︎Episode 1: Tarot
︎Episode 2: Open Weather
︎Episode 3: Raw Cacao
The Castle of Crossed Destinies – is three-part sonic project with geographer Sasha Engelmann, curator Olivia Berkowicz, and curator and biophysicist Aouefa Amoussouvi. They were fellows in residency at Akademie Schloss Solitude, and discuss tarot, radio, rituals, technologies, feminist narratives in science and art, as well as personal experiences and reflections on transgenerational memories & migrations. Each encounter focuses on one practice, where the first episode is hosted by Berkowicz on tarot. Part two focuses on Engelmann’s project Open Weather and how it deals with earth sensing radio technologies and the histories of feminist divination practices. Part three focuses on Amoussouvi’s practice with raw cacao and her research on the science, rituality and the entanglements with imperialism of this food commodity.
The Castle of Crossed Destinies: Open Weather, 2021. Photo: Olivia Berkowicz
This three-part sonic project departs from the writer Italo Calvino’s book The Castle of Crossed Destinies (1973). In the tale, a group of travellers meet each other in a tavern in the woods. Afflicted by a strange predicament that affects their capacity to speak, they turn to a stack of tarot cards to tell stories about one another. From a secluded room in Schloss Solitude, Amoussouvi, Berkowicz and Engelmann extend the invitation of Calvino’s story to reflect upon the use of divinatory tools, creative props and experimental techniques for collective knowledge making. Situated in pandemic times, the conversation conjures vocabularies, glossaries and sounds. Moving in a circular motion, three fellow travellers explore stories within stories within stories.
The Castle of Crossed Destinies: Raw Cacao, 2021. Photo: Olivia Berkowicz
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The Castle of Crossed Destinies: Tarot, 2021. Photo: Olivia Berkowicz
COLOPHON
All episodes are produced and released by The Institute for Endotic Research. Episode 2 is co-produced by Akademie Schloss Solitude.
SOUND DESIGNER
Sara Pereira
BIOGRAPHIES
Aouefa Amoussouvi is a French-Beninese research scientist based in Berlin, Germany and holds a PhD in Theoretical Molecular Biophysics from the Berlin Humboldt University, Germany. Outside the lab, she researches and develops curatorial projects on history and alternative narratives of science in the context of intersectional feminism and de-coloniality. She is also interested in the endotic exploration of the human psyche, body-mind relationship, group dynamics and transgenerational trauma and is training as a coach of process-oriented psychology. Between 2014 and 2019, she collaborated on several interdisciplinary projects at SAVVY Contemporary – Laboratory of Form-Ideas. She is a former fellow of the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany.
Olivia Berkowicz is a curator, writer and editor. Her practice explores the intersection of critical visuality studies and contemporary art theory. She is interested in vocabularies and practices which challenge modernist-colonial principles of exhibition histories, art production, and collaborations. Together with Marianna Feher, she organises Tentative Transmits (2020-2022), a discursive radio project investigating the ”former East”, supported by the artistic research funding of the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. She is a current fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart.
Sasha Engelmann is a London-based geographer exploring interdisciplinary, feminist and creative approaches to environmental knowledge making. Her new book Sensing Art in the Atmosphere: Elemental Lures and Aerosolar Practices (Routledge, 2020) traces the potential of artistic, community-driven experiments to amplify our sensing of atmosphere, marrying attentions to atmospheric affect with visceral awareness of the materials, institutions and processes hovering in the air. Together with Sophie Dyer she leads the feminist radio project open-weather. She is Lecturer in GeoHumanities at Royal Holloway University of London and a former fellow of Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart.
Sara Pereira is a visual and sound artist, working primordially in collaborative intermedia forms. Regular enrolment with group Discoteca Flaming Star, with whom Sara is performing and collaborating since 2010, engaging currently in the research project Hospital(y)tis. Since 2016 playing with Sofia Lomba, as AVA. Previously developing sound work within duo Gentileza and solo as Napa. Co-founder and former member of Altes Finanzamt Project-space (Berlin), Marvellous Tone CD-r collective (Porto) and PISO collective (Porto-Berlin). Sara is dealing with questions of self-organisation, through drawing and in musical improvisation.
︎theinstituteforendoticresearch.org
SOUND DESIGNER
Sara Pereira
BIOGRAPHIES
Aouefa Amoussouvi is a French-Beninese research scientist based in Berlin, Germany and holds a PhD in Theoretical Molecular Biophysics from the Berlin Humboldt University, Germany. Outside the lab, she researches and develops curatorial projects on history and alternative narratives of science in the context of intersectional feminism and de-coloniality. She is also interested in the endotic exploration of the human psyche, body-mind relationship, group dynamics and transgenerational trauma and is training as a coach of process-oriented psychology. Between 2014 and 2019, she collaborated on several interdisciplinary projects at SAVVY Contemporary – Laboratory of Form-Ideas. She is a former fellow of the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany.
Olivia Berkowicz is a curator, writer and editor. Her practice explores the intersection of critical visuality studies and contemporary art theory. She is interested in vocabularies and practices which challenge modernist-colonial principles of exhibition histories, art production, and collaborations. Together with Marianna Feher, she organises Tentative Transmits (2020-2022), a discursive radio project investigating the ”former East”, supported by the artistic research funding of the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. She is a current fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart.
Sasha Engelmann is a London-based geographer exploring interdisciplinary, feminist and creative approaches to environmental knowledge making. Her new book Sensing Art in the Atmosphere: Elemental Lures and Aerosolar Practices (Routledge, 2020) traces the potential of artistic, community-driven experiments to amplify our sensing of atmosphere, marrying attentions to atmospheric affect with visceral awareness of the materials, institutions and processes hovering in the air. Together with Sophie Dyer she leads the feminist radio project open-weather. She is Lecturer in GeoHumanities at Royal Holloway University of London and a former fellow of Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart.
Sara Pereira is a visual and sound artist, working primordially in collaborative intermedia forms. Regular enrolment with group Discoteca Flaming Star, with whom Sara is performing and collaborating since 2010, engaging currently in the research project Hospital(y)tis. Since 2016 playing with Sofia Lomba, as AVA. Previously developing sound work within duo Gentileza and solo as Napa. Co-founder and former member of Altes Finanzamt Project-space (Berlin), Marvellous Tone CD-r collective (Porto) and PISO collective (Porto-Berlin). Sara is dealing with questions of self-organisation, through drawing and in musical improvisation.
︎theinstituteforendoticresearch.org