Mile­na Kipfmüller was born and grew in Brazil, where she stud­ied oboe and piano. After mov­ing to Ger­many she decid­ed to con­tin­ue her stud­ies at the fac­ul­ty of applied the­atre stud­ies in Giesen with Hein­er Goebbels, Xavier Le Roy,
Mathilde Mon­nier, Anto­nio Araújo and where she focused on sound, radio­plays and dra­matur­gi­cal work. Her works blend dif­fer­ent media togeth­er and approach often polit­i­cal and cur­rent ques­tions. She was schol­ar­ship hold­er on the pro­gram for young Euro­pean artists, cura­tors and
pro­duc­ers (Fes­ti­val in Tran­si­tion). Her radio­play “Hate Radio” about the Rwan­dan geno­cide won the Hör­spiel­preis der Kriegs­blind­en 2014. She got a fel­low­ship of Robert Bosch Stiftung and col­lab­o­rat­ed with groups such as matthaei&konsorten, Gob Squad, was found­ing mem­ber of sound­ing sit­u­a­tions and IIPM. /​/​ www.milenakipf.de /​/​

Klaus Janek com­bines the dou­ble­bass­play­ing with elec­tron­ics as com­po­si­tion­al tools. He col­lab­o­rates exten­sive­ly with move­ment, spo­ken words and music the­ater, seek­ing the bal­ance between aes­thet­ics and dis­course. He per­formed at the Lou­vre, Berghain, CTM, Impul­stanz and many oth­er places and fes­ti­vals, tours reg­u­lar­ly in all con­ti­nents,  earned a schol­ar­ship from Robert Bosch Stiftung and grants from cul­ture exchange office Berlin and cul­ture office, Bolzano. – /​/​ www.klaus-janek.de /​/​

Jens Diet­rich works as cura­tor and free­lance dra­maturge. He stud­ied Applied The­atre Stud­ies in Giessen under the direc­tor and com­pos­er Hein­er Goebbels. Dur­ing and after his stud­ies, he worked at Richard Foreman’s Onto­log­i­cal The­ater in New York as well as at the Büh­nen der Stadt Köln and the The­ater Freiburg. Since 2004 he is active in var­i­ous inter­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tions. 2009 he joined the Inter­na­tion­al Insti­tute of Polit­i­cal Mur­der (IIPM). 2014 he found­ed the group “Polit­i­cal Bod­ies” togeth­er with Yolan­da Gutiér­rez. He curat­ed the Russ­ian Per­form­ing Arts sec­tion of the Nord­wind Fes­ti­val 2015. In 2016 he joined Sound­ing Sit­u­a­tions and co-direct­ed the audio play “Kun­st im Ver­hör” (WDR) togeth­er with Mile­na Kipfmüller and the walk­a­ble music the­atre “Rwan­dan Records”, which pre­miered at the HKW Berlin in 2019. – /​/​ www.jens-dietrich.com /​/​

Fabia Mekus is a cul­tur­al man­ag­er and com­plet­ed her bachelor’s degree in eth­nol­o­gy and edu­ca­tion­al sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cologne. In this con­text, she has pri­mar­i­ly dealt with the top­ics of fem­i­nism and post­colo­nial­ism. In the master’s degree in cul­tur­al man­age­ment and cul­tur­al edu­ca­tion at the Nieder­rhein Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences, her core inter­ests includ­ed var­i­ous man­age­ment and mar­ket­ing strate­gies for the cul­tur­al sec­tor, and above all cul­tur­al-polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al-soci­o­log­i­cal top­ics. Fabia is involved in var­i­ous cul­tur­al projects in Cologne and Ham­burg as pro­duc­tion man­ag­er, includ­ing the Som­merblut Kul­tur­fes­ti­val eV, the Cologne Insti­tute for Cul­ture and Edu­ca­tion, the per­for­mance col­lec­tive Per­form­ing Females and the Grenz sind rel­a­tiv eV. In addi­tion, she has been work­ing as a fundrais­er for var­i­ous artists, asso­ci­a­tions and col­lec­tives since 2017. In her work, she focus­es on socio-polit­i­cal issues, sus­tain­able work­ing meth­ods and col­lec­tive ways of work and cre­ation. In 2019 she joined Sound­ing Sit­u­a­tions cov­er­ing the fields of pro­duc­tion man­age­ment and co-think­ing.

1key is a mul­ti­lin­gual poet, actor, musi­cian, song­writer, pro­duc­er from East Africa merg­ing var­i­ous forms of media in his artis­tic expres­sions. http://1keyziki.com/

The per­cus­sion­ist Sofia Borges chose a risky but stim­u­lat­ing path: to explore, to exper­i­ment, to enlarge the estab­lished lan­guages (be it the impro­vised ones or the com­posed by her­self, with graph­ic nota­tions extend­ing the con­ven­tion­al writ­ing) and the results are show­ing us that the art of sounds is not dead yet; far from it. She does it in two ways. One is the solo for­mat – adding objects, some of them of her own inven­tion, music box­es and toys to the jazz drumk­it and the orches­tral per­cus­sion instru­ments, and also ana­log­ic and dig­i­tal elec­tron­ic devices enabling her to process, in real time, her acoustic con­struc­tions, includ­ing in the mix a good num­ber of field record­ings. Anoth­er is the asso­ci­a­tion with some of the most remark­able spon­ta­neous noise­mak­ers of our time, like Craig Taborn, Mat Maneri, Axel Dörn­er, Robyn Schulkowsky, Ignaz Schick, Ryeko Oku­da, Sanem Kalfa, Michael Thieke, Can­su Tan­riku­lu, Chris Pit­siokos e Nick Dun­ston, just to name a few, and inte­grat­ing unavoid­able bands such as SORBD and SLOTSCH.

The Berlin-based, but Por­tuguese-born inven­tive sound cre­ator has the stage as her nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment, estab­lish­ing music as anoth­er of the per­for­ma­tive arts. In this con­text it’s with no won­der that we find Sofia Borges in dance and the­atre projects, col­lab­o­rat­ing with Meg Stu­art, Alex­is Blake or the col­lec­tive Sound­ing Sit­u­a­tions. There’s no end in sight for the inves­tiga­tive approach­es of her play­ing with time and space, and that’s the key secret for her grow­ing nota­bil­i­ty in the inter­na­tion­al scene.

The Berlin-based clarinetist/​composer/​performer Michael Thieke is equal­ly at home across a broad range of musi­cal envi­ron­ments, such as exper­i­men­tal song forms, col­lec­tive­ly com­pos­ing projects, impro­vis­ing col­lec­tives, and music on the fringes of jazz. He is explor­ing the minu­ti­ae of sound, tim­bre and noise, with a par­tic­u­lar inter­est in micro­tonal­i­ty and relat­ed sound phe­nom­e­na. The qual­i­ties of slow­ness are anoth­er field of his research. He has a pref­er­ence for long-term col­lab­o­ra­tions and col­lec­tive work.

Some of his cur­rent Projects are: The Inter­na­tion­al Noth­ing (with Kai Fagaschin­s­ki), Voutchkova/​Thieke Duo (with Bil­iana Voutchko­va), The Pitch (with Boris Baltschun, Koen Nut­ters, Morten J. Olsen), Der lange Schat­ten (with Håvard Wiik, Anto­nio Borgh­i­ni), Split­ter Orch­ester, Mag­da Mayas Fil­a­men­tal (with Mag­da Mayas, Ang­harad Davies, Chris­tine Abdel­nour, Zeena Parkins, Rho­dri Davies, Aimee The­ri­ot, Anthea Cad­dy), Por­ta Chiusa (with Paed Con­ca, Hans Koch), The Clar­inet Trio (with Geb­hard Ull­mann, Jür­gen Kup­ke), The Mag­ic I.D. (with Christof Kurz­mann, Kai Fagaschin­s­ki, Mar­gareth Kam­mer­er), Marino/​Thieke (wth Lui­gi Mari­no), Nas­haz (with Sharif Sehnaoui, Andrea Neu­mann, Michael Vor­feld), Warte­land (with Lena Czer­ni­awska, Emilio Gor­doa)

He played on fes­ti­vals such as Novas Fre­quen­cias (Rio de Janeiro), Bor­der­line (Athens), Ring Ring (Bel­grade), Wien Mod­ern, Upper­cut (Bor­deaux), Klub Katarakt (Ham­burg), Irti­jal (Beirut), Ftar­ri Fes­ti­val (Tokyo), Meakus­ma (Eupen), Seanaps (Leipzig), Fes­ti­val Inter­na­tion­al de Musique Actuelle (Vic­to­ri­av­ille), Tai­wan Impro­vised Music Fes­ti­val (Tapei), Hud­der­s­field Con­tem­po­rary Music Fes­ti­val, Musikpro­tokoll (Graz), Klangspuren (Schwaz), Trans Art (Bozen), Music Unlim­it­ed (Wels), Jazz Fest (Berlin), März­Musik (Berlin), Bore­alis (Bergen), Musi­ca Estran­ha (Sao Paulo), ctm (Berlin), Crak (Paris), Darm­städter Ferienkurse Für Neue Musik (Darm­stadt), Son­ic Acts (Ams­ter­dam), Tak­t­los (Zürich), Metéo (Mul­house), Angel­i­ca (Bologna), Alter­na­ti­va (Prague), Kon­fronta­tio­nen (Nick­els­dorf), Musiques Inno­va­tri­ces (St.Etienne), artacts (St.Johann), Exper­i­men­tal Inter­me­dia (New York), Long Arms (Moscow), Con­troindi­cazione (Rome), Moers Fes­ti­val, Donaueschinger Musik­tage, ZJFT (Gronin­gen), Jazz em Agos­to (Lis­bon), Pied­Nu (LeHavre)

Josué Mugisha was born in Burun­di and is an actor, dancer-chore­o­g­ra­ph­er, direc­tor and play­wright.

After study­ing per­form­ing arts in South Africa, Josué encoun­tered what he calls a “speech cri­sis” in Burun­di, a term that comes from the fact that peo­ple were whis­per­ing about polit­i­cal issues because every­one was sus­pi­cious of every­one else, that artists were very cen­sored and threat­ened, that all inde­pen­dent radio sta­tions were burned, etc…

Joshua then began to research oth­er ways of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the pub­lic and found a lot of poten­tial in the vir­tu­os­i­ty of the bod­ies through the cre­ation of con­cep­tu­al images that return rea­son to the indi­vid­ual through a free, abstract and poet­ic read­ing.

www.matthaei-und-konsorten.de

GROTEST MARU was found­ed in 1996 at Kun­sthaus KuLe in the cen­tre of Berlin, where it was based until 2018. Since 2019 the com­pa­ny is locat­ed at Kun­stquarti­er Bethanien in Berlin Kreuzberg. The com­pa­ny has been tour­ing inter­na­tion­al­ly with its pro­duc­tions since 1999, often sup­port­ed by the Goethe Insti­tute.

GROTEST MARU spe­cialis­es in devel­op­ing site spe­cif­ic projects for dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions, archi­tec­tur­al spaces or land­scapes. Through work­shop pro­grammes local artists and com­mu­ni­ty groups can be inte­grat­ed into big­ger pro­duc­tions.

GROTEST MARU explores forms of com­mu­ni­ca­tion that cross cul­tur­al bor­ders. As a net­work of inter­na­tion­al artists with diverse cul­tur­al and artis­tic back­grounds, the com­pa­ny cre­ates an uni­ver­sal image-based the­atri­cal lan­guage, most­ly with­out words, that can be under­stood world­wide. https://www.grotestmaru.de/

Led by 3 asso­ci­at­ed artists — Stéphanie Mangez, Emmanuel De Can­di­do, Olivi­er Lenel — the Com­pag­nie MAPS is a the­atri­cal cre­ation col­lec­tive res­olute­ly focused on social issues and new writ­ing.
In addi­tion to its shows, since 2012 the Com­pag­nie MAPS has also set up pub­lic read­ings, writ­ing res­i­den­cies, as well as sup­port for artists in cre­ation and authors. It seeks to pro­mote artis­tic projects real­ized in new con­texts through its “cre­ative ecosys­tem” for which the MAPS Com­pa­ny is the win­ner of the JUMELLES D’OR SACD 2023 Prize.

Artist; com­pos­er /​ sound design­er; light­ing design­er for the­atre, dance and cir­cus; tech­ni­cal man­ag­er for devised the­atre; field recordist; con­cert /​ event organ­is­er; mail art cura­tor; radio pre­sen­ter and DJ: oper­at­ing in var­i­ous fields of art and per­for­mance since the mid-1980’s; born in Cardiff, Wales.

Co-artis­tic direc­tor with Paul Hod­son (The Future Is Unwrit­ten) of The­atre FC, cre­at­ing the­atre events for & with non-league foot­ball clubs and their sup­port­ers; tech­ni­cal man­ag­er /​ light­ing design­er for Gob Squad, the Berlin-based mul­ti-media the­atre com­pa­ny; tech­ni­cal con­sul­tant /​ light­ing & sound design­er for artis­tic direc­tor /​ chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Andreas Weg­w­erth (for­mal­ly of Resi­d­ance of the Peter Gläsel Stiftung); light­ing & sound design­er for UK the­atre com­pa­nies Prodi­gal /​ UPG and The Future Is Unwrit­ten; and band mem­ber of Ani­mal Mag­ic; LuTz and Wevie Ston­der.

Has pre­vi­ous­ly worked with Matthaei & Kon­sorten; Jens Diet­rich & Mile­na Kipf­mueller & SNDNG STTNS; Milo Rau /​ IIPM; Roys­ton Mal­doom; Tanz­mo­to; Kat­ja Drey­er; Dar­ren John­ston /​ Array; Liz Aggiss; Divas Dance The­atre; Periplum; Tim Crouch; Slot Machine; Sil­via Mer­cu­rali; Sarah Nicolls; Talia Ran­dall; Tchekpo Dance Com­pa­ny; The Ragroof Play­ers; Inspec­tor Sands; Vin­cent Dance The­atre; Matil­da Leyser & John-Paul Zac­cari­ni; Bright FX; Swamp Cir­cus; The Peo­ple Show & The Roy­al Shake­speare Com­pa­ny.

www.chrisumney.com

Katha­ri­na Meves stud­ied at SEAD, Salzburg and was a recip­i­ent of the DanceWEB schol­ar­ship 2009. In Aus­tria she has per­formed with Georg Blaschke and Liq­uid Loft/​Chris Har­ing, e.g. in the Pos­ing Project B – The Art of Seduc­tion, which was award­ed the Gold­en Lion at the Bien­nale di Venezia 2007. She also act­ed in the film Burn­ing Palace by Mara Mat­tusch­ka and Chris Har­ing, which received the Kurz­film­tage Ober­hausen Prize in 2009. In Ger­many, she has worked e.g. with Lara Kugel­mann, Ingo Reulecke, Lukas Matthaei, Lubri­cat, Ayat Najafi, Louise Wag­n­er and Anna Malu­nat. She has also been danc­ing with the T.r.a.s.h. Dance Com­pa­ny in the Nether­lands since 2011.

The Ital­ian-Ger­man duo TÒ SU explores tran­scul­tur­al bor­der areas in a glob­al world and deals with Euro­cen­tric per­spec­tives and their own cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty. Projects are cre­at­ed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with experts from art, sci­ence and every­day life and are most­ly char­ac­ter­ized by ana­logue and dig­i­tal inter­ac­tiv­i­ty, which invite the audi­ence to par­tic­i­pate. TÒ SU comes from the Rhaeto-Roman­ic lan­guage, which is spo­ken by a small com­mu­ni­ty in northen Italy and means “to record, to doc­u­ment, to include”. In Ladin, the two short words form the mean­ing that aris­es in inter­ac­tion and mutu­al exchange. Prinoth and Mahlknecht com­bine the two gen­res of doc­u­men­tary film and the­ater. In the past, var­i­ous col­lab­o­ra­tions have result­ed in projects that are hybrids of both gen­res and have been pre­sent­ed in cin­e­mas, the­aters and exhi­bi­tion spaces. They pro­duce their projects between sev­er­al coun­tries with a focus on Ger­many and Italy.

Mar­ti­na Mahlknecht was born in Bres­sanone, Italy. She lives and works between Bolzano and Ham­burg, Ger­many. She stud­ied art and stage design at the Acad­e­my of Fine Arts HfbK in Ham­burg and at the Mozar­teum in Salzburg, Aus­tria. Since 2022 she is teach­ing at the HfbK Ham­burg.

Mar­tin Prinoth was born in Rhaeto-Roman­ic Urtijëi, Italy. He lives between Bolzano and Ham­burg. After study­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion sci­ences at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Salzburg, Aus­tria he grad­u­at­ed in film and dig­i­tal cin­e­ma at the Acad­e­my of Fine Arts HfbK in Ham­burg. He leads film work­shops and film sem­i­nars i.a. at the UE Ham­burg.

Since 2014 Sound­ing Sit­u­a­tion has been sup­port­ed with­in sev­er­al projects by Kul­turbe­hörde Ham­burg, Sen­at für Kul­turelle Angle­gen­heit­en Berlin, Goethe Insti­tut, Kul­turs­tiftung des Bunde, Fonds Darstel­lende Kün­ste, Hum­boldt Forum