For three days in late July, the Kiezsalon settles into the Wasserspeicher in Prenzlauer Berg, a historic 19th-century water reservoir. On Saturday, 26 July we present Berlin-based sound artist Başak Günak and Welsh harpist Cerys Hafana. The program begins on Thursday with Jasmine Guffond and Jason Kunwar, followed by Limpe Fuchs and Maika Garnica on Friday.
Başak Günak is a Berlin composer and sound artist who also works in electronic music as AH! KOSMOS. Her work includes site-specific performances and soundscapes for theatre, contemporary dance, film and visual art projects. She presented ‘THE WELL’, her sound installation for 11 speakers, at Istanbul’s Arter museum in 2020 and ‘distant hollow(s) like you’ in the city’s ancient Çinili Hammam in 2023. Her 2024 album Rewilding incorporated audio from previous installations to create what The Wire called “a diversity of rewilded sounds skittering through a haze of electronic auras.”
Welsh composer and performer Cerys Hafana shares the creative possibilities of the triple harp, with its three rows of strings, combining Welsh folk tradition with found sounds, archive materials and electronic processing. Their second album Edyf was chosen as one of The Guardian’s top 10 folk albums of 2022, while Folk Radio hailed them as “an adept shapeshifter, entwining tradition with direct and personal interpretations to create music that’s both progressive, profound and inspiring.”
Alongside our live music program, we present artworks by pioneering German sound artist Christina Kubisch and multidisciplinary Berlin-based artist Victoria Alexandrova.
Christina Kubisch, born in Bremen 1948, belongs to the first generation of sound artists. Kubisch’s practice ranges from performances, concerts, to works with video and visual art, but she is best known for her sound installations and electro-acoustic compositions. In her installations she merges audio and visual arts to create multi-sensory experiences for the participants, who are invited to become active as listeners and performers.
Born in Kamchatka, Russia, multidisciplinary artist Victoria Alexandrova led a nomadic life that took her through Argentina and Finland before eventually finding her home in Berlin. At the Wasserspeicher, she will present a piece from her series 'Ordnung!', produced by recovering and documenting forgotten, small-scale and often trivial artefacts and their stories. Her reimagining of these found objects encourages a focused examination of the recent German history of tyranny.
The Wasserspeicher in Prenzlauer Berg is a historic underground reservoir, built in 1877 to store and supply water to Berlin’s growing population. Now decommissioned, the site has found new life as a cultural venue, its raw, vaulted architecture boasting unique acoustics and an enigmatic atmosphere.
The Kiezsalon is a project by Digital in Berlin. Curated by Michael Rosen and funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion. Presented by The Wire and taz, die tageszeitung.
