17 October, 9 pm
In English
Venue: 4th floor

Registration via pogobar@kw-berlin.de

Performer: Susanne Sachsse
Sound Design: Nile Koetting aka Atmospheric Solutions
Dramaturgy: Rahel Spöhrer
Outside Eye: Lara Scherrieble

Matadora is a work in progress exploring the third act of the corrida. The research delves into the arena of bullfighting and its camp aesthetics,  exploring the visceral themes of transition, rage, and the complex codes of masculinity and violence.  It is an exploration of power, identity, desire, and the spectacle that sheds light on the space between dominance and submission, life and death. In close collaboration with Susanne Sachsse, Nile Koetting and Rahel Spöhrer, Belle Santos takes a closer look at her own Spanish identity, her grandparents’ love of watching the toreros on TV, and her families’ history of bull farming in Andalucía.

Belle Santos is a Berlin-based artist working across installation, performance, text and costume design. Her current practice explores contemporary expressions and rituals of grief and pain, their service industries, and transformative spaces. Recent works include the installation MOURNING ROOM III – The Moon is Out Tonight at RAMPE, Stuttgart, and the performative installation THE WAKE at transmediale studio, Silent Green, Berlin, and Theater Neumarkt, Zurich. Her upcoming piece, MOURNING TIME, will be presented at Kyoto Arts Center, Japan, in March 2025. She attended a three-month residency at Villa Kamogawa in Kyoto (2022), funded by the Goethe Institut and attended the PACT Zollverein AIR. She was a visiting fellow at the Saison Foundation in Tokyo (2018, 2023). This year, she received a six-month scholarship from the German Cultural Ministry to research grief and ‘hysteria’ at the CITÉ DES ARTS INTERNATIONAL  in Paris. She is a founding member of the performance company THE AGENCY, with whom she worked between 2015 – 2022. Their works were shown nationally and internationally, at festivals such as the Athens Biennale and Tanz im August, among others. Santos is a co-founder of NEXT WAVES THEATER and GLASSHOUSE, platforms for interdisciplinary experimentation in digital performance (www.glasshouse.berlin).

Susanne Sachsse is an artist and actress who was born and raised in East Germany. She was a member of numerous German state theater ensembles for over a decade, including the Berliner Ensemble, where she appeared in productions by Heiner Müller, Einar Schleef, and Robert Wilson, among others. Since becoming a freelance artist in 2001, Sachsse’s practice has extended beyond stage acting into work as a visual artist, director, writer, musician, curator and performer. Her work has developed along three main axes: 1) as a solo artist; 2) as a featured collaborator working in art, theater, dance, film and music, for instance, at the Venice Biennial with Yael Bartana (2011) and Natascha Sadr Haghighian (2019) or in the choreography of Ligia Lewis (2018-2020); and 3) as co-founder and director of the Berlin-based art collective CHEAP, in which context she has a long-term collaboration with Vaginal Davis. In addition to frequent work with artists Bartana, Jonathan Berger, Zach Blas, and Phil Collins, Sachsse has also starred in five films by Canadian queercore filmmaker Bruce LaBruce, including The Raspberry Reich (2004) and Pierrot Lunaire (2012). Sachsse received the Premio Maguey Queer Icon Award at the Guadalajara International Film Festival.

Nile Koetting is an artist working with a diverse range of formats, such as installation, light, performance, scenography, and sound. Through his artistic projects, he explores a new dramaturgy for performative time and space. His works and projects have been presented at institutions worldwide, including Palais de Tokyo, Sharjah Art Foundation, Centre Pompidou x Westbund Museum, CAPC  Museum of contemporary Art, Tai Kwun Contemporary, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art Kanazawa, Fondation Hermès Tokyo, Somerset House, Kunstverein Göttingen, Thailand Biennale, ZKM Karlsruhe, and Mori Art Museum. Since 2014, he has been based and working in Berlin with support of the Overseas Study Program for Artists, Agency for Cultural Affairs Japan, and Pola Art Foundation. In 2023 he was selected for Asian Cultural Council NYC fellow. 

Rahel Spöhrer works as a curator, dramaturge, and lecturer at the intersection of performance and visual arts. Since 2021, she has been curatorial head of the artsprogram at Zeppelin University, where she curated exhibitions with Candice Breitz, Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Susanne Kennedy and Markus Selg, among others. She is active in a range of research projects, networks, and collaborations in the overlap of fine arts and academia, and is particularly interested in the role, of conflicts in artistic collaborations, cultural organizations, and society at large. This includes the European training program FEINART, which explores the future of independent art spaces in Europe (2022-2025).  During the Covid-19 lockdown, she co-founded  „h a p t i c a f f i n i t i e s“, a study group on touch, haptic aesthetics, and intimacy in the arts. She is further part of the founding team of “Future Art Education”, a research project on the issue of multidisciplinary teaching, learning, and critical pedagogy in art schools at the ASFA – Athens School of Fine Arts (2020-2022).

Information on Accessibility

Venue:
The event will take place in the exhibition spaces (4th floor) of KW. An elevator is available for visitors with limited mobility with the assistance of KW staff on site. Please contact us in advance at reservation@kw-berlin.de so that we can facilitate access.

Digital:
The event will not be recorded.

Times:
Entrance starts at 7 pm.
If necessary, we can offer you an earlier entrance from 8.45 pm so that you can familiarize yourself with the surroundings and choose your seat. Please register for this via reservation@kw-berlin.de.
Late entrance is not possible.
The event might start with a delay.
The duration of the event is approx. 30-45 minutes.
The event is held without breaks.

Seating:
Seating (chairs with backrests, benches without backrests) will be provided.

Sensory stimuli:
The event space is dark/darkened.
The event space is warm.
The event takes place in a spacious room.

Language:
The event will be mainly held in English.
There is no translation.

Trigger Warning:

The event contains representations of: animal violence.

Aid:
There is free admission for assisting persons.
Assistance dogs can be brought along to the event.

Contact persons:
If you have any further questions regarding accessibility, please send an e-mail to reservation@kw-berlin.de.
If you have any questions on-site or need support, please approach the entrance staff.