Pogo Bar:
Andrea Felizitas Karch /
Mina Amiri Kalvøy
WARP
WARP, Credit: Veronika Valtonen
WARP (2024) is the first act of a reading performance by Mina Amiri Kalvøy and Andrea Felizitas Karch. It takes us on the journeys of Ae and Em, who find themselves in worlds that are separate but joint, wandering from one place and time to another. Em, held captive in a digital mirror world, is on their quest to find a way to return, and Ae, who finds themself more and more disoriented in a world that resembles ours, only to become increasingly distorted until it is overturned entirely. Each on their own quest, the two protagonists navigate surreal landscapes where reality bends and twists at every turn, the digital and the physical, the realistic and the fantastical warp. Through a shared narrative, they encounter various characters influenced by those one might meet in online forums, on social media and IRL: The Imps, The Gatekeeper, The Guardian and The Jesters. Hidden portals serve both as gateways and as barriers as the protagonists try to find ways to connect to their surroundings, and to each other. The storyline of WARP is inspired by mirror worlds – representations of the real world in digital forms, conspiratorial shadow worlds and parallel worlds inhabited by our contradictory doubles. When the systems we inhabit close in on us, can we hold space in the stories we tell each other? The performance is accompanied by a soundscape composed by Christopher Schmidt.
Mina Amiri Kalvøy (b. 1995, NO) is an artist and writer based in Berlin, exploring physical, digital and magical realities. She is interested in interactive and speculative fiction, game and play mechanics, and world building; and curious about lore, myths, and storytelling. Mina recently graduated with a Visual Communication MA and as a Master Student (Meisterschüler) from Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin, where she produced the ongoing interactive fiction series The Waiting Room. She is currently teaching for Visual & Experience Design at The University of Europe for Applied Sciences.
Andrea Felizitas Karch (b. 1990, DE) researches media and network culture with a focus on radicalisms. Her practice spans writing, performance, video work and collaboration. From 2012 to 2014 Andrea worked on an interview project in Cairo which marked the beginning of her investigation of network cultures and their IRL potential. At the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam, she produced her video work Radical Youth, an exploration of online radicalization tactics and platform capitalism. Her two-channel video work In de Duysent Vrees (Jan van Eyck Academie, 2022) examines the dissolution of the left-right dichotomy on the example of the identitarian movement in Germany and Europe.
Christopher Schmidt (b. 1986, DE) is a Berlin-based sound artist and graphic designer. He is interested in the audible, the visible and the imaginary — and in translating between these realms. Schmidt creates individual sound installations, engages in sound performances and frequently collaborates with media artists such as Stefanie Schwarzwimmer, producing soundtracks for short films. He graduated with a Visual Communication MA from Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin in 2017, works as a graphic and sound designer and teaches animation at the Academy of Illustration and Design.