Infinity Rug

Deep Listening Session von Pedro Marum und Lou Drago

Wir laden Sie ein, sich es auf der Teppichlandschaft bequem zu machen und sich treiben zu lassen.

Infinity rug bietet eine Klang-Séance, in der Ton, kollektives Lernen und intime Begegnung eine unmittelbare Gemeinschaft erzeugen. Entstanden als Hörerlebnis in der Corona-Pandemie 2020, ist infinity rug das Ergebnis jahrelanger Konzeption der Initiator*innen Lou Drago und Pedro Marum aus deren Solo-, Kollaborations- und kuratorischen Arbeiten. infinity rug erkundet neue Arten der Zusammenkunft und transferiert das private Umfeld in einen öffentlichen Kontext, um Raum für Reflexion und Introspektion zu bieten.

Dieses Mal lassen wir uns von caner tekers "karadeniz" (UA) inspirieren: wir erforschen sanft die Rolle der Hochzeit als eine gemeinschaftlichen Feier der Bindung zwischen zwei Menschen, ob rechtlich oder romantisch, oft begleitet von Geschenken, üppigen Festen, gesellschaftlichem Prunk, Musik und Tanz, Poesie und Gesprächen. Über alle Kulturen hinweg gilt die Hochzeit als Fest von einer der höchsten Ausdrucksformen der Liebe, dennoch ist sie auch ein Zeichen einer Rechtsinstitution, die in der Vergangenheit - und in weiten Teilen der Welt auch heute noch - Frauen und LGBTQ+- Personen diskriminiert. Als veraltetes religiöses Konzept normalisiert die Ehe ein staatlich festgelegtes Bindungskonstrukt, in der diejenigen die sich ihr fügen, in den Genuss von Steuern, sozialer Sicherheit, rechtlichen Entscheidungsmöglichkeiten, Gesundheits- und Vaterschaftsleistungen kommen. Wir stehen für eine Politik ein die darauf abzielt, Machtsysteme abzubauen, anstatt den Zugang zu dieser Macht (d.h. die gleichgeschlechtliche Ehe) auszuweiten.

Wir machen uns in dem Klang-Tanz bewusst Hochzeitselemente zu eigen, um die institutionalisierte Cis-heterobezogenene Zweisamkeit zu entheiligen. Stattdessen feiern wir die kraftvolle Liebe der Freund*innenschaft und Intimität, während wir Sie durch eine Klanglandschaft aus Feldaufnahmen, Ambient-, Experient-, Drone- und Deep-Mind-Musik, verwoben mit sanfter, somatischer und zeremonieller Performance führen.
Bitte bringen Sie Ihren eigenen Teppich mit!

English version:
You are invited to bring your own rug to contribute to a larger rug-constellation. Feel welcome to come and lay down, get cosy with us, drift off with us.

infinity rug is a series of sonic-seances where sound, collective learning and intimate care offer a space for togetherness. Conceived in quarantine during 2020 in the form of small home listening gatherings, infinity rug converges years of experimentations from the hosts, Lou Drago and marum, collaborative and solo artistic and curatorial work.

infinity rug tentatively explores new ways of being-together, bringing the domestic into the public realm to offer a space for reflection, rejuvenation and introspection. Each sonic-seance softly investigates a topic, and this time we take inspiration from our co-conspirator caner teker's Karadeniz, to enquire about the role of the wedding, a communal celebration of a bond, legal or romantic, between two people, often accompanied by gifting, lavish feasts, social ostentation, music and dance, poetry and conversations. Across cultures, weddings are regarded as one of the highest expressions of love, and although seen by most as a celebration, weddings are also a signifier of a legal institution that has historically, and in much of the world still is, hostile to women and LGBTQ+ folks. With roots in organised religion, state sanctioned marriage has a normalising function in society, where those who conform reap tax, social security, legal decision-making, health and paternity benefits. We stand with a politics that seeks to dismantle systems of power rather than extend the access of such powers (i.e. same-sex marriage).

For this sonic-seance we deliberatedly rescue some of the elements of the wedding for a celebration of the polycule, desacralizing the history of cishetero coupledome and it’s legal institution. Instead we embrace friendship, intimacy and comraderie as the highest celebration of love as we guide you through a sensorial feast of field recordings, ambient, experient and deep-mind music, interwoven with soft, somatic and ceremonial performances and hosting, texts and poetry, scents, textiles, teas and other treats.

 

Pedro Marum, risen to prominence from Lisbon’s scene, is a multidisciplinary artist, DJ and curator based in Berlin, working between the fields of music and the history queer rave culture, exploring deep psychedelia and care practices through sound and moving image, and researching on feminist hacktivism. 
marum is a resident and co-founder of the queer rave mina cultural club space Planeta Manas in Lisbon, co-founder of the label suspension and ambient sonic seance Infinity Rug, a knit-tight collaborator of the hybrid dance & sex party Lecken and community radio Quântica, marum holds a refined and thoughtful sonic signature casting spells in entire communities, minds and dance floors.
Their sets are unashamed worship sessions oscillating between meditative soundscapes and fast-paced high-energy beats, hypnotic and dubby techno, trippy trance waves weaved with alien scores taking influence from film scores, minimalist composers and musique concrète. marum has played internationally from renowned to underground parties, clubs and festivals such as Berlin Atonal, Säule - Berghain and CTM (Berlin), ∄ (Kiev), TAG (Chengdu), Forestlimit (Tokyo), Ver Siden Af (Copenhagen), Whole Festival (Germany), Sónar Lisboa, among many others. 
marum’s sensorial performances and programs have been shown internationally in museums, galleries and festivals such as Gropius Bau and Sophiensaele (Berlin), Mimosa House (London), Transart Festival and Museion (Italy), ICCG Ramallah (Palestine) to name a few.

Lou Drago is a Berlin-based multi-disciplinary artist, curator, writer and radio producer/DJ. Working across various mediums, they draw connections between the healing potential of sound, the necessity for collectivity during neoliberal times, queer-feminisms, and meditation and related theories. Their artistic works works Suspending Time: meditations for accessing alternate space/time in music (2018), Dissident Vespers (2019), and Fragments for Affinity (2022) fuse Drago’s experiential-theoretical research with their sound-based work to create what they call ‘listening occasions’ for being-together and being with oneself, with others. Drago’s practice is always collective to varying degrees, and they reject the prevailing notion of the singular artist in favour of acknowledging the pluralities of experiences that contribute to any given work. This trajectory of thought is exemplified in recent works New Feathers (2021) and Female Copulatory Vocalisation (2020), in which Drago transcribes and arranges fragments of conversations with comrades into texts that reveal the collective (un)conscious of the group of the selected subjects.
Together with marum, they host sonic seances called infinty rug (2021) where they hold space for community, collectivity and healing through expanded listening sessions, that weave together music, poetry, other spoken word impluses, somatic practices, performative interventions, film screenings, tea ceremonies and other sensorial delights.
Since 2017 Lou has been regularly curating and producing, Transience, on Cashmere Radio, Berlin with 43 episodes to date. The radio show focuses on experimental, drone, ambient and experient music that aims to offer anxiety relief for its listeners.
They have shown work, curated shows and spoken on panels across Europe and internationally.