A clear, tasteless, and almost colorless liquid that falls from the sky. The rain that forms from H2O is vital to the existence of all life on earth. It’s a chemical compound whose state responds to the conditions of its environment, becoming liquid, solid, even gas. Its mutability makes it as unpredictable as it is untameable. Creamcake’s four-part concert, performance, installation, and moving image series “Is it cold in the water?” dives into the depth and expanse of said solvent, examining both its representations and real-life effects crossing fluidity, permeability, and dissolution.
Running throughout Spring/Summer 2024, the periodic event title refers to SOPHIE’s 2021 song of the same name, “Is it cold in the water?” conveys a certain hesitation, a fear of change at the point of transformation, while signaling a curiosity and joy in opening up space for possibility and potential. The series aims to explore the constantly-shifting modes and forms of individual and collective activations responding to the innumerable, unfathomable crises of modern life, as well as to promote more limber ways of thinking.
Events will break the surface of Berlin’s cultural calendar from May to July, starting with performances by Hayden Dunham, Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau, and Saint Precious around the urban spa pool of Kreuzberg’s Liquidrom, and a reading and talk session around hot water onsen pool led by Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju, and featuring Savanna Ni’cheal Morgan, Luzie Meyer, Nadia Marcus, and Jazmina Figueroa, among others. There’ll be a club night at ÆDEN—featuring LA Timpa, Sevyn 0000, River Moon, Sausha, and more—in June, and an encounter at the Hošek Contemporary barge and gallery in July. An award-winning film screening by Adham Faramawy explores themes of migration, colonization and ecological collapse at the same time, along with a parallel as-yet-to-be-announced installation happening at Großer & Kleiner Wasserspeicher.
Soft, hard, and gaseous, both acidic and alkaline, water has the potential to create, maintain, and destroy. Helin Şahin expresses the equal parts illusory and essential nature of this life-giving liquid with her “Is it cold in the water?” artwork and visual identity that accompanies the program. Rain, rivers, and reservoirs; storms, floods, and tidal waves, this most vital, yet ubiquitous thing is the single most resonant force to all known living forms, as it softly implores: “don’t be so fixed, or you’ll stagnate.”
Creamcake
Creamcake (CC) is a Berlin-based interdisciplinary platform, negotiating the point of convergence in electronic music, contemporary art and digital technologies. Distanced from normative social structures, Creamcake moves in fluid processes of thought and action and engages with current social issues of the present through diverse projects. CC organizes exhibitions performances, concerts, symposiums, DJ sets, digital projects, and workshops including 3hd Festival (since 2015), Paradise Found (2019), インフラ INFRA (2017), Europool (2017-2019) and “<Interrupted = “Cyfem and Queer>” (2018–2019). As a queer-feminist normadic space, CC has cooperated with a variety of clubs, community spaces and institutions such as Berghain, Klosterruine, OHM, Südblock, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, and KW Institute for Contemporary Art / Bob’s Pogo Bar, and WWWβ.
Creamcake: Is it cold in the water? | Berlin
May, 10 2024, with more dates and artists to be announced
Artists: Adham Faramawy, Hayden Dunham, Helin Şahin, Jazmina Figueroa, Li Yilei, Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju, LA Timpa, Luzie Meyer, Nadia Marcus, Saint Precious, Savanna Ni’cheal Morgan, Seba Calfuqueo, Sevyn 0000, Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau, River Moon and more tba
Liquidrom, ÆDEN, Hošek Contemporary, Großer & Kleiner Wasserspeicher, 3hdTV
