It’s not easy to define the word “space.” The Merriam-Webster dictionary makes an attempt, describing it as a “period of time,” as well as “a boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction,” i.e., “infinite space and time.” For the eighth edition of their annual 3hd Festival, interdisciplinary platform Creamcake contemplate said concept, not by trying to resolve its meaning but by exploring the word in its myriad forms and interpretations. Opening this Thursday and happening at various locations across Berlin, from October 20 to 29, this year’s “Life, the Universe, and Everything” takes its title, attitude, and approach from Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (H2G2), playfully responding to the theme across both the material and the cultural ideas of outer and inner space, as well as identity and perspective.
The festival presents a collision of parallel dimensions and realities that exist together, all at once, while also responding to notions of leaving and the cosmic imagination, versus staying grounded on Earth. Artist and FlucT member Monica Mirabile presents her “All things under dog...” ensemble piece at HAU Hebbel am Ufer to explore notions of the mafia as a secular ecosystem, along with a soundtrack by musician Aaron David Ross (ADR) and music by Eartheater. At Zeiss Grand Planetarium, Omsk Social Club and Joey Holder lead an immersive viewing that explores and studies the notion of embodied knowledge, collective hallucinatory experiences, and communing with aliens in a new performance commission called “The Waxing.” The “Don't Panic” group exhibition—happening at Tempelhof’s soft power and running to November 29—takes its self-defeating expression to find a way to glean hope in a time of ongoing crisis, with work by George Henry Longly, Katja Novitskova, Lito Kattou, and others. The “Deep Thought” film program—screening online at 3hdTV and IRL at Berlinische Galerie—opens with Kianí del Valle’s daring stunt performance, called “VACÍO SUSPENDIDO,” and four films broadly examining notions of life on earth and interstellar imaginaries, which include works by Shuang Li, Agnieszka Polska, Alice Bucknell, and Josèfa Ntjam.
There’s a classic Creamcake club night at ongoing venue partner OHM with AUCO, Suutoo, and more. Two weekend events at Trauma Bar und Kino include “The Ultimate Question” performance evening with 33 (Billy Bultheel & Alexander Iezzi) responding to the contemporary crisis of living on Earth and a similarly nihilistic spectacle that features contributions from Dylan Kerr, Ivan Cheng, Steve Katona, NAKED, and Patrick Belaga, in a modular installation designed with Andrea Belosi. “The Day of the Answer!” at the same venue is a similarly complex and chaotic affair. Holly Childs & Gediminas Žygus’s “Gnarled Roots of a Creation Theory” leads the charge into this anarchic realm of fact and fiction, followed by a night-long experience of degeneracy and dancing, including DJ Plead, Flora Yin Wong, Slim Soledad, Prison Religion. The mathematical model for spacetime combines the three dimensions of space (distance, area, volume) with a fourth dimension, being time, making them inseparable.
About Creamcake / 3hd
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 performances, concerts, exhibitions, symposiums, DJ sets, digital projects, and workshops including 3hd Festival (2015-Present), Paradise Found (2019), インフラ INFRA (2017), Europool (2017-2019) and "<Interrupted = “Cyfem and Queer>” (2018–2019). More recent events, productions, and exhibitions include Paradise Lost (2021), Stains of Times with Installationen Nürnberg and 10/11 anniversary series (2022), and co-curation of the Techno Worlds touring exhibition with Goethe-Institut, running from 2021 to 2026). As a queer-feminist normadic space, CC has cooperated with a variety of clubs, community spaces and institutions such as Berghain, Klosterruine, Wasserspeicher, OHM, Südblock, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, and Berlinische Galerie.
MORE INFO HERE
//
