Flutgraben Performances

14/04/2025

We are very sad to share with you that none of our fundings from the Berlin Senate for Culture for the Flutgraben Performances Residencies program will be continued. We submitted an application to the Tanzresidenzprogramm for the coming three years and received a negative response – without any explanation, as is always the case in Berlin. Simultaneously, our application for the Flutgraben Performances festival “Practices of Kinship” planned for 2025, was rejected at Spartenoffene Förderung. This puts an unexpected and sudden end to the continuous work we have been doing as artists collective organising events and residencies since 2014.

For more than a decade in different configurations we have built a network of artists, peers, colleagues and visitors, as well as an infrastructure with equipped spaces and organised channels of communication, trying out new formats of artistic collaboration and participation. All of this is now lost for Berlin and its artists. This is not only a brutal reality, it is also economic nonsense.

Throughout the years we have experimented with various ways of inviting and working together with artists, sharing resources and access. We did this to find alternatives to a system of curating and jurying that lacked care, sensitivity as well as a future-oriented, sustainable perspective. We questioned a selection system left to its own devices, a system of arbitrary replacements, hierarchies, and institutional bureaucracy. In some ways we feel we succeeded in our efforts to allow for something unexpected to see the light, and we are confident that our contributions will live on in other ways. Nevertheless, given the city’s politics lack of respect for our work and its value, it no longer makes sense for us to continue seeking alternatives to keep our organisation afloat. Our situation as artists is further threatened by disruptive political cuts being implemented, and the lack of any significant future perspective for Berlin. As a result, we will reorganise our efforts in other directions.

We find it important to note that our initiative, like many others, embodied the Berlin spirit of artistic self-determination, co-creating an infrastructure, based on principles of self-organisation, care and equity. We observe that, along an ongoing gentrification, this type of work by is no longer supported by the city. Institutions are now predominantly receiving grants, and with the wave of financial cuts, only the most established venues are the ones to receive funding, leaving artist-run initiatives on the brink of extinction. We call on all policymakers and jurors to reconsider this approach – it is this type of work that made Berlin a place for artistic innovation, and canceling it destroys in a short time what has been built up over years.

Institutions and funding bodies in Berlin tend to view artists as replaceable resources meant to be cycled through the system. Over the years we have witnessed countless dance artists—many with significant and well-known work—disappearing from the city due to a sudden lack of support. These decisions often appeared unjustified and random. As a residency program made by artists for artists we worked against this idea, for a more sustainable approach based on exchange, connections and building up networks.

We believe the current situation does not stem from malevolence but rather from a constellation of actors organised in ways that encourage anonymity and a political stance that refuses to commit to a growing field. The infamous metaphor used by the Senate of a “bus system” was even created to express this idea: “artists can get on the bus of being supported, but they will have to get off at some point”, without considering the options of these artists or, in our case, our organisation, after they have been disembarked. This is particularly evident in the way grants are awarded or denied. It is a repetitive loss for Berlin. As a residency and event venue we have looked for other ways to invite artists and share resources.

The level of urgency created by the recent financial cuts and the short-sighted lack of continuity provided to dance artists over the past decades have reached a point where it is no longer possible in this field to just go on. We call for an in-depth reform of the whole dance and performance art funding infrastructure of Berlin that respects the work and includes the knowledge of the artists and cultural workers concerned.

We call Berlin’s cultural infrastructure and institutions to support and commit to the artists of Berlin and to develop together new ideas for the future of dance.

Goodbye Flutgraben Performances! 💕

Clément Layes + Moritz Majce + Adam Man

08/01/2025

16/12/2024

GEPLANTE FÖRDERKÜRZUNGEN SIND EINE KATASTROPHE FÜR TANZKÜNSTLER*INNEN

(english version below)

Als eine der künstlerischen Basisinitiativen, die die lebendige und international renommierte freie Tanzszene Berlins ausmachen, möchten wir angesichts der angekündigten Kürzungen der Berliner Kunstförderung unsere Sorge zum Ausdruck bringen. Insbesondere für uns freie Tanz- und Performancekünstler*innen mit ganz besonders prekären Arbeitsbedingungen sind die geplanten Kürzungen der öffentlichen Förderprogramme für Projekte existenzbedrohend. Wir wollen dringend auf unsere dramatische Lage, die in der aktuellen Diskussion untergeht, aufmerksam machen.

In Berlin gibt es Galerien und Museen für Bildende Kunst, Konzertsäle für Musik und mehrere Theater für Schauspiel und Oper. Im Gegensatz zu diesen Kunstsparten und im Gegensatz zu vielen anderen europäischen Städten gibt es in Berlin aber keine Institution für Tanz. Während die Stadt über mehrere Staatstheater verfügt, die mit zweistelligen Millionenbeträgen gefördert werden, müssen Choreograph*innen und Tänzer*innen ohne vergleichbare Infrastruktur auskommen. Diese Situation zwingt sie, von Projekt zu Projekt zu arbeiten; all diese Projekte werden mit öffentlichen Fördermitteln für künstlerische Produktion realisiert.

Mit großer Besorgnis lesen wir, dass diese ohnehin (vergleichsweise) geringen Mittel nun um 14% gekürzt werden sollen (kolportiert wird eine Kürzung um €500.000 von €3,3 Mio. Fördermitteln für Performance UND Tanz)! Das würde bedeuten, dass gerade die Mittel, die für den Tanz den Kern künstlerischer Produktion ausmachen, stärker gekürzt werden als die der großen Institutionen! Bei einem Einsparvolumen von insgesamt fünf Milliarden Euro ist eine halbe Million ein unbedeutender Betrag. Für die Berliner Tanzproduktion ist diese Summe aber eine ganze Welt: Dieses Geld sind Stücke, die produziert und gezeigt werden, die das Publikum erfreuen, das kulturelle Leben der Stadt bereichern und international ausstrahlen.

Werden die öffentlichen Fördertöpfe für Projektrealisierungen (Recherche, Residenzen, Produktion, Wiederaufnahmen, Veranstaltungsreihen etc.) tatsächlich gekürzt, bringt das insbesondere Berlins Tanzschaffende in eine dermaßen prekäre Lage, dass Weiterarbeiten nicht mehr möglich ist.

Das Ausmaß der Kürzung öffentlicher Förderungen für künstlerische Produktionen bedeutet IRREPARABLEN SCHADEN für die Berliner Tanzszene!

Mit Flutgraben Performances arbeiten wir seit über zehn Jahren mit Choreograph*innen und Tanzkünstler*innen zusammen. Wir organisieren Veranstaltungen, um neue Arbeiten zu präsentieren, bieten Tanzkünstler*innen Raum, um zu produzieren und hosten eine breite Community, um Tanz in seiner Vielfalt zugänglich zu machen. Zusammen mit anderen Initiativen und privat organisierten Spielstätten bilden wir das Rückgrat der Berliner Tanzszene. Schon jetzt haben wir mit einer dramatisch unzureichenden Förderung zu kämpfen, wie jede Senatsjury Jahr um Jahr verzweifelt beklagt. Werden diese ohnehin knappen Mittel noch weiter gekürzt, verlieren wir jegliche Grundlage, um weiter Kunst zu schaffen, und Berlin verliert das, wofür es berühmt ist.
Tanzkünstler*innen zeigen ihre Arbeiten in den Sophiensaelen, im HAU, in der Tanzfabrik, im Dock 11 und an anderen Orten. Keiner dieser Orte verfügt über ein angemessenes eigenes Produktionsbudget, die meisten haben gar keines. Es sind die Künstler*innen selbst, die Produktionsgelder für ihre Projekte anderweitig organisieren müssen, um sie in der vorhandenen Infrastruktur präsentieren zu können. Keines der Häuser in Berlin – weder private noch Staats- oder Stadttheater – kann und wird gekürzte Projektfördertöpfe kompensieren! Die Institutionen sind selbst abhängig von Drittmitteln! Daher ist die dramatische Wahrheit: Wenn die öffentliche Projektförderung weiter gekürzt wird, sind Tanzkünstler*innen nicht mehr in der Lage, Stücke zu produzieren und es wird auch keine Aufführungen in den Theatern mehr geben.

Wir wehren uns gegen die Kürzungen jener öffentlichen Fördermittel, die künstlerische Produktion überhaupt erst ermöglichen. Die Kürzung dieser ohnehin geringen Mittel wird der Stadt keine nennenswerten Einsparungen bringen, aber dem Tanz als Kunstform in Berlin verheerenden und irreversiblen Schaden zufügen.

Wie Kultursenator Joe Chialo kürzlich bei einer Diskussion in der Schaubühne selbst sagte: Die Freie Kunstszene kostet nicht viel Geld für den enormen künstlerischen und touristischen Benefit, den sie der Stadt bringt. Diese Unterfinanzierung macht die Freie Kunstszene und insbesondere den Tanz aber auch sehr fragil. Tanz, der keine Homebase hat, kann leicht eliminiert werden.

Derzeit wird viel über die Bedeutung von Kultureinrichtungen diskutiert, und auch wir unterstützen selbstverständlich den Kampf gegen deren Kürzungen. Aber die Tanzszene in dieser Stadt hat überhaupt keine Institutionen. Tanzproduktionen brauchen ausreichende öffentliche Projektförderung, um entstehen zu können. Wir bitten Sie, ernsthaft zu prüfen, ob Sie tatsächlich eines der größten künstlerischen Assets der Stadt unwiederbringlich zerstören wollen! Wir bitten Sie, sich dafür einzusetzen, dass die Projekt- und Produktionsbudgets, die direkt für Künstler*innen bestimmt sind, erhalten bleiben.

Flutgraben Performances ist eine von Künstler*innen gegründete Initiative für Recherche, Produktion und Präsentation von Tanz und körperbasierter Kunst, die derzeit von den Choreographen* Clément Layes, Moritz Majce und Adam Man geleitet wird.

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English Version:

PLANNED FUNDING CUTS ARE A DISASTER FOR DANCE ARTISTS

As one of the many grass-root artistic initiatives that make up Berlin's vibrant and internationally renowned independent dance scene, we would like to express our concern in the face of the announced budget cuts in Berlin’s public arts funding. We feel it is necessary and urgent to emphasise a perspective that has been completely invisible in the ongoing discussion: dance and performance artists and their particularly precarious working conditions in Berlin.

Berlin has art galleries and museums for the visual arts, concert halls for music, and theatres for drama and opera. Unlike these art disciplines, and unlike many other cities known for culture, there is no public institution for dance in Berlin. While the city has several national theatres all of which are funded with millions of euros, choreographers and dancers have to work without any comparable supportive infrastructure. Because of this situation they have to work from project to project. All of these projects are realised via public project funds.

It is with great concern and anxiety that we read that these already (in comparison) small funds are now to be cut by 14% (we read that €500,000 is to be cut from €3.3 million fundings for theater AND dance)! This would mean that the funding that is the heart of artistic production is cut even more than the big institutions! What is a very small amount to consolidate a €5 billion debt means a lot of grants, projects funded and ideas realised. This is increasing the precariousness of dance artists to a point where it would not be possible to continue to work.

If public funding for artistic production is cut, this will TERRIBLY DAMAGE the Berlin dance scene!

With Flutgraben Performances we have been working with choreographers and dance artists for over ten years. We organise events to present new work, provide space for dance artists to produce it and host a community to discuss it. Together with other initiatives, we are the backbone of the Berlin dance scene. We already had to deal with dramatically insufficient funding, as every Senate jury reports every year. If this already low funding is reduced even more, we lose our basis to create art and Berlin will lose what it is famous for.

Dance artists show their work in Sophiensaele, HAU, Tanzfabrik, Dock 11, and other places. None of these venues have proper production budgets. It is the artists themselves who have to organise production money from somewhere else for their projects to be able to present them in the existing infrastructure. If public project fundings are lowered even more, dance artists will not be able to produce any work and there will be no shows in theaters.

We raise our voices against cuts in public funding; funding is the only possibility to allow for artistic production, research and rehearsal spaces. Cutting these funds will not bring substantial savings on a city level but it will cause devastating and irreversible damage to dance as an artform in Berlin.

As cultural senator Joe Chialo himself said at a recent discussion at the Schaubühne: the independent art scene does not cost a lot of money for the benefit it brings to the city. We agree. But the dramatically underfinanced independent art scene and dance in particular is very fragile. Dance has no home base and can therefore be easily destroyed.

We see currently a lot of discussions about the importance of cultural institutions and we support the fight against cuts in their budgets, too. But the dance scene in this city does not have any institutions at all. Dance productions need public project fundings to be able to create. We ask you to be aware not to irreversibly destroy one of the city's greatest artistic assets.

Flutgraben Performances is an artist-run initiative for research, production and presentation of dance and body-based art, currently directed by the choreographers Clément Layes, Moritz Majce and Adam Man.

21/11/2024

»Die Sparmaßnahmen des Berliner Senats treffen den Bereich Inklusion und Diversität unverhältnismäßig stark – nämlich mit Kürzungen von 100 Prozent. Damit schafft der Senat Inklusion und Diversität in der Kultur faktisch ab.«

Das Projektbüro Diversity Arts Culture wird geschlossen, die IMPACT-Förderung für behinderte, Taube und chronisch kranke Künstler*innen wird geschlossen, Interkultureller Austausch und der Projektfonds Urbane Praxis werden abgeschafft, die Mondiale wird ebenso nicht mehr finanziert.

Unterschreibt hier - das ist wichtig:

‘The Berlin Senate's cuttings are hitting the area of inclusion and diversity disproportionately hard - with cuts of 100 per cent! The Senate is thus effectively abolishing inclusion and diversity in culture.’

The Diversity Arts Culture project office will be closed, IMPACT funding for disabled, Deaf and chronically ill artists will be cancelled, Intercultural Exchange and the Urban Practice Project Fund will be abolished, the Mondiale will also no longer be funded.

Sign here - this is important:

(English version below) Der Senat schafft Inklusion und Diversität in der Kultur ab! Die Sparmaßnahmen des Berliner Senats treffen den Bereich Inklusion und Diversität unverhältnismäßig stark – nämlich mit Kürzungen von 100 Prozent. Damit schafft der Senat Inklusion und Diversität in der ...

20/11/2024

Die geplanten Kürzungen des Berliner Senats im Kulturbereich sind eine KATASTROPHE: insgesamt 12% weniger, für freie Künstler*innen und für den Tanz sind es sogar bis zu 25% weniger.

The Berlin Senate's planned cuts in the cultural sector are a DISASTER: 12% less overall, for independent artists and for dance it is even up to 25% less.

SIGN AND SHARE

Einsparungen in dieser Größenordnung kämen einem Kahlschlag für die Kultur in Berlin gleich: • Die institutionell geförderten Opern-, Konzert- und Theaterhäuser wären gezwungen, den bereits geplanten und vertraglich verabredeten Produktions- und Spielbetrieb weitestgehend auszusetzen. Denn ...

04/11/2024

The three of us (Adam, Clément, Moritz) wrote a text for TanzraumBerlin about Flutgraben Performances Residencies – the concept, the ideas, the practice. And about the increasing importance and significance of residencies in general. We are happy and grateful that we can discover and unfold this exciting format together with all of you who join and participate!

https://www.tanzraumberlin.de/magazin/artikel/flutgraben-performances-residencies-moving-community-residenz-als-praxis/

18/09/2024

We are happy to share an other performance of "your dream come true"

EXTRACTION by André Uerba
Performance-installation

Extraction is a performance-installation with one audience member as the main character/ performer. They sit on a medical chair inside a hexagonal glass structure around six metres in diameter. This ‘glass- house’ is sterile and equipped with surgical instruments, cameras hanging from the ceiling on movable arms, and six LCD screens. Inside the glasshouse, there are a doctor and an assistant. The doctor is extracting hair from the performer and re-implanting it in the affected areas. The performer cannot see out of the glasshouse, but from the outside, the audience can observe the action of extracting and transplanting the hair follicles. The LCD screens display images of natural disasters, demolitions, wars, babies falling asleep, amusement parks, fireworks, aeroplane crashes, cats, and so on.

For adults only

14/09/2024

As Flutgraben Performances we have always been aiming for new ways of relating to the public and as artists among each other. In 2020 we started our residency program putting this aspect into the center: Every resident artist becomes part of the program not just as a guest but as a host and companion for future residents. We believe in facilitating and living relations as artistic practice and format. After many years we are looking back now, hoping to be able to continue soon.

Pics: gathering, dancing, discussing at Flutgraben.

11/09/2024

One more of our semi-fictional performance from the event your dream come true:

The Black Lake | A Collective Action by Egotec

Two-Channel Video Projection, 32 minutes.

During the famous Feel Festival in August 2019 at the Bergheider See in Lausitz which attracted 30,000 people, visitors were asked to empty the lake. The Bergheider See is an artificial lake which was created in a former coal mine. For the duration of the festival, each visitor received a 15-litre watering can, which, multiplied by 30,000, is the precise amount of water the lake contains. Visitors poured the water they collected on the sand dunes that surround the lake. Trees started to grow. The lake became a black hole, uncover- ing the layer of coal underneath the water.
The anonymous art collective Egotec is internationally renowned for its radical invasive land art. After a collective grilling on top of a dying volcano and collectively licking away a melting Icelandic glacier, their current project in Germany aims to artificially reverse the post-industrial rewilding process happening in Lausitz. As in all their projects, they also aim to shift the hybrid border between nature and culture on a gigantic scale.

08/09/2024

One of the most beautful moments in the history of Flutgraben Performances so far was the summer episode of 2020. It was intimate and special: In the heart of it there were ten encounters for single visitors. Each of the participating artists developed a trajectory into his*her artistic universe and shared it with an audience member. The meetings took place on various locations indoor and outdoor: visitors were taken on different kinds of walks by Christina Ciupke, Milla Koistinen, Sergiu Matis; they went on a boat trip by Clément Layes, and on a cab ride by Moritz Majce; they sat in environments – under an oak tree, invited by Jared Gradinger and in an installation by Adam (aka Sandra) Man on a balcony that used to be the German-German border; they spent time in a kitchen talking with Asaf Aharonson and in studios with Stella Geppert and Jasna L. Vinovrški. Jefta van Dinther and Ixchel Mendoza gave insights into their future works. After a group dance choreographed by Milla Koistinen, there was the dinner performance by Asaf Aharonson for all guests.

03/09/2024

One other fictional performance from "your dream come true"

"FALLING"

by Uri Turkenich
Participatory Performance

One hundred performers walk around the space, each one choosing someone to fall in love with. They talk to this person in a private space and somehow manage to really and totally fall in love. The installation “Falling” is for people who want to fall in love with a random person. It’s like life. It’s for people who forgot how to fall in love / never managed to / fell in love too long ago / and want to do it again. Falling in love is something to experience at least once before dying.

Suitable for adults (18+) who want to fall in love

31/08/2024

We want to share some more news from the archive: The 4th and final episode of Flutgraben Performances in fall 2020 was affected by a Covid lockdown. Back then we wrote: "We decided not to cancel this episode. We want to do something, we want to continue making art. But we do not want to simply jump online, stream what is meant for physical encounter, put on zoom what is not made for screen. With this “no” to live audience we are left with the question of how to address you, how to involve you, where and how to find you, and whether to aim for a remote “you” at all. We cannot pretend that it is clear to us how to go public now and we don’t want to fake a relation that we do not feel, sense, believe in.
It takes time to get there where you are right now or to make up new places where we can meet."