In the Making

Unfinished Fridays at Lake Studios presents works-in-progress by resident and guest artists. On 25 October 2024, edition #111 featured performances from Maiada Aboud, Karlotta Frank, and LOLA.

Nestled in leafy Friedrichshagen, Lake Studios is a residency, research, and performance space. Their Unfinished Fridays format invites resident artists and guests to present their works-in-progress for an audience, in order to receive feedback during the creation process.

On 25 October, the first work shown is Replica: Between two shadows, from Maiada Aboud. To the sound of an insistently ticking clock, Aboud reads a text which humorously details the odd freedom of existing as an outsider. Performer Luisa Ravanelli lies on her back, an apple resting on her stomach rising and falling with her breath, with others strewn on the floor around her. As Aboud leaves the stage, Ravanelli stands and begins to collect the apples into the lap of her white dress, which bulges and stretches with the weight. She then catapults them into the space, before running around and collecting them back into her dress. This simple, strange action is repeated again and again, with the fruit slamming into the walls and rolling through the audience until they begin to disintegrate. There is an almost disquieting lack of development and, as a result, the choreography lies in the decay of the space and the material. As the floor becomes covered in pulp and Ravanelli’s dress stained with juice, it speaks to me of burdens carried, marks left, and defiant action.

Karlotta Frank’s solo dedication to what happened begins with a marionette-like quality, as Frank’s limbs shoot outwards and the floor seems to drop beneath her feet. I wonder who is controlling the strings, but Frank’s coy smile to her audience hints that she is in the driving seat. Like a slightly grotesque cabaret, Frank flits between short scenes: her two hands become puppets sharing a garbled dialogue, a lullaby plays as she both cradles and is cradled by a chair, a piercing cry turns to manic laughter. Like a radio being tuned, snatches of sound appear briefly and, out of context, take on new meaning.

Finally, we are shown You Decide, part of an ongoing video work by LOLA. A beautifully written monologue is read over shots of street lights reflected in water, but is there an irony to “I’ve never been this happy” being read in a slight monotone? Characters in an eclectic mixture of costumes then enact what seem like arcane rituals, eating fruit and wrapping themselves in swathes of cloth. Reverse footage is used to uncanny effect, so that clothing appears to have a life of its own, and hair can retie itself. With gravity upturned and sound also played in reverse, the consistency of the space is changed, as though everything were happening underwater, or behind a layer of thick, distorting glass.     

The presence of an audience almost always changes something in the nature of a work: in an open studio format like this, you can practically see the shells cracking open, and the work oxidising as it is exposed to the outside. During the moderated feedback session, there is a chance for the artists to reflect on the knotty relationship between what they were saying and what was heard. Unfinished Fridays has fostered an atmosphere which encourages open dialogue, between a generous audience and artists sincerely receptive to a multitude of reactions. It can be empowering for audience and artist alike.


Unfinished Fridays at Lake Studios presents works-in-progress by resident and guest artists every last Friday of the month.

Shots Fired

Cia Vero Cendoya’s “Bogumer (or Children of Lunacharski)” was shown at HAU1 on 17 November 2022, as part of the NO LIMITS – Disability & Performing Arts Festival Berlin. It asks the question: once the boss has been fired (literally), who is left running the show?

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Restive Bodies

In Sergiu Matis’ “UNREST”, shown from 02 – 05 November 2022 as part of the FEMINIST FUTURES FESTIVAL from Tanzfabrik Berlin, ancient myths resonate through a cavernous industrial space, and are taken up as a material to question both the nature and the future of humanity. 

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Thoughts on Lockdown No. 2

Gob Squad first presented their 12 hour livestream performance “Show Me A Good Time” during the lockdown in June. For the second lockdown, they remade the piece into three parts, and HAU broadcast the first episode on 26 November 2020. I decided to use it as an opportunity to reflect on this latest closure of live performance venues.  

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Female Futures

Between December 1989 and March 1990, the Central Round Table met in East Berlin to discuss making reforms to the GDR, and to draft a new constitution. As I enter Sophiensæle, I am informed that the year is now 2090 and those visions have been implemented. “POSTOST 2090”, by Rike Flämig, Anna Hentschel and Zwoisy Mears-Clarke, is a celebration of 100 years of the draft constitution, of feminist utopias, and of ‘Ossifuturism’. 

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Game Theory

Opening Tanztage Berlin 2019, Mirjam Gurtner’s “Skinned” places improvisation within a strictly delineated frame to create a contradictory, challenging work which belies any cohesive interpretation. Combining intuition and artifice, “Skinned” sets itself a difficult task, yet a generosity at its core entices us along for the journey.

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