The closing event of Kuboraum’s 10 Years Of Travelling took place on December 8th in Berlin at the iconic Club Tresor.
Since 1991, Tresor has been a pioneer in shaping the sound of Berlin and more broadly the electronic music scene as it is today. Originally located deep in the underground vault of a huge former department store, Tresor was the first big club dedicated purely to techno: hard, cold and precise – euphoric through its speed and movement alone.
Its great impact on the people’s consciousness was also fostered by the in-house label Tresor Records, which served as a foreign imprint for Detroit DJs such as Jeff Mills, Mike Banks and Blake Baxter, who were travelling to Berlin to play residencies at the club. If techno was invented in Detroit, it’s from Tresor in Berlin that it spread into the world and the entire scene started.
After its move to a new location at the Kraftwerk Berlin in 2007, the club took on an expanded curatorial role, relaunching the annual Atonal festival and commissioning numerous multimedia events and art exhibitions with the neighbouring OHM gallery.
Back in August 2015 Kuboraum curated the first event off Atonal Festival in Berlin with Karl O’Connor aka REGIS as headliner of the festival: after a first meeting in New York, Regis and KUBORAUM came together to conceptualize a special limited series including a compilation of unreleased tracks carefully selected by Regis to present at Kuboraum’s Open Studio during the days of the festival. This was the first of a long series of curated events which made Kuboraum a leading voice in the culture, music, art community and an established curatorial project.
On December 8th Kuboraum celebrated their 10th Anniversary in Berlin, precisely in Tresor’s Globus. To go back to where everything started, Kuboraum invited once again Karl aka Regis to bring his new instrumental project EROS as world premiere, among a range of special live acts, performances and DJ sets by some of the most interesting artists on the contemporary scene.
From a sound installation by Stefanie Egedy, to a live set by boundary-pushing electronic producer Loraine James, followed by live performances by the American art rock band EXPAT and ‘Canzionieri’, the new project ‘Canzonieri’ by Cosimo Damiano and Emiliano Maggi, DJ sets by multidisciplinary artist Slim Soledad and key figures of the roman techno scene DJ Red and Cosimo Damiano, alongside a site-specific installation by Domenico Romeo.
A specially curated lineup rejecting any definition of musical genre. A curatorial research of the non-genre, as a political and stylistic choice, which has always been part of Kuboraum’s identity and project. An insight of the contemporary moment bringing the work of different artists, proposing completely different genres, impossible to box in any rigid and suffocating category.
On this occasion we also celebrated the birth of the new Kuboraum logo, embodying our narrative, development and shaped identity in the past 10 years. Re-interpreting the original outline of a square symbolizing the architecture of a cubical room, the new Kuboraum logo stands as a manifesto of protection, inclusivity, diversity, liquid identity, and organic architecture.
To open 10 Years Of Travelling Berlin, Brazilian sound worker Stefanie Egedy presented Bodies And Subwoofers (B.A.S.), a sound installation investigating the ways in which specific frequencies – sub-bass, bass sounds, subwoofers – interact with multiple physical bodies (human and non-human) and the new realities that emerge from their interactions. Not only exploring the interaction of sound waves and human bodies, but also the correlations between sound and the structural aspects of the space where the installation is presented (dimensions, materials, walls, columns, and floor), to reveal the way they communicate with each other. With her installation, Stefanie created unique vibrational experiences intersecting sonorous and musical language.
For the whole duration of the night Domenico Romeo’s site-specific sculptural installation was on view on the ground floor. Connoted with a strong anthropomorphic and architectural component, Domenico’s living structure made of iron bars and nylon fabrics invited the viewers to recognize themselves in it and undertake multiple spatial experiences.
The first act taking place at the Globus was a live performance by ‘Canzonieri’, the new project by Cosimo Damiano and Emiliano Maggi, members of the group SALÒ. Rooted in the Italian folk literature, Canzonieri derives from the word ‘Canzoniere’ which is a collection of poetry intended to be sung. With their performance, Canzonieri invited the audience to enter an obscure and medieval microcosm filled with flutes, guitars, modular synthesis and voice, all wrapped in mysterious allure.
Following them, EXPAT – the duo comprising queer icon Mykki Blanco and Samuel Acevvedo – took over the stage with their eruptive energy. Combining queer, Black theatre and poetry with Latin American heavy metal and murky hardcore punk, they once again challenged the audience with extreme sound and expression for the Black/Brown wo/man and hardcore queer baptisms in the face of violent colonization.
As the room started to fill up, London sound experimentalist Loraine James opened the dancefloor with an hour-long live set, blending IDM glitch aesthetics and her improvisational, jazz-rooted spirit into cohesive and emotive sonic creations. Testing the boundaries of dance music, she carried the audience on a sound journey through a fluid musical landscape where eclectic beats and sounds shift and flow at a mercurial pace, using fast change and rapid movement as effectively as samples and loops.
After Loraine James’ live set, Einstürzende Neubauten producer Boris Wilsdorf, Karl O’Connor aka Regis and MY DISCO’s Liam Andrews presented their new instrumental project EROS as a world live premiere. With fiercely lean sound, shaped by Wilsdorf’s manacled mixing and anchored in the swerve of Regis vocals and his snake-hipped rhythm section, EROS’ performance represented a lustrous new high point of contemporary industrial and dance music.
Later, Brazilian performer and multidisciplinary artist Slim Soledad took control of the decks, bringing the people back on the dancefloor with a wild DJ set, spanning from syncopated, twerk-triggering baile Funk to nosebleed-inducing techno; hardstyle bootlegs of pop songs to brain-frying electro. Following her, our friend and longtime collaborator DJ Red led the crowd on an ecstatic voyage, turning the Globus into an intimate room full of love and sharing, infused with a strong sense of community.
After DJ Red played her last record, the after party continued downstairs in Tresor’s basement. As soon as we got there, UK techno figurehead Regis took possession of the decks with a 2-hour DJ set bludgeoning the senses with his ascetic and pinpoint-focused sound. Cosimo Damiano followed for the closing act of 10 Years of Travelling Berlin with an immersive and hypnotic DJ set exploring the space between the conscious and subconscious.
Only a few people were left on the dancefloor but every single one was dancing.