This workshop is closed, and preregistration is necessary: https://dice.berlin/fieldrecording/

This combined format workshop will provide an introduction to concepts and techniques around field recordings and sound art. Following this 1-hour online tutorial on how to find interesting sounds and produce high quality recordings, participants will be allotted time to create their own field recordings in Berlin. Using these recordings, they will prepare a composition at home on their own equipment.

In an online follow-up, participants will gather on Zoom to listen to each other’s compositions together, discuss the ideas behind their recordings, share details of their workflow and process, and exchange friendly, constructive feedback.

This workshop will be led by musician and sound artist Donna Maya. 

Music journalist Aida Baghernejad talks to sound artist Rosaceae about their two most recent releases Efia (2020) and Ava (2020), which will also be performed on Friday at Taborkiche.Efia and Ava explore a possible form of resilience through sound. Rosaceae’s work, which the magazine Das Filter describes as ‘Storytelling at its best’, uses a mixture of Neue Musik and noise to create captivating soundscapes with news cycle audio, echos, disembodied voices and manipulated vocal samples. Fusing video, performance and sound, Rosaceae moves between ambient, occasionally harsh noise, and collages of sound artifacts, often returning to Kurdish resistance fighter’s songs, folktales and found footage.

Ticket holders can use this link to join the Zoom Webinar.
This event will also be streamed for free at dice.berlin/digital

This roundtable with Nyabinghi_Lab will explore the group’s approaches to collective work, working with and through archives in their documentation of collective cultural productions, and working collectively towards a certain radicality of discourse that cannot be achieved alone. 
Ticket holders can use this link to join the Zoom Webinar.
This event will also be streamed for free at dice.berlin/digital

Closed workshop – preregistration necessary: https://dice.berlin/mentalhealth/

This workshop will be led by Abdul Hasan.

This current global pandemic has uncovered all kinds of ongoing “pandemics” and public health issues that continue to impact the mental health and wellbeing of Black and brown folk, and are likely to continue even after the ‘new normal’ of a post-corona landscape. With so many informal spaces of communal refuge shut off, and with state structures of health proving deadly for Black and brown folk, where do we go from here? At this apparent Point of No Return, which could also be seen as an endlessly recurring return, a constant status quo, can we build resilience? Is the imperative to build resilience a form of intense self-gaslighting?

This anti-workshop will explore with BIPOC participants what care looks like in this time and beyond, what self-care looks like, what community care could look like, and whether any of this is actually possible. In a context of hopelessness, from the standpoint of the unfixably crazy, what can self-preservation look like?

In 2020 hashtags such as #BlackLivesMatter, #Einzelfall and #Hanau helped to move the conversation around racism and police brutality forward worldwide but specifically in Germany too. Online activism, and the virtual communities associated with it, played a vital role in connecting individuals with each other and bringing them to the streets.

The art of burlesque has survived through the ages centering powerful femmes adorned in fabulous feathers, rhinestones and flirtatious costumes. Although burlesque is a profession dominated by femme bodies, mainstream burlesque scenes have centered the male gaze where certain bodies and gender identities become further marginalized while a toxic, exclusive beauty standard is upheld. However, powerful femmes breaking barriers in the mainstream have found ways to center diverse bodies and praise gender variance. Join inspiring burlesque artists Akynos, MisSa Blue and La Viola Vixen for a conversation about reclaiming body and burlesque.

Ticket holders can use this link to join the Zoom Webinar.
This event will also be streamed for free at dice.berlin/digital

The theme of DICE 2020 is Point Of No Return. 

This discussion will be led by Nathan Ma and Sanni Est with members of the DICE team. 

Please note that our conference venue is fully wheelchair accessible. Please contact us in advance at mara [at] dice.berlin (she/her) for assistance or more information.

Long before the new global reality of COVID-19, musicians, artists, and their communities faced widespread precarity, inequality and discrimination. Beyond the Point Of No Return the future is uncertain, and there is a need for new more equitable structures, safety-nets, and expanded access. Our festival will be spread out over six days, to allow time and space for our programme to run safely while respecting social distancing rules. In 2020 our aim is to cultivate community exchange.

Preregistration necessary: dice.berlin/bodymovement 

This workshop will be led by Valerie Renay. 

Be in your body
Be fully present
Be rooted
Be heard
Be seen
Be confident
Be relaxed
Be open
Be creative
Be connected to yourself and to others

This 90 minute in-person workshop led by performance artist and musician Valerie Renay will support participants to find pleasure, strength and a sense of ease in the simple act of being.

Employing various movement techniques and breath work inspired by her many years of training in dance and other forms of movement, Valerie will show participants how to use their bodies fully with the least effort and maximum joy, as well as how to use the voice freely without tension or restrictions.

The exercises are simple and no previous experience is required.

This practical one hour workshop presents techniques for using musical improvisation as a way to connect with the self and others, practicing openness, authenticity and accountability through music. By showing participants how to use the tools of composition, deep listening and honesty, Natalie Greffel presents an alternative way of composing, being and reflecting.  

Audience participation will be encouraged so please bring notes, lyrics, reflections, percussion, and sound-making tools. 

Natalie Greffel is a Berlin-based vocalist, instrumentalist, composer and arranger. She is known for her stylistic flexibility, and for her work as a singer, composer, lyricist and bassist.

Berlin is losing so much of the DIY, creative, and club scenes – what does the city (and it’s future as a “”creative”” capital) look like Berlin look like without them? Gentrification was already a huge threat. Now COVID 19 threatens existence of DIY & club culture as a whole. Capitalists now directing the future of long legacy of DIY berlin venues which were in part home to resistance and social movements.

This panel aims to take a cross section of different types of social resistance in Berlin and their histories, and touch on a few different aspects of DIY social resistance movements, from clubs, to squats, to self-organised spaces for education, sex positive queer parties, etc.

Berlin-based DJ Mobilegirl will present the tracks she loves to play during a set. She’ll talk us through the tracks, showing how and why she chose them, and reflecting on what inspires her in the selections. During the listening party Mobilegirl will explore how her sets have changed over time, and discuss how she selects tracks to compliment each other, giving her sets a powerful and dramatic structure.

LOL the DICE an evening of intersectional comedy with the amazing Daddypuss Rex, the wonderful Alexander Norton and the fabulous Liliana Velásquez, hosted by Kate Cheka.
Join us for a hilarious evening of laughter from four of Berlin’s finest comedians.

The workshop, suitable for beginners, is designed to equip artists and curators with the most important skills needed to apply successfully for funding. Talking points include: 

This workshop will be led by Andrea Goetzke. 

How to approach an application?
How to create a realistic schedule?
How to describe and advocate for your project?
How to find the right partners?
How to match your budget with the project description?

This beginners workshop will answer these and many other questions, with the overarching theme of creating a meaningful proposal for your project that helps to communicate clearly its unique qualities

In the present difficult, often frightening, situation it is harder than ever to make plans for the future. How can we set goals when the parameters keep changing? And how can we be sure that we can find the mental resources, as well as the money, to survive when the future is uncertain.

This workshop/discussion will offer a space for participants to develop techniques and share ideas for finding possibility and even optimism in this difficult moment, addressing this challenge with attention to the need to balance survival with the continued pursuit of participants’ dreams and passions.

This discussion will be led by Miriam Aced and Tina Lee. 

The berufsverband bildender künstler*innen berlin e.V. (bbk berlin, professional association of visual artists berlin) is a powerful advocate for artists, taking a stand on issues concerning the working conditions of artists, and lobbying policymakers in their interest.  bbk berlin is a powerful model for creative workers who want to join forces to represent their interests, which should inspire creators in the underfunded and precarious music scene.
In this conversation, Ute Weiss Leder (bbk berlin e.V.) and artist Sanni Est will talk about the shortcomings of the current funding system in Berlin and what needs to change. They will discuss why it is important for artists to unionize, exploring the exciting possibilities that can follow when artists join forces. This discussion sets out a vision of long-term goals for the sustainable funding of artists.

This lecture by Dr. Emilia Roig reflects on the central questions that emerge from this year’s DICE theme, “Point of No Return.” She asks who needs support in the current global crisis, and which communities are disproportionately disadvantaged. Reflecting on the different obstacles to which different groups are subjected, she asks how we maintain solidarity among and between marginalised communities. How do we make sure there are cultural spaces to come back to? 

Emilia Roig is the founder and executive director of the Center for Intersectional Justice (CIJ), Berlin. The CIJ is an independent nonprofit organisation based in Berlin dedicated to advancing equality and justice for all by combating intersecting forms of structural inequality and discrimination in Europe. Dr Roig holds a PhD in Political Science from the Humboldt University of Berlin and Sciences Po Lyon. Prior to founding the CIJ, she was Project Director at the German Federation of Migrant Women’s Organisations. She has taught at universities in Berlin and Lyon, as well as working in human rights, labor rights and development organisations in Germany, Tanzania, Uganda, and Cambodia.

In the era of civil documentation, mobile phone footage and its circulation on social media platforms is indispensable towards claims for justice and accountability. What happens when these modes of ‘collective witnessing’ are foreclosed, either due to access restrictions or the deliberate destruction of the tools that make this possible? Drawing on the recent investigation of Forensic Architecture, “Pushbacks across the Evros/Meriç River: Situated Testimony,” this talk will engage in questions of witness testimony, architecture as a conduit to recollection, and filmmaking as a medium for evidentiary production. For over a decade, migrants crossing from Turkey to Greece in search for EU protection, routinely testify to being detained, beaten, and forcefully ‘pushed back’ to Turkey. As the people’s phones and personal documents are confiscated, or thrown in the river, there is little evidence of this practice beyond their testimony. Forensic Architecture used 3D models to undertake “situated testimony” that helped four victims of pushbacks identify the locations where they were detained and pushed back, and reconstruct their experiences. Pushbacks continue to occur because they are carried out in the dark, outside the law and the public eye; in the struggle for accountability, creative modes of testimony amplification must be employed.

Yantan Ministry offers a sonic demonstration revolving around the use of a single sample in the creation of a full length track.
A sonic talkshow, touching on elements such as repetition, pitch, dramaturgy, depth and dynamics, as well as a conversation about the practice of inhabitation – what is a sound sample in terms of connective tissue, how can it change in response to the observation of somatic sensation, and develop from murky material into a landscape that’s loyal to one’s ideas?

Preregistration necessary: https://dice.berlin/queerear

This workshop will provide an overview of issues to which producers should pay attention while mixing. We will cover problems and challenges to avoid when it comes to mastering, and provide an introduction to what happens professionally with a recording once it’s ready for mastering. The discussion will be followed by a Q & A session.

This workshop is aimed at novice and intermediate electronic music producers who are looking to develop their skills and enhance the finishing touches they put on their compositions or arrangements.

Frequency, Embodiment and Melanin-o-phonic* Space

A black hole is the result of immense light. You are that same light.
Darkness is what holds this universe together – Because Blackness is not mere absence but rather an abundance

This hybrid lecture and listening session invites you to spend time with frequencies, rhythm and the voice to explore the sanctity and healing potential of sound. We will uncover Black-led sonic strategies for grounding ourselves in this ever-changing moment to encourage a feeling of security and stability from within.

See essay – ‘Melanin-o-phonic* Space or the Speaker Body as Totem’

Ticket holders can use this link to join the Zoom Webinar.
This event will also be streamed for free at dice.berlin/digital

Inès Lamari is a visual artist and painter. Armeghan Taheri is a writer and artist. Both are editors of the community magazine „What’s Afghan Punk Rock, anyway?!“. The magazine criticizes and personalizes legacies of (global) power structures through stories of love, intimacy, history and internal and external war(s). As such, the magazine provides a space for collective artistic and literary resistance. In the forthcoming November issue, the magazine documents and connects visions for the future. In their talk, the editors will present the magazine and the role of art in political resistance.

Ticket holders can use this link to join the Zoom Webinar.
This event will also be streamed for free at dice.berlin/digital

Preregistration necessary: https://dice.berlin/walkingtour/

On this 2-hour walking tour, transgender historian Dr. Finn Ballard will take you on a wander through the neighbourhood of Kreuzberg, exploring Berlin’s LGBT past: from the radical activism of the 1920s, to the squatting scene of the Cold War, to the modern-day Queer hotspots.