About me

Daydreaming the Archive (2021) was a research process of the affective cartography of the city of Frankfurt am Main, as experienced by a group of four artists-facilitators and six community participants with migration backgrounds; and an (audio-and-live performance) walking tour that resulted from that process.

Being a migrant/post_migrant, inhabiting a liminal space, neither fully belonging nor entirely an outsider, leads to a constant sense of dislocation. This research explored the impact of dislocation on our perception of public spaces and the desires and fears that move us in the city. From an understanding of place and body as living archives, we conceived daydreaming as the practice that connects us to those archives, as an intertwining of memory and imagination. Could public spaces become intimate, home-like spaces where we could daydream?

In this project, the term post_migrants was used in the open call for community participants, to encompass not only foreigners living in Germany but also German-born people with a migration background. It turned out to be a term reflective of the diverse conditions (some more privileged, others less so) in which they/we currently live and under which these migrations were undertaken.

Daydreaming the Archive was also an (im)possible collaboration, since the group was fragmented by the COVID-19 pandemic and individual working conditions. We often walked in pairs or small groups of three or four. Sometimes we walked in silence, sometimes we talked and told stories. We tried out scores as we walked. We also met in the studio to do other scores involving drawing and playing with objects. Furthermore, we interviewed each other and wrote scores for others to try out.

Ultimately, we planned a walking tour for the public to conclude the project. The audio-walk featured recordings made during the process, including texts written by participants reflecting on their memory archives in dialogue with the city's landscape. It included a train ride on the U-Bahn, live performance segments with singing and storytelling by the participants, and at one point, the audience was blindfolded for an immersive sound experience. The tour included narratives such as childhood memories of the war in Bosnia at a Frankfurt doll clinic, conjuring Buenos Aires through opera singing in the streets of Bornheim, a performative re-enactment at Frankfurt’s main cemetery and a nearby park, of steps taken many times in different latitudes, and soundscapes evoking lost, remembered, or dreamed photographs from family archives.

Minute Bread

Deep memory of the grandparent’s house, the recurring leak in the ceiling, the repairing of the leak, the transformation of the house through time, and as the economic means allowed. The old window in the new house, grandma’s baking of the minute bread. A juxtaposition of tree and house, both with roots, losing leaves, and growing new ones as an act of resilience and of putting memories into place. (were they ever out of place?)

Text and Voice by Debo Seabra
Text Dramaturgy: Felipe dos Santos

A Drop Hollows Out a Stone

“There is the memory as stone and the memory as water” says Bergie as he walks us through the memories of his parent’s beach house in Croatia, which they bought upon returning to their homeland from political exile. Upon this apartment rests the memory of building a cupboard with the loved one and the dreams of a future together. He then walks us through the steep geography of his suburb of Cape Town, where he grew up, and its only flat road, where initiated a lifetime bond with his best friend and his (other) South African father. This passage reaffirms belonging through solid memories, objects, and bonds, and yet, there is an anticipation of oblivion, a fear of memories dripping off, of losing touch with people and places.

Text and Voice by Bergie
Text Dramaturgy: Felipe dos Santos

Sailing Threads

These tracks were originally heard before and after the audience’s live encounter with Bergie

Thread #1: Longing for silence and stretching water
Bergie spends most of his day outdoors in the city recycling plastic bottles. He walks us through the different soundscapes that he experiences throughout the day and evokes the mind games he uses to make himself feel at other latitudes closer to home.

Thread #2: Lemmings
Bergie narrates his encounters with other homeless people as he reflects critically on Germany’s greatest disease and reveals his own particular perception of what it is to feel like a superhero.

Thread #3: An exercise of dépaysement
With a thorough description of the vegetation, this Cape Town native approximates a small park in Frankfurt am Main to Company Gardens in Cape Town.

Text, voice, and live performance by Bergie
Text and performance dramaturgy: Diana De Fex

The Railroad Track that Turns Back the Time

This passage is experienced as a braid of weaved voices of (post)migrants reflecting on traveling, urban environments, writing, editing, and reading.

Dramaturgy and edition by Barbara Galego
Texts and voices by Bergie, Khabeer Singh, Sol Crespo, Walter Castillo, Diana De Fex
Singing voice: Sol Crespo

Daydeaming the Archive

Concept: Diana De Fex

Choreographers-facilitators: Olga Popova, Felipe Dos Santos, Bárbara Galego, Diana De Fex

Participants co-creators: Dajana Kubat, Debo Seabra, Sol Crespo, Khabeer Singh, Walter Castillo, Bergie

Dramaturgy research phase: Alice Nogueira

Dramaturgy production phase: Maria Tsitroudi

A cooperation with Studio Naxos, supported by “Supported by the NATIONAL PERFORMANCE NETWORK - STEPPING OUT, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media within the framework of the initiative NEUSTART KULTUR. Assistance Program for Dance., Frankfurt Kulturamt, Amt für multikulturelle Angelegenheiten (AMKA), Hessische Theaterakademie (HTA), Giessener Hochschulgesellschaft (GHG) and ID_Tanzhaus FRM.

The time of childhood and our ancestors

Letter to Grandpa

An old photograph in retrieved from frozen time back onto life through the memories of a child, her perception of the room in which the photo was taken as they helped shave their grandfather’s beard.
(To be heard at the mausoleum of Frankfurt’s Main Cemetery)

Text and Voice by Debo Seabra
Text Dramaturgy: Felipe dos Santos and Diana De Fex

Žužulina

A doll speaks from the display of a doll clinic guiding listeners to her dwelling. We are taken to Bosnia during the Balkans war and a child’s narrow escape from death thanks to her baby doll guardian angel.

Text and voice: Dajana Kubat and Barbara Galego
Text dramaturgy: Barbara Galego

Text and Voice by: Dajana Kubat
Text Dramaturgy: Bárbara Galego

Abuela
Short film on the futurity of memory by Sol Crespo and Olga Popova

On the way
Two tracks with text and voice by: Khabeer Singh
Dramaturgy: Felipe dos Santos

The Black Tarred Road
A voiced journey through a gallery of family photographs and the road where childhood friendships were formed, and a community of neighbors, friends, family, and elders supported each other in surviving apartheid.

Sweet
Khabeer portrays his memories of growing up in a Muslim neighborhood of Cape Town, while reflecting on his connections to both India, the land of his ancestors, and (apartheid) South Africa, his homeland. He remembers the constant floods, which disproportionately affected communities of colour, but which also brought the sweetest fruits and brightest flowers the next season. This passage can be heard as a letter of gratefulness read aloud to his teachers and elders where he reflects on the lessons learned by walking the streets.