The 2024-25 edition of the Forecast mentoring programme will enter its most intensive phase from mid-September. Following the forum in August 2024, each of the six international mentors has now selected a project that will be supported until the Forecast Festival in March 2025. The 2024/25 mentees are: Mehdi Dhakan, Johanna Seelemann, Mei Liu, Trà Nguyễn, Hao Zhou and Camil Navarro.
Image above: © Forecast 2024
From 2 to 4 August 2024, Berlin audiences were able to experience 18 multidisciplinary projects by artists, musicians, performers and designers at Radialsystem. Even before this public weekend, the mentors and their nominees worked closely together to refine the various presentations, engage with each other’s themes in transdisciplinary workshops and network with practitioners and institutions in Berlin. At the end of the forum, each mentor selected a project that will be supported until March 2025.
The six selected mentees – Mehdi Dhakan, Johanna Seelemann, Mei Liu, Trà Nguyễn, Hao Zhou and Camil Navarro – will now begin their individual mentoring phase. In addition to the ongoing exchange, each mentor-mentee tandem will meet for a creative exchange as part of a multi-day work-stay at various Forecast partner institutions around the world. The final productions will be presented to the public at the Forecast Festival on 14 and 15 March 2025 at the Radialsystem in Berlin.
Open Minded Body
Choreographer Alice Ripoll will accompany Moroccan dancer and choreographer Mehdi Dahkan in the development of his solo piece KMs of Resistance, which explores the act of celebration as a form of protest and resistance. Alice Ripoll: ‘In the age of virtual encounters, face-to-face encounters are crying out for spaces. Dance can remind us that we are made of flesh, that we have a texture, a smell, a temperature, a muscle pulsing in the chest, and the overwhelming flow of air that relentlessly flows in and out of our lungs. The breathing that connects us erotically, passing freely from our mouths and noses to those of others, is the key that my mentee Mehdi Dahkan brought to approach a unique experience of community and togetherness through dance.’
A Place Beyond Fear
Documentary filmmaker Tomer Heymann will continue working on his film Correct me if I’m Wrong with Hao Zhou, a filmmaker from southwest China. Tomer Heymann: ‘Each of my nominees has presented a fascinating project full of potential, with unique narrative abilities. In Zhou’s project, I discovered a profound personal story with a unique point of view, combined
combined with a high-quality cinematic aesthetic. Zhou has the courage to explore unknown places of family and gender identity without fear or judgement. Zhou’s material reveals his challenging confrontation, both as director and protagonist, with his familial traumas and tensions in a fearless way that points to a promising visionary director. It is a pleasure to advise Zhou on the next steps of his project.’
Images Invisible to Our Naked Eye
Photographer Lieko Shiga will continue to work with Amsterdam-based artist and filmmaker Mei Liu on her multimedia project Homesick for Another World, a speculative screenplay that explores the effects of involuntary captivity on the psyche of fictional characters. In a meditative and hypnotic, image-based journey, the project will convey an experience of captivity and emancipation in new dimensions. Lieko Shiga: ‘In essence, Mei Liu is trying to convey what is happening in this world according to her beliefs, using different types and methods of media production to tell us about touching the essential freedom of our minds. I believe that through Mei’s works, we as the audience are questioned about what we think.’
Expanding Your Voice
Composer and performer Ute Wassermann will accompany the Ecological Assemblage project by Paris-based Chilean artist Camil Navarro. Ute Wassermann: ‘I am delighted to have had the opportunity to work with all three nominees. They all have very different perspectives on the relationships their voices can have with our world today. Inés Terra’s Vocal Self-Portrait wowed the audience with her multi-faceted voice and its various portrayals. Shasha Chen showed courage and perseverance with H(er)-istory and an outstanding talent for composing electronic sounds and using them in a visually compelling live performance. All of them also showed a natural and extraordinary stage presence. I was very moved by Camil Navarros’ research for her project on an environmental disaster. With her intense somatic performance, she explored how an absent ecological entity can be present in one’s own perception. This approach makes me very curious, which I see as a good prerequisite for mentoring. I look forward to working with Camil and exploring the complexity of her work.’
Expanding Your Voice
Composer and performer Ute Wassermann will accompany the Ecological Assemblage project by Paris-based Chilean artist Camil Navarro. Ute Wassermann: ‘I am delighted to have had the opportunity to work with all three nominees. They all have very different perspectives on the relationships their voices can have with our world today. Inés Terra’s Vocal Self-Portrait wowed the audience with her multi-faceted voice and its various portrayals. Shasha Chen showed courage and perseverance with H(er)-istory and an outstanding talent for composing electronic sounds and using them in a visually compelling live performance. All of them also showed a natural and extraordinary stage presence. I was very moved by Camil Navarros’ research for her project on an environmental disaster. With her intense somatic performance, she explored how an absent ecological entity can be present in one’s own perception. This approach makes me very curious, which I see as a good prerequisite for mentoring. I look forward to working with Camil and exploring the complexity of her work.’
Forecast Mentoring Programme
The Forecast Mentoring Programme was initiated by Freo Majer in 2014 and is unique in its form and purpose. Forecast invites renowned artists, architects, curators, designers, musicians and other renowned creative minds to support talents of all kinds. Forecast provides a transdisciplinary context for the questions and methods of these ingenious minds and translates them into a tangible form such as concerts, performances, installations, film screenings or exhibitions.
Previous mentors include the architect Tatiana Bilbao,
the film artist Omer Fast, the musician Holly Herndon, the choreographer Florentina Holzinger, the curator Koyo Kouoh, the musician Okkyung Lee, the publicist Evgeny Morozov and the artist Emeka Ogboh, to name but a few. With its public formats Forum and Festival, Forecast has been taking place annually since 2015. Initially based at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) Berlin, Forecast entered into a long-term cooperation with Berlin’s Radialsystem in 2019.
WHEN?
14 March – 15 March 2025
WHERE?
Radialsystem V GmbH
Holzmarktstr. 33
10243 Berlin
