Please join us on Saturday, May 13th, as Callie’s will host the Berlin premiere of Terre Thaemlitz’s multi-media performance Deproduction. The event is part of Reframed Positions, the first retrospective of Thaemlitz’s work in Europe.

As the artist notes in the text accompanying Deproduction:

“In Deproduction, a multimedia project involving audio, text, and video, Terre Thaemlitz investigates the awkward, uncomfortable, and hypocritical power dynamics behind Western humanist notions of family and how they function internationally through processes of globalization.

We live in an era in which dominant LGBT agendas are increasingly revolving around themes of family, matrimony, breeding, and military service. The cultural terms for social analyses and organizing around such issues require an aggressive capitulation to peculiarly Western Humanist notions of the nuclear family, as well as private and public space. As a result, Feminist and Queer critical rejections of family structures (nuclear and otherwise) are increasingly scarce. An ability to understand the abuses of family and domestic violence as symptoms of larger institutionalized dominations become virtually impossible.

In a stereotypically familiar and heteronormative manner, the anticipated promise behind today’s Queer families is nothing more than the egocentric notion that familial abuses will be resolved by this generation being better parents than the previous generation. What is forever absent are discussions of what it means to deliberately not be a parent, and to deliberately abandon family. They remain as taboo as the notion of celebrating the relief of an abortion.

Aesthetically, Deproduction is a continuation of Thaemlitz’s work in the fields of electroacoustic audio production, writing, images, “non-performative” performance and concerts, and collage-based video work that confuses/combines the languages of documentary/cultural analysis/oral history/personal narrative. This performance strategy has been developed over the course of two decades, and is done in ways that deliberately complicate typical entertainment expectations from both curators and audience members. Deproduction premiered in Athens in 2017, with support by documenta 14.”

Join us at Callie’s on Saturday, May 13th, for Deproduction. This event is part of Reframed Positions, a retrospective of Thaemlitz’s work, comprising a survey exhibition, talk, multimedia performance, and concert. Reframed Positions takes place across Halle für Kunst Lüneburg, Volksbühne, Berghain Panorama Bar, and Callie’s and is curated by Lawrence English, Elisa R. Linn, and Ann-Kathrin Eickhoff.

Terre Thaemlitz was born in 1968 in Minnesota, USA. Thaemlitz is a multimedia producer, DJ, public speaker, writer, educator, and founder of the record label Comatonse Recordings. Over three decades and under numerous aliases—including DJ Sprinkles, G.R.R.L., K-S.H.E.—Thaemlitz has released over 15 solo albums and has exhibited video, audio, and text in various contexts around the world. Thaemlitz lives and works in Kawasaki, Japan.