Aria Dean: The Color Scheme

In the organizer's words:

The Color Scheme

Performance by Aria Dean

Set in Berlin's Tiergarten shortly after World War I, artist and writer Aria Dean's performance The Color Scheme is a dialogue between two African American exiles - the poet and the philosopher - where their meeting in the park becomes a broader reflection on the relationship between Black avant-garde aesthetics and the burgeoning political movements of the 20th century. Commissioned by the Hartwig Art Foundation and Performa, the work premieres in a European context near the actual site of the action, the historic Victory Avenue, and will be shown as part of the closing weekend of the exhibition Tirailleurs: Trials and Tribulations. From Cannon Fodder to Avant-Garde-The Forgotten Soldiers Who Freed Europe at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW).

Only a few steps away from today's HKW, the historical statues of Kant and Goethe Dean offer the opportunity to critically question nationalist and imperial monuments and serve as a backdrop for the figures' date. Based on an actual encounter between the philosopher Alain Locke and the poet Claude McKay, Dean eschews heroization by leaving her characters nameless and using them as a means to explore a conflict between political and aesthetic perspectives. Their disagreements - about nationalism, the role of art and the political and economic changes needed to make life worth living - contrast with the monumental historical ambition in the design of the Tiergarten. In the 1920s, the park served as a backdrop for Prussian imperialist narratives - and was also a central meeting place for Berlin's sexually diverse scene. The tensions in history are heightened by the depiction of Siegesallee - the boulevard laid out by Kaiser Wilhelm II that was adorned with monarchist sculptures, later relocated by the Nazis to make way for large military parades, and finally completely leveled after the war. Dean 3D scanned the remaining broken statues, which are currently in the Spandau Citadel, so that production designer Filip Kostic could digitally reconstruct the park as it was in 1923.

Accompanied by a composition by Evan Zierk with Intonarumori - the experimental sound machines invented by the Italian futurist Luigi Russolo - a theatrical space is created in which history, form and speculation meet. The theater stage also serves as a film set: The actors* are captured in real time in the virtual replica of the Tiergarten, and these shots are simultaneously projected live onto the stage. This embeds the present in a historical framework in which the "truth" of the encounter is revealed as a projected image. Far from a flawless representation, The Color Scheme explodes the debris of history that floods the here and now.

Director / Screenplay: Aria Dean
The Poet: Jordan Coley
The Philosopher: Zaid Arshad
Composer: Evan Zierk
Music: Seany Nuelle, Ben Cohen
Cinematography: Alex Huggins
Cinematographers: Rhys Scarabosio, Owen Smith Clark
Virtual production design: Filip Kostic
Technical direction: Theresa Tomi Faison
Costume design: Natasha Simchowitz
Production: Vic Brooks
Co-production: Andy Rickert
Assistant director: Nina Diwan

Presented by the Hartwig Art Foundation

Venue: Miriam Makeba Auditorium

In English. German translation will be available online.