Welcome to BURLUNGIS: Hang your cloak and stay a while, weary traveller. The times may be dark and the swamps and bogs hide lurking creatures of the night, but accept our humble comforts in whimsical tales and ecstatic dances around the fire.
BURLUNGIS is a fantastical medieval landscape conjured by COVEN BERLIN to re-imagine a time as dark as ours. But hark! Whoever condemns darkness has forgotten its power. Much of liberal European thought today continues the tradition of the Enlightenment, scoffing at the perceived lack of refinement and unhygienic stink of the Middle Ages. Meanwhile, conservative right-wing movements have co-opted “the medieval”, summoning kings and vikings to create an imaginary time when Europe was white, heterosexual, and Christian.
Aye, let the patriarchs have their snobby printing press and “perspective”; let the fascists burn in their fire and brimstone. Leave the Mittlealter to the altered middle—to the queers, the Commons, the Live Action Role Players, modern herbalists and all those who’d gladly tread through the muck and mire of this swampy amalgam of history. We hereby decree the myth of “Medieval Europe” as utterly false, and rewrite it with BURLUNGIS, which bubbles out of the swamp from whence the city we call Berlin, in the 13th century, clumb.
BURLUNGIS begins as a stage open for co-creation between we the artists and you, dear wanderer. Therefore we – COVEN BERLIN together with Yoav Admoni, Irene Fernandez Arcas, Samantha Bohatsch, Hang Linton+Laura Lulika – heartily invite you to join us at the Galerie im Turm regularly, for we will be a-working, oft and ere. This exhibition, or work in progress, will be on display from 23rd of January to 8th of March 2020.
Curated by Linnéa Meiners and Jorinde Splettstößer
Events program:
22.01. | 19h
OPENING
08.02. | 11h – 13h
EXCAVATING THE EROTIC
Workshop with Dr. edna bonhomme
15.02. | 16h – 18h
RECIPES FROM THE ARCHIVES OF QUEER APHRODISIA
Workshop with Luiza Prado
22.02. | 17h – 18:30h
BY FIRE, BY WATER, BY COMBAT: Deviant Women & Medieval Punishment
Workshop with Ileana Pascalau
07.02. | 14.02. | 21.02. | 28.02. | 14h – 18h
ALCHEMICAL CREATURES AND ARCHAIC GARMS
Performative Costume-Making with Hang Lington+Laura Lulika
07.03. | 19h
THE FINAL JOUST with COVEN BERLIN
OPEN STUDIO DAYS | Children’s activities may occur, Hildegard von Bingen Dinkel Cookies and Mead may be served, poetry may be read, so cast your eyes to Facebook and Instagram for tidings of spontaneous events.
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