Inspired by contemporary initiatives, neighborhoods, and communities in Halle (Saale)—as well as by the city’s historic salt trade—Collectif MASI weaves a white ribbon through the city. This symbolic act also serves as a reminder that expressions like “that we are free and want to be free,” from the Twelve Articles of the Peasants, can only emerge from a collective of individuals.
The ongoing struggle against oppression and for shared prosperity is embodied in a Wealth Acknowledgement for Halle, developed in a workshop with Vishnu Vardhani Rajan, and in the shared meal featuring an Andean potato variety cultivated in the Moritzburg courtyard by Åsa Sonjasdotter and Daniela Zambrano Almidón.
KDM Königin der Macht calls for an uprising of memory through a poetic lecture-performance. Her feminist reading of the Peasants’ War opens new perspectives on a planetary future. Odete’s sound and DJ performance begins with peasants who disguised themselves as members of another class, exploring disguise as a means of overcoming hierarchy—moving toward planetary freedom.
Workshops preparing for the performances were held in collaboration with BBZ lebensart e.V., krimZkrams Halle, MitMischen e.V., Passage13, and WELCOME-Treff. This event is part of Pride Weeks Halle.
18:00 – Collectif MASI (participatory performance in the city)
19:00 – Papitas Tarpuy-cha – Earthing Potatoes. Part 2: The Meal by Åsa Sonjasdotter and Daniela Zambrano Almidón, with Andean potatoes grown in the courtyard of Moritzburg
20:15 – Performance by KDM Königin der Macht
21:00 – Performance & DJ Set by Odete
18:00
Meeting point: Mühlgrabenufer under Klausbrücke, corner Robert-Franz-Ring/Mansfelder Str.
Collectif MASI: The Salt Inside Us
For centuries, the water provided the inhabitants of Halle (Saale) with salt – the ‘white gold.’ It was collected from the water and extracted. The performance symbolically re-enacts this historic process, but with a twist: there is no salt in the water, the salt lies within us. Hence the use of mirrors, placed in a significant location: the old mill, where water once transformed wheat seeds into flour. During the performance, local participants will join in, using self-made gloves and a white fabric as a collective container for salt. As we walk along the Mühlgraben river, between Klausbrücke and Burgbrücke, this fabric gradually compacts, physically bringing us closer together. In the end, fabric and mirrors – gathered through many individual gestures that turn into collective strength – form a mountain of white gold on the bridge at the entrance of the Kunstmuseum Moritzburg.
Collectif MASI was founded in 2018 by Madlen Anipistaki, a Greek architect and urban scenographer (Paris-Malaquais), and Simon Riedler, a sociologist specializing in international migrations and interethnic relations (Paris Diderot). MASI practices social sculpture in public space, as well as archival work within exhibitions. In France, MASI has been in residence at Ateliers Médicis (2020), the Salon de Montrouge (2023) and Villa Belleville (2024) for Paris’s Nuit Blanche (2024). In Athens, MASI received the SNF ARTWORKS prize and participated in the 2023 European Capital of Culture Eleusis.
19:00
Location: Courtyard, Kunstmuseum Moritzburg
Åsa Sonjasdotter and Daniela Zambrano Almidón: Papitas Tarpuy-cha – Earthing Potatoes. The Meal
20:00
Vishnu Vardhani Rajan
Vishnu Vardhani Rajan‘s performance is a poetic, melodramatic, and humorous recital — a commentary on class and de-curated emotions. It is laced with Telugu pop songs and Western influences, layered with echoes of postwar protests and the struggle of surviving without money. How does Indian popular culture teach us to regard the rich?
Vishnu Vardhani Rajan is a Body-Philosopher and Performance Artist born in Hyderabad and based in Helsinki. A hyphenated identity, multidisciplinary practices, and building connections between art, science, witchcraft, history and cultures define her. Vishnu explores shame through dance, acting and stand-up comedy. Their persona Vamp Master Brown is the first Indian Drag King in Finland.
20:15
Königin der Macht: Witches and other Planetary Bitches
On the 500th anniversary of the German Peasants’ War, royal rapper KDM Königin der Macht, crowned by the dust of the feather, invites the audience to a performative and feminist counter-reading of history. Between smoldering witch fires and monoculture, between revolt and responsibility, KDM opens the stage for an uprising of memory – a reminder of who speaks, carries, or has lost history.
Myassa Kraitt is a performance artist, rapper, director and social anthropologist. Her work addresses direct and indirect forms of violence: epistemicide, coloniality, patriarchy, necropolitics, as well as anti-discriminatory artistic practices. In her multidisciplinary rap project KDM – Königin der Macht, she merges rap and performance, opening queer-feminist and anti-/decolonial discourses on music stages. She is currently the head of GL!TCH4 at DSCHUNGEL WIEN – Theaterhaus für junges Publikum, is developing the series Epistemic Rupture at the intersection of art and science, and serves on the board of WIENWOCHE – Festival for Art and Activism.
21:00
Odete
The margins of a social system often plant the seeds of revolution. From werewolves to jesters to homosexuals, history is full of class traitors who played with hierarchies, bringing about the apocalypse of their present. Odete brings that history into a soundscape – a lecture DJ set – intended to make theory fun again.
Odete works across performance, text, visual arts and music. Her work is obsessed with historiographical writing, using erotics and paranoia as somatic ways of relating to archives. She writes through her body, speculating on the biographies of historical figures via epidermic pleasures: fashion, personality, presence, fragrance, grace, sensibility. She calls herself a bastard daughter of Lucifer, descending from medieval satanic pacts to alter one’s gendered body. Recently, she has been researching connections between ‘effeminate’ histories – from baroque castrati to 19th century dandies.