Carry On – Thinking From the End | Where Improvisation Intersects with the Rights of Nature

Name: Carry On – Thinking From the End | Where Improvisation Intersects with the Rights of Nature
Start: 2025-11-06T20:00:00+01:00
Location: Zossener Straße 24, 10961

Schedule

Thu, 06 Nov, 2025 at 08:00 pm

UTC+01:00

Location

Zossener Straße 24, 10961 | Berlin, BE

»Carry On – Thinking From the End«
Lecture performance and talk in English
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leeways #4: Where Improvisation Intersects with the Rights of Nature – Tempoception: Improvisation, Poetics, Ecosystems
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Angela Snæfellsjökuls Rawlings (IS/CA): text, voice
Matthias Mainz (DE): text, voice, prepared piano
Joe Sorbara (CA): text, voice, table percussion
Moderation: Mathias Maschat
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Time: Thursday, 6 November | 8 pm
Location: exploratorium berlin, concert hall
Admission: 5 €, registration not required
Livestream: https://www.youtube.com/exploratoriumberlin
> exploratorium-berlin.de/en/events/think/leeways-4-where-improvisation-intersects-with-the-rights-of-nature
–> switch to DE for German text
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»Carry On – Thinking From the End« is a multi-year transdisciplinary and improvisational project cycle by Icelandic, Canadian and German artists Angela Snæfellsjökuls Rawlings, Joe Sorbara and Matthias Mainz in the context of nature’s inherent rights. Through their work with sound, poetry and ecosystems, they explore in the course of the exploratorium’s leeways series the space where human and non-human conceptions of time meet, which can evoke an overlap and intertwining of time levels in musical and communicative interaction. Their improvised and musical-poetic lecture performance is complemented by a conversation with Mathias Maschat, in which the intersections between improvisation and the inherent rights of nature are explored.
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In their cycle, Rawlings, Sorbara and Mainz develop performative formats and artistic research projects in order to jointly address questions of resistance and resilience in ecological, social and political contexts in an age of accelerating climate change. In their artistic work, they compose with found objects and text materials, concrete poetry and performance scores, improvise and interact with preparations and extended techniques, thus creating analogies between tipping points, boundaries and openings in ecological, social and political spaces. They are differently influenced by poetry, improvisation, contemporary music and transmedia art. What connects all three of them is their intensive, independent collaboration with the Canadian sound poet Paul Dutton, who died in 2025. It is therefore not surprising that the formative impression left by Dutton’s transformation of concrete poetry, extended vocal techniques and performance forms their common starting point.
»The Rights of Nature« is now a global movement comprising a wide range of local projects and actors working to grant legal rights to natural entities, placing them on an equal footing with state and transnational actors such as global corporations in legal disputes. The Carry On – Thinking From The End project cycle combines artistic-transformative projects with the communication and discussion of the topics and contexts of the Rights of Nature discourse. Ecological, economic, legal, cultural and social issues are juxtaposed and reflected in a performative manner.
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Read more about the artists:
Dr Angela Snæfellsjökuls Rawlings is a Canadian-Icelandic interdisciplinary artist and researcher. Rawlings works primarily with languages as material for exploration. Rawlings’ books include Wide slumber for lepidopterists (Coach House Books, 2006), Gibber (online, 2012), o w n (Cue Books, 2015), si tu (MaMa Multimedijalni Institut, 2017) and Sound of Mull (Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology, 2019). In 2022, Rawlings co-curated the Sphere Festival for the Canadian National Arts Centre Orchestra in collaboration with the Canadian Museum of Nature, the Royal Danish Library and Nordic Bridges. In 2024, Rawlings founded Snæfellsjökul fyrir forseta (Icelandic for ‘Snæfellsjökul as President’) the first Icelandic organisation for the rights of nature. In 2025, Rawlings’ solo exhibition Motion to Change Colour Names to Reflect Planetary Boundary Tipping Points opened in a disused Icelandic fertiliser factory. Rawlings teaches at the Icelandic University of the Arts.
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Matthias Mainz is a transdisciplinary musician, curating artist and author. From 2001 to 2012, he produced electroacoustic music, scenographic works and theatre. Since 2012, Mainz has been exploring issues of transcultural music and its embedding in national and international cultural policy through research in Kabul, Tehran and Istanbul. As managing director of the Platform for Transcultural New Music e. V., he realises curatorial, musical and artistic-scientific works. As an instrumentalist, the combination of improvisation, microtonality, extended playing techniques and electronics on the trumpet formed the focus of his musical work until 2014. Since around 2017, Mainz has been turning his attention to the piano as a self-taught musician, transforming jazz and contemporary music with multi-stylistic improvisation concepts, preparations and live electronics.
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Canadian drummer and percussionist Joe Sorbara has earned a reputation as a dedicated and imaginative performer, composer, improviser, collaborator, organiser, listener, author and educator. He studied with Jim Blackley for many years and completed his masterclasses. He holds an Honours Bachelor of Fine Arts in Music from York University in Toronto and a Master’s degree in English from the University of Guelph. Sorbara has performed and recorded with musicians such as Anthony Braxton, Paul Dutton, Joe McPhee, Evan Parker and William Parker. He has been teaching at the University of Guelph’s School of Fine Arts and Music since 2007, as well as working as a workshop and guest lecturer. Sorbara works as a curator on the board of the Silence art space and as artistic director of the Guelph Jazz Festival. He is also writing his doctoral thesis in Critical Improvisation Studies.