Kallia Kefala
Costume and Stage Design
Performance
Artistic Research
Soft Gardens (installation) 2025
A subtle hum guides you there.
You walk through the narrow passageway and end up in the middle of an unexpected scenery. It is as if you were gliding down the rabbit hole or descending into a mystical underwater cave. The search for a story about another place has brought you here. Is it a place of dreams or is it the place from a story that has been entrusted to you? Whatever it is, you are here now.
The light has a warm temperature that permeates the whole room. You hear voices … the voices of the stones, the voices of the weather and the voices of the water. The room speaks in multiple languages. The inhabitants of this new environment begin to gather. Clouds of flowers and branches swirl above you, a dense atmosphere of flora fills the room. It smells of damp earth and organic matter. Some odors are familiar to you others not. The floor is soft, you can lie down on it. Cushion creatures are there to support your weight with their soft limbs. Friendly creatures wave you with their arms of straw and metal. They mean well. You can close your eyes and dream beyond the dream. You are in a liminal landscape. Here everything is possible and everything is always changing.
Welcome toSoft Gardens
5.4.2025-4.5.2025 at the project space sign, CIAT
a project between Bureau of Transitioning Landscapes and Kallia Kefala
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an exhibition designed as a relaxed format
With contributions by hooops (Lena Astarte Posch & Nicola van Straaten); Lorena Carràs, Jean-Marie Dhur (Zabriskie – Bookshop for Culture and Nature) & Sina Ribak; Aiko Okamoto; Wanda Dubrau & Juliet Meding; Suza Husse, Kallia Kefala and Kim Bode
Bureau of Transitioning Landscapes is an ongoing artistic research initiated by Kim Bode, that explores landscapes not only as material and physical spaces but also as collective ideas and political terrains. Functioning as a platform for collaboration and exchange, it weaves together artistic research and practice. Kallia Kefala joined the project as part of the exhibition Soft Gardens – a multimedia installation comprising from textile, sculptural, floral and audio works.
In Soft Gardens, the concept of landscape is re-contextualized and expanded. It encompasses not only physical or geographical spaces but also inner landscapes. These inner landscapes are materialized as spatial and sound installations, inviting visitors to experience them as queer utopian places in the making.
The two rooms of the project space sign,CIAT are transformed into a cozy but also eerie “nature” – a space open and inviting. Visitors can rest there, focus on their sensory awareness and engage with the thoughts and impulses that arise. The installation functions as a retreat, a site for imagination and exchange that visitors can actively shape. Textile sculptures invite reclining, ceramic and straw-metal sculptures can be touched and used to create sound, and plant sculptures can be experienced through touch and scent. Light and sound conditions are regulated, allowing for a low sensory experience of the space.
The installation questions the categorical divisions between nature and culture, human and non-human, real space and inner space, linear time and queer time, the private and the public. These binaries blur, allowing images of the familiar world to dissolve, making space for new possibilities of coexistence.
The landscapes that emerge reflect collective desires and political aspirations for alternative ways of being together. They serve as blueprints for a world of queer, cross-species coexistence and mutual support.
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Project assistant: Lydia Miligkou, Production management: Michael Fesca, Technical management: Miriam Döring, Graphic design: Aziza Ahmad, Sound mastering: Cécile Perrot, Relaxed format: Agnieszka Habraschka, Access friend: jojo büttler, PR: Wayra Schübel, Photos: Louisa Boeszoermeny, Technical assistance: Viktor Petrov/Erfan Aboutalebi, Whisper translation: Sonja Hornung/Marc Hiatt, Exhibition supervision: Tama-Nomi Jacobi and Orestis Giannoulis, sign, CIAT: Nic and Sim.
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Soft Gardens-website
We would like to thank our friends Elisabeth Pieper, Manie Du Plessis, Gabi Neußer and Claudia Rutz for their support.
Funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion
MÜDE (installation) 2024
Aus der Krankheit eine Waffe machen
Turn Illness into a Weapon – Artistic Perspectives Within Healthcare Movements
Kunstraum Kreuzberg Berlin 01/06/2024-18/08/2024
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The group exhibition draws attention to the structural and intersectional disadvantages faced by disabled, chronically ill, and/or neurodivergent people in a late-capitalist, ableist system. How to turn illness into a weapon?
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MÜDE shown as an installation in the framework of the exhibition Turn Illness into a Weapon alongside the works of:
Anguezomo Mba Bikoro, The Chronic Iconic (Jessica Cummin), Chloe Pascal Crawford, Criptonite (Edwin Ramirez & Nina Mühlemann), Miriam Döring, Tomás Espinosa, Eva Egermann & Cordula Thym, Lotti Fellner-Wyler, Feministische Gesundheitsrecherchegruppe, Cornelia Herfurtner, Magda Korsinsky, Julia Lübbecke, MELT (Ren Loren Britton & Iz Paehr), Silvi Naçi, Sophie Utikal, RA Walden
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Curated by Linnéa Meiners
Curatorial assistance: Gianna Ehrke
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Graphic design: kadi | studiokwi
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A big thank you to Kim Bode, Lydia Miligkou, Orestis Giannoulis and the team of Kunstraum Kreuzberg for their support.
This Space In Between (performance) 2023
Inspired by the connections between migrant experiences and pop music, This Space In Between explores embodiments of in-between states. Through songs, sounds, remixes and calculated choreographies, three performers examine states of being in motion, arriving, not/working and celebrating for their inherent in-between places, in-between times, and in-between languages. Influenced by transgenerational migration experiences in Germany, by queer music cultures as well as by the losses and delights of the working class, the performers improvise post-migrant pop utopias. They employ polyphonies, hybridity and in-between cultures as choreographic strategies to claim space and as transformative paradigms for social and artistic formations.
Concept, Direction, Performance: Kallia Kefala, Performance: Minh Duc Pham, Katerina Papachristou, Composition, Live Music: Katerina Papachristou, Artistic Collaboration, Outside Eye: Sylvester Röpcke, Curatorial and research collaboration: District* (Suza Husse, Joe Ekenhorst,Communication: District*, Soundscapes: Kim Bode, Creative Producer: Martina Neu, Technical Direction: Cécile, Costume Collaboration: Aleix Llussa Lopez, Vocal Coaching: Christiane „Bobo“ Hebold
at Uferstudios Berlin
Photos: Louisa Boeszoermeny, Martina Neu
Supported by FondsDarstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media within the program NEUSTART KULTUR. This Space In Between is a production of Kallia Kefala and district*schule ohne Zentrum in the Uferstudios. The event on 1.7. was part of the Kultursommerfestival Berlin 2023 and took place in cooperation with Kulturprojekte Berlin.
Renting Berlin (mini series) 2023
We follow two real estate agents as they set off to Berlin to explore a new market.
Soon they will realize that the demand is huge, people are desperate, while the properties on offer are extremely poor. In their attempts to set foot in the business they join forces with a Berlin real estate owner.
What will prevail in the end, speculation or solidarity?
Director, Production, Editing: Monika Freinberger
By and with: Nolundi Tschudi, Lauri Wagner, Monika Freinberger, Dani Aérea Negrot, Vera Maria Kremers, Carmel Colabella, Mino Künze
Camera: Anatole Powilleit
Sound: Juan Carlos Donal Varela, Cécile Perrot, Francesca Rotundo
Costume/Set: Kallia Kefala, Costume-assistence: Aleix Llusa
Set-assistence: Kathi Sušec
Production-assistence: Lara Ledwa
a TVWOW production
Queer.Anticapitalist.RealityTV
Funded by: Fonds Darstellende Künste aus Mitteln der Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien im Rahmen von NEUSTART KULTUR.
PLANET LUBUNYA (theater performance) 2022
a queer science fiction theater performance
at Ballhaus Ost Berlin
Artistic direction & direction: Irem Aydin
Concept: Irem Aydin & Efe Durmaz
Performance:
BolBola aka Michael(a) Daoud, Queen of Virginity, David JongSung Myung, Valli Sefa Okutan, & Olympia Bukkakis Cameo by Kübra Uzun (on screen)
Dramatugy, Choreography: Kareth Schaffer
Stage & Costume design: Kallia Kefala
Stage & Costume collaboration: Aleix Llussà Lòpez
Project consultant, scriptwriting & translation: Liv Katny
Sound design: Gizem Oruç aka 6zm
Film director: Efe Durmaz
Video & Graphic design: Ainissa V
Project assistance: Pegah Keshmirshekan
Technical Direction & Light:
Fabian Eichner
Production Management:
Tine Elbel
Photos: Mayra Wallraff
Supported by Fonds Darstellende Künste
MÜDE (performance) 2021
MÜDE is a solo multimedia performance about the state of being tired. It intends to produce an intimate public space, a soft shell inside which comfort and discomfort coexist. The friction between reality and dream, gravity and lightness, privilege and responsibility creates a multi-sensorial disaster that resists to perform what it is being asked to. A cozy world where all expectations can be denied. MÜDE is an invitation to contemplate on living and working under the pressure of efficiency and achievement and on the ideal of self optimization. Moreover, it is about unlearning those. The piece pursues to discover radical potentials in fatigue and explores new possible ways to connect with each other and with the world.
Concept/Direction/Performance: Kallia Kefala, Movement dramaturgy: Nefeli Gioti,Video design: Gloria Gammer, Sound design: Kim Bode, Light design: Claudia Rutz, Stage & Costume design: Kallia Kefala/Elisa Nelvand, Production: Annett Hardegen, Technical Supervision: Aiko Okamoto, Photos: Louisa Boeszoermeny
Funded by the Berlin Senate Department of Culture and Europe
and the Fonds Darstellende Künste
MÜDE (artistic research) 2020
Funded by the Berlin Senate Department of Culture and Europe
Müde (Weary) evolves around weariness and its relation to precarious living conditions. The focus of the research lies on fatigue as a material condition as well as on the ways fatigue and tiredness manifest themselves on the surfaces of bodies. In this work the body is perceived as a hybrid, as the materialization of the interaction between flesh, clothes, objects and practices. Müde is a work about intensified working conditions and deteriorated living realities, bodies and the subversive potential of being tired.
Funded by the Senate Department of Culture and Europe
and the Fonds Darstellende Künste
AND NOWHERE CAN IT BE DIRECTED WITHOUT DISTRESS (short film) 2021
Direction: Louisa Boeszoermeny
Camera: Gene Glover
Sound: Enrique Cuesta
Costumes: Kallia Kefala
Performers: Suma Abdelsamie, Sepehr Brüderlin, Sofia Iordansky, Raha Emami Khansari
Photos: Louisa Boeszoermeny & Kallia Kefala
Three short films. An introduction to queer theory 2020
Three short films which introduce some of the main concepts of queer theory. The performers visualize and embody complex ideas of queer theory as well as its function as a tool for the analysis and critic of power. Hybrid figures playfully unfold notions, terms and arguments around gender and sexuality pointing out their political and social importance.
Concept and realization: Antke A. Engel und Filmfetch, FernUniversität Hagen, Lehrgebiet ‚Bildung und Differenz‘ (2020)
Costume design: Kallia Kefala
Performers: Neo Hülcker, Saboura Naqshband, Jayrôme C.Robinet, Pasquale Virginie Rotter
Sound design: Hyenaz
Foto: Sascha Senicer
Costume assistant: Mia Dünkel
available at http://e.feu.de/queer-theory-videos
The Enclosed Garden (performance) 2019
The enclosed garden is a performance about femininity and sexuality based on christian iconography. I investigate the way sexuality is concealed or described as an allegory inside the framework of christian faith. In doing so, I activate the idea of hortus conclusus (enclosed garden). The concept of the enclosed garden in relation to Virgin Mary pervades the theological thought, the religious written word and her depiction in art during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Hortus conclusus, basically, identifies her with a hermetically sealed and at the same time orgiastic garden. My intention is to place this symbolism outside the religious framework, distorting its original meanings and performing the original narrations around it differently.
Performers: Kim Bode, Nefeli Gioti, Stouli Leporidae
Movement: Nefeli Gioti
Sound: Kim Bode
Photos: Nikos Katsaros
presented at the Athens Festival of Queer Performance (2019)
The performance approaches time as a cultural concept and researches through movement, stage and costume design as well as through footage photos the way time is perceived. By scrutinizing motion, fragments of time are reconstructed in order to palpate linearity, circularity, continuity and discontinuity of time and space. The piece takes place in an indefinable space and time, deploying aesthetic codes of past times as well as new fictive/future ones.
Choreografy: Nefeli Gioti
Costume design: Kallia Kefala
Gallery Haus N Athen (2019)
Tundra 2019
Drag as-self
staging-as Drag (artistic research) 2018
Reasearching the codes of femininity and masculinity in drag performance and in private dressing practices. Trying to draw a connection between performance and performativity, I observe the intersections of theatrical costuming practices and private vestimentery practices in formation of gendered subjectivities. A brief theoretical and photographical research in the history of gender representation in theater and theatrical costume, as well as an approach of drag definitions in a multiperspectival way are the starting points of this research. Locating drag practices in an actual Berlin based scene, I interviewed three performers* with different drag approaches in an attempt to document the multiplicity of drag and research the role of costuming and dressing practices. The project also includes my own experiments of staging femininity and masculinity conducted on my own body. Use of photographic footage material as well as vestimentary practices and gestures inside my own family are methods of entangling biography and personal experience in my project. (2018)
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