FUNKEN Mesh - About interaction

Location

FUNKEN Mesh marks the end of the Funken Kolleg. Over the past six months, participants from the arts, business and science have worked together on issues in the context of high technology. This review looks at the lessons learned from cross-sector collaboration, provides insights into ongoing projects and presents the accompanying documentation. Key moments were often informal conversations and get-togethers on the fringes of official events.

At the same time, the most important lesson is taken seriously: informal exchange is a key driver of creative processes. That is why the FUNKEN Space is being transformed into a club room – as a stage for encounters, discourse and spectacular moments at the interface of art and technology.

What can be teased out of the FUNKEN Space?

You can expect:

🔹 Insights into creative, interdisciplinary collaboration

🔹 Release of a joint publication

🔹 Interactive installations & performances

🔹 Live concerts & DJ sets

🔹 Chill-out zones & dance floor

PROGRAMME

From 5 p.m. – Open House with interventions

5.30 p.m. – FUNKEN Kolleg – Review of cross-sector collaborations with creative professionals

6 p.m. – Experience and consolidation: Continuation of collaborations: Pinpoint GmbH – Matthias Millhof – Team Frederike Moormann, Fraunhofer IWU and Kollektiv Plus X report on their experiences and further collaboration.

7 p.m. – Concerts: Elva Skyn, Krachym, Selma (tbc) with visual accompaniment by light artist Sanja Star

11 p.m. – BUMBUM with Malibu Stacy, Niklas aka [to:n], Jojo aka Neuronal Division

FUNKEN Space will also present installations by Licia Lumen, Giulia Cabassi, Jamie Mulcahy and Pony Pracht.

Among those invited are: 

Malibu Stacy

Between dark basslines, broken rhythms, and synths: the sets are open in genre but always edgy. Uncompromising – at times driving, at times abrasive – the Chemnitz-based DJ showcases her instinct for the unpredictable.

[to:n]

DJ and producer [to:n] combines a club-oriented approach with adventurous electronic music. Drawing inspiration from both contemporary and classic pop, [to:n] creates a modern soundscape full of unexpected twists and conceptual depth—inviting listeners to lose themselves and drift away.

Neuronal Division

Neuronal Division shapes a distinctive sound that oscillates between electro, acid, jungle, and techno. With razor-sharp focus on the dancefloor, the Leipzig-based artist leaves no tempo, mood, or genre untouched. As part of the nonirritating collective, he pushes the boundaries of electronic music further with his own productions and live sets.

Denise Lee

Denise Lee / 李筑 (lǐ zhú) (USA / Hong Kong / Taiwan) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Leipzig, working across sound, intervention, and film. With roots in public art, civic education, and design, her practice creates spaces for dialogue around diaspora, belonging, and the digital age. Her project The Trickster revisits global mythologies of shapeshifting and mischief to explore tactics for facing uncertain futures. Through mask-making and card readings, audiences are invited to draw on the powers of trickery and transformation.

Jamie Mulcahy

Jamie Mulcahy and her art are bold, questioning, and uncompromising. Through vulva casts, video collages, and multimedia installations, she makes feminist statements that invite reflection on norms, shame, and how we live together. In contrast to excess, Jamie Mulcahy’s installation Balance opens a retreat beneath a sky of gentle lights, soft colors, and tactile textures, where time slows down and breath deepens. The space creates an atmosphere of safety and stillness, where peace, closeness, and joy are experienced not through intoxication, but through quiet and encounter. Those who let themselves fall may rediscover themselves—in conversation, in silence, or in the glow of the light that softly envelops everything. The work is an invitation to ask, together and honestly, how we might find true rest and connection amid the rush of everyday life.

Anne Schädlich

Anne Schädlich (@studio.aeynee) works with her hands—sewing, painting, crocheting, or building. Her practice grows from impulses and an intensive dialogue with material and process. In her current work, she transforms collected second-hand clothing from Chemnitz into a large-scale textile body. Through the elaborate process of spinning yarn and crocheting, the seemingly worthless becomes an object of striking presence. Complemented by textile seating pieces, the installation invites mindfulness and a renewed perception of material and value. 

Giulia Cabassi

What better way to spark conversation than over a cigarette? In her award-winning work take my breath away, Rome-born artist Giulia Cabassi explores the ambivalent relationship with smoking—caught between attraction and addiction, habit and self-destruction. Cabassi highlights how deeply smoking is embedded in everyday life as a supposed means of stress relief: after meals, while driving, in waiting moments, or out of boredom. At the heart of her work lies the question of whether this very ubiquity conditions us—making quitting an even harder process, marked by setbacks and relapses.

Sanja Star

Sanja Star is a Berlin-based interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of sound and image. Using digital media such as 3D animation, visual programming, and sound, she explores how frequencies shape our visual perception. Her performances and installations combine improvisation with technology, creating immersive and often unpredictable experiences. Inspired by quantum physics, pareidolia, and visual abstraction, she develops an audiovisual language that weaves together perception, intuition, and digital aesthetics. At this event, she accompanies the concerts with her live visuals.

Lisa Meinig

In her artistic practice, Lisa Meinig explores the impact of social media, the influence of political content, bots and propaganda, as well as feminist perspectives and gender roles. Her works aim to make power structures visible and to create spaces for reflection and exchange. After an initial degree in Media Informatics and Interactive Entertainment—where she developed skills in 3D modeling, animation, and game design—she shifted her focus to video, projection, and procedural visuals. Today, as a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich under Hito Steyerl, she deepens her engagement with the ethical questions of machine learning and the use of artificial intelligence. On site, her visuals can be seen on the dancefloor, where spaces are explored as point clouds—slipping into abstraction and reemerging in new perspectives. 

gyroscalzone

gyroscalzone works with a self-configured video feedback chain as an experimental tool for image creation. Between analog noise and digital artifact emerges an aesthetic exploration of distortion, repetition, and transformation. The setup consists of a complex chain of image-processing devices: from a Roland Edirol V-4 video mixer through upscalers, downscalers, and several analog video processors, before returning to the original mixer. The video signals circulate through these stations in an endless loop—each device altering, distorting, or amplifying specific characteristics of the signal.

krachym

Krachym blows into the microphone as if we were standing by the sea. With his MIDI guitar he moves through the audience, dressed like an astronaut. An electronic beat sets in while he simultaneously plays drum pads and guitar—as if an entire band were on stage. In his experimental pop symphony, synthesizers, MIDI guitar, and electronic beats merge into a dense, high-energy soundscape. His musical influences span from danceable 80s pop to electronic soundscapes and rock elements—a hybrid of nostalgia and futuristic sound. 

Elva Skyn

Trough her music, Maria confronts her insecurities, weaknesses, feelings, and fears, whilel questioning existing stigmas. Her latest music project, ELVA SKYN, created together with Leipzig-based artist Arno Selle, serves as an important medium for her to express herself authentically. On stage, Maria experiments with her voice and pushes her boundaries. During her peerformances, she strives to connect with herself and her audience-to provoke thought, evoke deep emotions, and inspire courage. 

Pony Pracht - Aics, the Game

Pony Pracht has made her music playable—inviting audiences to experience sound and image in a new way. In a small game created especially for one of her music videos, sound, animation, and interaction merge into a multisensory experience. What begins as a music video expands through playful elements: visitors can dive into the audiovisual world, move through sonic spaces, and become part of the rhythm themselves. By combining digital aesthetics with an intuitive approach to music, the artist turns listening into an active, personal moment.