The Institute of Queer Ecology
Hysteria 

Hysteria is an original multichannel video installation by IQECO premiering at the Kestner Gesellschaft. In this installation, the institute uses image, movement, and sound to construct an ecofeminist retelling of the poorly understood “dancing plagues” that swept through Europe between the tenth and the seventeenth centuries. The afflicted dancers are subtly recast as pointedly subversive agents entangled in environmental contagion and contamination that drive these wild, manic uprisings.
Dancing plagues (also referred to as dancing mania, choreomania, and tarantism) were spontaneous social phenomena in which groups of people, at times in the thousands, danced erratically and without restraint. The mania affected people of all ages and genders, and they often danced until they collapsed from exhaustion or suffered injury and even death. Although the phenomenon is well documented and affected multitudes of people across several centuries, these choreomanic events are still poorly understood.

Emilija Škarnulytė

Emilija Škarnulytė’s new work is a poetic meditation on the lifelong journey of one man’s never-ending search for home.
“We follow Abshalom Ben Shlomo through a day, as we travel simultaneously through the cosmos with him as an African American refugee, legendary jazz musician, and spiritual searcher.”