On Leopoldplatz in Wedding, amorphous sculptures stand and float, reminiscent of biomimetic forms from nature and at the same time of beings from another world. The performative installation Magical Manti by Berlin based artist Elisa Duca focuses on the interplay of human and non-human actors in everyday life. The Leopoldplatz in Berlin‘s Wedding, a highly frequented place where markets take place weekly, the neighborhood exchanges ideas, and children play, and which is at the same time defined by poverty, drugs, and a strong presence of heteronormative masculinity, became the focus of the artistic exploration. For a few days, the artist‘s interventions want to open the viewer‘s eyes to new shapes, colours and possibilities.
Magical Manti consists of hybrid inflatable objects that have undergone many stages of transformation. Their title is a reference to Turkish dumplings that can be eaten in the neighborhood - to the everyday life in the Kiez. Created in collaboration with an image-generating artificial intelligence, their forms elude clear definitions. They invite to endure everyday contradictions and to understand ourselves as part of an organic and inorganic landscape of human and non-human beings. In addition to the new reality on Leopold Square, the digital space has also been transformed. In an augmented reality, the visitors* can click on their smartphones into a world that has already existed in the digital, but can only be experienced on the Leopoldplatz when it is activated. With Magical Manti Duca proposes a world in which everything is in flux, boundaries are allowed to blur, and diverse lifestyles are possible.
Together with people from the neighborhood and from Berlin, workshops for children, young people and adults will be offered, which, inspired by Magical Manti, invite to consider Leopoldplatz as a place for visions of the future, as a place for fluidity and queer utopias.
„Leo, a place for everyone“ - what could that look like? On two dates in August 2023, Elisa Duca invites a wider audience to learn more about the creation of her creatures and to become part of the work with colorful chalk on the square using their own formal language, and to let their visions take shape.
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Elisa Duca‘s artistic practice is shaped by transcultural experiences of foreignness and has its place in post-migrant society. In her performative installations she creates lively mixed states, hybrids, in which the absurdity of clear categorizations can be experienced. The mixture of materials she uses corresponds to her non-hierarchical approach to media, human and object, and the ability of objects to communicate with each other and with humans, to generate meaning and create their own networks.
