TELEPATHY
Sensually reactivating memories.

After two intensive transmedial research processes in 2022 and 2023 on the de-aestheticization of non-European-coded dance practices, something new opened up for us: A space that liberated movement, sound, and theatricality from the logic of exoticization and commodification.
A foundation for what we came to call Telepathy.

From the Ancient Greek τῆλε (distance) and πάθος (experience/affection), telepathy did not describe a supernatural ability, but a shared, collective sensitivity that allowed memories to circulate between bodies, times, and places.
Telepathy is access to circulating knowledge, a silent, powerful current beyond aesthetic grids.
Free from permissions.

A channel of remembrance that connects where movement is halted, bodies are overlooked, stories are erased.
It lets us travel where paths are blocked, opens spaces whose archives have long been deleted.
Telepathy lets you see what you are not supposed to see.

The research project, conducted from March 2024 to February 2025, explored movement, media art, sound design, and choreobiography through experimental methods. It activated expressions of revelation and manifestation and confronted, through transmedial narratives, the politics of perception in the  German (theatre) space.
Inspired by Sufi Tanoura and Dabke, living archives of connectedness, resistance, and collective memory, we dedicated ourselves to the invisible frequencies that connect diasporic bodies:
across languages, beyond closed-off spaces.

In a year in which much has shifted, visibility, resources, voices – we are more
deeply connected. And we saw who spun, stomped, and endured with us when the ground vibrated, didn’t give way, but carried us.

“Be like a tree and let the dead leaves drop.”
— Rumi

Credits

Thanks to / Gracias / شكراً

Basak Ünal
Bashar Shammout
Ahmad Shihabi
Christine Peters

After two intensive transmedial research processes in 2022 and 2023 on the de-aestheticization of non-European-coded dance practices, something new opened up for us: A space that liberated movement, sound, and theatricality from the logic of exoticization and commodification.
A foundation for what we came to call Telepathy.

From the Ancient Greek τῆλε (distance) and πάθος (experience/affection), telepathy did not describe a supernatural ability, but a shared, collective sensitivity that allowed memories to circulate between bodies, times, and places.
Telepathy is access to circulating knowledge, a silent, powerful current beyond aesthetic grids.
Free from permissions.

A channel of remembrance that connects where movement is halted, bodies are overlooked, stories are erased.
It lets us travel where paths are blocked, opens spaces whose archives have long been deleted.
Telepathy lets you see what you are not supposed to see.

The research project – conducted from March 2024 to February 2025 – explored movement, media art, sound design, and choreobiography through experimental methods. It activated expressions of revelation and manifestation and confronted, through transmedial narratives, the politics of perception in the  German (theatre) space.
Inspired by Sufi Tanoura and Dabke – living archives of connectedness, resistance, and collective memory – we dedicated ourselves to the invisible frequencies that connect diasporic bodies:
across languages, beyond closed-off spaces.

In a year in which much has shifted – visibility, resources, voices – we are more
deeply connected. And we saw who spun, stomped, and endured with us when the ground vibrated, didn’t give way, but carried us.

“Be like a tree and let the dead leaves drop.”
— Rumi

Credits:

Pauli Nafer
Dancer & Choreographer

Mohamad Tamim
Dancer & Choreographer

Rojin Sharafi
Sound Design

Romy Schmidt
Artistic Director

Duncan Tafel
Media Art Research & Video Production

Suliman Almogharbel
Footage Production – Film “Al Darwish”

Alexander Huegel (2022–24)
Orbital Noise & Universal Rotation Media Art

Gabs_ Carneiro
Outside Eye & Dramaturgy

Adnan Abdalrahman
Photography / Website

Thanks to / Gracias / شكراً
Basak Ünal
Bashar Shammout
Ahmad Shihabi
Christine Peters