Deva Schubert
Glitch Choir: Voices between the social and the sonic

This field project delves into the power of collective voice and movement, exploring how disruptions – glitches – generate new forms of expression. Rooted in the practice of the performance Glitch Choir, experimentation with yodeling, overtone singing, dissonance, and live composition raises questions about how voice traverses bodies and creates resonance. How does the shift between harmony and dissonance shape collective space?
Through individual scores, choral patterns, and intimate one-on-one practices – such as singing into each other’s mouths—the interplay of body, voice, and space is investigated. Rather than focusing on emotions, the affects that emerge through different techniques are explored. The artistic practice will be complemented by collective reading sessions, engaging with texts such as The Lexicon of the Mouth by Brandon LaBelle. Inspired by the deconstruction of lamentation, the questions arise: What does it mean to get in and out of sync? How does resonance create collectivity?

This research invites participants to listen, hum, whisper, complain, and scream – investigating how dissonance, multivocality, and collective resonance can generate new social and sonic spaces. The research aims to challenge a unified understanding of collectivity and seeks the common ground in the diverse – or even the dissonant.

The week will be hosted by Deva Schubert with the Glitch Choir core team: Chihiro Araki and Lotta Beckers.

Chihiro Araki (she/her) is a dance, voice and performance artist based in Berlin. After training at the Tokyo Ballet School and earning a BA from the Rambert School in London, she has danced with Carte Blanche / The Norwegian National Company of Contemporary Dance and the Johannes Wieland Company, as well as for Alban Richard, Jenny Beyer, Helena Waldmann, Meg Stuart, Deva Schubert, Lina Gómez, Sergiu Matis and musical artist Pan Daijing (Haus der Kunst).

Lotta Paula Mathilda Beckers (they/them) is based in Berlin and works as a dramaturge and artist. They studied Applied Theatre Studies at the University of Gießen, Choreography and Dance at the National School of Performing Arts in Copenhagen, and European Media Studies in Potsdam. As a dramaturge and performer, Lotta collaborates regularly with choreographer Deva Schubert. They also share a longstanding working relationship with theatre director Noam Brusilovsky, with whom they develop documentary pieces that interrogate power structures and explore the impossible in theatre.

Lotta’s artistic research focuses on the entanglements of desire and power, cruel optimism, and the transformative potential of performativity. They are particularly interested in the oscillation between the documentary and the poetic, the intimate and the public, and in the historical within the personal. In their practice, Lotta moves fluidly between theatre, performance, dance and media art.