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We are very happy to announce The Globe is Going to the Moon, episode 100 of the podcast series Promise No Promises! and episode 30 of The Tale and the Tongue series. It follows a conversation between Yuko Mohri, an installation artist focusing on “events” that constantly shift according to the environment’s conditions and Sonia Fernández Pan, the host of this podcast series. During my stay in Tokyo, I went to the Artizon Museum with a friend. There we experienced On Physis, an exhibition by Yuko Mohri with artists who appear to be alive even though they are not. I remember the playful movement of Yuko Mohri’s pieces, as well as breaking the rules by taking videos when it was forbidden… I really liked Yuko Mohri’s way of telling stories and the fact that her words included brackets to express her laughs between questions and answers. Drawing on the artist’s ideas, I cannot help but think that our work is a manifestation of what we were or what we would like to be—even when what we do, does not explicitly speak about us, as in the case of Yuko Mohri and many artists I admire. Yuko Mohri’s work Moré Moré Tokyo (Leaky Tokyo) also made me feel connected to her. I sensed what I call “unconscious or unaware communities.” They are made of people who do not know each other but who have things in common. We talked about her relationship with music, invisible forces, electricity, Osaka, her recent exhibitions, Akihabara, Instagram, Venice, how she became an artist, and teaching during the pandemic.

“The In-Between” is episode 29 of The Tale and the Tongue podcast series. It emerged from several exchanges between Mafe Moscoso, writer, researcher, and anthropology professor at BAU, College of Arts and Design of Barcelona, and former fellow at CAPAS at Universität Heidelberg, and Sonia Fernández Pan, host of this podcast series. “Dear Mafe, Starting from the end – one of our many in-betweens – I’ll answer your question: what was I doing when I was five years old? Like you, I was moving for the first time. I was starting to become Galician—to my great regret at the time. I was sad to realize I would not be Basque. Like you, I didn’t like the change. Just like a plant uprooted against its will, that’s how I felt. The word “in-between,” which keeps resurfacing in our conversations, was already there in 2023—and even before that. I remember how central that idea was in your project for Hangar, for the way it connects to the mestizo. Mestizo is a word that carries your voice to me. Something I had forgotten is that the word “entremedio” in German was the title of a project I did with Lucrecia Dalt at the Lilly Reich and Mies van der Rohe Pavilion in Barcelona. She chose it back then, still living in Berlin: Dazwischen. Sometimes I miss the life without fear or worry that art residencies make possible. I felt at home because, for the first time in a long while, I felt safe. But you define it much better: to live the life of an inheritor. Does that happen to you with Heidelberg? Do you still miss that quiet life? Or perhaps the present demands so much from us now that there’s little time left for longing. your dear Pan”

“To Stir the Desire for Something Else” is episode 28, that emerged from multiple exchanges with poet and researcher María Salgado and Sonia Fernández Pan. “Dear María, I was told many times that poetry is something physical. I didn't get it from reading books. I think I got it when I saw you on stage with Fran Cabeza de Vaca. Years ago, you called poetry a vampire, and I also feel that it's like a ghost. Poetry is present in many places that are not poems. I often wonder what poetry is. It's not just short lines and books with lots of white space. There are poets in contemporary art, but contemporary art is not exactly a friend of brief, clear ideas. To use short sentences, you need to know exactly what you want to say. I really like the idea that poetry is a kind of vampire that runs through different eras. As you say, the fact of having to survive for thousands of years, but keeping a certain essence, has made poetry “to lose world”… Inspired by the things you said, these past few weeks I have started collecting phrases by my friends. I wanted to add them to this podcast with my voice. But I am not sure yet. In editing, as you well know, it is possible to delete and change the order of ideas. Over the years, I have understood that editing is as much about what you do to someone's voice as it is about what you don't do. Content is one thing, meaning is another. How they merge, it’s still a mystery to me. Auf WiederUmarmen, as I like to say in German.”

“A Place Where There Are Not Words” is episode 27, emerging from one of several encounters with Elin McCready in Tokyo. Besides researching language inside and outside of academia, she's a member of the collectives WAIFU and SLICK. I met Elin during my first few weeks in Japan. I also remember the nuance Elin made regarding safe spaces. It is not the same to say “a safe space to” or “a safe space from.” She would also tell me that identity politics are one thing and personal interactions are quite another. The way in which these contradict each other is something that comes up in many conversations with friends. It often reminds me of an idea by val flores, which I saw expressed in Tokyo with a vivid image of snow on a cherry blossom tree. We must learn to live with contradictory instructions. Our conversation for this podcast started with the Fueiho Law. It was introduced in 1948 to police nightlife in Japan, banning dancing at specific hours. The club scene in Japan is all about music, as Elin says. Dancing does not mean the same thing in every city, venue or moment in life. A rave is political if its ravers do political action. The same goes for art. Editing the podcast of someone who is so conscious of language, created even more questions. Each voice is a collection of many others. I also believe that we have many voices within us, even contradictory ones.

“Finding along the way” is episode 26, which follows a conversation with filmmaker Zheng Lu Xinyuan and Sonia Fernández Pan, the host of this podcast series. Xinyuan said she wasn't too worried that Western audiences wouldn't understand her films because they were made for Chinese audiences. Thinking about her comment, Sonia watched some of her films with the feeling of missing something very important due to different cultural sensitivities. Meanwhile, she experienced what we so often feel: the understanding of something without fully comprehending it. Cinema evokes memories and feelings that have been forgotten or hidden for a long time. At the same time, a film can show some emotions while producing different, even contradictory ones. Sonia’s questions for the interview were more about feelings than cinema-making: how feelings help us to feel belonging. As Xinyuan recounts, belonging can also be a sentient situation in which the body feels pleasure or comfort. When talking about loss of control, anxiety appears. This feeling is also part of the process of making a film. As Xinyuan says, “finding along the way” is what matters when making films. Following Xinyuan's words, “it should not be artists who are afraid of censorship”. Those who censor are the ones who are afraid, but they pass this feeling on to those who are censored. It is not only about your own voice but also about those who accompany and support you so that your voice can speak and be heard.

We lost the plot, episode 25 of the Tale and the Tongue podcast series, follows a two-instant conversation with artist Ella C Bernard and Sonia Fernández Pan, the host of this podcast series. The two speak about the cultural art scene in Berlin and how political identity has almost become more important than artistic practice, patronizing attitudes, censorship and Ella C Bernard’s personal account of having a Nazi grandfather. While Germany talks a lot about its Nazi past, it tells very little about it. Perhaps because it is often Germany that speaks, not Germans speaking in the first person. Unlike many other Germans, Ella C Bernard does not hide her personal and emotional connection to the aftermath of Nazism in German society. As she says, taking responsibility starts with speaking in the first person. And doing so without guilt or shame for a past that is given and not chosen. We can try to be critical individuals and not compliant roles within given plots and scripts. A part of censorship is having to measure our tone and our wording, like it is often the case when talking about Israel and Palestine in Germany. As Sonia Fernández Pan says, she feels that moral arrogance, among many other things, is also part of the puzzle. Meanwhile, Ella C Bernard is critical of the state's manipulation of both concepts: culture and remembrance. “Listening to Ella talk about her relationship with art, I wonder if the same thing is happening to art that happened to Germany: that we repeat an official narrative that is not really ours.” —Sonia Fernández Pan 

A point of contact, a common ground is episode 24 of The Tale and the Tongue podcast series, following a conversation between music journalist, booking agent, event promoter, and translator Yuko Asanuma, and Sonia Fernández Pan, the host of this podcast series. “In the last few years, I have seen Yuko in different places in Berlin, often in music-related environments but not only. Yuko Asanuma says, the places where we are willing to go to, we recognize each other as part of a different type of community. Although there may be music, it is something else that brings us together. I attended the first Setten series of events, part of the agency Yuko Asanuma runs. ‘Setten’ is a Japanese word meaning both ‘point of contact’ and ‘common ground.’ It is also an invitation for people to meet and amplify each other. There is something slippery about partying, about being together in one place at one time. Even when all the elements seem to be perfect, we may not feel fully present. Other times, unexpectedly, we feel totally connected in places where we don't seem to belong. As Yuko states, you can't really anticipate the energy that an event will create. While most of the institutional and mainstream cultural contexts are co-opted to remain silent, it is in other venues that the most relevant things and conversations are happening. And here I understand relevance as a question of common struggles and ethics in times of censorship and escalating state violence.” Sonia Fernández Pan

Where does from scratch start? is episode 23, which developed after a conversation with artist Jesse Darling. While I believe that ideas are never entirely our own, there is something very personal in how we express them. Especially when they are joined by life stories, as in Jesse's case. Following Jesse's words during our conversation, the things we do or think come mostly from life experiences. Listening to Jesse, it does not seem accidental how capitalism keeps us strategically busy and tired. Yet, we keep imagining and doing, with what we have and with what we don't have. Perhaps the question is not only how we work, but for what or who we work for. A question I asked Jesse was when does "from scratch" start? The compass is the search for an origin, a beginning, or a starting point. But when the source is multiple, a single origin is quite impossible.

Inhabiting a Tongue Together is the twenty-second episode of The Tale and the Tongue podcast series. It is a conversation with artist Iz Öztat, driven by the curiosity to learn more about Iz and Zişan, Iz’s close collaborator and her alter ego, a ghost she encounters from time to time. As I got to know Zişan better, a sense of time travel came over me. Every episode of her life is a place of struggle, yet also confidence and desire. To follow Zişan brings you to places and times that we have not lived: the Ottoman Empire, the European avant-garde, the memory of the waters of the Danube, the love between women writers in the 1920s... Thanks to Iz Öztat, Zişan makes the past happen differently. The present is a slippery time. It can move us backward and forwards at the same time. The spirit of the Avant-garde of the last century, promoting European modernity, is not so far removed from our present. The relevance of artistic practices is still decided from the same places, even if their actors come from different locations. And it is here that Zişan appears to challenge and be part of an avant-garde that made Europe the centre of attention. When asking Iz for a different way to introduce Zişan, she would go back to the title of this series. They tell a story inhabiting a tongue together. But this tongue speaks different languages.

Getting Along with Discomfort is episode twenty-one of The Tale and the Tongue podcast series, which follows a conversation with curator and researcher Rita Ouédraogo on the importance of conversation and exchanges in processes and learning to get along with discomfort.   Honesty, something that Rita Ouédraogo brings to our conversation, allows us to know what we can do and where we stand. Many misunderstandings in processes come from not explaining from the start what the conditions and intentions of the projects we work on are. Making them available provides a better understanding of the given structures in which we can work but cannot change. As she says, listening is an essential part of conversation. Discomfort is something that Rita relates to many of her experiences, from different positions and meanings. Far from being a stable place, discomfort is a situation that arises, that morphs, and that never quite goes away. What's more, for Rita it can become a curatorial strategy. Acknowledging that discomfort exists, is knowing how to listen to it when it appears. 

EVERY GESTURE COUNTS, HOWEVER SMALL, is the 20th episode of the “Tale and the Tongue” podcast series. Full of intimate moments, Sonia Fernández Pan exchanged thoughts over months with Karolina Grzywnowicz, talking about plants, migration, activism and much more. “Dear Karolina, The cuttings of the plants you gave me are taking root in water. I put them on a windowsill so that they are closer to the sun. It is quite telling that plants, which apparently don't move from their place, make you travel so much. But as you say, plants are not as native as they appear to be in many places. How a landscape can be a crime scene and a place full of concealed violence, to borrow your words, reminds me of how the forests of my childhood did not exist in my grandparents' childhood... This podcast also relates to this moment: a shared need to meet and talk. Especially, when many want us to be silent, detached, and indifferent…. A feminist collective called for the need to talk about trees, connecting many, many feminist struggles around the world. As they say, to talk about trees is to talk about colonialism, extractivism, and injustice... I pause my words here, always curious to hear more stories from you. Take care, and water. Sonia ”

MOVING IN MIGRANT RHYTHMS is episode nineteen, which follows a conversation with artist and loud thinker Maya Saravia and the podcast host Sonia Fernández Pan. In their conversation the migrant experience is very present. Maya has lived in different cities since she left Guatemala, including Madrid, Lisbon and Berlin. Even if we are the same person, our bodies do not move in the same way in all places and cultures. Part of the insights Maya and Sonia share have a lot to do with feeling and thinking with other rhythms. One of the music genres that Maya often talks about is raggaeton. The raggaeton rhythms are dangerously catchy. It is one of those music rhythms whose will is stronger than ours. In the statement of one of her projects, she refers to raggaeton as a syncretic event. It is a volcano erupting in the world, driven by the flows of capital, labour, many displacements and musical traditions. Another of her projects, El Olvido, starts in a bar in Guatemala. She says it's a bar that could be anywhere in the world. A place where the light-hearted life of bars mixes with the violence of the news. Violence always makes words fall short. Making things happen is usually the attitude of people who see art as a way, and not so much as a destination. It is not about the destination or following a course, but about how one thing leads to another; it is not only important to move, but to create conditions for movement. Perhaps that is the most magical thing about conversations, that they move us without intending to.

HOW CAN A FORM BE A HOLDER FOR INTENTIONS AND IDEAS is episode eighteen, following a conversation with multidisciplinary artist, experimental filmmaker, and writer Crystal Z Campbell. While form is one of the meaning-making elements in art, it can be often overlooked. Crystal Z Campbell, who furthermore refers to attention as a form of care, shaped formal relevance from a question: how can a form be a holder, a vessel, for intentions and ideas? In Crystal's work, which combines the specifics of historical events with the abstraction of artistic gestures and the serendipity of processes, form can be felt in many ways. Crystal's films are temporary places to enter and engage in a sensory relationship with the stories they make present. The witnessing relationship is also central to Crystal Z Campbell's work. Looking is not only a biological process, but also a historical one. They wonder in a public conversation: “How do we look at things we can't see?” Following Crystal's words, "looking should not be easy". Precisely when things are easy, our attention remains strategically distracted elsewhere, looking without seeing what is in front of us. The conversation with Crystal Z Campbell took place and words in November 2023. They were in Saint Louis, Oklahoma and Sonia Fernández Pan, the host of this podcast series, was in Berlin. Another thing Crystal mentioned in their conversation: the situation of indirect witness towards so many materials, events, and situations, the acts of omission, the gaps in the narratives. There are still many gaps in the official narratives, but also in our professional stories.

NOT KNOWING HOW A DEAD LANGUAGE SOUNDED—episode seventeen of the of The Tale and the Tongue series—follows a conversation with multi-media producer, writer, public speaker, educator, audio remixer, DJ, and owner of the Comatonse Recordings record label Terre Thaemlitz, and Sonia Fernández Pan, the host of this podcast series. The title of this podcast is inspired by a comment that appeared during the meeting with Terre Thaemlitz. She proposed a future in which aspects of the past are unknown as a critical gesture towards the ongoing and growing demand for visibility and preservation of mainstream, but not only, archival systems. Like any other medium, archives and documents produce ideology and are produced by ideology. Following more of Terre Thaemlitz’s comments, this podcast conversation is also not excluded from how criticism of the system is part of the system. Because, as he says, analysis and artistic work is often confused with political organisation. The relational dynamics of gender also emerged in this conversation with Terre Thaemlitz. Like Brigitte Vasallo—author, activist and former guest of the Promise No Promises! podcast series, episode 27 The Monogamy of the System—he is very nuanced about the widespread belief that removing gender from language removes its impact on social realities. On the current situation of gender pronouns, Sonia Fernández Pan also shared with Terre Thaemlitz her thoughts on other uses for the pronoun “they.” Sometimes Sonia Fernández Pan perceives in this pronoun a chance to imply the plurality of the self: “they” in relation to the “I” and not so much to the “she” or “he.” We are often asked to speak in key words that make us less complex than we are. Identity as a comfort zone or final destination contradicts the identity discomfort of so many lives. Being different like others is not the same as being different from others.

Staying with the wonder, is the sixteenth episode of the Tale and the Tongue series. As with Luz Broto, this episode is created through an audio recording exchange by artist Daniela Medina Poch and Sonia Fernández Pan, the host of the Tale and the Tongue podcast series. Dear Daniela, I have been collecting bottle caps these days to keep bringing the sea closer to this marshy city. Yesterday I brought back several from a long journey to reach a lake, as well as some strange, very hard mushrooms growing on the trunks of some trees. Curiosity makes us eavesdrop and intrusive, diverts us from the straight and narrow, makes us perceive the extraordinary within the ordinary, even makes us change our minds. Do you think curiosity is a crossing point between seeking and finding? I feel it is an indispensable attitude to stay with the wonder, an idea of yours that is much more than an idea. It is perhaps a way of being in the world, an unstable position that makes and unmakes given realities. Someone told me that curiosity was a type of youth. And I think that if you stay with the wonder, you age youthfully. In starting to write this letter, which is for you, but also for anyone who wants to listen to us through your voice, I was trying to recall things I said to you in my voice notes but not doing so keeps the secret. However, it is not the mystery of my stories that is important here, but the possibility of not telling something or of telling it half-heartedly. Not knowing everything stops being uncomfortable and becomes a way to stay with the wonder. I stop here, a bit suddenly. A summer storm has just started. Perhaps these drops bring to Berlin the waters of so many rivers that are important to you. See you in the future to share flavors, wishes and stories. In the meantime, enjoy the unknown very much. Yours, Sonia