Leashed Unleashed

Kimberly Kaviar is a Berlin-based "performing arts collective". In 2015, Simone Gisela Weber and Juan Felipe Amaya Gonzalez met at the Inter-University Center for Dance Berlin. This encounter developed into a close and enduring working relationship. In their working methodology, they emphasise the creative potential of conflicts and differences in order to stage new performative formats. The results are interdisciplinary works that function as performative spaces of dissonance and expectation, hypothesising coexistence through collaboration with other artists, non-artists and experts from different disciplines. Together they have developed works such as "Veneralia" (2015), "3D WHITE" (2016) and "Foundation" (2017). "MANIFEST: A Work on Progress" (2017), an eight-hour performance installation, was shown in Berlin at Uferstudios. In "Retrospective: Ecology of Occupation" (2017) they experimented with the workshop format, this work was shown in the Super Local Berlin series by Constanza Macras/DorkyPark at Studio Verlin and was invited to the Performatica Festival in Puebla, Mexico. In 2018 they developed choreographic material for the piece "Perfect Romance" by the performance group The Agency, which was shown at Münchner Kammerspiele and FFT Düsseldorf. Kimberly Kaviar was selected for LAFT Berlin's Newcomer mentoring programme in 2018 and mentored by curator Ricardo Carmona in Berlin until the end of 2019.

Simone Gisela Weber is an artist and choreographer living in Berlin. She studied Theatre and Cultural Studies at the University of Leipzig and graduated from the Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz Berlin (HZT) with a BA in Dance, Context and Choreography. She is co-founder of the artists* collective "Kimberly Kaviar", which has developed various experimental performances and installations dealing with theatrical dispositives as well as the creative process and artistic collaboration. Kimberly Kaviar was nominated by LAFT Berlin for the mentoring program "Newcomer" in 2017. Curator Ricardo Carmona accompanied Kimberly Kaviar until the end of 2019. In her solo artistic practice Simone works at the interface of choreography, text and performance. Her interest lies in the construction of complex physical and visual compositions in which the body is placed in a state of risk. She believes that meeting forces of the material and immaterial world reveal the unknown and unusual. In her works she is inspired by ubiquitous habits and physical states, which she critically reinterrogates through an interplay of different media. Among others, Simone has worked with deufert&plischke, Anna Aristarkhova, I -Jung Lim, Ellinor Ljungkvist, Sanna Blennow, Jan Rozman, Nile Koetting and Boris Charmatz.

Juan Felipe Amaya Gonzalez is a Colombian performance artist living in Berlin and working in the fields of dance, choreography and visual arts. His works can be traced at the convergence of interdisciplinary practices and unexpected encounters dealing with speculations on time, technology and ecosystems. In 2015, he co-founded the collective Kimberly Kaviar with Simone Gisela Weber, which was selected for LAFT Berlin's "Newcomer" mentorship program in 2018. He is also co-founder of Scores for Gardens, a study group working at the intersection of performance and critical theory, in collaboration with Travers Copenhagen and Radialsystem Berlin. From 2018 to 2020 he was a member artist of the Creative Europe research project Moving Digits. He mainly collaborates with artists such as Jan Rozman, Deva Schubert, Maciej Sado, The Agency, Nile Koetting, Florine Leoni, Michael Portnoy, Heiner Goebbels and others.

Zhenya Salinski is an artist who was born in the Soviet Union in 1986. Zhenya grew up in the Republic of Moldova, where he earned a bachelor's degree in International Economic Relations and worked with election monitoring, women's organizations, and political parties. After moving to Berlin, Zhenya eventually started making art. In 2014, he made a video titled "Hello, my name is Eugene. How can I help you?" in which he created a choreography based on his work in a call center. He successfully applied to the University of the Arts in Berlin with it, and in 2018 he graduated with a bachelor's degree in Dance, Context and Choreography. His recent works include performances such as: "A love problem prevented me from sleeping", shown at Queer Voices Festival 2019 in Chisinau, Moldova; "Zeche", a collaboration with Tristan Rebhold and Liina Magnea, presented at Salon zu wilde Renate in March 2019 in Berlin. He is also a recipient of the 2020 Entry Grant from the Berlin Senate. His areas of interest include: Immigration, Society, Sexuality and Fears.