UNEXPECTED LESSONS 5: The Resonating Body – Writing and Orality

Melanie Jame Wolf / emet ezell / Alvin Tran / Celina Baljeet Basra

UNEXPECTED LESSONS 5: The Resonating Body – Writing and Orality 1 – „My Mouth is a Resurrection Channel“, 2026

“Everything I make starts with language, with a word, a title, a repeated phrase” – Melanie Jame Wolf

Language is sound. Tunes dancing in a choreography; your tongue moving against your palate and pushing against your teeth. We spit and chew, bite and devour, click our tongues and sing and scream. Writing is a practice of knowledge transmission, memory, and self-positioning. In the intertwining of body, orality, and writing, hybrid forms emerge in which experience, history, and the present are inscribed and carried forward. The works presented in this chapter of “UNEXPECTED LESSONS – Knowledges of Body and Sound” reflect on these notions and more, in a writing workshop, in performative readings, in a play, and in a conversation.

“Language Acts” – Writing Workshop

How to edit language acts for the stage? How to shape text for dance and performance? 

Language Acts is a writing workshop co-hosted by Melanie Jame Wolf and Celina Baljeet Basra for dance and performance practitioners, as well as writers who would like to think about language as a carefully considered material for performance, both in making and presentation. It is for artists who would like to develop concrete tools for editing and rewriting language that will live on stages. Celina Baljeet Basra and Melanie Jame Wolf invite participants to bring an existing text that we will workshop and evolve in two rounds. The objective of the workshop is to equip stage artists with agency in writing.

“The Resonating Body” – Three Performances

Choreographer, performer, writer, and visual artist Melanie Jame Wolf explores the vulnerability of the live moment and the body as an unruly political riddle; she will present the formal experiment “UNRULY MATERIAL (After Genet, after Mr. Punch)”.

Visual artist and writer emet ezell works with the themes of devotion, dispossession, ruin, and return. The mouth and lips, and knowledge transmitted through eating, chewing, and spitting, are recurring motifs in their work. At Radialsystem, they will present the performative reading “MY MOUTH IS A RESURRECTION CHANNEL”.

Choreographer and artist Alvin Tran works with pop songs, music videos, and film. “STRAWBERRY, ARIZONA”, the artist’s first play, is about spectatorship and the parasocial imagination. It explores the frightening possibility that personality itself can become a survival technology: something we inherit, perform, desire, and eventually pass on to someone else.

Artists/Collaborators: Melanie Jame Wolf , emet ezell , Alvin Tran, Celina Baljeet Basra (Mit)

The series ‘UNEXPECTED LESSONS – Knowledges of Body and Sound’ is supported by the LOTTO Foundation Berlin. In cooperation with the Betty Center for Movement Research in Dance Studies at LMU Munich. An event as part of the TALKING OBJECTS LAB.

Media partners Radialsystem: taz. die tageszeitung, tip Berlin, The Berliner, Radio 3.

15 – 18 h“Language Acts” Writing Workshop | KubusWith Celina Baljeet Basra & Melanie Jame Wolf

19 h“The Resonating Body”Performances | Studio 1„MY MOUTH IS A RESURRECTION CHANNEL“Performative Reading by emet ezell„UNRULY MATERIAL (After Genet, after Mr. Punch)“Formal Experiment by Melanie Jame Wolf„STRAWBERRY, ARIZONA“A Play by Alvin Tran 

20.30 hArtist Talk | Studio 1With Alvin Tran, emet ezell and Melanie Jame Wolf, hosted by Celina Baljeet Basra

In English.

Next date:

• Date Saturday, 31/October/2026 15:00
• Venue Radialsystem V
• Address Holzmarktstraße 33, 10243 Berlin-Friedrichshain