Moonlight Sonata

With Theresa Weber

A photo of the artist Theresa Weber standing in a dark room with a spotlight on her. She is wearing an object on her chest that looks like it is made our of bones.

Theresa Weber, Moonlight Sonata Vol. 2, South London Gallery, 2023, photo: Sam Nightingale

Moonlight Sonata is a lecture performance by artist Theresa Weber, embedded in a composition by sound artist Nathanael Amadou Kliebhan.

As part of the public programme accompanying the exhibition DAS GLÜCK IST NICHT IMMER LUSTIG by Rirkrit Tiravanija, the Gropius Bau invites you to a monthly series of Long Evenings. In addition to this lecture performance, there will be a talk between சிந்துஜன் வரதராஜா (Sinthujan Varatharajah) and مشترى هلال (Moshtari Hilal) as well as a performance by Nazanin Noori and Andrea Belfi.

Moonlight Sonata deals with the assumption that Ludwig Van Beethoven was biracial and could stand as a representative of Afro-German history. This thesis encompasses themes of whitewashing in German historiography, the constructed narrative of white superiority and the phenomenon of white passing. The main focus here is the inconsistency of a dissonance between self and external categorisation. In the lecture performance, nostalgic sounds and spoken trains of thought circumscribe a fluid existence, vulnerable bodily feelings and a searching identity.

In her artistic practice Theresa Weber seeks to challenge existing power hierarchies and fixed categorisations, while referring to ancient mythologies and historical research from an anti-colonial lens. Her perspective as a German-born artist with Jamaican, German and Greek background influences her artistic approach. She was part of the Dekoloniale Berlin Residency 2024.