Sophie Allerding (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist focused on storytelling and crafting experiences that foster meaningful encounters. Rooted in worldbuilding and speculative fiction, Sophie employs various media such as role-play, audio/visuals, and radio to unravel the multifaceted nature of our shared reality. Sophie is active in the feminist collectives POSSY and Radio Echo Collective and part of .zip-space, an artist-run interdisciplinary project space in Rotterdam, where they are currently based.
Eixogen - 2023, urban-role-play game
Duration: 6 weeks, including 4 3 hours long role-play sessions
A collaboration with Louisa Teichmann
Eixogen is an urban role-playing game that unfolds online through the Eixogen travel app and within the urban space of Rotterdam. Over the course of six weeks, a speculative future story addresses social and ethical questions arising from the development of smart cities. Eixogen uses elements of LARP (life action role play) Geo-caching and psychogeography. The game aims to simulate the use of smart city travel apps within urban spaces while encouraging subversive ways of engaging with the technology.
The Anatomical Theater - 2023, photograms, wax sculptures, mixed-media installation.
It is no coincidence that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was written during the beginning of modern anatomical science. An emerging medical gaze transformed the perception of bodies in Western societies from holistic entities into assemblages of isolated organs, flesh, and tissues. The new image of the body was solely created by men.
Frankenstein refused to create a wife for his monster; he feared they would reproduce and give birth to a brood of monstrous anatomy. He also did not want to relinqish his newly gained power of reproduction without a womb.
Organs without a body, science generating magic, a darkroom instead of a womb. A monstrous anatomy is a speculative exploration of female anatomy, created with the tools available to us.
This work is part of the work The Anatomical Theater collectively created with Ana Garcia Jacome.
The Moritat of the Shark - Public Intervention and Participatory Performance at the Hallo Festspiele 2022
Collaboration with the choreographer Ari Adamski and the Hallo e.V.
The Hallo e.V. is a cultural association and network that creates welfare-oriented urban spaces and cultural productions. It has provided me with a space for experimentation, culture creation, and networking for many years. However, after seven years, Hallo had to leave its place of residence, the Schaltzentrale, because the owners decided to sell the site located in a flourishing neighbourhood in Hamburg to investors.
'Das Moritat vom Haifisch' was a participatory performance and public intervention in which the funeral of the Schaltzentrale was enacted. This served, on one hand, to provide the network of audiences and cultural workers a platform to mourn and, on the other hand, to draw attention to the displacement of culture by profit-oriented investors and gentrification.
The Last Submarine - In a future where sea levels have risen, and planet Earth is mostly covered by water, humanity seeks refuge in floating cities composed of drifting remnants of the world we once knew. One of the most significant challenges people face is the scarcity of fresh water. Suddenly, however, there appears to be hope for the weary and thirsty society: a researcher has seemingly discovered a strange creature in the depths of the sea, with the apparent ability to transform seawater into drinking water. With humanity's last remaining resources, a submarine crew is dispatched to investigate this suspicion.
'The Last Submarine' is a climate fiction role-play in which participants assume the roles of the submarine crew on its final mission. The mission spans four days and nights, guided by a soundtrack, taking participants deeper into the sea and the confrontation with a conflict over ownership of natural resources and their scarcity.
2023, participatory storytelling experience/LARP (Life action role play)
Duration: 4 hours
In collaboration with Jana Romanova
The Webconferene Imagining The Arachnopocene - 2022, Online workshop and role-play-experience,120 min.
Includes: audio visual stories, AR facefilter.
The web conference, 'Imagining the Arachnopocene,' is an audio-visual story in three acts, forming the playground for an online role-play and collaborative world-building experience. The fictional conference takes place on a video call and is the result of artistic research on questions related to human-nature relationships, alienation, knowledge creation, and power structures, using the spider as a carrier of stories.
The Webconference Imagining the Arachnopocene - Installation view at KABK graduation show, 2022.
Waterland – On How to become a Body of Water - Waterland – On how to become a body of water - 2021 - ongoing. Installation consisting photographs, photo montage, news paper clipping, archive material. In the 15th century, a flood breached the Markermeer dykes in the Netherlands and washed an unknown body ashore. The creature appeared like a woman but couldn't speak nor behave like a human being. Experts declared: It must be a mermaid. Waterland is a speculative climate fiction on rising sea levels examining our relationship with the ocean from the hydro feminist perspective of a mermaid. The rise in sea levels is a well-known consequence of climate change and one of the biggest struggles in the Netherlands.The question is no longer if the country will sink but when. How does a sinking country dream, imagine and design a future? How can we coexist with the sea? The mermaid, embodying both human and water life, enriches humanity's cultural imagination across diverse historical contexts. My work explores the mermaid's contemporary relevance, offering perspectives on urgent issues like rising sea levels.
Radio Echo Collective - In 2022, I co-founded the feminist radio collective Radio Echo. We are a location-independent radio collective dedicated to amplifying stories overshadowed by long-unexamined and unrevised worldviews. Taking an intersectional feminist standpoint, we echo stories through our own voices and experiences, cultivating a landscape for multiple voices to thrive and create vibrations that subvert mainstream narratives. Radio Echo members include Sophie Allerding, Beatrice Cera, Lina von Jaruntowski, Lea Novi, Emilia Martin, and Renata Mirón.
www.radioecho.net
