About the Project
Somewhere, Maybe Here is a performance/film piece in development: a call for connection from a stranger, a fallen angel who arrives to the city, to Berlin. It’s about really being Here.
Performance-maker Cat Gerrard started developing this character two and a half years ago, just after she’d moved to the city. Struggling to connect with where she was, she had the feeling she needed to get out of the studio and onto the streets, to see what happened when she improvised with the public. Somewhere, Maybe Here was Cat’s first artistic excursion to step over the distance she felt from the city and to try to really encounter the people and the place in which she found herself.
It was a beautiful, exhilarating and provoking encounter.
With an expanded team - of photographer Alix Lucas, camera operator Hugo Reis and costume maker Angharad Matthews - we are re-working Somewhere, Maybe Here in April 2018 – taking to the streets with a couple of cameras and a pair of wings. The piece will become a silent film, to be screened with live accompaniment on the piano by Nerea Ariznabaretta and with an accompanying analogue photographic exhibition.
We are also collaborating with artists - local and international, Berlin and beyond-Berlin – starting to talk to each other through our work, our art. And we are talking to others who live in Berlin, about their stories of the city, of their arrivals and departures, their longings and their rootings.
Why You Should Join Us
We live in provoking times, when many of our encounters in public happen through a screen: we instinctively capture and post who and what we meet, or else we hide behind our phones and ignore or simply don’t really see the world.
The angel just wants to connect and play…
…and we’ve found it’s quite hard to ignore her. Through our earlier research over the last two and half years – which has led to two previous short films – we discovered she gives people the permission to connect and play. The angel reminds us of another possibility, another way of being, even for a moment: to be open to having a real encounter with another, which might even spill over into the rest of the day…
She opens the possibility of another way of seeing, not just ourselves, but also the city.
And we’ve found she also connects people in other ways. Through the project we’ve started to bring together a network of artists – visual artists, performers, poets, in Berlin & internationally – who come together to support the project and each other’s work. A community.
We’ve also started interviewing people who live in the city, hearing their stories that make the city. You can meet some of them in our video blog, to be released in May of this year.
Each previous step of the project has been received wonderfully – by audiences and the public on the streets – and given us important information to take into this next and final step: to create a film and a performance piece that we can take to as many people as possible.
And now You can join us on the journey, help us down the road and get some great rewards on the way. We look forward to meeting you!
Here's Where Your Donation Goes
Your donation gets the angel out onto the street and connecting with people. Your donation goes towards covering the basic costs of seven days of filming, to give us the raw material to make this project a performance piece that can go out into the world: to art spaces, theatre spaces, cinemas and public spaces in Autumn/Winter 2018.
Your donation also supports our collaborating artists – with 40% of the proceeds going to them, 40% to the project and 20% covering the costs of getting your rewards to you.
We have some wonderful rewards:
- original works, prints and postcards by our incredible collaborating artists (please see the slideshow below! & see the rewards page for details)
- a CD of the piano music, plus interviews with the artists, stories and clips from the street
- workshops and performances with the creative team, from photography to storytelling to voice
- a guided tour round Berlin with members of the creative team
- a beautiful book, exploring the making of the project from its very beginnings until now, featuring essays, sketches, poetry, stories, artwork and more…
- and you can even find yourself inside the film!