Inky Lee, Marie Yan & Makisig Akin

Inky Lee (they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist and a writer living in Berlin. Inky’s work focuses on amplifying the voices of marginalised individuals and communities. This interest initiated from untangling their own knotted experiences of marginalisation through their artistic practice. From this personal place, Inky’s viewpoint has widened to researching collective experiences of marginalisation. In their work, Inky looks for ways to be direct and tender at once.  Inky was an artistic director for the performance “Floating Roots”, which premiered at Tanzfabrik Berlin (2022). The work told the stories of 1.5 generation immigrants living in Germany. Inky was the artistic director for the experimental writing platform, “Right Now”, which portrayed the perspectives of the marginalised individuals in the independent performance scene in Berlin (2020-2021). Their music album, “one of many” (2020), was presented as a part of “Sound of Berlin #10” by LOLA Magazine. The album sings about the life of an illegal immigrant worker and a mother. www.inkyunglee.me

Marie Yan (1990) is a multilingual writer (FR, EN, DE) and dramaturge with a focus on postcolonial and queer-feminist perspectives. In worlds that range from near-documentary to speculative fiction, she has written stories about borders (I need to cross, commission of the Eskişehir’s city theatre, 2019), conspiracy theories (La Théorie, Festival Impatience, Paris, 2021), climate disaster and authoritarianism (A Tidal Home, Hong Kong, 2021). She recently wrote a series of critical pieces for the Magazin of Plateforme.de on the 2023 festival africologne. As a dramaturge for dance she has worked with a number of Berlin-based choreographers among which: Ricardo de Paula (Unrestricted Contact), Natalie Riedelsheimer and Carol Alves (Machine to become_woman) and is part of the curation team of the FRATZ International festival for very young audiences. She received the Mary Leishman Award for Theatre for her first play The Fog and the Crossing Borders scholarship for her upcoming essay Hong Kong: Struggling home. She holds a Master in Playwriting and Dramaturgy from Glasgow University and works between France and Germany.

Makisig Akin (they/them): I am a queer, transgender Filipino born choreographer, dance artist, facilitator, and activist. I was raised in the Philippines and am currently based in Berlin, Germany. My work focuses on the recognition of intersectional identities, reconnecting with my ancestry, and decentralizing Western ideologies in dance making. I hold an MFA in Dance from UCLA and my training includes Filipino Traditional Dance, Contact Improvisation, Kung Fu, Improvisation, walking meditation, Authentic Movement, Bouldering/Climbing, and Contemporary Dance. I examine how survival strategies can be translated into a communal physical practice, which I then use as a catalyst to a creative healing process. My work has recently been supported by Fonds Darstellende Künste and DISTANZEN 2022/2023. www.makisigakin.com