ECHOES OF NUMBERS
Statistics offer a clear and ordered view of the world, translating social complexity into numbers and graphs. However, behind this apparent objectivity lie crucial choices about what we measure and how, which can influence the reality they claim to represent.
Since the 19th century, statistics have accompanied the construction of the modern state. Counting, classifying, measuring — these operations are inseparable from power. The French philosopher Michel Foucault anticipated these issues: biopolitics passes through the counting of bodies, their organisation and surveillance. Today, in the era of big data, the line between measurement and control blurs. Numbers no longer just describe: they predict and prescribe. Cameras, predictive algorithms, artificial intelligence, social scoring…
Does the promise of efficiency and safety also silently erode freedoms? Behind the reassuring precision of figures, a world emerges where everything is traceable, calculable, optimisable. At what point does a number cease to inform and become a useful or dangerous fiction?
It is therefore vital to establish ethical governance around data, ensuring their use respects dignity, privacy, and avoids discrimination. Despite their power, statistics can be diverted or reimagined. Art and performance hold the potential to bring these cold data to life, evoking emotions, stories, and opposing the rigidity of figures with sensitive, creative humanity.
Nevertheless, statistics are not condemned to remain in the shadow of control. They can be reclaimed and diverted. Behind every chart, there is a story; behind every percentage, a multitude of lives. Visual arts, music, performance possess this power: to crack the coldness of data, to evoke emotions where only an unyielding logic appears to reign. Transforming percentages and columns of figures into gestures and stories. Creating counter-statistics: not to deny reality, but to open it up to other imaginaries.
This underground exhibition explores the multiple faces of statistics: both mirror and mask, tool of understanding and weapon of power, promise of transparency and maker of fiction. Between philosophy and performance, in a dialogue blending debates and sensitive experiences, we will question how figures shape our lives, guide our desires, and sometimes make their way even into our dreams.
CREDITS
Salon Souterrain: Echoes of Numbers I
by Elisabeth B Tambwe
with Amani Abuzahra / Bishop Black / Cedrik Fermont / Marianna Areti Mondelos / Zoé-Afan Strasser / Elisabeth B Tambwe / Vassilis Tsianos / Untited Instruments of Lucilin
team: Elisabeth Bakambamba Tambwe (concept/artistic direction), Benoit Juan (research), Indra Jäger (production), David Pujadas Bosch (documentation), Francois Tambwe (web)
Produced by Salon Souterrain / Dig Up Productions & Wien Modern
Co-produced by Tanzquartier Wien, United Instruments of Lucilin
In cooperation with ChateauRouge.at, Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab (AIL), DAS WEISSE HAUS
Kindly supported by the City of Vienna (MA7)
titelpic © Rizar Photography
BIOS
Dr. Amani Abuzahra is a philosopher, author, and anti-racism trainer. In her work, she deals with social power relations, intersectional forms of discrimination, and questions of plural coexistence. She teaches, among other places, at the Carinthia University of Applied Sciences in Feldkirchen and is active in educational work in German-speaking countries. Her publications include “Mehr Kopf als Tuch. Muslimische Frauen am Wort” (Tyrolia, 2017) as well as “Ein Ort namens Wut” (Kremayr & Scheriau, 2022).
Cedrik Fermont is a Berlin-based Belgian-Congolese composer, musician, mastering engineer, author, radio host, curator, independent researcher and label manager (at Syrphe) who operates in the field of noise, electronic, electroacoustic music, sound art since 1989. From industrial to electronica to harsh noise via electroacoustic and free improvised music, he works as a solo artists and in numerous collaborative projects such as Axiome, Tasjiil Moujahed, and has collaborated with dozens of artists such as Marie Takahashi, Ira Hadžić, Sarmen Almond, Jawad Nawfal, Dora Bleu, Periklis Tsoukalas, Luong Hue Trinh, Yan Jun, AGF, Gülce Özen Gürkan, Dickson Dee, Zeynep Ayşe Hatipoğlu, Khabat Abas & Hardi Kurda, Klaus Janek, etc. In 2024, he was awarded the Kunstpreis Berlin – Jubiläumsstiftung 1848/1948 in Berlin. In 2017 he released together with Dimitri della Faille the book Not Your World Music about noise music in South-East Asia, winner of the 2017 “Golden Nica” Prix Ars Electronica in the “Digital Musics & Sound Art” category. In 2005, his soundtrack for the experimental film Atalodz directed by Gisèle Pape won the best prize at Côté Court festival, Paris/Montreuil, France. He composes music for sound installations, theatre and choreographies, including collaborations with Robyn Orlin, Guangdong Modern Dance Company (GMDC), Dao Anh Khanh, Jia-Jen Lin, etc. His tours and ongoing research lead him to perform and give talks in 70 countries in Eurasia, Africa and the Americas.
Label (Syrphe) – Site | Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Bluesky | Mastodon
Prof. Dr. phil. Vassilis S. Tsianos teaches sociology at the University of Applied Sciences Kiel. His research focuses on the sociology of post-migrant society, social science research on racism, as well as the biometricization of the European border. Vassilis Tsianos is Chair of the Board of the Council for Migration, a founding member of the Hamburg Institute for Migration and Racism Research (ImiR), co-founder of the Network for Critical Migration and Border Regime Research, member of the Section on Sociology of Migration and Ethnic Minorities of the German Sociological Association (DGS), as well as a member of the Commission “Refugee and Immigration Policy” of the Heinrich Böll Foundation. He has published numerous books, most recently the co-authored monographs Mobile Commons, Digital Materialities and the Right to the City (Palgrave Macmillan Pivot Series Mobility and Politics, 2015), Escape Routes. Control and Subversion in the 21st Century (Pluto Press, 2008), as well as the co-edited volumes Racism in Post-migrant Society. Movements (Journal for Critical Migration and Border Regime Research, 2016), The Art of Being Many. Towards a New Theory and Practice of Gathering (transcript, 2016), Empire and the Biopolitical Turn (Campus, 2007) and Turbulent Margins: New Perspectives of Migration in Europe (transcript, 2007). His publications on mobility studies, critical urbanism, and anti-racist movements have appeared, among others, in Citizenship Studies, European Journal of Social Theory, Peripherie, Darkmatter, Multitudes, Boundary 2, Soziale Systeme, Zeitschrift für Sozialgeschichte, and Texte zur Kunst. He is currently working on a textbook entitled Racism in Social Structures and Lifeworlds for Kohlhammer Verlag, in which institutionalized forms of racism in post-migrant society are analyzed from the perspective of Critical Race Studies.
Bishop Black (they/their) is a British artist who initially appeared in the field of performance art and later turned to drag and burlesque. Bishop Black uses the body as language and as a politicized tool to shape sexuality and gender. After several years of work in the field of film, Bishop Black can now increasingly be seen on stage, developing unique but interconnected performances in which mythology, occultism, queerness, and dance come together. A recurring element is the creation of moods through music and acting – making the supposedly ridiculous perceptible as powerful and dissolving inhibitions that one feels within one’s own body and towards the body.
Since 2017, Bishop Black has appeared several times at Ballhaus Naunynstraße – first in Permanente Beunruhigung Vol. II, which was shown again in 2018 under the title Your Devices at the festival of the same name. In 2019 followed the first solo Becoming My Body. In 2022, they took over the direction of the project Re-Searching Joy (akademie der autodidakten) and debuted in 2023 as a director with Flight of the Canaries. In 2025, Bishop Black appeared in the world premiere of SelFist by Viennese artist and choreographer Elisabeth Tambwe as part of the ImPulsTanz Vienna International Dance Festival.
Marianna Areti Mondelos creates artistic interventions through eating experiences. These temporal installations and performances are based on reshaping the perception and relationship with and around food, where social norms of sharing a meal and eating together are questioned.
Among other projects, Marianna Mondelos opened the StilWerk design & art festival in Berlin with a food performance, was a performer in a dinner performance by Julischka Stengele at the Tanzquartier Wien, did the eating design for the Research Dinner by APL at Künstlerhaus Wien, made a performative lunch intervention for the “Radical University Symposium” at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, a food installation for the symposium “Becoming Human in Times of Post-Humanism” at the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts in Taipei, collaborated with Ma Belle Maison in Seoul, showed her parts of her project “mono chrome multi sensory” at the SOUPERNATURAL group exhibition in Madrid and more. She was published in “FOOD. 200 images and 2 videos exploring our relationship with consumption” by DITO Publishing (Rome) and will be featured in Food Design Voices VOL. 3 by Francesca Zampollo.
After her curatorial studies at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, she did a diploma in nutrition pedagogy and just recently graduated from the alternative MA food-based art reseach at the Gramounce. She is a co-founder of Studio Wasser – Association for Innovative Culinary, Table Culture and Design in Vienna.
http://marianna.mondelos.com
on Instagram
Zoé-Afan Strasser is a Viennese-Ghanaian dancer and choreographer based in Vienna, working in the fields of classical ballet, contemporary dance, and interdisciplinary performance. She received her training at the Ballet School of the Vienna State Opera and at the Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna, where she completed her BA in Dance with honours in 2018. She continued her studies at the Alonzo King LINES Ballet Training Program in San Francisco. Since 2019, she has been active as a freelance artist and dance educator in Vienna. Her choreographic work Mell brwn was presented at the International Solo-Tanz-Theater Festival in Stuttgart. Her artistic practice often involves cross-disciplinary collaborations with artists such as Erwin Wurm, Shake Stew, Afropoiltan Berlin, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, Afropoiltan Berlin. She has performed in works by choreographers including Akemi Takeya, Maurya Kerr, Kiani del Valle, Alonzo King, Simon Mayer, Antony Rizzi, Virginie Roy-Nigl, Esther Balfe. In 2025, she collaborated with visual artist Carola Dertnig on a performance Move on the Move at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg and premiered Transient Shifts, a science-fiction- piece choreographed by Akemi Takeya, at ImPulsTanz.
Cedrik Fermont is a Berlin-based Belgian-Congolese composer, musician, mastering engineer, author, radio host, curator, independent researcher and label manager (at Syrphe) who operates in the field of noise, electronic, electroacoustic music, sound art since 1989. From industrial to electronica to harsh noise via electroacoustic and free improvised music, he works as a solo artists and in numerous collaborative projects such as Axiome, Tasjiil Moujahed, and has collaborated with dozens of artists such as Marie Takahashi, Ira Hadžić, Sarmen Almond, Jawad Nawfal, Dora Bleu, Periklis Tsoukalas, Luong Hue Trinh, Yan Jun, AGF, Gülce Özen Gürkan, Dickson Dee, Zeynep Ayşe Hatipoğlu, Khabat Abas & Hardi Kurda, Klaus Janek, etc. In 2024, he was awarded the Kunstpreis Berlin – Jubiläumsstiftung 1848/1948 in Berlin. In 2017 he released together with Dimitri della Faille the book Not Your World Music about noise music in South-East Asia, winner of the 2017 “Golden Nica” Prix Ars Electronica in the “Digital Musics & Sound Art” category. In 2005, his soundtrack for the experimental film Atalodz directed by Gisèle Pape won the best prize at Côté Court festival, Paris/Montreuil, France. He composes music for sound installations, theatre and choreographies, including collaborations with Robyn Orlin, Guangdong Modern Dance Company (GMDC), Dao Anh Khanh, Jia-Jen Lin, etc. His tours and ongoing research lead him to perform and give talks in 70 countries in Eurasia, Africa and the Americas.
Label (Syrphe) – Site | Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Bluesky | Mastodon
The ensemble for contemporary music United Instruments of Lucilin was founded in 1999 by a group of passionate and committed musicians and is the only Luxembourgish chamber music ensemble specialised in contemporary music. Dedicated exclusively to promoting and commissioning works of the 20th and 21st century, United Instruments of Lucilin is now known for its outstanding programs around the world.
In about 40 concerts a year, Lucilin presents a broad scope of musical events, ranging from “traditional” concerts to music theatre productions, children projects, improvisation sessions as well as discussions with composers.
United Instruments of Lucilin works in close collaboration with the Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg in the field of contemporary opera and music theatre projects and premiered, among others, Toshio Hosokawa’s monodrama The Raven with Charlotte Hellekant, Philippe Manoury’s «thinkspiel» Kein Licht staged by Nicolas Stemann, and recently Adam Maor’s opera The Sleeping Thousand, premiered at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence (France).
United Instruments of Lucilin organises every year, together with the rainy days festival (Philharmonie Luxembourg), the Luxembourg Composition Academy, the only composition masterclass held in Luxembourg, and invites eight young composers to work on a brand new piece.
Over the years, United Instruments of Lucilin is continuously reaching a growing enthusiastic audience and has been encouraging innovative musical expressions, as with Black Mirror, an immersive experience taking place in an abandoned hotel, commissioned to Alexander Schubert and premiered in 2016 during the Philharmonie Luxembourg’s rainy days festival. In May 2022, the ensemble premiered Sleep Laboratory, Alexander Schubert’s last immersive project with VR at the Acht Brücken festival in Cologne, at the Venice Biennale and at the rainy days festival.
At the beginning of 2023, the ensemble launched its own independent series “Lucilin in the City”, and it is featured at the Philharmonie Luxembourg in the series “Lucilin: Now!”.
Lately, United Instruments of Lucilin has commissioned works to François Sarhan, Igor C Silva, Diana Soh, Elsa Biston, Albena Petrovic-Vratchanska, Mirela Ivičević, Camille Kerger, Patrick Muller, Sina Fallahzadeh and Yang Song.
Elisabeth Bakambamba Tambwe (host/artistic direction)
As an artist, choreographer, and director, Elisabeth B. Tambwe works with different forms and genres: performance, choreography, film, interactive and generative formats, as well as with various dramaturgies and spaces such as installations and stages. She is interested in the emergence of new forms of otherness and the unique relationships and languages they produce. What do they reveal about our humanity, and how do they challenge the concept of anthropocentrism? Her projects are transdisciplinary and collective, aiming to create shared spaces of research between performance art and the social sciences.
https://www.chateaurouge.at
Benoît Jouan (research)
Benoît Jouan is a writer and illustrator. He studied fine arts and holds a university degree (Master of Visual and Plastic Arts / University of Lille III, France) and an art school diploma (National Superior Diploma of Expression of Plastic Arts – DNSEP & National Diploma of Plastic Arts – DNAP of the School of Tourcoing, France). He worked for twenty years (1999–2019) at the Lille Métropole Museum of Modern, Contemporary and Outsider Art (LaM) in Villeneuve-d’Ascq (France) as lecturer and head of art workshops (specializing in engraving) in closed institutions such as psychiatric hospitals and prisons. He has collaborated with Elisabeth Bakambamba Tambwe since 1998. Since 2022, he has lived and worked in Vienna.
Indra Jäger (production)
Indra Jäger, born in Frankfurt am Main, has lived in Vienna since 2000. After studying journalism and communication sciences, she co-initiated and directed the art and cultural association IM ERSTEN (2012–2016). In this field she continues to work as a producer for Dig Up Productions and is responsible for the discursive performance format Salon Souterrainas well as Elisabeth Tambwes Trilogy on Roland Barthes „A Lovers discourse“ (Speech of Love: Absence, Beyond The Overflow, SelFist). Since 2023, Indra has been working as editor and managing editor at the Austrian solutions journalism platform relevant.news, as well as a freelance research associate at the Institute for Comparative Media and Communication Studies (CMC).
David Pujadas Bosch (documentation)
David Pujadas Bosch, born in Barcelona, has lived in Vienna since 2000. From 2000–2013 he worked at IBM Austria in various areas (including Announcement Support Advisor, Quality Coordinator, Country Focal Point). From 2003–2013 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna with Monica Bonvicini (sculpture and performative art) and Harun Farocki (film and art). Since 2013, he has been in the film class of Thomas Heise. He works mainly with video and film, but also engages in photography, drawing, writing, as well as performance and sound installations. From 2009 to 2016 he was a regular illustrator, author, and accountant for Paradigmata – Journal for Humanity and Discourse – alongside other editorial activities such as layout, editing, and distribution.
https://davidpujadasbosch.wordpress.com
