RUNNING

RUNNING is a personal project, that came natural to me after a long, extensive, what seemed like never ending period of restlessness. I wanted to channel a feeling of haste, the urge to move, to produce, to express, driven by some inner clock ticking away, that makes time feel limited, wants to see results and makes achieving those results a life and death scenario. Especially after finishing a project that I had loaded with tons of intrinsic pressure, I was looking for some form of release button.

In my everyday life, running is more of a meditative practice that I come back to every so often. It’s a regulating motion that synchronizes breath, pulse and feet. Next to actual meditation or drumming, it’s a physical dialogue with myself.

So when I talked to Fanyu Pu about a future project that I wanted to do in combination with a treadmill, we first and foremost bonded over this shared experience of a safe haven, that running represents to the both of us. In the following weeks, we began exploring how the drum set and the treadmill could communicate with each other, reflecting both feelings of haste and stress, as well as comfort and safety, within the same performance.

Asli Özdemir joined after we had developed some first audio sketches that were trying to explore different emotional states around the treadmill. We were looking for something physical in the way the camera would join the conversation. Three people interacting with each other, in a constant dialogue, like a jam session. So we had to get rid of all tripods, rigs or heavy lenses, that could slow down Asli´s movement and flexibility. The camera´s flash became a crucial tool to push rhythmic ideas in our conversation.

We premiered Running at the Naxos Hallenkonzerte in march 2025, at Produktionshaus Naxos in Frankfurt. The performance is built as a continuous conversation, Fanyu, Asli and me are still working on and keeps evolving over time.