Energy can be interpreted in many different ways. There’s kinetic energy, potential energy, elastic energy and chemical energy — the phenomenon of a physical transfer from one object to another to produce heat or exert power. Then there are those more abstract, or figurative interpretations. There’s an emotional interaction between people, where a frown on one face produces another on the next, or an idea effects a political movement. Performance is its own compound of disparate elements colliding in a single spectacle – an energetic transfer between the artist, and their audience.

The performers taking part in “Energy Exchange” at Berlin’s Säule utilise a number of these forces, their various approaches interacting and intersecting in sometimes volatile, sometimes tense, sometimes extravagant displays of their own power. QT is an augmented performance project realising the complex flows in the production of a pop song, inspired by a soft drink, distilled from emotion. Casey MQ blurs the borders between ambient production, melancholic soul and distorted club music, while using sentimentality and glamor to serve an ultimately subversive end.

Golin and Bob Vylan will present their distinct takes on visceral performance. One is a classically-trained artist inspired by memory and folklore. The others are a brutal hip-hop infused punk group concerned with ideas of oppression and resistance, life and death. Dis Fig reflects her past and present in a shifting landscape of noise and experimental club genres, juxtaposing them with eerie acapellas in a collision of unsettling beats and idiosyncratic musical backdrops. Together, the “Energies Night” participants create a cacophonous blend of differing aesthetics, frustrations, aggressions, joys and balms in an intricate tapestry of the contemporary milieu.