Set in Berlin’s Tiergarten shortly after the First World War, artist and writer Aria Dean’s performance The Color Scheme imagines a dialogue between two African American expatriates—the Poet and the Philosopher—as their date in the park becomes a broader meditation on the relationship between Black avant-garde aesthetics and the nascent political movements of the twentieth century. Commissioned by Hartwig Art Foundation and Performa, the piece is premiered in the European context near its original setting, the historical Siegesallee, and is presented as part of the closing weekend of the exhibition Tirailleurs: Trials and Tribulations. From Cannon Fodder to Avant-Garde—The Forgotten Soldiers Who Freed Europe at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW). 

A few steps away from what is now HKW, the original statues of Kant and Goethe offer Dean an opportunity to critically examine nationalist and imperial monuments and serve as the mise-en-scène for the characters’ date. Loosely inspired by a real encounter between philosopher Alain Locke and poet Claude McKay, Dean avoids heroization by presenting characters without name and operationalizes them as figures through which to explore the clash of political and aesthetic perspectives. Their disagreements—over nationalism, the function of art, and the political and economic transformations required for life to become liveable—contrast the monumental historical ambitions of Tiergarten. In the 1920s, the park served as a backdrop to Prussian imperial narratives, even as its grounds were a meeting place for Berlin’s sexually diverse social scene. History’s tensions are further heightened by the presence of a rendered version of the Siegesallee, Kaiser Wilhelm II’s boulevard adorned with monarchical sculptures, later moved by the Nazis to grant space for large military parades, and finally dismantled completely after the war. Dean 3D-scanned the remaining ruptured statues, which are currently located at the Zitadelle Spandau, for production designer Filip Kostic’s digital reconstruction of the park as it was in 1923.  

Accompanied by a score by composer Evan Zierk, featuring Intonarumori, the experimental noise machines invented by the Italian futurist Luigi Russolo, the result is a theatrical space where history, form, and speculation converge. The theatre stage doubles as a film set: The actors are captured in real time within the virtual Tiergarten landscape, while the film is simultaneously projected live onto the stage, binding the present to a historical frame in which the ‘truth’ of the encounter resolves as image. Far from a picture-perfect representation, The Color Scheme explodes history’s debris cluttering up the here-and-now.

Director / Writer: Aria Dean
The Poet: Jordan Coley
The Philosopher: Zaid Arshad
Composer: Evan Zierk
Musicians: Seany Nuelle, Ben Cohen
Cinematographer: Alex Huggins
Camera Operators: Rhys Scarabosio, Owen Smith Clark
Virtual Production Designer: Filip Kostic
Technical Director: Theresa Tomi Faison
Costume Designer: Natasha Simchowitz
Producer: Vic Brooks
Associate Producer: Andy Rickert
Director’s Assistant: Nina Diwan