About
Parallel/Play is a live performance series based in Berlin that explores the dynamic relationship between preparation and spontaneity in visual art and music.
Artistic Inquiry
Parallel/Play places these modes side by side, revealing artistic creation as a spectrum rather than a binary. The series holds both discipline and risk in the same breath. It asks:
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What changes when we prepare — and what is lost or gained?
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How does improvisation differ from composition?
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Where does intuition meet structure?
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Can rehearsal and spontaneity coexist?
Why Visual Art & Music?
Both mediums unfold in time. Both rely on rhythm, texture, silence, and movement. By pairing one visual artist with one musician, Parallel/Play opens a space of cross-sensory dialogue — where sound becomes image and gesture becomes tone. Each encounter is its own temporary world.
The Audience
Audiences do not arrive to consume finished works. They arrive to witness the process — hesitation, adjustment, repetition, breakthrough. The space is intimate and immersive, inviting each person to reflect on their own relationship with preparation and spontaneity, in art and in life.
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Formats
The project brings together visual artists and musicians in three interconnected formats, each inhabiting a different state of artistic creation — from the
slowly composed dialogue to unrehearsed encounter , and finally to the open, collective space where the two converge.
I. The Prepared Dialogue
A visual artist and a musician present a work developed together in advance. Through a slower process of exchange — conversations, sketches, rehearsals, revisions — they arrive at something that is not a fixed product, but a refined conversation. Structure and intentional form shape the encounter. The performance asks: what becomes possible when two artists take time with each other?
II. The Improvised Encounter
A second pairing meets without rehearsal. No fixed score. No predetermined outcome. This format foregrounds presence, risk, and deep listening. Sound becomes gesture; color becomes rhythm. The audience witnesses creation in real time — fragile, intuitive, and unrepeatable.
III. The Open Playground
The evening closes with an open invitation — to participating artists, musicians, and audience members alike. The boundary between performer and witness dissolves. What began as a curated dialogue becomes a shared space of experimentation, informed by everything that has already unfolded.
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Meet the Curators
Riikka and Lavia have been brought together by their love for visual arts and music, they want to create a space for genuine creative dialogue across disciplines, and an open invitation to explore what becomes possible when artists and musicians truly listen to one another.
Curator & Visual Artist
Rikka Korpela
Riikka holds a BA in Fine Arts, where she studied printmaking and photography. Alongside her visual practice, she has always been drawn to music — studying singing and piano, collaborating with musicians, and working in theatre. Her creative world has always moved fluidly between disciplines.
She has initiated and developed several collaborative projects, and is particularly drawn to the energy of live, improvised encounters — moments where something unrepeatable happens between artists in real time.
Curator, Live Painting Performer & Visual Artist
Lavia Lin
Lavia holds a BA in Humanities, Arts and Social Thought, where she studied arts and aesthetics, philosophy, and studio art. Her practice is rooted in the relationship between music and image — translating auditory experience into expressive abstract form, drawing from jazz improvisation, rhythmic gesture, and melodic flows of colour.
Live painting is at the core of her practice — real-time visual responses to sound, rhythm, and atmosphere, in collaboration with musicians across genres. Since 2017 she has collaborated with Italian band Satoyama, where live painting and music became tools to reflect on climate change. Alongside her practice, she facilitates creative workshops on mindfulness and creativity.