A hairdresser, a furniture-maker, two dancers, a vicar, two clothes shop owners, a cook, a librarian, a juice bar owner and two mobile phone salesmen: dance/video artist Jo Parkes has worked with 12 people who live and work on Badstraße in Berlin to investigate the role of tradition in their lives. They come from Lebanon, Turkey, Germany, Iraq, the Gaza strip, South Korea and Pakistan. The result is a series of 12 short video portraits forming an installation.

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What do you do which your parents did before you? How do you do it differently? How do your children do it differently?

The project investigates how people take inherited traditions and adapt them in the context of a 21st century city where people from different countries and cultures live and work side by side. Which traditions become entrenched and which mutate in the new context? What role does the body play in this “handing down”? What role does dance play in the transfer of tradition?

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The project was conceived by Jo Parkes and Inge Koks and is artistically directed by Jo Parkes/Mobile Dance, working in partnership with Tanzfabrik Berlin e.V.

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The exhibition had its premiere in September 2015 in the shop-windows of the subjects on Badstrasse/Wedding and is now on tour, with dates in Bochum, Berlin and Wuppertal.

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The artist team collaborating on On Tradition are: Jo Parkes (artistic direction), Sven O. Hill (camera), Lena Hatebut (cut), Florian Bilbao (dance) and Mattef Kuhlmey (sound). The project is supported by two community contacts Sophie Brunner and Ayse Avdic and the photographer Elly Clarke. The project is developed and delivered in partnership with Tanzfabrik Berlin e.V. and funded by the Fonds Darstellende Künste and the Kofinanzierungsfonds der Berliner Kulturverwaltung.

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