Time Bent, Folded, Exhausted

reading performance and video

in collaboration with Simoné Goldschmidt-Lechner.

Time Bent, Folded, Exhausted explores blurred boundaries between literature and sound performance, translating the experience of neurodivergent thinking into text, visual, and multichannel sound.

Jay Afrisando and Simoné Goldschmidt-Lechner collaborated in a non-neurotypical way to imagine a world where neurodivergence is the norm, and in which it not only artistically influences and shapes what they make, but also is shaped by their art. During the making process, their senses of time, ways of listening, attentions, coping mechanisms, and energy fluctuations become the creative source of the making.

The installation features the reading performance that took place on 21 June 2025 at Berlin’s daadgalerie. The work questions: What happens when we refuse to adhere to the norms imposed upon us in our creative output? What can happen, develop, and emerge out of the refusal to mask?

Simoné Goldschmidt-Lechner is a writer and a translator interested in queer online fandoms, (postmigrant) horror narratives, language in video games and linguistic experimentation in general. They have been writing fiction in German and English since 2018 and were part of the editorial team for BELLA triste, a German literary magazine, from March 2019 until September 2021. They were part of the organizing committee for PROSANOVA 2020, a festival for contemporary German literature, and organised the online  festival Futur 3.0 as part of the streaming release of the film No hard feelings / FUTUR DREI.  Part of BREAK ROOM. Since 2022, they have been involved in different theatre and performance projects as well as film projects. Co-editor of process*in magazine. Excerpts from Simoné’s first novel, Messer, Zungen (2022), were nominated for the 28th Open Mike and shortlisted for the FM4 Wortlaut Prize 2021. Their novella Days you’ll find me (in a place I like to go) (2024) received the Hamburg Literature Prize in the category “Book of the Year”. Her newest book, “Nerd Girl Magic”, was published in February 2025. Simoné has received a number of scholarships for her writing and interdisciplinary work, including the Schloss Solitude Scholarship (2023/24).

Work details

Year created: 2025

Format: reading performance and video installation

Medium: single-channel video with stereo audio

Duration: 30 minutes

Cast

Concept: Jay Afrisando

Text: Simoné Goldschmidt-Lechner and Jay Afrisando

Visuals and sound: Jay Afrisando and Simoné Goldschmidt-Lechner

This project was created during Jay Afrisando’s DAAD Artists-in-Berlin residency 2024-25, performed at daadgalerie, and exhibited at the In Conversation exhibition, curated by Dr. Kate Brehme.

In Conversation is supported by the DAAD Artists-in-Residence Program in Berlin, the University of California, Santa Cruz, the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion, and the Exhibition Fund for Communal Galleries. The Galerie im Turm is run by the municipal government of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg.

Showcase

In Conversation exhibition, Galerie im Turm, Berlin, DE, 4 September - 23 November 2025.

Time Bent, Folded, Exhausted reading performance, daadgalerie, Berlin, DE, 21 June 2025.