Discipline: Music & Performing Arts

A Place of Welcome: Kameron Locke’s Performance in Tarabya

Date 24. & 25. January 2026
Discipline Music & Performing Arts

On January 24 and 25, fellow Kameron Locke transformed the garden of the historic summer residence of the German Ambassador into a site of artistic creation. With Welcome, he presented a performance and installation work developed during his residency at the Tarabya Cultural Academy.

Shaped by his engagement with James Baldwin and Baldwin’s longing for a place that could hold all facets of his identity, as well as by Locke’s own experiences of belonging and exclusion, the work explores the concept of welcome as both an individual and a societal experience.

The outdoor installation and performance investigates what it means to be welcomed — to be received in one’s fullness, without conditions or the rejection of aspects such as gender, race, sexuality, nationality, religion, or social status. Unfolding through sound, scent, language, and touch, the work invites visitors to experience welcome as an embodied and sensory encounter.

Across the two consecutive performance days, around 50 guests took part in Locke’s performance and explored the installation.

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Kameron Locke

Year 2025
Discipline Music & Performing Arts

Kameron Locke is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, classically trained tenor, researcher, and educator born in Chicago and living in Hamburg. His artistic practice explores themes of sexuality, identity, patriarchy, and love within the context of Afro-diasporic and LGBTQ+ experiences. After studying classical music at the Chicago College of Performing Arts, he earned a master’s degree in musicology from Goldsmiths, University of London. Locke sang in ensembles such as the London Symphony Chorus and performed in venues that have included the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Barbican Centre, the Royal Albert Hall, and the Elbphilharmonie. His semi-biographical play about American writer James Baldwin and his German editor Fritz J. Raddatz, the Blacker the Berry / perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition, premiered at the 2024 Kampnagel International Summer Festival. His poetry has been published in translation in Parabolis Virtualis 3: Neue, Queere Lyrik. Together with the soprano Juliet Petrus, he wrote the libretto for a major opera about the African American flying squadron known as the Tuskegee Airmen, with music by composer and conductor William Garfield Walker. His interest in the impact of fascist ideologies and regimes on LGBTQ+ artists took him to Tbilisi, Georgia, where, as part of the EU initiative Culture Moves Europe, he explored possible futures for queer expression.

Kameron Locke is in residence at the Tarabya Cultural Academy from October 2025 to January 2026.

Year 2025
Discipline Music & Performing Arts

Kameron Locke is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, classically trained tenor, researcher, and educator born in Chicago and living in Hamburg. His artistic practice explores themes of sexuality, identity, patriarchy, and love within the context of Afro-diasporic and LGBTQ+ experiences. After studying classical music at the Chicago College of Performing Arts, he earned a master’s degree in musicology from Goldsmiths, University of London. Locke sang in ensembles such as the London Symphony Chorus and performed in venues that have included the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Barbican Centre, the Royal Albert Hall, and the Elbphilharmonie. His semi-biographical play about American writer James Baldwin and his German editor Fritz J. Raddatz, the Blacker the Berry / perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition, premiered at the 2024 Kampnagel International Summer Festival. His poetry has been published in translation in Parabolis Virtualis 3: Neue, Queere Lyrik. Together with the soprano Juliet Petrus, he wrote the libretto for a major opera about the African American flying squadron known as the Tuskegee Airmen, with music by composer and conductor William Garfield Walker. His interest in the impact of fascist ideologies and regimes on LGBTQ+ artists took him to Tbilisi, Georgia, where, as part of the EU initiative Culture Moves Europe, he explored possible futures for queer expression.

Kameron Locke is in residence at the Tarabya Cultural Academy from October 2025 to January 2026.

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To the scholarship holders
To the projects

Nuran David Çalış

Year 2014
Discipline Music & Performing Arts

Nuran David Çalış was born in 1976 in Bielefeld, the son of Armenian-Jewish immigrants from Turkey. He worked as a bouncer, studied directing at the Otto Falckenberg School in Munich and produced music clips for hip-hop bands. He now works as a director, playwright, and screenwriter. He has received numerous prizes for his works and productions, including the 2006 Bavarian Art Prize in the literature section. In 2008 his first feature film, Meine Mutter, mein Bruder und ich (My Mother, My Brother and Me), was released, in 2010 he filmed Frank Wedekind’s Frühlings Erwachen (Spring Awakening) for ZDF, and in 2012 Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck. In 2011 S. Fischer published Çalış’s first novel, Der Mond ist unsere Sonne (The Moon is Our Sun). Most recently, on the 10th anniversary of the nail bomb attack in Cologne’s Keupstraße, he developed together with residents of the street and those affected by the bombing Die Lücke – Ein Stück Keupstraße (The Gap – A Play about the Keupstraße) for the Schauspiel Cologne; the work caused a sensation. Çalış lives in Munich.

Nuran David Çalış was a resident at Tarabya Cultural Academy from December 2014 to April 2015.

Year 2014
Discipline Music & Performing Arts

Nuran David Çalış was born in 1976 in Bielefeld, the son of Armenian-Jewish immigrants from Turkey. He worked as a bouncer, studied directing at the Otto Falckenberg School in Munich and produced music clips for hip-hop bands. He now works as a director, playwright, and screenwriter. He has received numerous prizes for his works and productions, including the 2006 Bavarian Art Prize in the literature section. In 2008 his first feature film, Meine Mutter, mein Bruder und ich (My Mother, My Brother and Me), was released, in 2010 he filmed Frank Wedekind’s Frühlings Erwachen (Spring Awakening) for ZDF, and in 2012 Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck. In 2011 S. Fischer published Çalış’s first novel, Der Mond ist unsere Sonne (The Moon is Our Sun). Most recently, on the 10th anniversary of the nail bomb attack in Cologne’s Keupstraße, he developed together with residents of the street and those affected by the bombing Die Lücke – Ein Stück Keupstraße (The Gap – A Play about the Keupstraße) for the Schauspiel Cologne; the work caused a sensation. Çalış lives in Munich.

Nuran David Çalış was a resident at Tarabya Cultural Academy from December 2014 to April 2015.

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To the scholarship holders
To the projects

Hakan Silahsızoğlu & Muckemacher (Verena Roth & Florian Erlbeck)

Year 2024
Discipline Music & Performing Arts

Hakan Silahsızoğlu and Verena Roth & Florian Erlbeck are residents at the Tarabya Cultural Academy as a tandem of the Turkish-German co-production grants supported by the Allianz Foundation.

Hakan Silahsızoğlu

Hakan trained as an actor at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in England. He worked at Talimhane Theatre as an actor as well as producer and coordinator in national and international projects including EU projects. He was member of Yapı Kredi Afife Jale Theatre Awards Jury in Istanbul between 2012-2018 theatre seasons. He’s been a global fellow at International Society of Performing Arts (ISPA) between 2016 – 2018. Hakan was in the selection committee and board of International Performing Arts for Youth (IPAY) which is the most prestigious congress in the world regarding performing arts for children. He is at the board of Theatre Cooperative and International Association of Theatre for Children and Young People (Assitej) Turkey. Hakan is the founder and director of Atta Festival, Turkey’s only international arts festival for babies and children. Hakan is the head of children’s theatre department at Watermans Arts Centre, London’s leading cultural centre.

Hakan Silahsızoğlu is a resident at the Tarabya Cultural Academy from October 2023 to January 2024.

Verena Roth und Florian Erlbeck

Verena Roth & Florian Erlbeck (Muckemacher) live and work in Berlin. The two composers, musicians, and producers have been very active on the music since the 1990s in the form of a large number of studio albums, productions, and concert tours. Until 2006, they were members of the Munich-based band Les Babacools. Verena Roth is a singer and pianist, and Florian Erlbeck studied jazz (tenor saxophone) in Munich and composed film scores (Dok.fest München, composition prize 2018). Since 2012, they have been producing music and video clips using their own sound and visual aesthetic with the aim of moving past categories and labels such as children’s music and entertainment for adults. Their goal is to have people experience music together, and to formulate an unconventional mixture of music genres with the right approach to audiences that also fosters artistic growth. They have presented their music at numerous festivals and concerts (including Elbphilharmonie, at:tension Festival, and Bardentreffen). Through collaborations with the Goethe-Institut in Milan, Istanbul, and Sofia, they have also performed concerts and conducted projects in other European countries.

Verena Roth und Florian Erlbeck are residents at the Tarabya Cultural Academy from October 2023 to January 2024.

Year 2024
Discipline Music & Performing Arts

Hakan Silahsızoğlu and Verena Roth & Florian Erlbeck are residents at the Tarabya Cultural Academy as a tandem of the Turkish-German co-production grants supported by the Allianz Foundation.

Hakan Silahsızoğlu

Hakan trained as an actor at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in England. He worked at Talimhane Theatre as an actor as well as producer and coordinator in national and international projects including EU projects. He was member of Yapı Kredi Afife Jale Theatre Awards Jury in Istanbul between 2012-2018 theatre seasons. He’s been a global fellow at International Society of Performing Arts (ISPA) between 2016 – 2018. Hakan was in the selection committee and board of International Performing Arts for Youth (IPAY) which is the most prestigious congress in the world regarding performing arts for children. He is at the board of Theatre Cooperative and International Association of Theatre for Children and Young People (Assitej) Turkey. Hakan is the founder and director of Atta Festival, Turkey’s only international arts festival for babies and children. Hakan is the head of children’s theatre department at Watermans Arts Centre, London’s leading cultural centre.

Hakan Silahsızoğlu is a resident at the Tarabya Cultural Academy from October 2023 to January 2024.

Verena Roth und Florian Erlbeck

Verena Roth & Florian Erlbeck (Muckemacher) live and work in Berlin. The two composers, musicians, and producers have been very active on the music since the 1990s in the form of a large number of studio albums, productions, and concert tours. Until 2006, they were members of the Munich-based band Les Babacools. Verena Roth is a singer and pianist, and Florian Erlbeck studied jazz (tenor saxophone) in Munich and composed film scores (Dok.fest München, composition prize 2018). Since 2012, they have been producing music and video clips using their own sound and visual aesthetic with the aim of moving past categories and labels such as children’s music and entertainment for adults. Their goal is to have people experience music together, and to formulate an unconventional mixture of music genres with the right approach to audiences that also fosters artistic growth. They have presented their music at numerous festivals and concerts (including Elbphilharmonie, at:tension Festival, and Bardentreffen). Through collaborations with the Goethe-Institut in Milan, Istanbul, and Sofia, they have also performed concerts and conducted projects in other European countries.

Verena Roth und Florian Erlbeck are residents at the Tarabya Cultural Academy from October 2023 to January 2024.

Read more Less
To the scholarship holders
To the projects