Dr. Peter Banki (Sydney), Julyen Hamilton (Athens), Felix Ruckert (Berlin), Jay Wiseman (San Francisco)
Playing Times: Friday 11:00 – 21:00 / Saturday 11:00 – 21:00
Location: Kachelhalle (Kachelhaus, ground floor)
THE CENTRAL HALL is the biggest and certainly most beautiful space at xplore. Not many people know that this space has a history in kink Berlin, as it was the home of the KIT KAT Club from 2001 to 2007. We are happy to continue using this magnificent space for the festival since 2018.
On xplore FRIDAY the CENTRAL HALL will open at 11 00 with an XPLORE INTRODUCTION WORKSHOP, especially designed for all xplore FIRST TIMERS. If you are new to xplore please attend this workshop. It will directed by Felix Ruckert, introducing the COLLECTIVE CODE, a set of rules and recommendations, used in previous xplore editions and designed to navigate sex positive spaces and to help establishing consent.
After this there will be various proposals of scores and workshops until 21 00, on Friday and Saturday. The interventions in this space will be provided by Dr. Peter Banki (Sydney), Julyen Hamilton (Athens), Felix Ruckert (Berlin), Jay Wiseman (San Francisco). These four exceptional beings bring a vast baggage of knowledge and experience. They will try to install a dialogue between each other, reacting and responding to each others proposals, navigating and intertwining KINK and DANCE, SEX and PHILOSOPHY, PRAGMATIC ADVICE with ARTISTIC SKILL.
Peter Banki, Ph.D., is the director of Erotic Living and the Festival of Death and Dying in Sydney, Australia. Together with Stuart McMinn, he also runs Nangamay Ngurra: a First Nations healing camp. In 2009, he received his Ph.D. in German Studies from New York University. His dissertation was published under the title The Forgiveness to Come: the Holocaust and the Hyper-Ethical (New York: Fordham UP, 2018). Peter is combining his vast experience with sophisticated kink practices and a queer attitude with his keen interest in philosophy and literature.
https://peterbanki.com
Julyen Hamilton is a dancer / choreographer / poet / teacher / musician. He has been making and performing dances for 45 years throughout the world. He has made over 100 solos as well as 20 years of Company pieces and numerous collaborations with dancers and musicians and theatre performers. Born and brought up in England he trained in London in the 1970’s, a time of radical experimentation, he has been an exponent of innovative performance since that time. His work is mostly improvised : he composes dance works instantly as well as the texts which often accompany them. His work with text is unique. It fuses naturally his long-term writing practice with his refined skills in dancing. When working with his company ALLEN’S LINE he directs dancers and lighting designers to make and perform work through this same immediacy.
Since the 80’s he has performed constantly in close collaboration with many of the highest quality musicians from all over Europe (Nuria Andorra, Jordina Milla Beseny, Barre Phillips, Fred Frith, Tristan Honsinger, Michael Moore, etc). It is with some of these musicians that he gives readings of his poetry in the dutch band RIVER. He is at present performing the solos “a KOAN for our Times” and his latest work “ANONYMOUS throughout Europe and in S.America and S.Korea.
With his company ALLEN’S LINE, he has been performing their new work “WOLVES” during Autumn 2025 and through 2026.
As a pianist he plays regularly with Hamilton Carroll in Berlin and Brussels. Their first cd ‘POINTER’ was released in 2016. His new poetry album ‘Jack Gets Out of Prison’ with bassist Wilbert de Joode was released in 2018 and ‘The Road to Amarillo’ piano/text/bass with Giorgos Kokkinaris released in 2022.
“Technique is always in evolution; it is also the ability to update and adapt to changing situations, contexts, age and cultural environments.”
“Central is a clarity of mind and an experienciality of and in the body and a constant attraction to physical creativity.”
Felix Ruckert is a dancer, choreographer, conceptual artist and curator. He creates events, performs, gives lectures and teaches workshops, often fusing his knowledge from dance with an unique approach to practices of BDSM and conscious sexuality. He also enjoys making music.
He started as a dancer working with several renowned companies (Mathilde Monnier, Pina Bausch’s Wuppertaler Tanztheater) before concentrating on choreography, conceptual work and choreographic installations. Between 1993 and 2008 he created more than 30 evening length performances for his Berlin based company; some of those toured worldwide. He strongly influenced the performing arts by expanding the stage to the physical body of the audience and giving it an active role in his performances. His experimental dance pieces, his participatory work and his choreographies for ballet companies earned him an international reputation as one of the most versatile and innovative contemporary choreographers.
Felix main interests are the endless possibilities of the human body. He studied Ballet, Modern and Contemporary dance, Improvisation, Feldenkrais, Pilates, Continuum Movement, Yoga, Chi Kung, Kyudo, Tao Yoga, Massage techniques, Tantra, Kinbaku, Choir and Solo Singing and much more. In the last twenty years he became well known for his practical and theoretical investigation of BDSM and the exploration of connections between BDSM techniques and artistic practices, developing an art of touch and a philosophy of sensual communication.
From 2007 to 2016 he directed the art venue schwelle7 in Berlin as a fusion of a kinky club, a dance studio and a private living room: a permanent performance on the threshold between the private and the public. schwelle7 also produced many performances and workshops with Japanese masters and therefore played a major role in the popularization of Kinbaku – Japanese Rope Bondage- in Europe.
Since 2004 Felix directs the annual festival “xplore” in Berlin and curates its international branches, with 31 editions in seven countries so far. Since 2012 he also directs “EURIX – The European Rigger&Model Exchange”, a bi-annual festival in Berlin dedicated to the development of Rope Bondage as an art form.
In October 2020 Felix opened a new venue in Berlin at Holzmarkt, the “IKSK – Institut für Körperforschung und sexuelle Kultur” (Institute for Body Research and Sexual Culture). IKSK was closed for Corona and reopened again in June, 2021.
Jay Joseph Wiseman (born 1949) is an American BDSM author, educator, and expert legal witness. His book “SM 101: A Realistic Introduction” has somewhere in the area of 100,000 copies in print. It is also one of the Society of Janus’ “Suggested Readings” regarding BDSM.
“Greenery Press” was founded in 1991 by author Janet Hardy, and in 1995 it merged with “Jay Wiseman Books” under the Greenery name. Hardy continues to run the company, while Wiseman continues to serve on the Press’s board of directors.
After receiving royalties from the distribution of “SM 101: A Realistic Introduction”, he took the resultant funds and put himself through the “New College of California” School of Law. Later on, he became an adjunct professor at the same college. Although the college is now defunct, he is still listed through documentation as having taught “Advanced Legal Concepts” and “Legal Analysis”.
“For some time now, and in particular within the last year or so, a number of assertions about so-called “Old Guard” traditions, customs, and teachings have come to my attention. Many of these assertions have caused me to roll my eyes and utter a world-weary sigh. I’ll also confess that I’ve been having a bit of satirical fun in this regard (as if I could deny that). Hopefully, nobody has taken serious, lasting offense.
I’ve mentioned it before, and I’ll briefly mention it again now, I see the “Old Guard” being romanticized and idealized in a manner similar to how the cowboys of the Old West were romanticized and idealized. Sadly, the reason for this is largely identical — all too many of the people who could set the record straight are dead.”
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