6 May 2019, 20:00
Flutgraben Atelierhouse, 12435 Berlin, Am Flutgraben 3
Under the title This is Not About You, the second edition of the interdisciplinary project Montag Modus Klimata at Flutgraben Berlin, focuses on the relationship between human and non-human entities.
Inspired by a new materialist ontology which dissolves categorical (binary and hierarchical) distinctions, Montag Modus has invited artists who expand on the notion of (im)materiality. This Is Not About You features works by Julian Weber, Maya Weinberg, Siegmar Zacharias and bodylotion co-dance that call for a change in our understanding of the world and encourage us to become aware of different kinds of existence.
The event presents four performances and an essay by Siegmar Zacharias, written for this occasion. In her solo, Maya Weinberg explores the hidden mechanisms of different bodies, both animate and inanimate, and investigates how they can shift and switch roles. Siegmar Zacharias, in the frame of a lecture performance, spins her saliva into strings and questions our notions of intimacy and alienation. The Hungarian dance company bodylotion co-dance invites the audience into a multi-sensory seance to bid farewell to life as we know it, while Julian Weber, through the mediums of dance and installation, celebrates possible flirtation with aliens.
Julian Weber: EXTRA
In blockbuster movies, aliens are usually seen as the dangerous unknown. They represent a threat to humanity which must be stifled with the violence of war. But alongside battle scenarios, there are also numerous reports of flirting, romantic relationships and sexual encounters with extraterrestrials.
EXTRA aims to celebrate this exchange with the unknown and these possible connections with extraterrestrials through the medium of dance. The performers set up an exhibition consisting of sculptures that serve as stage, frame and support for their dances. Fragments of medieval folk dances and mating rituals from the animal kingdom are combined with movement sequences designed to attract the attention of aliens. What ensues are supernatural mating dances between the ancient and the contemporary, which ask how we construct the unknown body and what kind of movements these bodies would enable. Over the period of the durational format, the dancers exhaust the material with the aim to convince extraterrestrials to join their dance.
Choreography/Set design: Julian WeberCostume: Julian Weber, Judith FörsterDance: Renen Itzhaki, Rachell Bo Clark, Marcell Proske, Judith Förster
Julian Weber is a choreographer/dancer and visual artist. He studied sculpture at HBK Brunswick, at the Academy of Arts Vienna and choreography at HZT Berlin and the Theaterschool in Amsterdam. He works intensively on spaces of interaction involving body, material and movement. He collaborates with artists such as Meg Stuart, Boris Charmatz and Tino Sehgal and creates his own work at the intersection of visual and performance art. With his work the tourist he won the Berlin Art Prize 2015.
Siegmar Zacharias: DROOLING LECTURE
This ongoing research explores how the visceral vocality of speech and its meaning-building sensibility inspire movement between form and formlessness, between fluidity and sedimentation and between structure and leakage. Particles reorientate and reorganise, instantiating an enduring intimacy with the alien, while acknowledging the alienating forces of intimacy. In the format of a lecture performance, Siegmar will spin threads of saliva on, around, and through virtual and non-virtual entities, creating non-normative bodies of knowledge and flesh.
Siegmar Zacharias builds her practice between performance and philosophy, between satellites and between the sheets. She explores the politics of alienation and intimacy in embodied thinking/being, in collaboration with both humans and non-humans. She develops formats for performances, installations, discursive encounters and curation. Her work has been shown internationally at festivals, in galleries, and up in the sky. She is a research fellow at THIRD DAS Research, Amsterdam and a TECHNE Scholarship recipient working on her PhD in posthuman poet(h)ics.
bodylotion co-dance: FEAR NO MORE
Digital witchcraft, a spiritual party – transformation. Join our seance of farewell to life as we know it. But don’t you worry! No sadness! We’ll be grieving with love and appreciation. We’ll gather and celebrate grief with compassion - we’ll prepare our senses for the upcoming challenges of the Unknown.
FEAR NO MORE is a playful ritual that takes place in our multi-sensory temple. The space, the lights, the sound and the movement are designed exclusively for you to safely explore the world’s final moment – and practice for the Big Step Over.
Please contribute waste to our ritual of grief and joy! Bring your collection of plastic bags, surplus office materials, wrapping paper and plastic straws and you’ll be rewarded with a surprise at the entrance.
WARNING: Synthetic fog and strobe lights are used during this performance!
Concept: Julia Hadi, Virág Arany / bodylotion co-dance
Director: Julia Hadi
Performers: Anna Biczók, Dóra Furulyás, Tamara Zsófia Vadas
Video: András Juhász, Dávid Maruscsák
Music: Endre Vazul Mándli
Set and costume: Lili Izsák
Light: Kata Dézsi
Consultant: Petra Ardai
bodylotion co-dance is an artistic partnership between Virág Arany and Júlia Hadi. They began working together in 2009, after graduating from the Budapest Contemporary Dance Academy. They share an interest in choreographic approaches that draw up philosophical dilemmas and use limitations as a creative tool. Taking traditional, ritualistic forms of movement from different cultures as their starting point, they create modified micro-realities based on redefining movements from everyday life.
Maya Weinberg: HOMONIMI
Homonym (n): each of two or more words having the same spelling or pronunciation but different meanings and origins. Derived from the Greek ‘homos’ (same) and ‘onoma’ (name).
HOMONIMI is a solo piece for a performer and two stackable chairs. The performer’s opening text is a mix of collected testimonies on depression and corresponding excerpts from psychoanalytical and philosophical literature. Following Julia Kristeva’s description of the “symbolic collapse” in her 1987 self-help book “Black Sun”, the piece consists of textual, musical, mental and physical loops, and gradually reduces human behaviour to a set of instinctive, conditioned loops of reaction and interpretation. The performer and the chairs shift and switch roles, subjectivity and agency transform and deform – the hidden structure of the body reveals itself. Until the loop restarts.
Choreography and performance: Maya WeinbergMusic: Yaniv Weinberg
Maya Weinberg is a choreographer, teacher and dramaturge. She studied at Seminar HaKibutzim College of Arts and Technology in Tel Aviv and danced for the Yasmeen Godder Company. She has taught at The School of Visual Theatre in Jerusalem, Smash Berlin and HZT Berlin. In her work, she is interested in raising basic questions about the medium of performance while offering unexpected ways of dealing with the tragic-comic gap that exists between language and unexpressed intentions. She has collaborated with Lee Méir, Antonia Baehr, Antje Velsinger ‘The Instrument’, Zufit Simon, Xenia Taniko, Roni Katz, Juliana Piquero and others. Her recent work Misspelled premiered last December in Tel Aviv and in Jerusalem.