Calendar

In Borderlines, Manuel Pelmuș revisits past performances and personal histories and aggregates notions of visibility and invisibility in connection to history and politics of representation. These histories playfully move back and forth in time and space, updating and reflecting on the notion of boundaries, whether they are boundaries between states or boundaries between artistic disciplines. The artist uses his own memories of the volatility of borders, also in regard to the fall of the Berlin wall.Pelmuș’s lecture, which will be performed in absolute darkness, addresses the ascendency of visual perception and reflects on the dominant economy of presence. In doing so, he will refer to his solo Preview, which was also performed in absolute darkness.

“BRUNO emerges from the mist like a stranded ship, a sigh left hanging in the air. It cascades away and leaves a pause. A piece of a hole. Something that doesn’t happen. A breeze of what didn’t take place. A haunting. To let ourselves be haunted, to sigh together, to stop, to blow, to turn around, to be sad together. To not do much. To step aside, to let a rumbling moment pass, to weave our thoughts against a break, to nestle inside a break. To take a break, together. To rest, to be absent from an event, together. To caress a thought. To rest, to stay there. To not worry about creating a flow, to not do things in vain. To not write scores, protocols, to wait, to stop, to not fill in the gaps, to leave blank, to dance next to our shoes. To open a hand and let go, to not hold back, to lighten, to tenderly support, to relieve. BRUNO is the emanation of a piece without end, a cloth made of friendships and loves cobbled together. Located in a recently abandoned (or perhaps never to be inhibited) linguistic space, BRUNO unfurls, unfolds its over-exposures.”Named after the light designer Bruno Pocheron, a collaborative partner of Alix Eynaudi since 2005, the piece features a cluster-like light sculpture which sprouts and transforms itself into a music instrument through the sound design of Paul Kotal. BRUNO is a dance piece that brings together series of movements while Hugo, Mark and Alix seem to nestle between images, evocations and invocations, never quite completing them and constantly oscillating between figuration and abstraction. In this laboratory atrium, the dancers try the movements on as if they were clothes, challenging their contours, boundaries and textures in a dialogical mode in which the image/notion conjuring vibrates until it fits, comforts and finally swirls away. BRUNO tests forms of encounter on stage in which light, sound and dance co-exist, casting shadows of possibilities.

Encounters is a series of long-durational dance performances situated in workspaces. #1 took place as a 50h livestream performance in a large empty factory space. In #2, the office space will be subject to physical scrutiny. Encounters is part of the same artistic development which was established with Negotiations (2018) and continues Alexander Gottfarb’s artistic (and non-artistic) questioning of the relation between choreography and art making and the Post-Fordist capitalist society. Gottfarb is looking for and building tactics on how to be with each other. Here, the choreographic craft is being used as a tool, helping us build and explore the boundaries of sustainable relations between dancers, the audience and our environment.

Mucus, this biologically vital substance, triggers different reactions in people. It can provoke disgust and unease as well as arousal. The cause for its appealing and yet irritating nature can be found in our technologized society, which is driven by ideals of sterility and stability: mucus is neither solid nor liquid, neither internal nor external. Life starts out wet, we need to be towelled dry, we do not come “clean” into this world. Mucus is a primordial part of us that we lose track of over time. It’s the glue that makes the organism work, creating all sorts of connections.

Conventionally, Dante’s Divine Comedy is divided into three sections: Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. What heaven is for one might be hell for another – this divine comedy places heaven and hell all at once in the present moment, erasing the differentiation that we can find is so deeply rooted in our life and culture.

Crystallmess, Golin, Anthea, In My Talons, Leon Höllhumer, Antonia XM, Rovan