changing slowly
Performance for the ZEITSPRÜNGE performance day
Karl-Marx-Platz, Greifswald, 2024
photo: Lars Heidemann
I pull white fabric out of an unprinted jute bag and put it over myself. As I then slowly move around inside this shell, turn in, stand up and let myself sink back down to the ground, it gradually becomes coloured as if by magic. It takes a while to register the process, because the audience cannot see where the colours come from and when and where they will appear next.
In the performance, not only the shape but also the colour of the shell changes – in a way that is unpredictable and takes a certain amount of time. Changing slowly functions as a parable for processes of change. Both individual and social developments need certain periods of time to be realised and finally become effective. They cannot be realised overnight.
transformation
Performative installation (15 min)
Spielhalle KUNST, Greifswald, 2024
photo: Eva Leder
For the 34th national art exhibition, thematically related to the 250th anniversary of Caspar David Friedrich, I developed the performance tranformation. I understand Friedrich’s pictorial worlds as perpetual questions about who we are and how we experience and shape the world in which we live. I am primarily concerned with the need for a more aware experience. This is why different levels of perception are integrated into the work: A video collage, which refers to aspects of the landscape via the movements of my veiled body, is projected from behind onto a large projection screen installed in the room. The soundscape created for the performance accompanies the situation. From the front, this screen serves as canvas for a painting that I create spontaneously. For the audience, I appear as a „Rückenfigur“, a figure from behind, while I incorporate the visual and auditory impressions into the painterly improvisation.
exploration
Performance for the 6 ½ minute event
Studio 301, Rostock, 2022
A fabric shell, in which another shell is hidden, becomes a changing case for my body. By exploring movement within the tightest of spaces, on the outside numerous sculptural formations with different colours and textures emerge within a few minutes. The sound accompanying the performance remains non-verbal and spherical apart from a short whispering sequence. With its depth, it refers at the hidden.
wort los II
Performance with Jana Nedorost
Pommersches Landesmuseum, Greifswald, 2022
Improvised gestures are used to create a dialogue that is playfully shaped by suspenseful elements. It reflects the fact that a large part of our communication is managed without words, even if we don’t realise it. In this activ, partly dance-like improvisation, various aspects of non-verbal exchange become visible. Whether an attempt at approaching, a refusal or the testing of boundaries – the dynamics of the performance remain comprehensible to the audience, even though no words are spoken. The individual expression is unique, but still for everybody understandable, so that the repertoire of communication possibilities seems almost inexhaustible. Our self-expression is an underestimated resource that comes into play here.
what remains
Performance with Karen Kunkel und Peter Tucholski
tractor hall, Groß Kiesow, 2021
Sounds reminiscent of trickling grain and rattling tractors interact with coloured surfaces and structures that appear and condense on the foil of a six-sided object illuminated from the inside. Outside the installation, sound artist Peter Tucholski creates fleeting audiovisual impressions by playing with the sometimes huge sound objects he has built by himself. From inside, Karen Kunkel and I respond to the sonic impressions with brush and colour. The painterly gestures become visible to the audience outside. Our shadows gradually disappear behind the painting.
Continuous
Performance
CUBIC artspace, Greifswald, 2021
photo: Pauline Stopp
A dance improvisation that doesn’t follow a choregraphy, but develops out of the situation instead. For this I use elements with different qualities, contrasting repetitive movements reminding of a swimming process with a choice of very free movements. In the broadest sense, the dance thus creates a field of tension between automation and creativity that is reminiscent of our everyday life. Surrounding noises, light conditions, and objects and people moving past, influence the course of the performance.
The performance took place as part of the project “Freistil – CUBIC performativ”, which was organised by art-cube – Raum für zeitgenössische Kunst e.V..
bodies in dialogue
Performance with Merle Saarva
Inner courtyard of the cultural centre APARADITEHUS in Tartu, Estland, 2019
photo: Julia Piehl
Three wooden platforms in the inner courtyard of the APARADITEHUS cultural centre serve as a dance floor. By using them, they become a stage. Without words and without choreography, a dance piece develops that tells of two people who meet, circle each other, develop individually and relate to each other in order to be together for a moment.
The performance was staged as part of the cultural festival “Saksa Kevad – German Spring 2019” organised by the Goethe-Institut Estonia.
trace the lines
Performative intervention with Yvonne Dombrowski, Michael B. Ludwig und Hans Christian van Nijkerk (Künstler:innengruppe SINTOS)
Bergen city centre, Norwegen, 2018
photo: Petter Lønningen
SINTOS visiting the Norwegian city of Bergen on a cold November evening in the shopping street decorated with lights:
A bright green cleaning glove appears. And a canvas attached to a washing line is pulled across the floor. Then a Dadaist soundscape whizzes through the air, to which people respond with gestures. A woman’s voice is now heard, a bass joins in. Passers-by take notice, some stop.
SINTOS in motion – four bodies in dialogue. A group of young people seem to like it. They pause, imitate what they see and try to make contact with their own gestures.
The canvas was dragged through the city on a leash before the action. It picked up traces of dirt and left its own traces – traces that others could have followed. Now it is at the centre of the action, once again being worked over in drawings. SINTOS finally leaves the site with the canvas.