VIDEO PERFORMANCE

Arwa Azzouz
Diana Bauer
Cemre Bayatlier
Wiebke von Bremen / Wang ChunLi
Linn Filous
Judith Förster / Stella Horta
Lukas Graf / Ju Aichinger
Nico Hauck
Elena Herrmann
Xiaoer Liu
Katinka Pyritidis / Raica Wackes
Lina Yasmine Sastimdur / Bruno Visconti
Maxim Tur



initiated by Prof. Jimmy Robert and Constantin Hartenstein I Berlin University of the Arts I winter semester 2020/21


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In the course of the global pandemic, there is a necessity for digital performance. Bookshelf backgrounds advance to stages,
a deep longing for non-digital experience arises, standardized browser windows define limiting spaces for interpersonal
interactions and establish new technological hierarchies.

Performance art, which uses the body as an artistic medium, is able to question social categorizations and thus to reflect
discourses and contents beyond heteronormativity.
Within the block seminar "Video Performance" at Berlin University of Art, the participants developed their own video performances.
The moving image serves as a pre-produced stage, as a live-feed, the camera as an actor and observing entity, as a dance partner,
as a documentary medium or an imagined audience.

In what context can performance art deal with the "New Normal"? Is acting a performance? What role do cameras, projectors and
digital live feeds play in the development of new performance art formats? When do you enter or leave a stage or the frame?
What new digital performance media can be appropriated to express artistic creativity?

The works shown on this platform are works in progress and will result in an exhibition event in summer 2021.

top image: © 'silent spreader' by Lina Yasmine Sastimdur / Bruno Visconti


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ARWA AZZOUZ

(just Arrived) (gerade angekommen)


“I'm exhausted but excited, just arrived.
Do my roots have room here to be planted?
I have something to offer: my heart, my story and a sun. "





DIANA BAUER

Performance Moodboards


A series of aerial perfomance moodboards - work in progress.

















WIEBKE VON BREMEN / WANG CHUNLI

White





A fading feeling of what it means to be in time and space makes me long for softness,
for textile touching my skin. But there, in bed, place of birth, illness, love and death,
I lie sleepless, circling thoughts above my head. Before I can grasp them they dissolve into fog.
This is the center of my world and more, has become my world entirely, as I reach anywhere and always
without my body ever leaving. I wonder though, about this body – am I not bodiless already?

An audiovisual sculpture in progress







CEMRE BAYATLIER

Agitation












The video documents mental prisons created by our narrow and limiting beliefs, which we create ourselves or absorb from the collective mindset.
The cage represents what we define as a problem, anything which we define as “bad” or things/emotions that shouldn’t be there.
So, it’s basically everything we resist, try to get rid of and then suffer from.

We waste all of our energy either fighting the cage or desperately sinking under it by playing the victim role.
The way out of this illusion requires widening the perspective and changing the view point. But we are mostly incapable
to change because the cage feels familiar to us, it has become our comfort zone.
We usually don’t have the courage to go into the unknown, where it feels unfamiliar.

Sound by Blank Wall Season




LINN FILOUS

DIGITAL ME°ID


Welcome to digital space: loops of video phone calls, faces trapped in browser windows, thoughts of distanced politeness, communication in
campaign slogans, and interaction in filter chains - who am I in this digital cosmos?

"DIGITAL ME°ID" is a brief moment of reflection. It is a game that takes the paradox between authenticity and a masked reality to the extreme. 

Masking can be protection, relaxation, thought journey, and communication impulse all at once. Which mask do you put on to experience reality? 









LUKAS GRAF / JU AICHINGER

If you need me, I’ll come texting


Pancakes with maple syrup, a bottle of champagne and two best friends in a Zoom call.
What we tried out one year ago as a new form of digital intimacy, both desperately and enthusiastically, now not only defies any enthusiasm,
but has even become obsolete as a symbol of the pandemic. “If you need me, I'll come texting” reproduces the everyday in order to be able to
visualise authenticity.

A performative attempt in a familiar setting: one’s own apartment, the mimics and gestures of the counterpart and the self, on display.

How can the enacted relationship overcome physical distance? Where can the role of self-observation be located in the relationship?

Based on these thoughts, the video work deals with possible representatives of a relationship.




NICO HAUCK

Thought Police // Gedankenpolizei


Are you also sick of being called „Thought Police“ for pointing out that systemic oppression like racism, sexism, classism, ableism (and many other forms) exist?
Then you need to get „Thought Police“. „Thought Police“ is a high quality glass Police Baton. With „Thought Police“, nobody will ever gaslight you again.

Videoperformance, not a real call for Violence.







ELENA HERRMANN

Cycle of (it)self


Just do it! But how? Bu ho? B h? feeling making thinking making talking listening thinking repeat. Present offer want want someone.
Myself myself found taken arms. I I I I arms. arms arms arms. joyous joyous joyous.

performer: Elena Herrmann
costume: Luisa Weißflog (@lui.love.lab)




JUDITH FÖRSTER / STELLA HORTA

showdown AV


Initiated as a filmic avatar of the performance showdown, this audiovisual work tries to expand the format of screen dance or documentary.

Inspired by Monique Wittig's Le Corps Lesbien and Octavia Butler's novel Parable of the Sower, showdown imagines episodically the meeting and co-existence of two individuals.
In a strange and at the same time provisional-hopeful environment, the two dancers Nanna Stigsdatter Mathiassen and Judith Förster find opportunities to meet.

paragliding /
______________

__________________ knotting /

___________________________________ masking /

_____________ waterfall /

With reference to the worlds of Neo-Western and Survivalism, in showdown the line between duet and duel, collaboration and sabotage become blurred.


Credits 
Artistic direction, choreography and performance: Judith Förster
Film Directing, cinematography and editing: Stella Horta
Co-choreography and performance: Nanna Stigsdatter Mathiassen
Dramaturgy: Isabel Gatzke
Original music and sound mix: Fjóla Gautadóttir
Light Design and Camera Assistance: André Uerba
Costumes: Martin Sieweke
Stage design, sculptures: Julian Weber
Voice-over: Merel Steenbrink, Judith Förster
Audio description: Isabel Gatzke, Renae Shadler, Judith Förster
Color Grading: Tomas Vieira





XIAOER LIU

Onion Juice


This work deals with cutting onions and drinking onion juice as a loop.
It is about overcoming oneself, border experiences: how far could our
suppressed voices travel? As well as the attempt to break out of the
conventions of society, as well as the question of the role of women.



KATINKA PYRITIDIS / RAICA WACKES

The Cutest Criticism


Are you tired of being criticised for what you do? So are we!
Grab a pillow and join us for our first ‘The Cutest Criticism’ live talk!
Each episode will be streamed from our Secret Pillow Palace. We want
to speak out on work-related issues as well as personal stuff, so
please feel free to share your own experiences and just ask away!


“The Cutest Criticism” is a performance project by Katinka Pyritidis and Raica Wackes.
It is an ongoing performative format that engages with the inner critical voice. In their performance,
the two personify the critical voice we all know in the head and give it not only a face, but also a story.
On their Instagram account, Frances and Joey regularly talk to their community about their job as internal critics.




Take part in their performance on Instagram Live: @the_cutest_criticism




LINA YASMINE SASTIMDUR / BRUNO VISCONTI

silent spreader


The performance 'silent spreader' by Lina Yasmine Sastimdur (@linayasmn) and Bruno Visconti responds to existence in an era of a pandemic,
bodying forth the fear of and desire for physical closeness and connection. At a time where so much transpires beyond our control,
our body emerges as a force, tactual and true. A force that is equal at parts sensual, toxic and threatened, the power of our body
epitomises control while also positioning itself in need of it.

Previously invisible frontiers have materialised, everything touched by a body suddenly turns toxic. There is something inside of you,
maybe you just don’t know. You have no symptoms? Maybe you are asymptomatic. You have symptoms? Maybe you are hypochondriac.
What happens in between?

This performance comments on the disgust of the body. It transcends a familiar yet deeply internalised association of bodily shame,
a rejection of our fluids further compounded by the emboldened awareness of sanitisation and censorship.
Playing with the ideas of forbiddance, delusion, and temptation, body movement is unbounded...


Enter the performance space here: silent spreader






MAXIM TUR

Zero Star Run


At a time when data is increasingly dematerialised, the physical aspects of a work, such as screens or projection surfaces,
become protagonist in the presentation; and the work's own materiality plays the role of the supporting cast.
— Julia Stoschek

We probably unterstand performance as a performative action of a physical body in a physical room, viewed by an physical audience;
artist Marilyn Arsem even claims that it wouldn't even be performance if it does not have this level of reality,
does not operate in front of real witnesses on a human scale. And so the videoperformance is reduced to be not more then a documentation,
not able to reproduce what a performance has to be.

In my work "Zero Star Run" I want to question this perspective on video performance and explore and exploit the video screen.
Searching for bodies and embodiment in worlds behind the screen, asking for performance in a digital space;
seeing it as a new way to perform; not as a performance the way we expect it.



Watch the performance on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/whitegauna