Chora. Growing Time

The relationship between time and space is the centre of focus in Chora. How does a space move us and how does it change when we move in it? Chora looks different every day. Performers, objects, videos, texts and sound transform the space. It moves between the presence of the bodies and the phantasms of the images and texts. Everything has a present, past and future.

As a visitor, you arrive in a landscape. You go in and move around the space, you stop and stay for a while, you look around, listen. You leave again. The days get longer, the opening times get later, the landscape changes. The audience and the performers share the experience of a living environment.

Artist Statement

1.Chora is a space choreography, not a dance piece. It lives in its spatial relationships, not from a dramaturgy. It is created in the in-between spaces between bodies, objects, images, texts, not in their sequence. It surrounds the visitors, it is not facing them. It is plastic, not visual.

2.In the live performance, the performers spend time together in a presence of intensified fee- ling – listening, taking in, allowing. Every session is an independent act, every time it is unique. Allowing new connections to happen takes place differently every time.

The choros in Chora is not presupposed, encounters are contingent.

3.The bodies share the stage: multiply it, disperse it in the space. The stages drift and slide, the bodies let them shift and go with them.

4.The location of the presentation, Studio 14, is the centre of gravitation, not the container of the space choreography. The space is open, the performers come and go in and out of the exhibition space.

And just as the performers move through a landscape in the live sessions, so the choros moves over the earth in the video images. It continues its travels in the texts.

5.Just as the performers come and go, so too do the visitors: entering, staying, going out again, coming back… Chora is a place to dwell and a transitory place at the same time. What applies to the performers also applies to the audience: each time, new connections are allowed to happen again. It is not guaranteed, not fixed and not predetermined. It’s alive.

Moritz Majce lives and works in Berlin and Vienna. He studied at Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna and at Städelschule in Frankfurt a.M. The focus of his work begins with Sensationen im Alleingang (2005 and 2006): The relationship between artwork and viewer. Since then he has been working with installations, choreographies and videos that explore the relationship between watching and being watched, the space between audience and performance.

Sandra Man lives and works in Berlin, Vienna and Obervellach. After studying Literature and Philosophy, she began working as an author and artist. She describes spaces in texts, videos and in collaboration with performers. Since Ellipsen (2014), her writing has been created primarily in connection with spatial choreographies of bodies, objects, images and language.

With Die Umsetzung (2011, Localize Festival/Potsdam, 2012 Ballhaus Ost/Berlin) the artistic cooperation between Moritz Majce and Sandra Man began. With the joint works Fortress/Europe (2015, Sophiensaele/Berlin), Narkosis (2017, imagetanz Festival/Vienna, Open Spaces/Tanzfabrik Berlin), Choros I-VI (2016-2018, Flutgraben/Berlin, Kunstraum Lakeside/Klagenfurt, Collegium Hungaricum/Berlin, WUK performing arts/Vienna, Open Spaces/Tanzfabrik Berlin) they developed spatial choreographies: mobile installations and walk-in performances. Objects, videos, texts and performers create fluid environments for viewers. At the core of their work is an exploration of nature and technology. This spatial choreographies are shown internationally and are funded by Vienna and Berlin. moritzmajcesandraman.com

[Source: play bill]

TFB Nr. 1391