Production Details / Press Releases
THE CLOUD: A COSMO-CHOREOGRAPHY
MADE BY ANIMALS/ VEGETABLES/ MINERALS/ HUMANS/ CONCEPTS/ EMOTIONS
A SHRIMP, A THISTLE, fluorescent minerals, humans, entanglement and wonder are the co-authors of this work. SXS enterprise asks: what if this performance was made by animals, vegetables, minerals, humans, concepts and affects? And how would I perceive it if I believed that that was the case? They employed scientific methods to get to know their collaborators and worked para-scientifically to communicate with them. They pull apart correlations creating space for a parallel universe, by cross channeling between the ‘here and now’.
Meteorologically a cloud is a product of ration and relations – water, pressure, temperature and dust. A cloud is an ephemeral and ecological atmosphere. We are choosing the theatre space as an ecology without nature: as a study of a house where activities regulate the flux of energy and matter. Entangled objects behave as though they were telepathic. It is the capacity of an object to imagine another object. To make a cloud will be very difficult because the mere presence of the audience disturbs the atmosphere. But maybe that’s exactly what this is about. Everything disturbs, influences, makes something else.
SXS ENTERPRISE is an international group of artists. Besides their individual projects in film/video/music/performance/theory, they occasionally come together to work within the field of performance as a possibility of aesthetic reflection and experience. They have explored different genres such as live film, storytelling, rock opera, musical, lecture performance and now choreography. In a conscious reduction to DIY tools they engage in a critical practice while fully devoting themselves to the magic of theatre.
SXS ENTERPRISE like inviting guests. This time they expand their cosmo-choreography by inviting berlin based practitioners from the fields of performance, choreography, philosophy, curation, architecture and music to share their own approaches and explorations next to each other. They deal with non-human and human agency, feminist artistic practices, materiality and being together.
SIEGMAR ZACHARIAS works in the theory and practice of performance. Her works develop formats of performances, installations and discursive formats. They deal with questions of human/non-human agency and collaboration; the contract of the willful suspension of disbelief and the critical substance it produces. Her current artistic research is into the ecology of artistic practice. She teaches at Doch Stockholm, DasArts Amsterdam, and HZT Berlin.
XANDER DE BOER is working as a documentary filmmaker, video artist and performer. He makes independent movies and commissioned films. His independent work is stylistically sophisticated. The interplay between movement, sound and image are important elements in his films. Xander studied Theatre, Film and Television at the University of Utrecht, but also studied Visual Art at Art School.
STEVE HEATHER, Drummer, summoner of sound. Stiff Leather the Australian Shaman’s music has been described as the breeding ground between progressive landscape gardening, psychic carpentry and a progressive instructional ritual finesse DVD.
SILKE BAKE works as dramaturge, curator, and artistic manager in the field of performing arts. She develops topic-bound programs and research formats in collaboration with institutions. She is continuously working as an artistic manager and coach with the performing artists Anne Juren (F/A), Claudia Bosse (D/A), and Siegmar Zacharias (D), as well as a mentor in art educational environments.
SANDRA BLATTERER, born 1978 in Vienna, lives in Berlin and works as a light designer since 2005. She is interested in the experimental character and the unseizable quality of light as well as in the interface between performing arts and visual arts. These interests are mirrored in her light design for performing arts productions and her own installation art work.
IGOR DOBRICIC is a Serbian dramaturge active in the field of contemporary dance. He is at the moment living and working between Berlin and Amsterdam while teaching and developing collaborations internationally. In his practice, he is sharing work with a number of choreographers ( Christina Ciupke, Jenny Beyer, Meg Stuart, Keren Levi, Chris Leuenberger a.o). Table Talks is his long term research project.
Cast & Credits
CONCEPT, REALISATION: SXS enterprise/ Siegmar Zacharias, Xander de Boer, Steve Heather
LIGHT-DESIGN: Sandra Blatterer
OUTSIDE-EYE: Igor Dobricic
ARTISTIC MANAGEMENT, COACHING: Silke Bake
A production from Siegmar Zacharias/ SXS enterprise in co-production with FFT Düsseldorf, MDT Stockholm and SOPHIENSÆLE.
Funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds, and Kulturstiftung NRW in the frame of “Alien Ecologies”.
Supported by Goethe-Institut Schweden.
Thanks to Avantgarde Bühnentechnik, Lichtblick, Uferstudios.
And thanks to Jared Gardinger, Dan Belasco New, Julia Rodriguez, and Susanne Zacharias, without their support this work would not have been possible.
Sophiensæle
Video Documentation
The video documentation is produced on behalf of the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion. The purpose of this contract is to document productions in the field of contemporary dance in Berlin. The master recordings are archived by the University Library of the Berlin University of Arts. Copies of the recordings on DVD are available for viewing exclusively in the reference collections of the following archives (at media desks in these institutions):
University Library of the Berlin University of Arts
Mediathek für Tanz und Theater des Internationalen Theaterinstituts / Mime Centrum Berlin
Inter-University Centre for Dance Berlin (HZT)