Shot at locations in Japan, April 2018

EPISODE 1
for Episode 2 – AJIMA, click here

CONCEPT Marc Philipp Gabriel & Asaf Aharonson
PERFORMANCE / CO-CREATION TASO
MAKE-UP and COSTUMES Asaf Aharonson
PHOTOGRAPHY Marc Philipp Gabriel
Supported by SEIUNKAN AIR Artist-in-Residence programme, Komoro, Japan

The character TASO (performed by Asaf Aharonson) moves between modes of transness, starting from the act of drag as a tool for transgressing genders in public spaces. In the first part of the research, TASO travelled for 10 days, embracing tactics of “guerrilla dragging” in public urban, touristic and rural spaces of Japan (Tokyo, Kamakura, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Naoshima; in male-only-hotels as well as changing into drag in the Shinkansen train), the encounters documented by Marc Philipp Gabriel in the format of a photo journal, a catalogue of experiences. In the second part, TASO and Marc encountered the rural SEIUNKAN AIR residency in Komoro, Nagano-ken, settling the drag experiment in a concluding performance in different spaces around the village.

The project became a reality performance of otherness in everyday life. Out of days of simply doing ordinary things in drag, eating, walking, sightseeing, abrupt moments of performativity arose through spontaneous camera shoots, activating the space and the public into fragments of a show.

At the residency in Komoro, Asaf performed different nuances of  TASO in the every day business of a guest house, without revealing his ordinary identity until the last day.

Over the course of the 16 days, several individuals were inspired to join the drag experience in their own way, quickly developing different kinds of intimacy with the character TASO. The material is still very fresh and will be curated and edited into a photo exhibition and book later this year.

Video documentation of final residency showing, Komoro, Japan April 2018:

photos: © 2018 MARC PHILIPP GABRIEL. All Rights Reserved

Between Horizons is a new collaborative piece from an international team of artists working in our current epoch. Creating a space of visual and physical navigation, this performance invites the audience to filter through visions of how our lives are shaped by circumstance, privilege, and transformation. Pondering the Anthropocene – our current geological time frame identified by the impact and rupture of humankind – we take apart seemingly unbreakable structures, patterns, and loops posing the paradigm: to kill the thing that gave birth to you or to find hope in the dark? Using tools of performance art, stage, music, light, and text, a space inside of a place will be unfolded putting thoughts into motion as well the thought of why, at times, there is rarely any movement at all.

CONCEPTION, PERFORMANCE, LIVE MUSIC, LIGHT, STAGE:
Yogin Sullaphen, Gretchen Blegen, Marie Fricout, Kieron Jina, Marc Philipp Gabriel

PREMIERE

National Arts Festival South Africa 2018
Makhanda (Grahamstown). Venue: Graeme College

06 JUL  20:00
07 JUL  12:00 + 18:00
08 JUL  14:00 + 18:00

Monsters are scary, terrifying and ugly -this is how we imagine them. Yet they are also representations of anarchy and signify longings of being ‚different’. Monsters give us the lusty creeps; ’angst lust’. Because they exist outside of the norm, monsters threaten our identity and agitate our certainty whilst confronting us with our own self. Through differentiation they simultaneously serve a reassurance of normality. In the 19th century freak shows became an important de-monstration. Exhibiting the monstrous and pairing it with the voyeuristic audience’s expectations these shows had a regulating functionality. The monstrous arrived within the everyday life whilst being domesticated by keeping it within specific boundaries. But what happens when the line between monster and curious onlooker blurs? In her new piece Helena Botto together with choreographer Marc Philipp Gabriel and her team examine the aesthetics of the grotesque, absurd and the freaky body as well as the theatrical apparatus of a freak show. They open new perspectives for the audience of what might be perceived as’ the other’.

PREMIERE  2 + 3 AUG 2017 / Ausufern Festival / Uferstudios Berlin
10 + 11 NOV 2017 / Hebelhalle Unterwegstheater / Heidelberg
13 DEC 2017 / SODA ALUMNI FESTIVAL / Uferstudios / Berlin
5 + 6 JAN 2018 / ACUD / Berlin

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Helena Botto – Studies on Monstrousness

7-27 NOV 2016 / 3rd Study on Monstrousness / Residency at TANZAllianz Coreographisches Centrum Heidelberg, Heidelberg

22 OCT 2016 /   2nd Study on Monstrousness / Presentation “Tanz Stipendium Berlin Senate 2015” / Ada Studios, Berlin

4-12 SEP 2016 / 1st Study on monstrousness / Monstratorum (research) / Residency at Lugar Instável, Teatro do Campo Alegre, Porto

helenabotto.weebly.com

3^rd Study on Monstrousness – some notes on the structure

To kill the Monster one needs to keep it apart, but at the same time, to introduce it into the everyday realm, one will make out of it a curiosity (fair) and so it will paradoxically become a liberator of anguish.

José Gil in Monstros, 1994

This performative research is rooted on the exploration of monstrousness and aims to bring a critical insight on the theatrical apparatus of the Freakshow, the popular fairs of wonders and Humans Zoos.

Freakshows and Human Zoos arose in the middle of the XIX century – as a consequence of the apogee of the western european colonialism – and were a display that emphasised division and Otherness, rooted on the dichotomy: I versus The Other.

Often disguised by the name of “World’s Fairs”, those shows (de-monstrations) offered a particular regulating mechanism where the display of the “monstrous”, or of the “Other” was meant to satisfy and pacify the voyeuristic desire of an audience by attempting to reassure their own normalcy.

The three weeks residency at the Choreographic Center of Heidelberg constituted the third of the five condensed blocks of this research. The previous two blocks were in September (Portugal) and in October (Berlin). The objective of this phase was tending toward the construction of a structural draft that would allow the exploration of, and reflect upon ways of transforming the conventional roles of the “Monster” (the Other), “the Freakshow Host” (the Showman) and the Audience, and to test a few procedures in order to build the skeleton of the future performance.

How strict should the borders of this triangulation remain in order that the spectrum of the former dispositif can still remain visible? And how much can one merge them?

In aesthetical and methodological parameters this research is making use of grotesqueness, absurdity, the exploration of the moustrous, in its comic, morbid and scary variations aiming to achieve states of hybridness in which the content becomes blurred and often unidentifiable.

A public showing at Ada Studios, in Berlin the previous October, inserted within a specific frame, brought back into the work adapted and recontextualised performative material that I had started to develop in 2015 within the frame of the “Portuguese Monster” – where I was developing material related to the role of Portugal as a colony, its mentality, its cultural and folkloric manifestations, a.o. (Helena Botto)

photo: Dieter Hartwig 

DOWN TO EARTH is a whirling dance of constructed identities shaped by increasingly complex constellations that go beyond the universal social interrogation of “where are you from?” and “what do you do?”. Existing examples of socially coded dance, music and cultural artifacts collide until alien identities are born and shattered on stage, drawing on the human body as a projection canvas. What agency do we really have in rupturing our identities? Kieron Jina (South Africa) and Marc Philipp Gabriel (Germany) work together since 2013. For “Down to Earth“ Yogin Sullaphen (South African) joins as a collaborator to assist in musical composition.

Choreography & Performance: Kieron Jina & Marc Philipp Gabriel | Music: Yogin Sullaphen | Light: Gretchen Blegen | Set: Marie Fricout | Dramaturgy: Joni Barnard | Rehearsal director: Liselotte Singer

Coproduction: Tanzfabrik Berlin and University of Johannesburg Arts and Culture.
Supported by: Internationaler Koproduktionsfonds des Goethe Instituts | Dance Umbrella Festival (Johannesburg) | National Arts Festival, South Africa | NATIONALES PERFORMANCE NETZ (NPN) International Guest Performance Fund for Dance, which is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media on the basis of a decision by the German Bundestag.

AWARDS

Nominated for “Best Cutting Edge Production 2017”, South African Theatre Magazine Awards for Stage

PRESS

„This piece is, to vary the fitting programme notes, a hybrid of cultural artefacts, socially coded dances and music, a playfully exotic dance that neither denies the desire for appropriation, transformation and identity change, nor for the fen-fire-like in-between.” (Astrid Kaminski, tanzraumberlin)

“Why is this faking of rituals, this colourful ethno-kitsch so good? Perhaps because it is made so easy to experience the seductive part of it, and because at the same time the comedy of the unsuccessful attempts at enchantment is now and then shining through, but remains unspoken. And also because the multi-ethnic globe-hopper-cast makes it clear how thin the boundaries are between expropriation, appropriation, and self-ownership in a world of mutual interdependence and influence.” (Astrid Kaminski, tanzraumberlin)

DATES

4 – 6 JULY 2017 / National Arts Festival / arena programme / Grahamstown, South Africa

12 MAY 2017 / Theatertreffen / international programme / Berliner Festspiele, Germany

10 MAR 2017 / #UPINTHESKY Workshop / Con Cowan Theatre / Johannesburg

2 + 3 MAR 2017 / Dance Umbrella / Johannesburg

24 + 25 FEB 2017 / Open Spaces #1 / Tanzfabrik Berlin

DOWN TO EARTH means basic, both feet on the ground, straight forward, exactly what is expected. No surprises please. No more than necessary, no bullshitting. Just be yourself, please, innocent like a child. DOWN TO EARTH is exactly that — and not! It is unexpectedly the expected. The descent of the strange stranger from non-earth to Earth. The alien figure within us, the reflection of what we are – not -, and what we could have been. Digging up questions like: why-are-we-like-this and why-not-like-that? This is an encouragement for collective self-analysis.

Two faceless humanoid creatures, vulnerable and bare as they are, drop down in our communal centre, the theatre stage, and proceed to take us on a bumpy road trip through the building and bursting of culture, where the distinction between artificial and real becomes blurred and dichotomies of gender, power and social norms are revealed in their threatening ridiculousness. Emptied out, we ask ourselves, is this the world we would like to be in?

Kieron Jina, Marc Philipp Gabriel (performers) and Yogin Sullaphen (musician) are using a bunch of random “man-made” stuff to summon an artificial world of creatures, cultural codes and artifacts from past and present times, touching on the nostalgia for another future and heading for a rebirth into another past.

“When you are down to earth, don’t forget to look at what’s up in the sky!” — (someone wise)

“When two hands touch, there is a sensuality of the flesh, an exchange of warmth, a feeling of pressure, of presence, a proximity of otherness that brings the other nearly as close as oneself. Perhaps closer. And if the two hands belong to one person, might this not enliven an uncanny sense of the otherness of the self, a literal holding oneself at a distance in the sensation of contact, the greeting of the stranger within? So much happens in a touch: an infinity​ of others—other beings, other spaces, other times—are aroused.”

Karen Barad

photos: Dieter Hartwig 

Evgenija Wassilev: Music Pieces for Voice Piece for Bass, Tenor and Baritone (after Voice Piece for Soprano by Yoko Ono), 2016

The work is based on a re-interpretation and translation of the instruction piece Voice Piece for Soprano by Yoko Ono, performed by musicians, in tribute to Yoko Ono’s piece and interpretation. The voice piece performances were transcripted into music sheets, using the algorithm of a note recognition program. The performers interpret the musical notation of the translated screaming into a music piece on his instrument, extending its possibilities for the unplayable parts of the scores by using tactile parts of the instrument, voice or respiration sounds.

Marc Philipp Gabriel (voice / flute), Juan Peñalver Madrid (voice / piano), Mike Flemming (voice / viola), Michal Krajczok (voice)

Wandering Flutist (Music Pieces for Voice Piece, after Voice Piece for Soprano by Yoko Ono), 2016

The flutist Marc Philipp Gabriel plays six selected music sheets out of the musical notation of three voice performances of four different musician’s voice performances while walking through hidden and public spaces of the Campus HBK in Brunswick.

26 MAY 2016 / 19:00 / CYBORG’S HERITAGE // Mayhem / Vanitas Performance Fest / Kopenhagen

24 APR 2016 / 19:00 / CYBORG’S HERITAGE // Talking to a deer (friend) / DOCK 11 / Berlin

09 SEP 2015 / 19:00 / CYBORGS HERITAGE // Veem House for Performance / Amsterdam

CYBORG’S HERITAGE is an ongoing performative research by Burkhard Körner and Marc Philipp Gabriel. Both of us have backgrounds in classical music and are recent graduates from experimental choreography schools (SNDO Amsterdam / HZT Berlin).

The idea for CYBORG’S HERITAGE grew out of an immense curiosity for what would happen if the specific modes and qualities of traditional western music making and the infinite possibilities and reflective processes of contemporary performance making start to inform each other: singing baroque music as part of a dance performance. What seems simple and obvious at first has undergone a crucial development that goes deeper than the superficial confrontation of both worlds. We are insisting on revealing the concepts, sub-layers, emotions, codes, conventions, taboos, patterns, mechanisms, social implications and relationships of each world, in order to explore what these inner layers can contribute to each other.

Starting from dissecting a vocal duet by Claudio Monteverdi and exploring physical approaches derived from partnering and contact improvisation, combined with pixelated full body suits, we began to summon a post-human digital body with permeable borders and fading individualities. We started exploring approaches derived from partnering and contact improvisation (in particular the symmetry practice of Jess Curtis and Maria F. Scaroni). Playing with modes of perception, flatness and universality on the visual level, the vocal level operates with individual timbres, social communication and emotional exchange between the two performers and the audience, moving on a fine line between comedy and seriousness.
We are working on the physicality of a post-human body, a body that becomes object, that loses individuality and is seemingly entangled with the world of other beings. An incomplete organism. A post-identity-body that is yet pierced by its vocal heritage.

CREATION AND PERFORMANCE Burkhard Körner and Marc Philipp Gabriel

THANKS TO Johanna Peine, Emma Tricard, Petar Sarjanovic, Graziella Gamonal, Jija Sohn, Lisa Skwirblies, Oneka von Schrader, Bussana Vecchia, Maria F. Scaroni and Jess Curtis

photo: Ahmed el Ghendy

photo: Linea Kornum Rask

B: It will be our first creation after graduating from choreography

M: It’s not fitting in.

B: What do you need to know?

M: It is digging into our togetherness.

B: Can you see the thing which is so inherent for us?

M: It will be the non-human sounding of a butterfly.

B: What if a tone can tell more than a movement?

M: It is floating in delirium.

B: I think this is a piece which wants to bridge what seems to be opposite.

M: It is an urban dirty queer ritual club.

B: Is this a human drama or an expression of contemporaneity?

M: It is saying yes.

B: It is an encounter of two Germans who are not where they come from.

M: It is a caterpillar looking for transformation.

B: It wants to channel our desire for music into contemporary performance.

M: It is already there.