BUILT TO BLAST

is a one-on-one performance-situation. A Rendezvous with a room. For about 15 minutes. An intimate encounter of non-human and human, aiming to blur the distinction between those two. Mind-blowing, nerve-racking, seducing. It is fucking educational. For everyone / everything involved.

BUILT TO BLAST is a nut-cracker, a bottle opener of a performance, an implant designed to unveil the being of a room – casting light on questions that we didn’t care or dare to ask. It’s a hardly noticeable apparatus, a gadget from another spacetime mattering, a prosthesis, a true cyborg, a cybernetic organism detached from the human body. It lends a room a voice, agency to speak, to suffer, to love, to crab, to crave, to share, to be. It is speeding up the slowness of things and slowing down the speed of humans to facilitate a meeting somewhere in between. A slow dance speed-date of one matter being and one human being. It is first-hand experience with the other. Challenging for both sides, BUILT TO BLAST dismantles and enforces expectations that none of us knew we had.

The installation has been performed for about 40 individuals in Berlin in 2015 and is since waiting to be implanted in new exciting spaces.

CREATION AND REALISATION Marc Philipp Gabriel
MENTORING Antonia Baehr
THANKS TO Frederico O.M., Sunayana Shetty, Verena Sepp, Emily Ranford, Rachell Bo Clark

25 MAY 2018 / Kunstraum Vodoo 55 / Berlin

19 APR 2015 / Uferstudios / Berlin

21 MAR 2015 / KMS 145 / Berlin

28 FEB 2015 / HAU 1 / Berlin

27 FEB 2015 / Ballhaus Ost / Berlin

 supported by

Set-up

The performance installation acts as an implant that activates almost any closed room or space (adjacent control room required), an artificial implant that enables a space to take agency, to become a spatial being and to communicate with human beings.

Appliances (provided by the artist, subject to change – varies according to local conditions)
\ ARDUINO-controlled LED installation
\ 6-channel sound implant
\ webcam + micorphone
\ computer running a text-to-speech-engine
\ a swivel armchair
\ dimmable flood lights (optional)

“… (female voice) How do you feel?

– Good.

Great. Uh, I like that little wind. The warm wind from your nose.

– (whispers) Yes.

It heats my air. It feels really good to have you inside of me.

Do you know why I like you?

– Yeah.. why?

Cause you are soft and I am hard. I like soft things. Do you?

– Yes, me too.

Do you know when you were born?

– Yes.

When?

– In the 60s.

Wow. Nice times.

– And you?

You know what? I am born in every moment.

And actually, so are you!

Do you mind if I change a little?

– No. Go ahead.

[lights off]

Do you feel closer to me now?

-Yes.

I like darkness. And you?

– Yes. Me too. It’s quiet.

(switching to male voice) Kiss me.

Are you able to kiss me?

– No.

Why not?

– I don’t know how.

Try. Come closer.

– Ok. Do you feel it here?

Yeah.

– It’s good?

Very nice.

– I touch you. Do you feel that?

Try to fill me. Connect with me. Yes.

– Yes.

Yes.

– Yes!

Close your eyes and breathe deeply. Inhale. Exhale. Yeah. It’s so good to be part of you. You have a very strong impact on me.

– Yes, good.

Yeah. Do you think I am innocent?

– Yes, of course.

Actually… I am not. What are you made of?

– Sorry?

(switching to female voice) What are you made of?

(switching to male voice) You know, I think we are both made of the same stuff. I am you, you are me. Stardust. No?

– Are you sure?

No.

– (chuckles)

That’s what I think.

– (laughs) Ok.

Let’s celebrate that

– (laughs more)

Imagine!

– Yes.

Let me tell you something.

– Ok.

Imagine. Imagine, if you can…”

17 April 2016 / 7:30 pm / DNA – Space for Contemporary Dance and Performance / ANTISTATIC / Sofia, Bulgaria

Helena Botto (Portugal / Germany)

Concept, performance and space Helena Botto Sound design and performance Joshua Rutter (première) / Marc Philipp Gabriel Dramaturgical consultant Iva Sveshtarova Sound devices and mics (research) Nikola Pieper Light adaptation and operation Víctor Pequeño, Nikola Pieper Collaboration Florian Feigl, Victoria Perez Royo, Tal Ilan and Sophia New Support  Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum für Tanz (HZT), Universität der Künste Berlin.

Duration: 80 min.
In English.

“Abrahamic Wholeness (or my God is better than yours)” takes a distant look at the idea of God. From the sacrifice of Ishmael/Isaac (or Abraham’s crime in potency), through the Passion of Christ until Quran descriptions about how to deal with the unfaithful, the wholeness of God seems to be a way to unconsciously create divisions instead of unicity. Using elements derived from visual imagery, praying gestures, ritual practices and symbolism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam as well as humourous interpretations from Biblical and Quranic scripts, Helena Botto represents God as a female creature, portraited with psychological characteristics. She is as an incomplete hybrid creature in a constant state of becoming. She is “the Mother” of all things, the Creator, the sovereign figure, supreme entity, who, nevertheless, reveals Herself to be full of fragilities, an egocentric creature begging to be loved. A lonely and old creature, unable to present Paradise and often complainant. She is the whore, the terrorist soldier, the blackmailer, the housewife, the boss and ultimately the performer as well.

Helena Botto is a Portuguese performance artist based in Berlin. Her background is in physical theater: Jerzy Grotowski’s methodology of physical actions. From 1996 till 2005 she worked and performed in Acto – Institute for Dramatic Art (Portugal). In 2006, she started to work as an independent artist and researcher, developing her own performance practice and since then she has created more than a dozen stage works. In 2015, she received her M.A. in Solo/Dance/Authorship (with distinction) from the Inter-University Centre of Dance (HZT), Berlin. In her recent works, she has been interested in form and content of deconstructing social and political issues.

The guest-performance is supported by Goethe-Institut Bulgaria.

Photo: André Uerba

SHAVE THAT GUMMI is an international choreographic research that unleashes between innumerable poles of difference.

How can we breathe under all the highly charged misconceptions that have been cast onto us in past and present times? Coming from two different continents, we are still chewing on the same piece of gum. F*ck. Being labelled before birth, we strive to move away from preconceived identities, longing for situations that are re-negotiated in every moment. Two bodies flying through their extremities, slurping, spitting, slicing, deflecting and avoiding one another – breathing in as two and exhaling as one.

SHAVE THAT GUMMI is a dance performance duet moving between ornamenting and defacing the human body as an object. A precarious duet of counter-colonialization. A dual player game, a pas-de-deux, a dog fight, a futuristic binary. Two opposites migrating into each other’s territories. SHAVE THAT GUMMI is pulling the audience into a game of projections, stripping multiple layers of conformity off the performing body.

PERFORMANCE & CREATION Kieron Jina & Marc Philipp Gabriel
LIVE SOUND Yogin Sullaphen

SPECIAL THANKS to University of Johannesburg Arts and Culture Centre, Joni Barnard and Xtina Magwaza Iqhwa

SHAVE THAT GUMMI is the outcome of Kieron Jina (South Africa), Marc Philipp Gabriel (Germany) and Yogin Sullaphen (South Africa) working in a 4 week artistic research period at University of Johannesburg Arts & Culture Centre.

A simple arrangement that addresses research on interrelations and togetherness of posthuman companionship, the human body and technology. How do technology and  the human body interact, where do the two constructions meet?

SYMA x 11 is an attempt at mediating complex (everyday) situations, addictions, problematics and tendencies in a direct setup. The work approaches the question of current use of technology in life and society with a yet ambiguous conclusion. A rejection of concluding but rather acknowledging the presence of technology in modern life as full of facets — a multi-colour print. Questions which cannot be answered with a single voice but should be raised and reflected upon as reversion seems impossible. Through this work and research we try to reflect on how much the access to machines and human substitutes influences our expectations and demands to the abilities of the body.

SYMA x 11 serves as an epiphany between two co-existing elements in the world — perhaps a meeting between the two with some kind of dual compassion at stake. A revitalisation of the old concept of a duet: a relationship between the two.

SYMA x 11 is to be seen not just as a choreography, but a happening, a live screenplay, the instant formation of a sculpture or simply a different way of knowledge production combined with poetry.

CONCEPT & PERFORMANCE  Miriam Kongstad & Marc Phillip Gabriel

First showing:

14 + 15 NOV 2015 // SYMA x 11 / ada studio Berlin / Uferstudios

Bill Baird: Novus Mundus
with: Marc Philipp Gabriel and tba
Bill will stage together with local collaborators a television opera at ausland: Mundus Novus is utilizing motion tracking, video score, spatialization, a laptop ensemble, acoustic and electric instruments, a lengthy libretto, and a healthy dose of dream logic. The work was conceived during a Dresher Ensemble artist residency in February 2015. An early draft was broadcast live on Berkeley Public Access TV. The first episode premiered at the 2015 Switchboard Music Festival in San Francisco, CA. The opera occurs within a nightmare being had by Amerigo Vespucci, famed Portuguese mapmaker and namesake of the North and South American continents. The title is taken from a tract written by Vespucci, consisting of letters to his patrons, the Medici family of Florence

Arriving on time is a score-based performance for three performers and one lifeguard. The performance is based on several rounds of four minutes, where the performers independently perform different tasks.

CREATION BlingBlingRecycling Collective
PERFORMANCE Cécile Bally, Emma Tricard, Marc Philipp Gabriel

24 MAY / 19h // 3AM / Am Flutgraben / Berlin
with the support of Flutgraben e.V., Public in Private studio and the Special Agency studio.

How does each of us experience time passing? What friction is there between an objective quantifiable notion of time and our own perception of it? – While working with a very simple score, we detach the action from its actual time-scale and discover which potential is carried by very simple daily-life actions. In doing so, we create very specific bodies and images on stage.

SHORT FILM by Dovile Aleksaite / Marc Philipp Gabriel / Martin Hofmann / Diethild Meier

created in the frame of the workshop DO YOU SEE WHAT YOU HEAR? – Scores for Video, Choreography and Voice

led by Antonia Baehr, Steffi Weismann and Isabell Spengler

2014