IN TRANSIT 09 - Performing Arts Festival

PROGRAM:

IN TRANSIT 09 – Resistance of the Object

What if an object could speak? Moreover, what if an object could speak back – and through its unexpected claiming of sovereignty and will, open up a whole new way for us to understand and to create performances?
“Resistance of the Object” is the theme for IN TRANSIT 09. This phrase emphasizes the recent and increasingly visible phenomenon in the performing arts of exploring the fine line between objecthood and subjectivity. Thus, much of the theater, body art, dance, performance, video, installation and lectures presented during the 10 days of the festival directly address the current centrality of objects in performance. Sometimes playfully, sometimes cruelly, artists from five continents will explore how subjects become objects, objects become subjects, and how neither can escape the call to act.
“Resistance of the Object” is a phrase drawn directly from the work of US performance and critical theorist Fred Moten – a guest throughout IN TRANSIT 09 and who will open the lecture series. Moten’s work reminds us how colonialism and capitalism in its past and current racisms and modes of subjectivation are both predicated on systematic, pervasive, and institutional reduction of entire human populations to the condition of objects. Yet, even when reduced to objecthood, resistance has happened and continues to happen – particularly through performances that can only be called: radical.
I hope you will enjoy this edition of IN TRANSIT – since joy is essential to any resistant act.

André Lepecki, Curator



Opening
Thursday 11.6.
19 h – 1 h
Switching on the House: The Opening of IN TRANSIT celebrates the festival’s buoyant mood: Dreamlike choreographies, performative installations, guerilla dances, intriguing videos, sculpture, music and more.


Sankai Juku (Japan)
Hibiki (1998)
Thu. 11.6. – Sat. 13.6. 20 h (85 min)

“Amagatsu is to botany as Pina Bausch is to psychology, taking inspiration from the minimalist transformations of cellular tone and texture as she plumbs emotions for their parallel in movement.” International Herald Tribune. Sankai Juku, with “Hibiki”, winner of the Laurence Olivier Award 2001 for best choreographic production, for the first time ever in Berlin!


Maria Jose Arjona (Colombia/USA)
Untitled (2008)
Thu. 11.6. ab 19 h, Fr. 12.6. – Sun. 14.6. 12 – 16 h + 18 – 22 h
Remember to Remember (2008)
Wed. 17.6. – Sat. 20.6. 12 – 16 h + 18 – 22 h
Karaoke (2008)
21.6. 17 – 20 h
Performance
Free Entrance

Red bubbles on the wall, „Remember to Remember“ tattooed on the back, „Je ne regrette rien“ sung until the voice is no more: “Marie Jose Arjona seduces her audience by being vulnerable and placing herself in a position of wonder, which in turn imposes a feeling of uncertainty on the viewer. How do we negotiate this?” Wynwood. The Art Magazine



Impure Company / Hooman Sharifi (Iran/Norway)
Once Upon a Time Country
Sun. 14.6. 21:30 h + Fr. 19.6. 22.00 + Sat. 20.6. 21 h (70 min)
Performance


Thu. 11.6. 19 – 21.30 h + Fri. 12.6. 18 – 22 h + Sat. 13.6. 18 – 22 h + Thu. 18.6. 18 – 21 h + So 21.6. 17 – 20 h
Workshop
Free Entrance


“Somewhere, once upon a time, there was a land where animals and humans co-created functions and behaviors.“ Hooman Sharifi opens an island-workshop built in the pond at the House to develop the idea of a country where the division between humans and animals is uncertain. The public is invited to row over and take part. This (post-human?) utopia is turned into a performance by the Impure Company.



El Periférico de Objetos (Argentina)
Manifiesto de Niños (2005)
Fri. 12.6. + Sat. 13.6. 21.30 h (90 min)
Theatre
Spanish with German subtitles


Actors in a box are revolting, acting as children, reading manifestos, filming and vexing each other; the audience outside is watching the „children“ through windows, watching the live videos, watching each other when the inside goes quiet. El Periférico de Objetos, founded as a puppet theater, places manipulation at the center of their approach.



Allen S. Weiss / Michel Nedjar (USA/France)
Danse Macabre I (2004)
Fri. 12.6. 19.30 / 21 h + Sat. 13.6. 19.30 / 21 / 22 h + Sun. 14.6. 18 / 19.30 / 21 h (25 min)
Theater

“How might we envision the Totentanz in the 21st century? The presence of intensely grotesque rag-dolls, inspired by Dance of Death iconography, resonates with a disembodied voice chanting the story of the dolls in an imaginary, disarticulate language.” (Allen S. Weiss).



deepblue / Heine Røsdal Avdal (Belgium)
Some notes are (2006)
Fri. 12.6. 20 h (60 min)
Performance



deepblue / Heine R. Avdal, Christoph De Boeck, Yukiko Shinozaki (Belgium)
you are here (2008)
Sat. 13.6. 22 h + Sun. 14.6. 20 h (80 min)
Performance

“Some notes are” explores, what is specific to the site of the theater: Actions and objects transform into other actions and objects until the interface between performer and audience starts shifting. “you are here” turns the theater into an archive of possible meanings: chairs talk, stage curtains lead their own lives and even the performers are no more than pawns in a larger network.



Trajal Harrell (USA)
Tickle the Sleeping Giant #9 (the ambien piece) (2009)
Sat. 14.6. 12 - 20:00h
Performance
Free Entrance

Showpony
Tanz, Café Global
Wed. 17.6. 19:30h + Sun. 21.6. 18.30 h (70 min)
Dance


New York choreographer Trajal Harrell explores the performance of „cool“ in relationship to the performativity of fashion: In “Tickle the Sleeping Giant” the public is invited to view the movements of a group of performers asleep on the drug Ambien, while “Showpony” addresses the value of fashion shows and the implications of selling your body.




Julie Tolentino (USA)
CRY OF LOVE (2009)
Thu. 11.6. 19 – 21.30 h + Fri. 12.6. 18 – 21 h + Sat. 13.6. 18 – 21 h
Installation
Free Entrance

Sun. 14.6.18 h (30 min)
Performance


Step A: An intimate environment where the audience can interact with some intriguing elements left by the artist. Step B: Tolentino uses the audience’s input to create a solo piece exploring the frail boundaries between witnessing and participating.


Julie Tolentino + Ron Athey (USA)
The Sky Remains The Same – Archiving Ron Athey's Self-Obliteration #1 (2008)
Thu. 18.6. 19.30 h (45 min)
Performance


Julie Tolentino archives Ron Athey’s piece by transferring it to her own body. When they perform one after the other this heavily physical and haunting piece, the audience will be questioning their own perception of what “contagion” means in our society.




Aitana Cordero (Spain/Netherlands)
Solo...? (2008)
Sun. 14.6. 19 h (40 min)
Performance

The Duet (2007)
Wed. 17.6. + Thu. 18.6. 21:30h (40 min)
Dance


“A body alone on stage is missing other bodies to interact with. Why do I move, if I don’t have anything to touch?” In “Solo…?” the performer feels the resistance of objects center stage, while in “The Duet” “three dancers articulate my body (itself totally motionless), choose my motion and play with the different ways how a body (my body) can be read.”




Mapa Teatro (Colombia)
Ansío los Alpes; así nacen los Lagos (2008)
Text: Händl Klaus, “Ich ersehne die Alpen; So entstehen die Seen”
Wed. 17.6. + Fri.19.6. 19.30 h (65 min)
Theater
Spanish with German Subtitles


A woman on the brink of death hallucinates herself into the silent and cold Alps while a solitary and fatigued man up in the mountains realizes that the company he hoped to have found are dead bodies. „An enigmatic visual and sounding poem… echoes of distant geographies knocking at the actual history of Colombian society.“ Revue Mouvement, Paris



Maricel Alvarez & Emilio García Wehbi (Argentina)
Dolor Exquisito, inspired by Sophie Calle (2008)
Wed. 17.6. + Thu. 18.6. 21 h (65 min)
Theatre
Spanish with German Subtitles


Sophie Calle is famous for exploiting her own life to create art. In this piece it’s a rendezvous in far away East-Asia that does not take place, throwing her into a state of „exquisite pain“. Director Emilio García Wehbi turns this predicament into a congenial one-woman-show for brilliant actor Maricel Alvarez.



Mapa Teatro (Colombia)
Opereta Marciana (2007)
Fri. 19.6. 31.15h + Sat. 20.6. 22:15 h (40 min)
Cabaret


A kind of remake of an awful Mexican Science Fiction film from the Sixties, „Blue Demon against the Invading Women“ is performed both in video and live by three travestidos. Grotesque as it is, this piece tells a lot about Colombian – and Latin American – reality.



Melati Suryodarmo (Indonesia/Germany) / Lilith Performance Studio (Sweden)
Perception of Patterns in Timeless Influence (2007)
Fri. 19.6. 18 - 23 h + Sat. 20.6. 16 - 21 h
Performative Installation
Free Entrance


A tableau vivant, living by and for itself: The artist, clad in red, stays for several hours with white rabbits, without any ostentatious aim. Now and then a singer and a violinist turn up, to play an aria from Bach’s Matthaeus Passion. Some kind of contact is established, but only briefly… The „longue durée“ of this piece opens up different modes of perception.



Mathilde Monnier (France) + La Ribot (Spain/Switzerland)
Gustavia (2008)
Fri. 19.6. 21 h + Sat. 20.6. 21 h + Sun. 21.6. 17 h (60 min)
Dance
english

Who is Gustavia? Who is this scheming woman that hides as much as she reveals? In their first cooperation the two renowned choreographers draw from classical burlesque, a format not usually connected to dance. Dance has nothing, or almost nothing, comical about it. And that’s exactly what it’s all about.



Yingmei Duan (China/Germany) / Lilith Performance Studio (Sweden)
Rubbish City (2008)
Sat. 20.6. + Sun. 21.6. 18 h (3 h)
Theater / Installation

Yingmei Duan emphasizes vulnerability as a way of communication: A dark wasteland situated in tons of garbage, peopled by five characters, lost in an undefined catastrophe. In the midst of this the audience can walk around, immerse themselves into the scenario and gradually become accustomed to a world that at first sight seems so inhospitable.




Sello Pesa (South Africa) & Carlos Pez (Spain)
Cross Currents – Sharp Sharp Laboratory
Sun. 21.6. 16 h (90 min)
Dance
Free Entrance

Nelisiwe Xaba, Carlo Gibson, Lukasz Pater 8south Africa)
Black!...White? (2009)
Sat. 20.06. + Sun. 21.6. 19 h (60 min)
Performance


In cooperation with Tanzfabrik, Berlin IN TRANSIT 09 presents a new play by South African choreographer Nelisiwe Yaba exploring racial and social stereotyping: When a lonely woman – in Brooklyn, Soweto, Kinshasa – kills her skin with whitening cream, what happens to her mind?



Adrian Piper (USA/Germany)
Everything #5.2 (2004)
Fri. 12.6. - Sun. 14.6 + Wed. 17.6. - Sun. 21.6 10-22 h
Installation
Free Entrance

Conceived in 2004, this version of Piper's installation acquires a special meaning in the context of Berlin, as the artist states when referring to her perception of “a city reconstituted in continuity with its pre-war history, but now also in accord with a population that is being gradually reconstituted through the removal of walls and barriers of many kinds.”

Nevin Aladag (Turkey/ Germany)
Lowrider Bellydance (2004)
Video (3.30 min, Loop)

Voice over (2006)
Fri. 12.6. - Sun. 14.6 + Wed. 17.6. - Sun. 21.6. 10-22 h
Video (14 min, Loop)
Free Entrance


A bellydance performed by two men with their remote-controlled toy cars, instruments played by nature itself, Berlin youngsters singing their forefathers tunes from the mountains of Turkey: “Aladag’s issue is not the ‘clash of cultures’ but rather the fissures that lie between cultures and the connections that grow out of difference.” Harald Fricke




Allen S. Weiss / Michel Nedjar / Boualem Ben Gueddach / Mark Sussman (USA/France)
Danse Macabre II (commissioned work.. IN TRANSIT 2009)
Fri. 12.6 - Sun. 14.6. + Wed. 17.6. - Sun. 21.6. 10-22h
Installation
Free Entrance

“A peepshow that is simultaneously still choreography, simulacral theater, musical installation. Six apocalyptic dolls and four uncanny sonic fantasies as omens of mourning and melancholy, regeneration and renaissance.” Allen S. Weiss




Interactive Library
Fri. 12.6. - Sun. 14.6. + Wed. 17.6. - Sun. 21.6. 10-22h
The Interactive Library gives visitors an insight into the works that have provided an inspiration to performers and practitioners.




IN TRANSIT Lectures
In englischer Sprache
Theatersaal

The lecture series congregates scholars and artists from across the globe to open up a vivid debate on the IN TRANSIT 09 motto “Resistance of the Object”, exploring the fine line between objecthood and subjectivity. The lectures are located at the intersection of contemporary artistic practices and political actions.
All lectures in English. For more information please visit www.hkw.de