https://mariaroessler.work Maria Rößler Fri, 24 Apr 2020 20:00:28 +0000 https://mariaroessler.work en http://mariaroessler.work/Kerogen-Voices Fri, 24 Apr 2020 20:00:28 +0000 Maria Rößler 364523 Kerogen Voices&nbsp;Jimmy Grima / rubberbodies collective&nbsp; With an ‘island consciousness,’[1] looking at the world from the shoreline of Malta at the Southern margin of the EU, Jimmy Grima &amp; the rubberbodies collective set out to a transnational artistic exploration of European identity in the year 2020, which draws connections between man-made earthquakes, continental European folklore, myths of entrepreneurial spirit and economic growth, and the geological consequences of human extractivism. KEROGEN VOICES starts out as a research into man-made earthquakes and, with it, the question what happens to human identity in a world where ominous events such as earth quakes and floods are no longer natural hazards reserved exclusively for superhuman forces, but also calculated risks of capitalist production. What used to be read as an ‘act of God’ beyond human control and possibly feared as an act of geo-planetary self-defense and anti-human revenge, is now humanly reproduced and integrated into a set of predictable side-effects of advanced engineering. KEROGEN VOICES tells a multi-layered story about (hu)man’s obsession with the insides of the Earth, through a musical sound scape and a blend of scientific and historical data, fantastical legends and dream-like visions. It invites us to imagine the Earth’s “subterraneous fossil guts as a giant sentient body, patient, but agitated.” This vitalist image resonates with Reza Negarestani’s apocalyptic vision of an incapacitated Earth “charged with [...] a worm-infested body exhumed by worming processes and vermiculating machines.“ In Cyclonopedia (2008),[2] Negarestani invents the geo-philosophical concept of “Tellurian Insurgency,” describing “Oil as the Tellurian Lube of all narrations traversing the Earth’s body.” In this speculative fiction, humanity obliviously participates in a fateful project of a mysterious dark energy working from below. Increasing the porosity of the planet’s surface through digging, drilling, pumping, and the building of more and more tunnels (pipelines), humanity industriously contributes to the burning of the Earth from the inside out, leading to its ultimate fusion with the Sun. Jimmy pays attention to the material currents in his own particular way: He tracks the route of liquified petroleum gas tankers from the island of Malta back to the North-West of the European continent, he follows the trace of Neolithic dolmens (‘hunebedden’), which lead him to the largest gas field within the EU, and he listens out for the mythical whispers of the trees of the forest, which become the meek material of human productivity and which, over periods of time that stretch beyond human comprehension, will eventually end up as a sediment of continental crust: kerogen. KEROGEN VOICES offers reflection on analytical fascination and the desire to know and to appropriate every thing. It refers to a Western history of tireless efforts to access and explain (or mythologise) the enormous potency of the Earth. In the performance, human speakers gather around a table with installed microphones – like in a multi-national conference meeting or a radio podcast studio. They represent the talking; humans talking, then and now, about numbers, about the Earth. A familiar constellation, the “narcissistic reflex of human language and thought,” that also raises questions about the possibilities and the limitations of theatre in times of planetary crisis, when what is at stake in representation may be the de-centring of the human figure in favour of the non-human. How to convincingly deconstruct the self-appointed supremacy status of (the Western hu)man as measure of all things, fundamental power and shaper of the world? Jimmy and his team use the theatre in the function of an auditorium: a space set up and dedicated to listening with others. As such, it allows space for human self-reflection in relation to their material environments and calls for a new social sensibility towards non-human entities. These are powerfully imagined by association of human concepts of intelligence, bodily sentience, and potency. The audio performance revives fairies and kabouters in the role of accomplices to the human project of utilising the Earth’s energy resources. In a psychedelic vision, the blue planet is evoked as a heavy floating body, pregnant with a turbulent future which is heralded by smelly farts and leaking dark fluids. Yet, we know that this compound body has the strength to survive ecological damages, epidemics, and the climate catastrophe – other than the many species that it has generously been hosting on its itchy litho-skin, including the human animal. Jane Bennett, author of Vibrant Matter (2009),[3] suggests the cultivation of anthropomorphism as a valid strategy to counter human narcissism. Exercises of radical anthropomorphization may produce a physical sense of empathy and help dismantle the perfect picture of a human-centred world. Thus finally, what seems to matter more than a consistent post-humanist re-centring of terran metabolisms in this work is its post-anthropocentric attitude of representation that critically engages human frames of perception and imagination regarding the planet. When and where does a re-fabulation of man-made Earth phenomena become necessary? For whom is this bloated Earth staged to be perceived as a speaking vibrant insurgent creature? What difference does it make when we collectively imagine the Earth not as a collection of inert geological matter but as a giant body with wounds and bruises, whose skin is violently poked and penetrated, squeezed and pushed without cease? How does this affect our human self-image, and more precisely, how does it re-position Western capitalist civilisation? With this, dear human reader, I invite you to complete the work with your own associations and considerations, and with receptive generosity. written by Maria Rößler, dramaturg [1]“The self is surrounded by mystery, the way an island is surrounded by the vastness of the ocean, a domain that connects you with every other part of the earth. It can, of course, be experienced as a separation, but the mystic doesn’t experience nature or the ocean as something that separates you, it’s a reminder of our connection with the universe. And island consciousness does that.” – David Weale, Shore Walkers: A company of friends, 2011. [2]&nbsp;Reza Negarestani, Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials, Melbourne 2008. [3] Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, Durham/NC 2010. Kerogen Voices&nbsp;Jimmy Grima / rubberbodies collective&nbsp; With an ‘island consciousness,’[1] looking at the world from the shoreline of Malta at the... http://mariaroessler.work/Artist-Talks-at-Batard-Festival Mon, 08 Jul 2019 10:40:36 +0000 Maria Rößler 330224 Artist Talks at Batard Festival 2016, Brussels Nov 2: EMOTIONAL MATERIAL / EMOTIONAL LABOUR with Lulu Obermayer, Nadja Hjorton &amp; Halla Ólafsdóttir Nov 3: URBAN SPACE: A SITE OF REPRESENTATIONwith&nbsp;Anne Reijniers &amp; Rob Jacobs Nov 4: HUMAN/NON-HUMAN COLLABORATIONS: PEFORMING (WITH) MACHINESwith&nbsp;Bryana Fritz, Néstor García Díaz and Jaha Koo Nov 5: DOCUMENTS AND MEMORIESwith Ogutu Muraya,&nbsp;Silke Huysmans &amp; Hannes Dereere Artist Talks at Batard Festival 2016, Brussels Nov 2: EMOTIONAL MATERIAL / EMOTIONAL LABOUR with Lulu Obermayer, Nadja Hjorton &amp; Halla Ólafsdóttir Nov 3:... http://mariaroessler.work/Foreign-Affairs-2012-2016 Mon, 08 Jul 2019 10:39:05 +0000 Maria Rößler 330223 Foreign Affairs Festival (2012-2016)International performing arts festival at Berliner Festspiele Foreign Affairs was the international performing arts festival of Berliner Festspiele, first initiated by Frie Leysen in 2012, then curated under the Artistic Direction of Matthias von Hartz. I worked as part of the festival’s program team from late 2013 until summer 2016. With a focus on artistic explorations at the intersection of performing arts and visual art, we developed and realised international programs of performances, exhibitions, and conversations, at Haus der Berliner Festspiele and at Martin-Gropius-Bau, enabling ambitious works by artists such as Boris Charmatz, Angélica Liddell, Forced Entertainment, Ragnar Kjartansson, Nature Theater of Oklahoma, and William Kentridge. More info: Foreign Affairs program archive 2012-2016. For Foreign Affairs 2014-2016, I coordinated commissions and project adaptations with artists such as Yan Duyvendak, Florentina Holzinger &amp; Vincent Riebeek, Nástio Mosquito, Johannes Paul Raether, Mary Reid Kelley, and Dries Verhoeven. With an agenda for art-induced critical discourse, I organised the symposia How to Dance With Art,&nbsp;Zeitverschwendung and Landscapes of Uncertainty, as well as the Academy of Creative Resistance, including a one-week Action Adventure Game Lab for Climate Justice with art-activist collective The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination. Foreign Affairs Festival (2012-2016)International performing arts festival at Berliner Festspiele Foreign Affairs was the international performing arts festival... http://mariaroessler.work/On-Institutions-and-Fantasies Mon, 08 Jul 2019 10:14:18 +0000 Maria Rößler 330222 From the monthly letters on www.performance-platform.org (offline) Of Institutions and Fantasies...Written by Maria Rößler, March 2017 Keeping fluids in shape requires a lot of attention, constant vigilance and perpetual effort - and even then the success of the effort is anything but a foregone conclusion.1- Zygmunt Bauman (1925–2017) Fluidity as well as flexibility seem to be popular qualities applied to almost everything today and I think they actually have been for most of my lifetime. What you must know, dear Reader, is that I am not much older than the German reunification and I do not have memories from a time without the tenets of neoliberal deregulation. I have learned that fluidity and flexibility are set against outdated mechanisms of control and rigid structures, promising (even) more freedom to those who adopt them. In the above quote, recently departed Zygmunt Bauman describes the engagement with fluids as quite a high-maintenance relationship if not an elusive one. When confronted with those f-words, I usually end up pondering on their assumed opposites: solidity and stability. I wonder how much stability one thing must at least possess or how much stability must be left in one thing for it to be able to support another thing. Strength to support appears to rely – at least physically – on somewhat stable structures. <img width="1200" height="1200" width_o="1200" height_o="1200" src_o="https://cortex.persona.co/t/original/i/add0f0063bd78c1e07720addd1a6cbc216c8af2c7d0989aff2a40020de618444/theroof_makets.png" data-mid="740088" border="0" />Moha, The Roof, (Amsterdam, December 2016), makets © David Cenzer For me, the month of February was on the one hand marked by my temporary relocation from Amsterdam to Ghent and on the other hand occupied with recurring questions and conversations around the status and the future of institutions – in the majority of cases: art institutions. All this culminated at a three-day event in the middle of February at Kortrijk’s Kunstencentrum BUDA. In response to a sense of crisis among Flemish art institutions and the ongoing normalisation of precarity amongst artists and artworkers2 (just as among other members of society), Agnes Quackels had organised an extraordinary gathering of artists, theorists, and representatives from art institutions of different contexts, sizes and missions. In Kortrijk, I found myself among peers from Amsterdam as well as new colleagues and friends from Ghent and Brussels, all in one way or the other experienced with the challenges of art institutions in crisis and transition. They were invited to have an exchange abouthow to ‘make’ institutions and to develop together an imagination of the Fantastic (Arts) Institution “in a temporary space between reality and fiction.”3 Having had my share of complaining about the imperfections of institutional structures, I was particularly looking forward to the ‘fantastic’ aspects of the exchange. And I mean ‘fantastic’ as in ‘fantasy’, a genre of fiction and a mode of thinking that - one may think - art institutions have a good bit of practice with. However, despite a few, in fact, quite evocative impulses from brilliant artists and researchers such as Sarah Vanhee, Vladimir Miller, and Daniel Blanga-Gubbay, moments of radical collective imagination or emancipatory use of fiction did not seem to find their way into the agora on that weekend. The conversation about institutions remained hard-headed and almost disenchantingly ‘realistic’. Any possible speculative exercise ‘under the cover of fiction’ – to borrow from Blanga-Gubbay – was stranded in a series of status-quo presentations, which left little time for cross-references between the individual contributions, not to mention space for what-ifs, pipe dreams, or cloud castles. In a recently published article entitled “Fictional Institutions: On RadicalImagination,” Livia Andrea Piazza and Daniel Blanga-Gubbay write: It is necessary to be reminded of the fictional aspect in the idea of theinstitution (…) The market, and the system of neoliberal capitalism inwhich we live, are among the institutions that we perceive as themost natural ones, hindering our attempts at critique. (…) capitalism’sfocus on reality emerges from and develops into a naturalised set offictional rules and institutions.4 Our institutions are necessary fictions, which we have agreed to treat as real. To maintain stability and power, institutions have to conceal their fictional character.&nbsp;When an institution is at a loss of stability, it can try to cling to its operational patterns or revisit the social agreements at its core… which for many art institutions would probably mean to re-imagine what it means to first and foremost provide a supporting structure for art and artists. This exact question is one of the concerns Sarah Vanhee put forward in her contribution to the exchange in Kortrijk. &nbsp; In his lecture, Blanga-Gubbay added another, new thought: Referring to Laboria Cuboniks’ Xenofeminist Manifesto (“A Politics for Alienation”),5 he pointed out the liberating potential of alienation - or fictionalisation - in the face of unjust and oppressive realities.&nbsp;While the dictates of fluidity and flexibility are increasingly perceived as repressive, fiction reserves an open space that allows us to explore and experiment with those qualities beyond capitalist profit logic, but also toimagine solid structures, such as institutions, differently and outside their established ways of operating. Performance activates and depends on a relational support systems.6 In performance, imagination emerges in the encounter between audiences and performers. And it is my understanding that, besides artists, it will be audiences (not consumers, mind you) who carry the capacity for subversive fictions into the space which is marked by the art institution. With this in mind, we present to you another set of carefully selected performances and related events in and beyond Amsterdam and we wish you a fantastic beginning of spring. Maria Rößler - in conversation with Annick Kleizen, Isobel Dryburgh, Marjolein Vogels &amp; Simon Ascencio <img width="1134" height="787" width_o="1134" height_o="787" src_o="https://cortex.persona.co/t/original/i/ac2ad74e8d05fafb214c70f8e99679941bd651c50b4cc32f524ff9893554f126/doingtheroof.png" data-mid="740089" border="0" /> Moha, holding up The Roof, (Amsterdam, January 2017) © David Cenzer, Julia Williams _______________________________________________________________ 1. Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity, Cambridge/Malden: Polity Press, 2000, 8. 2. As, for instance, described in: Bojana Kunst, Artist at Work: Proximity of Art and Capitalism, Winchester/Washington: Zero Books, 2015. 3. Agnes Quackels, “Who's afraid of the fantastic (arts) institution?,” 2016. 4. Daniel Blanga-Gubbay and Livia Andrea Piazza, “Fictional Institutions: On Radical Imagination,” Turn, Turtle! Reenacting the Institute, edited by Elke van Campenhout and Lilia Mestre, Berlin: Alexander Verlag, 2016, 44. 5. Laboria Cuboniks, Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation, 2015. 6. For reflections of a larger context of the supporting social infrastructures of artproduction, see: Shannon Jackson, “Performance, Aesthetics, and Support”, in: Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics. New York and London: Routledge, 2011, 11-42. From the monthly letters on www.performance-platform.org (offline) Of Institutions and Fantasies...Written by Maria Rößler, March 2017 Keeping fluids in shape... http://mariaroessler.work/Zurcher-Theater-Spektakel Mon, 08 Jul 2019 07:47:12 +0000 Maria Rößler 330207 Zürcher Theater Spektakel (2018-...) International performing arts festival <img width="2016" height="1512" width_o="2016" height_o="1512" src_o="https://cortex.persona.co/t/original/i/407b0d87b7aa72152fc3fd17574b9480e5b53c5776f7bdc27e556ada77ad5744/40133648_1854902374577696_8108617484245925888_o.jpg" data-mid="740302" border="0" /> Since autumn 2017, I have been working with the program board of Zürcher Theater Spektakel as a freelance dramaturg and program advisor. Through the celebration of art,&nbsp;the festival opens up a popular space for transnational encounters and exchanges by Lake Zurich every summer. Together with Artistic Director Matthias von Hartz and program board members Rabea Grand (now: Gessnerallee) and Lea Loeb, I co-develop diverse, multi-layered festival programs of performances, concerts, and conversations. More info: Zürcher Theater Spektakel 2018, Zürcher Theater Spektakel 2019, Zürcher Theater Spektakel 2020.&nbsp; My programming so far has featured work by artists such as Hiba Alansari, Mohammad Al Attar, Youness Atbane, Ebony Bones, Ali Chahrour, Nora Chipaumire, Sorour Darabi, Samara Hersch, Silke Huysmans &amp; Hannes Dereere, Geumhyung Jeong, Chrystèle Khodr, Lagartijas tiradas al Sol, Nomcebisi Moyikwa, Dorothée Munyaneza, Ogutu Muraya, Royce Ng, La Re-sentida, Marion Siefert, as well as critical reflections of political thinkers such as Nikita Dhawan, Rohit Jain,&nbsp;Ailton Krenak, Achille Mbembe, and Gloria Wekker. Using the festival as an international platform for art presentation and exchange, I put special focus on the inclusion and support of female* voices, both in the artistic program as well as in the development programs for young artists. I have been organising all-female international festival juries as well as the 10-day watch&amp;talk residency for young performing artists.&nbsp; Since the beginning of my collaboration with Theater Spektakel, I have also worked toward the expansion of anti-racist and de-colonial discourses as part of the public program (lectures, round-table talks) as well as anti-discriminatory institutional critique and self-evaluation within the festival organisation. Zürcher Theater Spektakel (2018-...) International performing arts festival Since autumn 2017, I have been working with the program board of Zürcher Theater... http://mariaroessler.work/Daylight-Chamber Mon, 08 Jul 2019 07:46:47 +0000 Maria Rößler 330206 Daylight Chamber. a space for reflection Daylight Chamber. a space for reflection http://mariaroessler.work/My-Home-at-the-Intersection Mon, 08 Jul 2019 07:45:59 +0000 Maria Rößler 330205 My Home at the Intersectionby Abhishek Thapar “Past a surpassing disaster, the memorial and memory are (…) affected with some discredit and disgrace through the ever present possibility that one day one would have the impression that the memorial is a fake and that the memory is a false memory.” – Jalal Toufic “Not only our memories, but the things we have forgotten are ‘housed.’” – Gaston Bachelard <img width="2048" height="1365" width_o="2048" height_o="1365" src_o="https://cortex.persona.co/t/original/i/3baf5100cf65b95868fa5094609b471e9e6f9ac1a334f62eafa53373e748c8f9/MHATI002.jpg" data-mid="740246" border="0" /> In 1947, during the division of British India and subsequent partition of the Punjab State into West and East Punjab, over 14.5 million people were involuntarily displaced in one of the largest mass migrations recorded in history. The traumatic experiences of extreme violence and enormous sacrifices have overshadowed life in the region of Punjab ever since and resulted in on-going ethno-religious conflicts potentiated by the devastating economic consequences of colonialist intervention and global capitalism. A few decades later, East Punjab was again caught up in a violence created by the state and Sikh militants demanding autonomy - a separate nation called Khalistan. It reached its peak in 1984 when the Indian army stormed the Golden Temple in Amritsar, followed by the rise of militancy and the Police Raj – better known as ‘the black days’ of Punjab. How do we move on with a heritage of violent conflict and collective trauma and what is to be done about the ensuing dilemmas of memory? Abhishek Thapar, born in India in the 1980s, went on a search for the truth(s) of the past when he decided to travel to the town Moga in East Punjab. Together with his mother, father and sister, he re-visited his childhood home: a house that had disappeared, a place they all thought they had forgotten and which yet persisted, preserved in a jar of haunting images, between the conflicting priorities of official histories and the personal memories of three generations. In a final pursuit of closure, the family returned to the house in Moga – and moved back in. Together they created a work of art... My home at the Intersection complicates reductive perceptions of Punjab’s recent history, producing an imagination that goes beyond dichotomies of perpetrators and victimhood, outside and inside, terrorism and resistance. &nbsp;In the intimate setting of his performance, Abhishek Thapar unfolds moments from a personal journey into a contorted past in dialogue with documents from an attempt of a ritual of - ‘going back, to make sure that you have forgotten about the past.’ The global geopolitical landscape – rife with war and forced displacement – presents art with the challenge of creating forms to deal with traumas of loss (the loss of one’s home, citizenship, nationality, language, etc.). Can art produce experiences that help achieve closure for those affected by disaster? Abhishek Thapar’s performance offers an existential proposition in response to the notion of closure in trauma narratives. <img width="2048" height="1365" width_o="2048" height_o="1365" src_o="https://cortex.persona.co/t/original/i/1824a4a9d5429eb22927a9b25bfc1be63da260be9fc6c9e44b4650ddcca748e9/MHATI001.jpg" data-mid="740247" border="0" /> Artist statement: My home at the Intersection is a work, which I have been growing towards since I first started making theatre but never gained the courage to actualize – until recently. Over the course of one year, I have been working with the contested historical narratives about Punjab, a state in the northwest of India and home to my family. In December 2016, I visited my family in India to learn more about Punjab in the time of my childhood, when I was growing up with mythical images of ‘terrorists’ and ‘freedom fighters’, and what happened to the place that used to be our home then. I invited my family to (re-)construct an imagination of the house my father had once built, and to bring our memories home. Written and Performed by Abhishek Thapar Dramaturgical support: Maria Rößler,&nbsp;Divya Nadkarni Advisor: Floris van Delft, Jeroen Fabius Cinematographer: Sahib Gill Film Editing: Jeanette Groenendaal, Rinku Kalsy Music: Kabeer Kathpalia Costumes: Loise Braganza Primary research: Abhishek Thapar, Swati Simha In the video Venu Thapar, Dr. Shveta Grover, Ashok Thapar My Home at the Intersectionby Abhishek Thapar “Past a surpassing disaster, the memorial and memory are (…) affected with some discredit and disgrace through... http://mariaroessler.work/Of-lonely-humans-and-loving-rice-cookers Mon, 08 Jul 2019 07:29:14 +0000 Maria Rößler 330200 Performance review of CUCKOO by Jaha Koo, presented at the MMCA Performing Arts: Asia Focus 2017, Seoul Of lonely humans and loving rice cookersWritten by Maria Rößler, December 2017 Displaced artistic practice involves the necessity to consider the particularities of one’s own cultural formation and the possibility to look anew and with some distance at the most familiar circumstances. After having relocated from Seoul to Amsterdam, theatre maker and music composer Jaha Koo must have found himself in such a shift of perspective. And, consequently, he ended up making work about the country that he strongly identifies with and yet does not feel quite at ease with. Born in the 1980s, Jaha Koo grew up in South Korea and studied theatre at the Korea National University of Arts as well as the Amsterdam University of the Arts. After Rolling and Lolling (2014), CUCKOO is the second part of a trilogy exploring cases of ‘hamartia' in human history, and how historic incidents tragically affect lives today. Jaha Koo’s work draws on social and political themes from his home country, tracing reverberations of Confucianism, Japanese colonial rule, and US-American influence in South Korean society and cultural identity. In CUCKOO, the artist problematizes issues such as social pressure and isolation, obedience, powerlessness, and self-sacrifice. Jaha Koo decided to leave South Korea at the age of 28. Among the few things that travelled with him to Europe was a Cuckoo rice cooker. This rice cooker would became the artistic medium and a perfect allegory for the issues he seeks to address in his latest piece. On stage, the performance of three electronic rice cookers manifests the hopeless struggles of absent humans and evokes a sense of unavailability of human connection. It is in meditation over his rice cooker, for instance, that Jaha Koo recalls the caring words of his father asking after him or memories of his school friend Jerry and how he used to dance before he was worn down by exhaustion and anger. “High pressure - steam explosion - it’s time to explode...” To lift up our spirits, Jaha Koo’s Cuckoos sing comforting songs with dancing LED lights, even about the most depressing realities.Cuckoo Three Cuckoo high-pressure rice cookers are orderly displayed on a table: one of an older generation and two newer, ‘smarter’ versions. Apart from this installation, the stage is empty. As the audience walks in, the older rice cooker on the left makes a quiet rushing sound while steadily releasing steam from its top. Once the audience is seated, the steam has stopped and no noise can be heard. For a couple of minutes, there is no movement on stage – only the silent presence of the objects. Then, the rice cooker on the left beeps and announces that it has finished cooking rice, followed by a cheerful chant: “Cuckoo!” In this theatrical setting, the rice cooker’s most trivial operation, it’s every-day performance of steaming rice, becomes a singular happening, during which the sensory effects of the machine’s very practical use – the emergence of the smell of freshly steamed rice, the swirling formations of the steam in the space, the cooking noise, and the merry signals of the machine – all become part of the aesthetic experience. Jaha Koo’s peculiar choice of co-performers is well-wrought: these kitchen appliances carry their own histories and symbolic potential - or, as Yuriko Saito notes in her study of Everyday Aesthetics: “non-art objects can be expressive of various ideas, values and qualities.”[ 1] The performing rice cookers are not least cultural objects that refer to technological innovation, high-performance culture and the domestic sphere at the same time. Cuckoo rice cookers are amiable home appliances that provide various ways of cooking rice and customarily speak in a friendly female voice.[ 2] Their place is the kitchen and, with it, the home imagined as a realm of nurture and care. Directed at human needs of emotional security, warmth and caring, Cuckoos have somewhat ambiguously been advertised as “Love Cookers.” Connecting commercial cooking technology to the emotional landscape of the home, Cuckoos are meant to attend to their users’ desires for comfort and affection, cooking love or with love. Except, more accurately, of course, they cook food with pressure. In Jaha Koo’s staging, the rice cookers refer to the private sphere of the home as well: however, it does not appear as a place of warmth and comfort but rather like an island in the dark, where loneliness and depression become visible. It may not be a coincidence that the expatriate artist became aware of the aesthetic and symbolic potential of his South Korean high-pressure rice cooker in a place far away from his native country and - if we trust his story - in a moment of existential concern, over a meal in the private isolation of his apartment in Europe: “One day, it occurred to me that I would be quite satisfied if I could lead my life making money fair and square, feed myself with that money, and sleep comfortably. But the reality I witnessed in my life has been isolation without help. Then suddenly, my rice cooker spoke to me: ‘Cuckoo has finished cooking rice Please, stir the rice!’” According to the performance narrative, Cuckoo entered the artistic project in response to the question of how to survive in social isolation and helplessness. In such a context, it appears almost reasonable to turn to the friendly rice cooker for companionship. At least, unlike human friends, they are made to work with pressure and not to burn out from it. Jaha Koo’s performance can be associated with the increasingly prevalent sociological phenomenon of the withdrawal of individuals from human contact, voluntary isolation and self-confinement in their homes. Psychological research has found a link between loneliness and the tendency to pursue connection with nonhuman agents.[ 3] Seeing human traits when interacting with objects is like dreaming of a social affiliation with a “real” intelligent being in the absence of human social interaction. Anthropomorphism, that is, the attribution of human mental states and motivations to non-humans, allows lonely humans to experience social interaction and empathic relationships with non-humans. Jaha Koo stages a food-based human-machine relationship, in which emotions are produced… Cuckoo rice cookers appeal to the human cognitive tendency to anthropomorphise by design and so it is only consequent of the artist to pursue an extended dialogue with these friendly machines. In collaboration with a hardware hacker, he developed ways of animating the machines beyond their regular modes of expression, invisibly modifying their inner technological setup. The rice cookers’ voice navigation systems were hijacked and re-engineered so that two of the three devices can perform as intelligent machines with distinct personalities, who seek to socialize with each other and the artist. During the first half of the performance, the two younger rice cookers start a competitive fight about communicative and physical ability, qualification and usefulness. One of them proudly shows off its advanced modes of emotive expression: colourful lights and an LCD panel, which allows it to show images of hearts and other emotive symbols; thereby outperforming his fellow rice cooker, whose visual features are less developed. In turn, the more modifications are made to the bodies of the rice cookers in order to enhance their expressiveness, the more underproductive they become in their function as rice cookers. In the process of becoming a piece of art, one of them has been incapacitated for cooking rice. Spitefully picking at this inability, one rice cooker finally even denies the other recognition as a worthy being: “Look at yourself, you can do nothing. You are just a worthless, empty tin.” The harsh fight between the rice cookers demonstrates the kind of cruelty and lack of empathy that is generated in competitive performance-oriented environments. “There is no use whining when you can’t live up to the standard, you loser.” In all this, there can be no doubt that the rice cookers’ performances of intelligence and empathy are far more limited, their expressions clumsy and under-complex in comparison to those of human actors. Their entirely symbolic indications of emotions, however, invite the audience to produce their own associations of mental states and to experience themselves as empathic beings – and possibly even more effectively than a human performance could. In a figurative sense, acting as catalysts for human empathy in the performance piece of Jaha Koo, these rice cookers may deserve to be described as “love cookers” after all.Under pressure Perhaps, the things we feel, when friendly machines reach out to us, are indicative of the nature of our contemporary human condition. “What has happened to South Korea in the past twenty years?” asks Jaha Koo towards the end of his performance as if to reaffirm the urgency of dealing with a (collective) trauma in relation to this youngest part of history: 1997. To avoid national bankruptcy after South Korea’s economic crash, the country agrees on the International Monetary Fund’s terms for a bailout package, which include accepting enormous interest rates and foreign-lead restructuring measures, surrendering legal economic sovereignty to the IMF, and thus enslaving the country to foreign economies for the long term. South Korean markets were opened and swiftly eaten up by US corporations. South Koreans voluntarily donated their gold to pay the nation’s debts. To what effect? Twenty years have past since the IMF incident. Accentuated by Jaha Koo’s terrific electronic music, a three-minute video montage shows documentary footage of street demonstrations, civil protest actions and police violence from 1997 until today: a stirring portrait of a society under pressure. But the tragedy of this society goes deeper… Jaha Koo addresses a part of South Korean history that he has lived through himself. In 1997, he was 14 years old. He belongs to a generation that grew up with the social repercussions of the IMF bailout: unemployment, debts and emigration drastically changed the lives of family members and friends. Six friends have died since. Stress and precarity have become the norm for young generations that only know lack of social security and irregular job conditions with high performance pressure, long working hours and minimum wages. Only few enjoy wealth and stability later, while for many others it has never been possible to develop perspectives towards the future or personal fulfillment. Working hard, in fact, does not seem to pay off and so it cannot be surprising that many young people can no longer be convinced of the meritocratic ideologies of an older generation nor find meaning in spending their lives under constant pressure with no benefits. Not only do such conditions erode the status of social values such as solidarity, openness and kindness, they also push individuals into anxiety, depression, alcoholism and social isolation. The rise of stress-induced illnesses is reflected by South Korea’s exceptionally high suicide rates, in the light of which the widely established assumption that happiness is tied to the productivity and economic success becomes questionable. “But what is happiness anyway?” Jaha Koo contrasts the social-economical struggles of South Koreans with the commercially compromised, airy-fairy contemplations on happiness of self-help guidebook author Gretchen Rubin, a typical representative of the privileged 1% and, ironically enough, a relative of Robert Rubin, former Goldman Sachs board member and US Secretary of the Treasury, who pulled strings during the IMF’s negotiations with South Korea. Jaha Koo’s witty Cuckoos know to sing a song about Rubin and “capitalist imperialist neo-colonialist disaster.” Two chapters of Jaha Koo’s piece are dedicated to recent victims of this situation: 1) the artist’s friend Jerry, a young father, who was crushed by the burdens of work and economic pressure, and 2) the publicly received case of a 19-year old mechanic, who was hit by a train in May 2016 while &nbsp;trying to fix a screen door in the subway of Seoul under unsupportable time pressure. What connects these two deaths? In a reflection on the urban society of Seoul, philosopher Byung-Chul Han, describes a society, which has eagerly adopted the capitalist performance principle. He draws connections between the pervasiveness of motivational slogans promoting initiative and ability on the one hand and ever-present exhaustion, social isolation, and the country’s worryingly high suicide rate on the other: “Self-exploitation is much more efficient than exploitation by others, because it goes with a feeling of freedom. But this freedom brings with it immense pressure, under which the achieving subject breaks. Who fails at ability, becomes depressive. He is ashamed and isolates himself. He alone bears the blame for his failing. He problematizes himself and not society. (…) The neoliberal system stabilises itself by separating and isolating people as achieving subjects.”[ 4] This account – which Han applies to any Western achievement-oriented society in a similar way in his book Müdigkeitsgesellschaft (translatable as “Fatigue Society”)[ 5] – resonates with the stories of Jerry and the subway mechanic Kim, who sacrificed their lives under extreme pressure. Could they be paradigmatic for a self-exploiting society that misses the mark, isolating its people in spaces of total neglect and helplessness, where people have to fall into nothingness just so that the world keeps running on time? In a strong final scene, accompanied with a beautiful piece of music, voices and impressions of the performance echo in a portrait of cheerless meals and dismal solitude. In an absurd, childlike play, Jaha Koo illustrates the arduous yet meaningless labour of continually building upward at the foreseeable risk of collapse. At the end, a small human figure must fall down from a tower of steamed rice.&nbsp; [1]Yuriko Saito, “Neglect of Everyday Aesthetics,” Everyday Aesthetics (New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 2007), 35-36.&nbsp; [2]For an interesting and comprehensive account of “protocols of femininity being programmed intomachines” and how female voices in electronic devices “emphasise the association with the so-called‘feminized labour’ of clerical and service work”, see: Helen Hester, “Technically Female: Women,Machines, and Hyperemployment,” Salvage, August 8, 2016.&nbsp; [3]Adam G. Waytz, “Social Connection and Seeing human,” The Oxford Handbook of Social Exclusion,ed. C. Nathan DeWall (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 254.[4]My translation. Byung-Chul Han: “Südkorea - Eine Müdigkeitsgesellschaft im Endstadium” (trans.: South Korea - late stages of a fatigue society), April 9, 2012. &nbsp; [5]Byung-Chul Han: The Burnout Society, trans. Erik Butler (Stanford University Press, 2015). Performance review of CUCKOO by Jaha Koo, presented at the MMCA Performing Arts: Asia Focus 2017, Seoul Of lonely humans and loving rice cookersWritten by Maria... http://mariaroessler.work/Body-of-Knowledge Mon, 08 Jul 2019 06:59:44 +0000 Maria Rößler 330197 Body of KnowledgeSamara Hersch <img width="2500" height="1647" width_o="2500" height_o="1647" src_o="https://cortex.persona.co/t/original/i/6bf698dd3accb67ede2c06cd562db4dfce176e8b7fd146f4ee3f532732f3ab91/body_of_knowledge_1.jpg" data-mid="739953" border="0" /> BODY OF KNOWLEDGE is an intimate conversation piece created by a group of teenagers and a team of artists, initiated and directed by theatre maker Samara Hersch. Realized in the framework of Be SpectACTive! - CapoTrave/Kilowatt (IT), Artemrede (PT), Bakelit Multi Art Center (HU), Brut (AT), BUDA Kortrijk (BE), Cafè de las Artes Teatro (ES), Domino (HR), Divadelná Nitra(SK), Dublin theatre festival (IE), Göteborgs stadss kulturförvaltning/ Stora teatern (SE), Institution Student Cultural Centre (RS), Occitanie en scène languedoc-roussillon (FR), Plesni teater (SI), Tanec praha (CZ), Teatrul national Radu Stanca (RO). Co-produced by SICK! Festival in Manchester, Liveworks Festival of Experimental Art, Carriageworks in Sydney. What do you want to know about the body? What makes you feel good? BODY OF KNOWLEDGE is a creative collaboration between a group of teenagers and a team of artists, initiated and directed by theatre maker Samara Hersch. The project explores how to express oneself and how to have complex conversations about sex and the body in ways that are empowering, driven by real curiosity, including questions of boundaries, shame, healing, consent, pleasure, ageing... While sex education classes and campaigns mostly focus on teaching young people about the mechanics of sexual reproduction and the dangers related to sex, the concept of pleasure, and female pleasure in particular, is largely absent from educational conversations about sex and sexual health. From early on, we are surrounded by warnings when we talk about sex. But how do we learn and discuss whyp eople do it and why we may wantt o have sex? How would sex education and body perception change if the positive aspects of intimacy and sexual relationships were put at the heart of the conversation for both boys and girls?[ 1] In our times, much social interaction takes place through disembodied encounters in spaces that seem to deny materiality and physical (inter-)dependencies. How do we still pay attention to our own bodies and those of others? What do we know about them? What do we do about our interconnected pains and desires? And can there be proximity between strangers that feels safe? With BODY OF KNOWLEDGE, Samara Hersch continues her work with non-professional performers on the creation of alternative conditions for trans-generational discourse. Through a question-based conversational process, the artist conducts exercises and thematic workshops, canvassing personal experiences and concerns, developing ideas for how to set up unlikely encounters between performers and audiences of different ages. After SEX AND DEATH (2016) and WE ALL KNOW WHAT’S HAPPENING (2017), Samara further pursues and combines aspects of an on-going artistic research: On the one hand, she explores different modes of intimacy and the role of listening in relational ethics; on the other hand, she delves deeper into teenage perspectives and ways of knowing. The performance gives presence to young people’s voices, which are mostly absent from public debates, and to their embodied subjectivities and perceptions beyond school, play zones, and virtual spaces. Children and teenagers are commonly placed at the receiving end of one-way communication and education. BODY OF KNOWLEDGE activates the theatre as an altered framework of communication and a space for listening that allows for complexity, unfinished answers and shared silences. It is set up to interfere with the power imbalance and ambivalences of teenager-adult relations. A limited encounter takes place over the phone, while the audience dwells in a landscape enchanted by teen spirit. BODY OF KNOWLEDGE is an invitation to listen. You will receive a phone call from a teenage stranger. They call you: You are the grownup, the one who has already come of age, who has got a vote. You make your own decisions about your body. You carry responsibility. Teenagers carry the hopes for a better future. Everything still lies ahead of them; they have all the possibilities. Don’t they? On the phone with a teenager, you hear their voice, you will be asked to help out, you will be asked to share knowledge, to be attentive and response-able, to remember your body. You will also be asked to listen, to imagine and learn. Guided by this teenager, you can imagine the world and yourself differently. You may remember the future, what happens after you die... At the same time, there is the active presence of that living body on the other side of the phone connection, this person who called you, who responds to you and who exists now, in a network of bodies that are holding you in their breath... Hello? Can you hear me? written by Maria Rößler, dramaturg [1]Jess Phillips: “Yes, yes, yes: why female pleasure must be at the heart of sex education, ” The Guardian, Nov 13, 2018. Body of KnowledgeSamara Hersch BODY OF KNOWLEDGE is an intimate conversation piece created by a group of teenagers and a team of artists, initiated and... http://mariaroessler.work/en_projects Tue, 26 Mar 2019 21:45:03 +0000 Maria Rößler 317368 maria rösslerdramaturg &nbsp; &nbsp; German&nbsp; &nbsp;Projects &nbsp; Contact Selected projects and collaborations 2019 Body of Knowledge by Samara Hersch, theatre performance speculative bitches by Nuray Demir, performance Institutional Dramaturgies, workshop with Nienke Scholts 2018A Song To Hear You Arriving by Sofia Dinger, performance Upstairs Geology V by Ira Melkonyan, performance/installation 2017 My Home at the Intersection by Abhishek Thapar, theatre performanceLooking for Lena with Nathan Fain, performance lecture Daylight Chamber with Nienke Scholts, a space for reflection Performance Platform, Amsterdam-based cross-institutional online platform for the mapping and relfection of current artistic landscapes 2016 Artist talk program for Bâtard Festival 2015 Academy of Creative Resistance, artistic workshop program for Foreign Affairs festival Right Is the Might of the Community with Nathan Fain, performance lecture maria rösslerdramaturg &nbsp; &nbsp; German&nbsp; &nbsp;Projects &nbsp; Contact Selected projects and collaborations 2019 Body of Knowledge by Samara...