2015 © Anderwald + Grond
Reenactment in Istanbul of Mieko Shiomi's work event for the late afternoon performed in Okayama, Japan, 1964. (http://www.moma.org)
Keeping our bodily balance is a continuous performance, including the effort to keep the erect posture against gravity. However, since this performance remains strictly subliminal we become aware of the state of equilibrium only in the event of disruption: in the very moment we loose our balance, stumble and fall, or more generally, when the relation between the body and the surrounding world is irritated, disturbed, or interrupted as it is characteristic in the state of vertigo.
The project for Haus der Geschichte Österreich (House of Austrian History) encompasses a photo series and a series of videos. Following the construction process for the new museums’ space in the historical backdrop of Neue Burg, the former Emperor’s quarters.
If one notes the amount of staggering performed or stammered by characters in Waiting for Godot, it can be quite surprising. In fact, few plays contain characters that spend as much time stumbling or tottering about the stage. It is almost as if they are sailors in the midst of a violent squall, but this is not the case.
This artistic-research exploration starts with a somatic critique of opposing stillness to movement, body to cognition, and equilibrium to instability.
This workshop will elucidate how dizziness breaks up the given, be it habits, beliefs, preconceptions or patterns, creating space and dynamics between established categories and perceived oppositions. In this sense dizziness provides power and dynamics to restructure, to rethink, to redesign the given.
How do the arts research? What knowledge is produced? What social challenges are explored? What possible society is imagined?
