Tanzfabrik
Berlin
Stage
Stage
Stage
Stage
ICI Berlin Stage
Stage
Photo: Jeannette Ginslov

CATALYSTS – Somatic Resonance

Interdisciplinary Choreographic Installation Exhibition by Margrét Sara Guðjónsdóttir
In the frame of The Last Open Spaces?

Tickets ↪ here

«CATALYSTS – Somatic Resonance» is an installation exhibition of somatic states from the work of Icelandic choreographer Margrét Sara Guðjónsdóttir. The exhibition is a choreography of mixed reality technologies, kinaesthetic algorithms, affects, archival material and live bodies. Visitors are invited to download the CATALYSTS app to immerse themselves in the resonant states of the dancers informed by Guðjónsdóttir’s meditative de-conditioning practice «FULL DROP into the Body». States of affective potential arise from awakening latent energies over time, across media and flesh, expanding what dance can be and how bodies can remember.

This work is created by an interdisciplinary team of artists and researchers and is an intervention in the tensions and potential of current digital cultures. It participates in ongoing discussions around the expanded choreographies of interconnectivity of mediated bodies, healing, feminism, notions of energetic citizenship, AI and the pathology of the wider social-political body within our bodies. Visitors to the exhibition carry the states from this choreographic exhibition outwards, like ripples in a collective somatic field.

In the context of the symposium "Performing Embodiment: Practices of Reduction" at the ICI Berlin.

Margrét Sara Guðjónsdóttir

Icelandic  Berlin based choreographer Margrét Sara Guðjónsdóttir has created performance works which have toured internationally since 2007. Since 2013 the works made function as safer spaces for collective exploration of the maze of connections and dead ends that constitute the interface of the pathological body with our achievement-oriented society and outer and inner energetic realities beyond it. Her work takes shape from in-depth research and development of a meditative de-conditioning practice titled ”FULL DROP into the body” that accesses formerly unconscious embodied sub-worlds. During the last decade Margrét Sara collaborated with the late electronic musician Peter Rehberg and his soundtracks accommodate all her work from that time. During that period she collaborated repeatedly with performers; Laura Sigmund, Suet-Wan Twang, Johanna Chemnitz, Angela Schubot, Louise Dahl and Marie Ursine. Since 2017 she has an on going research with Phenomenologists Prof. Susan Kozel into the somatic states that make up her choreography and how they help to construct an understanding of Somatic Materialism in the world of philosophy.Incorporating the  FULL DROP into the Body practiceinto philosophical thought and language. Other currently on going interdisciplinary collaborations include a full length film project with visual artist and filmmaker Hulda Rós Guðnadóttir. Research and artistic work with choreographer and dancers Karolin Ginman and dancer Marlon Moilanen where together they explore the intersections of various sciences of psychology and embodied states. She is also planning a new collaborative work with performance maker Esther Mugambi. Margrét Sara has shared her practice with the free scene and at professional institutes within the field of dance and choreography around Europe.  www.msgudjonsdottir.com
Tickets ↪ here
Duration: Thu 19:30-22:00, Fri 20:30-22:00, Sat-Mon 13:00-17:00 
Concept, choreography, author of performance works & somatic practice: Margrét Sara Guðjónsdóttir | Philosophy & archival concept: Susan Kozel | Editing, video creation for tablet & visual concept: Jeannette Ginslov | AR/MR/AI Creation, interactive technologist: Keith Lim | Photos: Lasse Dahl, Jeannette Ginslov, David Kiers, Eva Schmidhuber | Original video footage: Jeannette Ginslov, Andrea Keiz, Eva Schmidhuber, Jens Sethzman, Antoine Verbièse | Printing of images: Magnus Denker | Original composed soundtracks: Peter Rehberg  | Dancers in the archival video footage: Louise Dahl, Catherine Jodoin, Laura Siegmund, Angela Schubot, Marie Topp, Suet-Wan Tsang, Marie Ursin | Production management: Jill Emerson & Till Rothmund.
Supported by Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, co-produced by Data Society Research Program of Malmö University, Inter Arts Center, ICI Berlin, Open Spaces Tanzfabrik Berlin, WUK performing arts.


Further Biographies

↪  Canadian Susan Kozel is known for artistic and philosophical work applying phenomenology to a range of choreographic, affective and somatic practices, with a particular emphasis on dance in networked digital systems. She is a professor with the School of Arts and Culture at Malmö University in Sweden. Publications in include Closer: Performance, Technologies, Phenomenology (MIT Press 2007) and many shorter pieces on phenomenology, dance and digital cultures. Since 2010 Susan Kozel has been Professor at the School of Art and Culture / K3, Malmö University, Sweden,2007-2009: Principal Researcher in Performance and Motion Capture, SMARTlab Digital Media Institute, University of East London, UK, 2008-2010: Senior Project Researcher Intuition in Creative Processes: Examining Artistic Procedures and Decisions in Contemporary Dance and Digital Media Design, Media Lab, Department of Digital Media Design of the University of Art and Design in Helsinki, Finland 2002 - 2007:Associate Professor (Performance and Media Art), School of Interactive Arts & Technology, Simon Fraser University, Canada. 2001 - 2002: Assistant Professor in Interactive Arts, Technical University of British Columbia, Canada. From 2012-2017 she directed the Living Archives research project funded by the Swedish National Research Council where she refined a variation of phenomenological method and applied it to performances of encryption and somatic archiving. She now collaborates with Margrét Sara Guðjónsdóttir to deepen this work. livingarchives
↪  South African Dr Jeannette Ginslov (Phd, MSc, MA) is an artist, researcher and scholar exploring dance, Screendance and embodied technologies. Ginslov is an independent Screendance maker,producer, online workshop facilitator, and has screened her works internationally. In 2021 she was awarded aPhD from the Arts and Creative Industries Department at London South Bank University, where she researched Deep Flow: a tentacular worlding of dance, biosensor technology, lived experience, and embodied materials of the human and non-humankind. She also has an MSc in Screendance Dundee University(Distinction),and an MA in Choreography, Rhodes University. She is currently working on Nano cosmic Aesthetics a collaboration with KeithLim and nuclear scientist Emil Rofors, selected for the Open Call ESS & InterArts Centre Residency in Malmö, exploring Small Angle Neutron Scattering(SANS), the embodiment of data and neutronic imagery, using AR/VR technologies to create a new visual aesthetic. http://www.jginslov.com/participate.html

Keith Lim is an Australian creative technologist, interactive specialist and lecturer. His 20 years of combining Computer Science, Psychology and Dance results in a interdisciplinary investigation in developing human potential in relation to technology. He is driven by fusing new technology with immersive and somatic practices to create full-stack interactive experiences. www.keithlim.art