The crisis triggered by Covid-19 hits artists worldwide hard and directly. For our blog Voices we have invited international artists who are currently unable to work in our production houses to make statements about their current, individual and artistic situation.
Berlin, 05/2020
Our invitation:
Dear artists,
we sincerely hope you’re doing well, considering the circumstances.
Still very busy in dealing with the unpredictable situation, we miss above all your presence, your voices and contributions, your suggestions and imaginations. It is the questions that have been asked for years about a common togetherness across new boarders, about a new solidarity and global responsibility, about a readjustment of our view and perhaps of our radius of action, which now receive a new additional existential dimension. They need our attention and our joint commitment more than ever.
In order to open at least a small space in which the individual „now“ can be seen and shared on a larger scale, we would like to collect on the website of the Production Houses a steadily growing gallery of contributions from artists working with us. We would be very pleased if we could publish a contribution by you in this gallery, which can be oriented towards two framing questions. Your contribution will be payed. How do you feel about this situation where you are? What does this situation do to your artistic work? or rather: What does this situation mean for your artistic work? or: What artistic contribution could interact with the current situation?
We are looking forward to your contributions.
We ask for your understanding that the contributions are published here in their original language or in English.
There are currently plenty of negativities to face worldwide. Nearly in each sector. Culture is no exception. And within the most vivid, but also most fragile part, the independent field. It’s crises, just like of plenty other fields won’t end with the virus. +
After COVID-19 broke out in India the ruling dispensation implemented a hasty, inconsiderate and strict lockdown across the Indian state without giving any substantial thought about its impact on the precarious working class communities. Tragic fallout of the irresponsible implementation of the strict lockdown was the pushing over the edge of the migrant worker communities across India. +
Corona hit me and my team of collaborators hard. We were meant to tour my two current works around Germany and Austria and all of our gigs were cancelled. We immediately gathered for emergency meetings via Zoom and fought hard with programmers about possible cancellation fees, with state institutions about emergency funds and social security. +
This text was written between April 20th and June 23rd in Berlin – This situation, the lockdown2020, makes me want to think about intimacy: What does it mean to produce intimacy and to be produced by intimacy? +
We – the Orquesta Experimental de Instrumentos Nativos OEIN from La Paz in Bolivia and the Berlin vocal ensemble PHØNIX16 – should have opened the MaerzMusik festival on March 20 and on March 22 we wanted to perform in Hellerau. After the outbreak of the corona crisis these concerts were canceled at short notice, and a little later the OEIN’s journey home. +
In this context of confinement, the pandemic of patriarchy no longer needs to hide behind false masks and disguises. Today, the cases of domestic violence increase every day, confirming that the home is often the most dangerous place for many women worldwide. +
The covid-19 confinement has been a real test of artistic autonomy and resourcefulness. Paying the rent, a kind of geo-politics. I worked 100% alone with only what I could find in my studio. I made many objects but only a single performance: A selfie-portrait. +
“The Empire’s Last Gala” – On March 5th I turned 60. Having not celebrated in a long time, I threw a considerable party in my backyard, from where I write this piece. It was kind of a private version of the „Baile da Ilha Fiscal“. +
We are filmmakers, dancers, visual artists, theatre makers, writers, peasants, students, all coming together for the „Folk Memory Project“. In early 2020, the Corona Virus started spreading rapidly and widely, not only to the lungs but also to the human hearts. We asked the members of the „Folk Memory Project“ to keep filming their daily lives wherever they were. +
All of us can find “Eraser Fields“ right behind where we live. Indeed, we could even find them inside our homes. As such, chelfitsch decided to make the effort to cultivate them: +
Every Wednesday since April the Manila Zoo team of 5 Filipino Artist: Russ Ligtas, Joshua Serafin, Bunny Cadag, Cathrine Go and I, have been meeting on zoom. +
I write this letter from a country where there are still no restrictions, as the President does not see a reason. He calls the pandemic as ‘a corona psychosis’ mentioning that it is more about politics than an illness. +
Impermanence
We are in a state of change, where beginnings and ends, oscillates.
As an Artist, i was alway searching for some sort of liberations or catharsis.
And maybe i have a tremendous yearning for Freedom. +
In this pandemic age, God’s Entertainment has increasingly developed a political awareness for the working class. They describe their work as a battle against “political blindness”, “civil obedience” and the “society of balconies – a structural, social privilege”. +
Sheer: The position of a ship riding to a single anchor and heading toward it. The upward curve of a ship’s deck toward the bow and stern, as seen from the side Break sheer: (said of a ship riding at anchor), to be forced by wind or tide out of a position clear of the anchor. +
The corona lock down gave us time to edit footage that we have taken in recent years. It shows places and situations that mean something to the team, such as the demolitions in the Rue Princess in Abidjan, structuralist architecture in Ivry near Paris, the Steindamm in Hamburg ecc. +
„The sequence of events was quick“
March 12th afternoon – at Residenz in der Spinnerei in Leipzig – We are standing next to kitchenette, discussing with Lina and Rabih [1] and our hosts Thomas and Ulrike we are discussing the final week of rehearsals. There are some doubts we might not be able to finish it as we planned, but nothing is certain. +
COVID-19, We are in Shanghai. From the end of January to mid-March, we did a lot at home, and it was hard to be alone. Reading books, communicating with friends on the Internet, reviewing past works, anxiety, tension, insecurity. At the same time cooking, follow up the daily news, watching the trees outside the window grow thick leaves. +
WASHING PROCESS Video – Director: Alice Ripoll, Camera: Renato Mangolin, with Cia REC +
How do I feel about this situation I am in right now?
I always need people. I always need gathering. And it has been always happened in a common time and space. but now we only access to a common time in different spaces. +
Dear xxxxx,
Thank you for your question. I have been thinking about it for a few days now and I don’t have a design yet. Can it wait? My head is slow these days.
I’m writing this text with a giant plate of Plexiglas™ leaning against my left shoulder / It stands between me and the window. +
I am writing this from Nairobi, Kenya where I still have friends who are staring down the barrel of months without pay, friends who have already lost jobs and friends whose contract will be running out soon… +
In Simple Action, created by Yasmeen Godder in 2016, spectators are invited to be held, as their weight is slowly carried to the floor. This proposal happens multiple times during the performance involving different bodies and creating endless humane variations which resonate empathy, care, and real-time physical negotiation. +
Since 2019 I am developing an institute for movement heritage; Motus Mori Institute. For the coming years I will build an archive for the endangered human movement. My team and me collect personal movements of people in different cities, preserve them in the dancers’ bodies and expose it in long-durational movement exhibitions. +
I am very conflicted at the moment about invitations to respond to the current situation. I am torn, wondering if perhaps I should say nothing at this time. Part of me feels that artists are really not the important thing just now, that we should cede space to those who keep people alive and safe. That we should not continue to feel the pressure of putting things into the world to justify our existence. +
The keyword is uncertainty. As an independent company without constant state support we know this word well. In the current situation uncertainty reached a totally new level. An aera with mostly only questions, but nearly no answers.
IMITATION OF LIFE (photo: D. Matvejev/Proton Theatre) „We would have had 4 guest performances with it, to Rome, to Madrid, to Turin and to Tampere…“ +
In this photo I’m in my apartment in Santiago de Chile. I live very close to downtown, almost there. Few months ago we were living our revolution and the streets of my neighborhood were full of people all the time. We were angry but happy. +
On March 17th 2020, I wrote:
One of my first thoughts in the early days of the pandemic was: social distancing and closing borders, those are things dictators like. I knew I had to be careful how I said such things. +
I am trying to respond to the question of “What artistic contribution could interact with the current situation?” in this particular framework, with the resources and the medium of expression it can offer in times of spatial isolation and physical distancing imposed by the coronavirus crisis. +
Physis is a face of nature, body is expression of it. It looks beautiful, graceful and sublime. But it’s also cruel, violent, hostile and painfully pragmatic. +