21 22 23 EN Handeln durch Unterlassen. Ein installativ performatives Diskursformat
©Nora Sobbe
HOW THE INSTALLATIVE SETUP WORKS
The installative set-up can comprise up to 20 buzzers that function on a visual level. There is one foot-buzzer per person. Part of the programmed dialogue dramaturgy are so-called push-phases, in which it is decided whether the buzzers light up or not. A push-button inside the buzzer can be pressed with the foot. The decision of the dialogue participants for or against a buzzer-push is not visible through a dome and is therefore anonymous. If at least one person does not press the button inside the buzzer, the buzzer does not light up and a reflexive phase about the discussion room is initiated.
The phases of a discussion in the installative structure are listed below. This list is not to be understood chronologically. The order in which and whether all phases are run through depends on the push behaviour of the discussion participants during the push-phases. The length of the speaking phases in the course of the discussion can be defined at the beginning. A discussion with discussion-phases of 13 minutes each lasts a total of 41-47 minutes – depending on the push behaviour of the discussion participants during the push phases.
PUSH-PHASE
During the push-phases (1 min each), the participants are asked to decide in favour of or against a buzzer-push: The buzzer-push means an affirmative positioning on the discussion situation. Not pressing the buzzer initiates a reflective phase about the discussion room. If all dialogue participants press the foot switch inside the buzzer inside the buzzer, the discussion room is updated as usual and discussed again with the buzzer lighting up. If at least one person omits the the buzzer-push, a reflective phase about the discussion room is initiated (INTERIM REFLECTION | INTERIM REFLECTION). The subsequent discussion phase takes place when the buzzer is not lit.
There are three push phases in total: 1x at the start of the discussion to launch the mechanism. 2x during the discussion.
DISCUSSION PHASES UNDER LIGHTING UP
Once all participants in the discussion have positioned themselves with a buzzer push and thus affirmed the room formation, an x-minute discussion phase follows with the buzzers lighting up.
REFLECTIVE PHASE 1: COLLECTIVE SILENCE | REFLECTIVE PHASE 2: EXCHANGE ON DISCUSSION DYNAMICS SO FAR
If at least one person omits the buzzer push during one of the push phases, a 1-minute collective silence / pause is initiated. If at least one person omits the buzzer push again in a subsequent push phase, there is a 5-minute reflection on the discussion room and the dynamics of the discussion so far.
This can be used to approach the discussion space together in a descriptive manner, to communicate expectations and possible demands on the discussion space or to express any unease about the discussion dynamics to date. It is also possible to leave the room – an option that usually already exists, but which, if provided for in a room dramaturgy may be easier to implement.
DISCUSSION PHASE UNDER NON-LIGHTING UP
After a reflective phase in the course of the discussion (REFLEXIVE PHASE 1 + 2), the subsequent discussion phase takes place when the buzzers are not lit. The non-lighting of the buzzer indicates a momentary vagueness with regard to the formation of the discussion space – a reflexive phase was previously initiated by at least one omitted buzzer push.
21 22 23
short description: Handeln durch Unterlassen (Act by Omission) is a programmed dramaturgy of conversation. It is characterised by two moments that enable the participants to intervene in the conversational space (GER Gesprächsraum) silently and in the mode of omission. Connected via foot-buzzers, the participants can initiate reflexive phases about the shared discussion space by refraining from a buzzer-push. The installative setup communicates with the participants via light signals.
project description: Handeln durch Unterlassen (Act by Omission) sees itself as an attempt to create a discourse space that reflexively questions itself in moments of a discussion dynamic that is perceived as inhibited. The decisive factor here is that such reflexive phases can be called for during the conversation silently and in the mode of omission. The participants are connected via foot buzzers and are asked twice during the discussion to choose whether to press or not to press a button inside the buzzer. The design of the buzzer allows to press the Button unseen and therefore anonymously. If you press the button, it means that the discussion should continue as existing. If you choose not to press, a reflective phase about the shared discussion space is initiated. This would mean first reflecting on the discussion space in a minute of silence. And then, in a next step, if again someone refrains from pushing, it would mean to have a shared exchange about the discussion so far. This could mean, sharing one‘s own expectations and demands on the discussion or it could also mean to approach the shared discussion space by describing how you have perceived the dynamics of the conversation so far. Was it possible for you to participate as you wished to do?
Research Interest: HdU responds to a research interest in how silence can be effectively integrated into conversational situations without remaining in the paradox of inviting silent positionings to comment on their respective silences by speaking or to explain possible motives. In a kind of hermeneutics of silence, I have begun to explore the spectrum of different modes of silence, based on my own experiences of speech dynamics in various discussion contexts. Silence, for example, can be a very powerful act of ascribing the conversational space to other participants in the discussion and evading responsibility for transforming the common conversational space. At the same time, with Miranda Fricker‘s concept of Hermeneutical Injustice [1], among others, silence should be considered as a potential silence due to unequal power relations of a structural nature. Miranda Fricker refers to a form of silence that occurs due to a lack of collective hermeneutical resources for certain social experiences.
Handeln durch Unterlassen hosting follow-up discussions on Performances:
HdU is also suitable as a discussion format for follow-up discussions on performances. In contrast to the ‘Artist Talk’, I see the installative structure as an opportunity to focus on the constitutive function of the audience for performances - by connecting the discussion participants via foot buzzers, an understanding of a discourse space is proposed that considers all those physically present as participants in the discourse and not only includes temporary speakers.
[1] Miranda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice. Power and the Ethics of Knowledge, New York 2007.
concept | object-design: Nora Sobbe
technical realisation | lighting-design: Paul Matyschok
further development technical realisation of the push-button: Antonía Orfanou
dramaturgical support: Ronja Landtau
moderation: Ronja Landtau | Olga Popova
24 EN [sic]nals – intrapulse
©Marcel Rickli
24
[sic]nals – intrapulse
Installation of a waiting room as an anteroom for Light- and Air-Therapy
intrapulse installs a waiting room in response to the location of the project's premiere: The Schatzalp Hotel Davos.
The hotel is a former sanatorium where people suffering from tuberculosis travelled at the beginning of the 20th century in the hope of being cured by Air and Light Therapy. The lobby of the hotel offers a view of the Davos mountain landscape through a large window front. Guests who book a hotel in the health resort of Davos today can choose to support the ‘myclimate Climate Fund Davos’ by paying a small surcharge and thus take “Verantwortung[...] für die momentan unvermeidbaren CO2-Emissionen [zu übernehmen][:] [d]er Gast wird aktiv und löst mit seinem Engagement Nachhaltigkeitsmaßnahmen im Hotel/Betrieb aus”.[1]
The shift in what a claim to healing or measures of care are directed at – then to the bodies suffering from tuberculosis, today to a health resort that reacts to emissions (for example from hotel operations) – has made us wonder about a current reading of the phrase air and light therapy:
Do we possibly need to widen our view beyond habitual material boundaries of the living to be able to think a patient of Light- and Air-Therapy that does justice to the complexity of what is commonly subsumed under the dichotomy of the living/and its environment?
In the waiting room setting of intrapulse – as an anteroom to Light- and Air-Therapy, so to speak – we invite to a speculative approach to bodies and phenomena that are waiting to be treated here.
We have become accustomed to considering the atmosphere, oceans, soils, and rocks as "environment”, "abiotic”, "physico-chemical”, "external conditions”, "geological". [...] It is because the activities of the beings we classically recognize as living overflow and exceed what we classically recognize as the inanimate world that we must, precisely, revise the idea that this world is inanimate. Sébastian Dutreuil, Gaia is alive
We performed the project once again at the Letzigraben outdoor pool in Zurich. Here we were interested in the former changing rooms as a location – like the Schatzalp, as a glass cube they encourage reflection on the boundaries between inside and outside, the living and its surroundings.
[1] EN: take ‘responsibility[...] for the currently unavoidable CO2 emissions[:] [t]he guest becomes active and triggers sustainability measures in the hotel/business with their commitment’.
PULSE INDICATOR | LIVING/AND ITS ENVIRONMENT
The dramaturgical point of reference for the performance in the attempt to think aesthetically about more than human bodies/phenomena is the taking of the pulse.
The human pulse provides the initial musical orientation. We draw on pieces from the Renaissance and a contemporary composition that refer to the human pulse in their instructions on musical metre. The references differ: In Heinz Holliger's Cardiophonie, the focus is on the tempo and sonority of the human pulse, while the Renaissance pieces focus more on the movement of the human heart as a gesture.
With the help of a tube connection, we ultimately give phenomena from the outside a place in our waiting room. the mechanism functions as a pulse indicator: We generate data with the help of a wind sensor, which informs the pulsation of water in the filled tube system. In the object design, we have orientated ourselves on the feeling/touching of the pulse in humans and on ‘Tactus beating’, a historical practice of making musical time countable for the performing musicians.
HUMDITY VEST
With the help of the Humidity Vest, we initiate a relationship between a plant and a waistcoat wearer that encourages the integration of non-human needs into everyday actions. The waistcoat is reactively switched to the water supply of surrounding houseplants (prepared with a humidity sensor) and inflates when a houseplant within a certain radius suffers from water shortage. With continued inflation, the pressure on the wearer's chest increases. The wearer can only stop the inflation by ensuring the plant's water supply and fulfilling its need for water. among other things, the programmed interaction is based on an interest in how routine processes are modified when they become permeable to needs that are usually (or can be) ignored. The focus is not only on including the needs of non-human actors, but also on moments in which usually ignored needs come into conflict with normative notions of time and space of routine or institutional processes.
(see Diversity Arts Culture Berlin, Crip Time)
Lea Sobbe | Recorder
Eleonora Bišćević |Traverso
Martin Jantzen | Viola da Gamba
Zacarias Maia | Performer
Pascal Lund-Jensen | Object-Design + Sound-Direction
Nora Sobbe | Conception + Object-Design + Scenography
Lea Sobbe | Conception + Musical-Direction
We would like to thank the Medical Collection of the Institute for Evolutionary Medicine (University of Zurich) and in particular Sabina Carraro for the exchange of information in the lead up to the performance.
22 EN [sic]nals – liminoid
©Nora Sobbe
22
[sic]nals – liminoid
liminoid initiates ritualized processes in the Baptistery of Cologne Cathedral. Three musicians/performers explore the formerly sacred space – today a profane space of archaeological interest –, that mediates between Cologne Cathedral and the bustling pedestrian zone. Visitors are invited to explore moments of in-between with the musicians/performers. The musical starting point is the Lutheran hymn “I call to you, Lord Jesus Christ”. Various baroque arrangements of the piece, including those by Johann Sebastian Bach, will be used as material for musical construction and deconstruction, allowing the musicians to improvise together.
Victor Turner (1920-1983) borrowed the term ‘liminal phase’ (lat. Limen - the threshold) from ethnological studies on rites of passage and modified it for the theatre of ‘complex’, ‘post-industrial societies’. According to Turner, performance moments, understood as ‘liminoid processes’ (‘resembling liminal phenomena without being like them’), have the potential to act as an ‘independent and critical source’ in relation to currently binding social orders:
But how can the possibly transformative potential of such threshold phases have a lasting effect across performance situations? What agency do performers, visitors and objects of the performance have and how can they continue to communicate with each other after the end of the performance?
(Victor Turner, Vom Ritual zum Theater/From Ritual to Theatre. The Human Seriousness of Play.)
Part of the performance of liminoid is a sounding object that is activated by a performer at the end of the performance. Like a wind-up music box, it cannot be stopped at will for a certain period of time. Towards the end of the performance, three of these sounding objects will be handed over to people from the audience. They are asked to bring it to a collection point that can only be reached by passing through the public space. Fragments of the performance sound from the three objects. The sound of the three objects intertwines.
Martin Jantzen | Viola da Gamba
Zacarias Maia | Performer
Juri Rendler | Realisation of the Object
Ronja Landtau | Outside Eye
Nora Sobbe | Conception + Object-Design + Scenography
Lea Sobbe | Conception + Musical Direction + Recorder
21 EN even the greatest stars live their lives in the looking glass
©Nora Sobbe
21
even the greates stars live their lifes in the looking glass
The mirror setup works with two performers. Performer1 holds a mobile phone with a mirrored back in one hand and another mirror in the other. Performer1 positions themselves in front of a full-length mirror in front of Performer2, who is holding the mirror. Performer1 constructs a self and stages herself in the mirror using fragments of the environment behind Performer2. Performer1 captures the mirror illusion in a photograph
What I want to liberate myself from with this installation is the view of another as a prerequisite for making sure of myself. I am looking for a process of becoming a subject that takes place detached from the view of the other.
In The Heterotopias. The Utopian Body, Focault places the body as the „main actor of all utopias“. Foucault believes that this utopia of the body can only be arrested through love, looking in the mirror or death.[1]
I ask whether the realisation of the utopia of the body by looking in the mirror can be understood as a particularly autonomous act of becoming a subject. The mirror as a mediator from utopia to heterotopia. [2] What remains utopian about the mirror is that I only become aware of myself from a virtual point of view - by looking out of the mirror.At the same time, however, my point of view gains reality by connecting with the surrounding space when I look into the mirror.
An empowering act towards the view of a third party in the attempt to transport the body into a here and not to be dependent on the view of a lover, but to transport the body into the here by looking into the mirror and to reserve the right to help shape the mirror illusion.
The view of a third person is the starting point of my installative construction, in a count that lists the view into the mirror, the view out of the mirror and the view of another person looking over the view-in-the-mirror scene.
[1] Endlich ist da ein Blick [in der Liebe, N.S.], der die geschlossenen Lider zu sehen vermag. Wie der Spiegel und der Tod, so besänftigt auch die Liebe die Utopie des Körpers, lässt sie verstummen, beruhigt sie, sperrt sie gleichsam in einen Kasten, den sie verschließt und versiegelt. Deshalb sind Spiegelillusion und Todesdrohung einander so ähnlich. Und wenn wir trotz der beiden bedrohlichen Figuren, die sie umgeben, dennoch so gerne einander lieben, so weil in der Liebe der Körper hier ist.“ (Foucault, Die Heterotopien. Der Utopische Körper)
[2] In Andere Räume, Foucault defines heterotopia as „tatsächlich realisierte Utopie“.
Video installative setting | performance
Videodocumentation of the installation @auftakt festival Cologne 2021
Glossar mit Foucault
UTOPIA
Utopie = „wesentlich unwirkliche Räume“ (Foucault, Andere Räume)
„Es gibt also Länder ohne Orte und Geschichten ohne Chronolie. [...] Diese Städte, Kontinente und Planeten sind natürlich, wie man so sagt im Kopf [...].“
(Foucault, Die Heterotopien. Der utopische Körper)
HETEROTOPIA
Heterotopie = „tatsächlich realisierte Utopie“ (Foucault, Andere Räume)
„Weil diese Orte ganz andere sind als alle Plätze, die sie reflektieren oder von denen sie sprechen, nenne ich sie im Gegensatz zu den Utopien die Heterotopien.“ (Foucault, Andere Räume)
MIRROR
„Der Spiegel ist [...] eine Utopie, sofern er ein Ort ohne Ort ist. [...] Aber der Spiegel ist auch eine Heterotopie, insofern er wirklich existiert und insofern er mich auf den Platz zurückschickt, den ich wirklich einnehme; vom Spiegel aus entdecke ich mich als abwesend auf dem Platz, wo ich bin, da ich mich dort sehe [...].“ (Foucault, Andere Räume)