postgraduate program, workshop

Antonia Baehr “When this you see remember me.” *

9-13 March 2015

In this workshop, we will investigate how scores can function as a constitutive factor for kinship relations. We will write scores as gifts to each other, and I will share some of ‚ “make up productions‚” working methods with you.

We will make ourselves familiar on a practical level with the use of scores for performance. We will read and execute a number of found scores: historical ones (from John Cage’s Songbooks for ex.) and contemporary ones (from the projects Laugh, and Abecedarium Bestiarium, among others), some infamous and others entirely unheard of. We will write, interpret and perform scores for each other, pass them on, turn them literally upside down, while swapping roles and places.

Performing, directing, writing and interpreting scores ‚ – how to collaborate? How can we work together? Between the hierarchical pyramidal structure to the collective, there is an endless plurality of forms of collaboration possible. This workshop  examines the boundaries between score/interpretation, rehearsal/performance, director/performer, and audience/presentation. This workshop’s focus is an investigation through praxis.

* Gertrude Stein 

Biography:

Antonia Baehr is a choreographer. What characterizes her is a non-disciplinary work and a method of collaboration with different people, using a game-structure with switching roles: each person is alternately director / author / host and performer / guest for the other one.

1994 she co-founded the Berlin-based performance group “ex machinis”. She graduated in Film- and Media Arts at the Hochschule der Künste Berlin with Valie Export (1996) and obtained a DAAD-grant and a Merit Scholarship for the School of The Art Institute of Chicago. There she completed her Master in Performance with Lin Hixson of the performance group Goat Island and began collaborating with William Wheeler. Since 2000 she is based in Berlin. She was co-organizing “Labor Sonor”, experimental music and performance series, at KuLe from 2001 to 2003, and co-hosted the festival “Radioriff” that took place in December 2003 at Ausland, Berlin. From 2006 until 2008 she was associated artist in residence at “Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers” in France. In 2008 she published her book and her vinyl “Rire / Laugh / Lachen”. From March to May 2013, the Beursschouwburg in Brussels curated a three-month program that included performances, films and an exhibition: “make up – at Antonia Baehr and Werner Hirsch’s table”. This focus program featured works by artists who have been collaborating with Hirsch and Baehr in various and switching roles for many years, as well as a wide selection of works by Baehr and Hirsch themselves. Her book “Abecedarium Bestiarium – Portraits of affinities in animal metaphors” came out in January 2014.

Antonia Baehr’s productions include: “Holding Hands” (2001), “Un après-midi” (2003), “Cat Calendar” together with Antonija Livingstone (2004), “Larry Peacock” co-produced by Sabine Ercklentz and Andrea Neumann (2005), “Merci” (2006), “Rire / Laugh / Lachen” (2008), “For Faces” (2010), “My Dog is My Piano” (2012), “Abecedarium Bestiarium” (2013), “The Wildes” together with Ida Wilde (Keren Ida Nathan) (2014).

Antonia Baehr is the producer of the horse whisperer and dancer Werner Hirsch, the musician and choreographer Henri Fleur, and the composer Henry Wilt.