Our understanding of space has changed drastically in recent decades. Digitization has created new spaces, distances have been eliminated and our sense of reality has been questioned. Hearing is an extremely immersive sensory impression, which today, besides seeing, experiences constant expansion and translation through technology. In this project, I was concerned with the perception of sound and the experience of digital space. Another kind of stage is created, that doesn’t not primarily appeal to the eye, but mainly to the ear. It uses binaural (spatial) sound and the movement of the participant to unfold the performance.
In WELCOME we examined the relationship between private and public spaces. How are they interlocking with each other? How has our understanding of them changed over the recent decades? How do we understand them and how are they staged? The private home as an apparently safe place is crossed by countless, conscious and unconscious, boundaries and connections to the outside. WELCOME deals with analogue and digital transitory spaces between private and public. With the help of collected documentary image and sound material from inhabitants of Tübingen, a multimedia fictional living space was staged. It enabled us to look at the phenomenon of our everyday limits from different perspectives, starting with curtains, peepholes, passwords and doormats. Come in and feel at home.
Staging: Ariane Trümper, Stephan Mahn, Sebastian Rest Research and performance: Stephan Mahn, Ariane Trümper Preliminary research: Ekaterina Trachsel, Birk Schindler, Stephan Mahn Concept: Monster Control District Light and sound: Karsten Sandow A co-production with the Institute for Theatrical Future Research, Tübingen
Heute wird Morgen Gestern sein collage from Ariane Trümper on Vimeo.
performative (audio-video) installationHeute wird Morgen Gestern sein (today will be tomorrow’s yesterday) is a interactive/re-active, autonomous working installation that invites the spectator to explore an impossible phenomena, to turn back.
The first idea for Heute wird Morgen Gestern sein evolved during an artist residence in the outermost East of Germany, in Sachsen. A once flourishing area due to the yarn and fabric industry, in the 19th century and during the GDR, is the region since the reunification of Germany imprinted by a decrease of industry and residence, as well as an increase of unemployment. Sarcastically it was known under the title ‚the valley of the clueless.’ A title that stems from GDR times, as it was one of the regions in which Western television and radio could barely be received.
This performative installation continues to change it’s form and the used pre-recorded film and audio footage from showing to showing. It is part of an ongoing research on the reconstruction of the work in relation to the context and location it is shown in. So far it has been presented during:
02.2019 Group exhibition Bild Handlungen, science day, RWTH Aachen University / DE
09.2018 Theatre Festival Fringe Amsterdam / NL
08.2018 Exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Istria & during the Festival Media Mediterranea 20: Technology + Nature in Pula / HRV.
This project is produced as part of the Summer Sessions Network for Talent Development in a co-production of Metamedij and V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media.
DAKGEFLUISTER (roof whispers) is a research into the experience of space through sound. During the Rotterdamse Dakendagen several roof sounds could be experienced via binaural sound recordings, a technology capable of recording 3D sounding audio. The attention of the listener shall be led away from the experience of vision towards the experience of sound and clashes between the heard and the seen can be experienced.
The the seemingly less conscious, but very influential impact sound has on our perception shall be put into focus. How do we experience a space through sound in relation to an experience through vision? What does the sound of a space tells me about my position in relation to it? Raw sounds from air conditioners, traffic, rain, construction sites, birds, voices of children or church bells can be heard as a clear event or as disappearing in a fog of noise. They, but also the building itself, are creating the audible landscapes of the roofs.
Shown: 02-03.06.2018 Rotterdamse Dakendagen
The Making of:
This project has been made possible with the support of CBK Rotterdam. A
thank you goes out to the Dakendagen Stichting, the CBK Rotterdam,
Hannes Wallrafen, Platform Scenography and the teams of the Delftse
Poort, De Rotterdam, het WTC and the Central Station.
In Vorzeigekind (poster child), the first stage performance of the performance collective Monster Control District (MCD), two completely different orphans meet: the fictitious hero Siegfried from Wagner’s opera of the same name and a real orphan. A baby that was stored in a freezer, before being defrosted and presented to parents imitating a stillbirth. All for the purpose of selling the actual children without them knowing. With the help of the choral form, we seek to adopt these two high-contrast orphans in our performance.
Photo’s: Moritz Friese
» MONSTER CONTROL DISTRICT (MCD)
In 2017, Monster Control District (MCD) was founded by the theater collective VOLL: MILCH, cameraman Moritz Friese, programmer Nils Bultjer and scenographer / media artist Ariane Trümper at the LAB Frankfurt. The mission and goal of the MCD is to stage our monstrous present. MCD is located in Berlin, Lower Saxony and Rotterdam. It develops works of film, theater and a computer program called nota, which is used a working tool for their collective, intermedial montage-practice. In 2016, VOLL: MILCH started a monster cycle that began in April 2016 with terreur and continued in October of the same year with Monster Erlöser. This cycle has been continued with the MCD since 2017.
Spacial design for the fashion collection & photo exhibition of the duo Julia Striebel and Caroline Liehr, who are thematizing in their works the tension between fragile ecological systems and opulent nature inspirations.
The online program nota has been in production since MCD’s residence on notation systems in the LAB FFM and opens up an infinite digital space for the documentation and arrangement of text, image, video and audio files. The program acts as a digital work and assembly table for these media. The individual materials can be arranged, placed and put into relationship to each other in a variety of ways. Nota is a tool to visualize complex conceptual thoughts and ideas on a digital surface.
In April 2017 MCD started the development of nota and since then the program has been an important part of our creative work. On the 19 January 2018, nota was presented to the public for the first time in a beta version: As part of the „Digitalisierungstriple II“ of the Performing Arts Program Berlin, the current state of the program was presented and subject of an exchange on digital imaging spaces of scenic works.
In 2017, Monster Control District (MCD) was founded by the theater collective VOLL: MILCH, cameraman Moritz Friese, programmer Nils Bultjer and scenographer / media artist Ariane Trümper at the LAB Frankfurt. The mission and goal of the MCD is to stage our monstrous present. MCD is located in Berlin, Lower Saxony and Rotterdam. It develops works of film, theater and a computer program called nota, which is used a working tool for their collective, intermedial montage-practice. In 2016, VOLL: MILCH started a monster cycle that began in April 2016 with terreur and continued in October of the same year with Monster Erlöser. This cycle has been continued with the MCD since 2017.
A interactive and
participatory live Jump & Run project for 5 players, developped
with teens. The play took place from March 26 to April 8, 2018 at
Parkaue, Junges Staatstheater Berlin.
“At the end of the
Easter holidays, young people turn Stage 3 of the Parkaue Theatre
into a live Jump & Run computer game. But instead of virtual
fireworks, we have tangible reality in the usual brilliant graphics.
The Task: Steer your avatar unerringly through the level and face the
final boss in the final showdown!”
In an empty meeting room, two delegates passionately vie for attention and air time. Webcams, meanwhile, convey the posthumanistic picture of a world we have abandoned to become tourists.
Recordings of the meeting of the „Litchfield Mosquito Control District“ shows Chairman John and his Vice Alfred. The special feature: these two men are the only participants present at the meeting. Nevertheless, the session is strictly in accordance with the protocol and both of them are constantly addressing their speech and discussion to a seemingly present public. Both are demanding more airtime, which is the condition that their message is perceived and the population can take protective measures. This video is juxtaposed with footage from live webcams from different places in the world.
In 2017, Monster Control District (MCD) was founded by the theater
collective VOLL: MILCH, cameraman Moritz Friese, programmer Nils Bultjer
and scenographer / media artist Ariane Trümper at the LAB Frankfurt.
The mission and goal of the MCD is to stage our monstrous present. MCD
is located in Berlin, Lower Saxony and Rotterdam. It develops works of
film, theater and a computer program called nota, which is used a
working tool for their collective, intermedial montage-practice. In
2016, VOLL: MILCH started a monster cycle that began in April 2016 with
terreur and continued in October of the same year with Monster Erlöser.
This cycle has been continued with the MCD since 2017.
Monster Control District (MCD) is a performance collective formed in Berlin and Frankfurt a.M. beginning 2017. It consists out of the camera man Moritz Friese, the theatre collective VOLL:MILCH, the programmer Nils Bultjer and the scenographer and media artist Ariane Trümper. MCD’s task and goal is to put our monstrous time in scene. For this purpose MCD acquired VOLL:MILCH’s in 2016 started monster-cycle, who will have it’s peak in a collective opera-project in 2019/2020. The opera, a monstrous scenic art form, seems to be predestined to argue with the monstrosity of our time.
In the frame of a residence at Frankfurter LAB in April 2017 we started our working phase. During this residence our focus was to develop a collective notation for our different artistic approaches, to lay a common foundation for our future work together. A found video from the year 2015 stood at the beginning of our scenic research: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTXUIVmJQmQ
The recording of the Litchfield Mosquito Control District meeting shows chairman John and his vice chairman Alfred. Despite those men being the only participants of this meetings, it does strictly run after protocol. We disassembled this grotesque video in it’s individual scenic elements, noted the developing montage parts, reassembled them and re-staged them.
The newly formed notation models are intended to be tools for developing and working on the opera format. Till the performance of the Opera in its full monstrosity, in up to three years, we will produce several independent montage parts that will be presented in independent shows.
ONGOING RESEARCH – Audio/video installation 7:56min LOOP
“One must die as a blind person to be born again as a seeing person,” this statement stems out of Oliver Sack’s book An Anthropologist on Mars (1995). It is referring to a story about a blind person gaining back sight, but not being able to make sense out of the visual input, in such a way as a sighted person is able to. This person’s world was, until the point of gaining back sight, functioning well in its own way, the brain adapted to the lack of sight and created a functional system. By gaining back the ability to see, this system got interrupted so much that it even broke down to protect itself.
What seems so crucially interesting in such a story is that a presumed ‚lack of something‘ or the so called ‚disability,‘ could probably be more often observed as just a ‚different form the norm.‘ Meaning, that focusing only on what is missing compared to what is the ’norm,‘ can be a very subjective and degrading way of looking at something and someone. It might just cover the fact that there could be a functioning system behind the ’state of different.‘
But how can we really understand such a state, how can we feel and experience another way of being if we don’t have the necessary set-up in our brains for it? How can we experience ‚otherness?‘
This is a question that drives me in most of my works. How can we rupture our very personal and subjective perception on reality to such a way that it enables a glance on the otherness? A world that might hide a fascinating reality?
These questions and the above mentioned story inspired me to have a closer look on a world besides the visual. Declaring Scenography as my discipline of art means for me putting space and the experience of such in the focus of my attention. I want to find out what this experience can mean for my work, if it is a material I can use and how it engages in our interaction with space.
An interaction with a space stripped of visuals, consisting of sounds and touch. A reality that is supposed to be much more imprinted by time than by space, which seems to be more sequential in its way of perceiving the world, if compared to the more simultaneously perceived world of sight. In the following month I want to have a focus on how I experience a space and myself in a space by sound and how others do so. And, when I am talking about spaces in this context I am not only referring to physical ones but also digital ones. How could or does a digital audible space feel like in a world where we constantly talk about the huge amount of visuals penetrating us everyday? Would a lack of visual input change our perception of ourselves and the world? Who would we be and do we have to die to be reborn?
Site specific audio/video installation 7:56min LOOP
The video work was filmed for and presented on a specific location in Arnhem. The video was running in a seemingly endless loop, constantly repeating itself. Merging the physical and the digital, two worlds following different rules flow in and out of each other, exploring the possibilities of the medium video.
Material: Trafohuisje Arnhem, white board, projector, stereo speakers, video player, per-recorded video.
Scenography and Outside Eye, Collaborative Project, Performance
A work about memories and their connection to storage media. During Im Rahmen einer Erinnerung 4 performers transform through re-enactment and repetition their very personal stories into a collective one. A performance about the illusion of concreteness and about remembering.
15 – 17.04.2016 Theater im Pumpenhaus, Münster / DE
An installation about walls and borders, both emotional and physical. About confusion, the alien and the wish to be understood. About dreaming, the overcoming of ‘walls’ and the ‘outgrowing of oneself.’
The work was developed in the city of Görlitz-Zgorzelec, in the frame of a 5 week artist residence. A beautiful city, with a lot of space, demographic problems and an interesting history.
The work was set up on the ground floor of an empty building at the Obermarkt 6. Several spaces inside, outside and the wind running through the building shaped the work. Plastic plans were moving and reminding of the sound of the tree growing in a small court yard of the building. Live camera transmissions made walls invisible and on telephones Polish and German speaking people were unable to communicate.
Impressions of a city full of potential but somehow still living with a wall, even if there is no physical one anymore.
A work about words, misunderstandings, dreams and the self.
This work was running parallel and additional to the installation ‚Auf der Anderen Seite I Po Drugiej Stronie‘ am Obermarkt 6. The screen positioned in the door frame of a room in the former Hotel Vierjahreszeiten builds a connection to the parallel running installation at the Obermarkt 6. It places the spectator inside of the location at the Obermarkt, looking out on the streets.
