Open Dialogues : New Life Berlin

Open Dialogues: New Life Berlin was a collaborative writing project that explored the possibilities of contemporary critical, theoretical and art writing in the context of the New Life Berlin Festival (31st May -15th June 2008). 

The three main themes of the New Life Berlin festival were: Transnational Communities, Artistic Social Responsibility and Participation and Intervention. And Open Dialogues: New Life Berlin matched the structure, themes and artistic content of the festival itself: it was curated but participatory at its core, and it involved on and offline communities in examining artistic responsibility and new modes of existing for art critics. Within this model, the purpose of the programme was four fold; 1) to provide critique on, and documentation of, the festival, 2) to examine the notion of community, 3) to explore the role of criticism in relation to participatory art and 4) to act as professional development programme for new and existing international critical writers. 

The Open Dialogues: New Life Berlin blog included all the texts written by the 21 international writers on the Open Dialogues: New Life Berlin programme, three of whom experienced the festival online from across Europe and the US. Combined, their output represents 5 interviews, 3 previews, 27 reviews and 15 opinion pieces relating to the socially engaged and collaborative art work at the festival and the practice of critical writing. There were also two printed publications produced as part of Open Dialogues: New Life Berlin. The PDF’s of these publications can be emailed to you on request to opendialogues@gmail.com. 

Open Dialogues: New Life Berlin programme: 

31 May, 10.30am - 5.30pm Writers’ Workshop 
2 June, 2.30pm -5.30pm Writers’ Meeting 
5 June, 5pm -7pm Peer Critique 
7 June, 5pm -7pm Live Review 
7 June, Publication of Open Dialogues: New Life Berlin ‘issue 1’ 
12 June, 5pm -7pm Peer Critique 
14 June, Publication of Open Dialogues: New Life Berlin ‘issue 2’ 
15 June, 11am - 1pm Plenary Session 

7 June Open Dialogues: Live Review :
The Open Dialogues: New Life Berlin Live Review was a showcase of, evaluation for and live critical response to Open Dialogues and New Life Berlin. Special guests included: 
Martin Rosengaard and Sixten Kai Neilsen (Wooloo Productions) 
Doreen Mende (General Public, Berlin) 
Tatjana Fell and Lisa Glauer (Arttransponder, Berlin) 
Anonymous Representative (30 Days in New Life Berlin) 

The web archive:

http://www2.wooloo.org/opendialoguesblog/

The Writers:

The writers on Open Dialogues: New Life Berlin were Anga'aefonu Bain-Vete, Alfredo Cramerotti, Clare Carswell, Alexandria Clark, Mary Kate Connolly, Kathryn Fischer, Eleanor Hadley Kershaw, Christina Irrgang, Joanna Loveday, Cheree Mack, Matthew MacKisack, Carali McCall, Charlotte Morgan, Christin Niehoff, Ann Rapstoff, Valerie Palmer, Carrie Paterson, Kara Rooney, Heiko Schmid, Claire Louise Staunton and Eliza Tan. More details about the writers can be found on the CV section of http://www.wooloo.org/opendialoguesblog/ 

Open Dialogues: New Life Berlin was facilitated by Rachel Lois Clapham and Mary Paterson, the Directors of Open Dialogues, with assistance from Christina Irrgang (Open Dialogues Associate, Berlin). 

All photographs courtesy Open Dialogues : New Life Berlin

Performance Saga texts - online

Images: Peter Vittali, 'The Second Person' at Performance Saga Festival - Bone 11, Schlachthaus Theater, Friday 5th December 2008. Photograph (c) Martin Rindlisbacher

www.performancesaga.blogspot.com

Read about last night's performances from Peter Vittali, Martha Rosler and Wagner-Feigl-Forschung.

Also, Thursday's performances from Carolee Schneeman, Gaspard Buma and Irene Laughlin & Jorge Manuel de Leon, and Wednesday's performances from Alison Knowles and Die Maulwerker.

(All We Need is) Radio Ga Ga

'Incommunicado FM'
Matt & Ross

Image courtesy the artists and Site Gallery.







Radio Ga Ga

Performance Saga texts - online

www.performancesaga.blogspot.com

Read about last night's performances from Carolee Schneeman, Gaspard Buma and Irene Laughlin & Jorge Manuel de Leon, and Wednesday's performances from Alison Knowles and Die Maulwerker.

Images: 1)Alison Knowles at Performance Saga Festival - Bone 11, Schlachthaus Theater, Wednesday 3rd December 2008. Photograph (c) Martin Rindlisbacher

2)Drawing of the concert by Aliosn Knowles and Die Maulwerker, by Chris Regn.

'Upside Down', directed by Alessandra Fel, Camden People’s Theatre, Tuesday 25th November 2008

Image: Upside Down (c) Alessandra Fel

‘How did we get here?’ asks the male performer at the beginning of Upside Down, lying on the floor with a chair, as if he is sitting down but subject to an unnatural kind of gravity. ‘From the table’, replies his companion, a woman clutching a suitcase who is also prone on the ground, but looks as if she is flying. In the long pause between his question and her answer, the couple are suspended in emotional limbo, caught in static and displaced poses of the everyday. Behind them, the table also lies upturned on the floor; it does not offer much of a solution.

Thus begins a 16 minute journey into the demise of an ordinary couple, as explained through the physical tics and patterns of their daily routine. They kiss, they touch, they sleep, and their movements slip into a familiar mould. But the mould itself is slipping: what begin as tender moments of physical closeness dissolve inexorably into the strained symptoms of two strangers uneasy in shared space.

Without losing the fluidity of their cyclical routine, these two performers turn sparky flirtation into weary habit, into resentful physical reflex. When they say 'I love you' for the fourth or fifth time, the words have become meaningless and mechanical. A few minutes later, the couple are on the floor again, and the male performer asks, ‘How did we get here?’ Because of the flow of the performers’ movement, and the inevitability of the couple’s decline, the audience finds no satisfactory answer to this question, even when it arrives for a second time.

Image Upside Down (c) Alessandra Fel

Upside Down was extended for the performance at Camden People’s Theatre, as part of The ScenePool festival of theatre. In the extended part, the performers lift themselves out of the visual echo of the opening scene – the two questions ‘How did we get here’ originally stood at the beginning and end – and spin into a more personal journey for the male performer. This means that the seam is easy to spot – the moment when the symmetry of the piece is broken. But what Upside Down loses in symmetry it gains in a kind of legacy: the second part extends the fantasy lives of the individuals involved, building thematically on the dreams the couple repeat while they still function as a unit. At first the performers speak their private lives as they go through the motions of everyday- the man dreamt about his parents, he says, as he swings his briefcase and marches to work. But later they stop speaking, and their movements become more abstract; the man lifts his briefcase onto his back, as if to symbolize burden. Fantasy and reality merge as the piece progresses, and the couple's relationship becomes inscribed in their dreams as well as affected by them.

Weaving sparse and repetitive language into skilful physical theatre, Upside Down is a melancholy fairy tale with an unhappy ending. As its title suggests, it displaces gesture and space so that normal relations twist out of recognition. In doing so, it coils away from cliché, even if it is built from an old fashioned male/ female standard – the man is driven by pressure and work, the woman dreams of escape as she waits at home. But as a whole, the work is drafted in fluid choreography that defines the effects of a couple’s relationship without explaining its root cause. The result is a compelling momentum that pushes the performers from romance to break up, and defines the natural divergence of separate lives. Like all misery, this couple’s unhappiness seems prosaic, gradual, and destined to come.

Written by Mary Paterson

Upside Down is performed by Alessandra Fel and Miguel Oyarzun, with music by Robin Holloway.

Alessandra Fel
http://www.alessandrafel.com/

The ScenePool was at Camden People’s Theatre, Tue 25 Nov 08 - Sun 30 Nov 08
http://www.cptheatre.co.uk/event_details.php?sectionid=theatre&eventid=265