Archipelago

mindblankless

The solo piece Mindblankless is the result of a research process focusing on concepts and physical solutions connected to a broad notion of misplacement. The interest and field of experimentation is to misplace, change the function or the meaning of different elements.  These elements could be ideas, objects, body parts, words, sounds, movement impulses, emotions, reactions, expectations and translations, senses, contexts, spaces and places or even time. The idea of misplacement feeds a search for absurdity and relations between sense and nonsense, logic – illogic, related – non-related. This might be an utopian task as all actions being performed on stage will have specific meaning and be deliberately read and tried to be made sense of. Sense and nonsense are man made concepts and the human will to find meaning and understand things is strong. The sources to be studied and referred to are different cases of sensorial, perception and reception disorders (e.g. books of Oliver Sacks including case studies of people with neurological disorders).

 

 How can one achieve some kind of misplacement on stage, where everything is possible and the common meanings and order of things are constantly being challenged? Is the nonsensical an illusion, a holy grail of art making – a hoax? Where is the border or distinction between sending out a message, a signal and producing a noise, a gibberish that no one will understand? Is random scattering of movement possible or are abstract movement already scattered units following one after the other in time and space – a continuum that we (e.g. spectators and performers) all share and participate in, a continuum which will always make us relate? 

 

Is nonsensical automatically meaningless or meaningless automatically nonsensical?

 

Concept, choreography and dance: Anna Maria Nowak

Music: David Bowie, Anna Maria Nowak

Light: Peter Thalhammer

 mindblankless is a co - production of Kunstverein Archipelago, OdeonTanzt Festival and  Anton Brückner Privat Universität