SODA WORKS 2018

oDA 2018
The SODA (Solo/Dance/Authorship) class of 2018 have compiled this publication to contain selected content from their
individual thesis projects. These projects each consisted of a live performance - presented in December 2017, at the Uferstudios
in Berlin - an artist work book, as a document of the creative process and a written essay, each explicating areas of
independent research. It is the aim of this publication to present a selection of this material for public dissemination.
The publication can be read in two directions: vertically as well as horizontally. You can choose from which perspective you
would like to start. You can read the book from the beginning till the end and after that start again, this time reading from a
different angle, or you can simply make fast changes, jumping from horizontal to vertical, from vertical to horizontal. It is just
a matter of adjusting the object to your choices. The amount of changes is limitless.
The MA in Solo/Dance/Authorship (MA SoDA) is a two year, full-time, performance-oriented Master of Arts degree. It
provides a practice-led postgraduate education for practitioners and recent graduates who wish to challenge, extend and
transform their practice and their understanding of arts practice through practical, theoretical and critical enquiry.
The MA SODA is situated within the HZT – Inter-University Centre for Dance Berlin, which provide a practice led and research
driven education in contemporary dance, choreography and performance.

f it‘s not sharp,
t won‘t cut

ove is healing
TaypiMami // footnotes to myself
‘feel how what I have to tell you vibrates’
maque pereyra

pleasure is
empowerment
TaypiMami is a hyper existential, deeply
spiritual dialogue with
the real/imagined selves I was/am
and the ones I will be.
Decolonial aesthetics and notions,
personal stories,states of mind-body-soul-spirit,
and movement practices, gather at
the intersection with identity,
memory, healing strategies,
rituals, and the agency of love,
sensuality and sexuality.
It draws into the idea of
the circularity of time and that
healing the present can change the
past and the future.

In my work I deal with personal material as means for engaging with
a wider understanding and production of practice, knowledge and
theory in order to connect with a broader social frame full of colonial
woundings in which the enjoyment, growth and sharing of oneself in
body-mind-soul-spirit, the exercise of memory, the practice of rituals,
the awakening of consciousness, the embracement of sexuality,
sensuality, emotions, sensations, affections and intuitions and the notion
of deserving love and pleasure, are constantly diminished and/or
threatened and therefore I see them as modes of resistance, knowledge
production and a healing decolonial rebellion facing the different
oppressive structures.
Self healing through self reflection is one of the decolonial strategies
I use in my creative processes. Gloria Anzaldúa says that achieving
consciousness means to go deep into oneself and then expanding out
into the world. Healing oneself is a way to consciousness and it also
means healing others following the idea of the personal as political.
For being able to do that I took the idea of juxtaposing different times
of my life, inviting my past, future, real and imagined selves to a ritual
here and now.
The juxtaposition of times, images, dances, texts I produce are directly
related to identity. A ch’ixi identity, as Silvia Rivera says, or a nepantlera
identity, according to Gloria Anzaldúa.
These identities exist at the cracks between worlds, they are fluid and
constituted out of different worldviews, different influences that are
many times contradictory and exactly this contradictions produces the
necessary tension that will enable them to exist. I embrace my ch’ixi
and nepantlera identity knowing there is no ‘pure’ identity where to
‘come back to’ after a long process of colonization.
trust your intuitions
The aymara word ‘taypi’ means the gathering of the opposites. I see
this liminal place as a healing space where feelings, emotions, sensations,
desires, loves, thoughts, memories, negotiate with themselves
and find their ways to be expressed, transformed, enhanced, comforted,
forgiven and accepted, acknowledging the empowerment that will
come out of that. So I created the conditions for my ritual to happen;
I invited my beloved ones to send me their chants, letters, videos,
music, thoughts, I invoked their presence to feel they were with me all
the time.
I celebrate my process of self healing with them
and to expand the possibility of generating loving
connections through this work, I dedicate this
to my brother Diego.

sensuality is empowerment
pleasure is empowerment
love is empowerment
love is healing
respect is love
love is trust
intuition is knowledge
loving sex is empowering
vibration is healing
open your heart
shake your womb
love your vagina
invoke your guardian spirits
take time
practice YOGGATON
trust your intuitions
talk to yourself
pray for those you love
find yourself
sweat cowardice off
because life asks you to be brave
find yourself

Agata Siniarska
ngest and digest it!
NO MICROBE, NO ART
Our bodies, as well as our bodies of work, travel in time and space by occupying and being occupied by many places, institutions
and by intermingling within many political dimensions.
The outcome of these movements is the trajectory of the ‘Name’. ‘Name’, as concept and material, is the currency, a value
every artist needs to take care of. Name often has important impacts on our future possibilities, artistic recognition, prestige,
work conditions as well as artistic choices. Name is a network of relationships participating in the art market. The artist and
their name become a currency that belongs to a higher anonymous bureaucratic and managerial authority, the structural
power of the market with a multitude of evaluative, managerial and organisational processes that need to be constantly
adhered to.

Name is a place of investment. When institutions invest in a name, they continue this investment into the future. They want
to prove to the world and convince themselves that this name is worth investing in. In a project, the ideas and artistic work do
not have that much importance, but the name makes the project important. The signature. The brand. These are what make
the product valid. The name is one and unique, and it signifies only one artist. If the name is valid enough, it will be the preferable
choice of product for most of the audience who refer to a festival program. This name becomes trustworthy because
it is responsible for the whole artwork and its process. Here appears a crucial question: Is an artwork really made by one
person? If not, as we claim, then how is it possible to put a name on an artwork if a work is never done by one individual?
Specifically, one human?
Bacteria have an enormous impact on our feelings as well as our thinking processes. What does it mean when one says:
“I thought about it, this is my idea”. Thinking processes are collective, involving hosts and guests. They always transpire
with the assistance of others within an ecosystem. There is nothing that fully belongs to us. As humans, we cannot claim our
authorship. Bacteria always participate in all parts of our life. And bacteria knew this already, before us. Of course one
response to this would be to say: “I am thinking with my bacteria”. But can we say that bacteria exclusively belong to us?
Let’s hold this question for a moment.
The first contact with bacteria happens during the birth. The womb is sterile. The amniotic sac and fluid that surrounds the
baby is a pristine environment devoid of bacteria or other microbial agents in order to protect the growing baby which still
doesn’t have a fully developed immune system. A baby’s first exposure to bacteria starts during birth in their mother’s vagina.
This is the bacterial first stamp we receive as we enter the world, which then continues through skin-to-skin contact with
our mother and our new environment. This stamp becomes our ecosystem that stays with us till death, but with certain
changes that depend on our relationships, the places we live and our hygiene, etc. The transmission of bacteria is a fact and
cannot be questioned. The time spend with other humans and non-humans, especially when intimate, slowly changes or
moves the borders of our primary ecosystem.
e-monster-ate!
It is impossible to trace from whom or where new microbes have come as they appear in our bodies. They are not ‘our
bacteria’. They choose to inhabit our environment, and just as quickly as they came to us, they can leave. The human body
is a space of transition, like a bus stop, a train platform, an airport: space that does not belong to anybody. The passengers
change their location, they come and go. We are like a landscape, so even though some bacteria may live with us forever, it’s
hard to imagine that they have any feelings or sentiment towards ‘the land’, nor any possessive ambitions toward it.
We must ask ourselves if we want to be a land or a residency space.

ean the thing!
As we continue thinking with bacteria, we ‘have’ no bacteria, meaning that no bacteria belong to us. At the same time, we are
influenced by them and our thinking and feelings are connected with their actions. What does this mean for our decisions?
Every community lives in communities with many others, just like ideas live in art. The ideas and artworks do not belong to
the artists. It is impossible to distinguish ‘our’ bacteria, the ones that inhabit us our whole lives. In the same way, we cannot
tell if an artistic thinking process is happening with the company and assistance of certain bacteria. What an artist does by
making art is to put them in process. We can have tons of ideas but to realise them, we have to insist on them; to put them
in process. Imagine this: I, a scientist, share my apartment with a film director, let‘s say, Jane Campion. Eating breakfast
together, sharing cups, using the same towels, keeping our things in proximity, kissing each other, using the same utensils
to cut our nails, borrowing shoes, our bacteria ecosystems impact each other. Practically, this means that my bacteria
triggers certain ideas in Campion, making her write certain scripts, choosing certain scenes for her movies. Yet it is her as a
person that activates the whole machinery. She allows bacteria from my ecosystem to niche in her, she listens to them
and ‘lets them speak’ through their molecular language. She listens to them, she listens to her body as we might call
it colloquially, but on a physical level there is nothing more than Campion giving space to different kinds of microbes. She
cultivates them and allows them to interfere with and influence her own ecosystem.
Some symbionts help digest food, some symbionts help digest ideas. Some new microbes are random residents, some
temporary passersby. But there should always be a small fraction that matters, and this is where artists have the possibility to
act. An artwork is not a product of discourse, it is the material confrontation between bodies. The act of thinking and making
work is dynamically entangled with the microbial capacities of our bodies. We should not forget that while writing our credits.

This process is still not clearly understood by science and is definitely not taken into consideration by the art market. The
self-revolving way artists write their artistic biographies, insisting on naming themselves in applications, and institutions
and funding bodies also demanding these identifications from the artists, shows just how far from reality art exists. We (as
humans) contain a multitude, we are a multitude, we are not unique and thus, our artworks are not unique. Why produce
ideas if there are so many in the world?! Why not share resources?! Stealing, reformulating and translating are artistic strategies
that create conditions in the body in which microbes can thrive.
The biggest question now is, if we embrace this perspective, can this process be shaped into form? [….]
- from the book “IN THE BEGINNING WAS A COPY”, written by Agata Siniarska, 2kg of bacterial flora, rota virus, CEFUROX
Basics 250mg, 377521 handshakes, others..., illustrations by Salomé Genes, Coccigram +, Coccigram -, Streptocoque,
Meningcoque, others..., editing by Alice Heyward and a hundred trillion microbes and others...
Find another point of entrance!
Agata Siniarska makes works within formats of performances, events, practices, lectures, videos, TV programme and others. She is interested in knowledge,
that explores various mediums, protocols, strategies of its own production and does not apply any hierarchy to itself. These are all the detours,
twists, turns through knowing and confusion: from aliens, imaginative blobs, sweat, scientific facts, air particles, discourses, affects, personal dramas,
gossips, zeros, thoughts, inner speeds, transplants, women – all knowledge that seeks not to explain but to involve. Agata is a founding member of
female trouble - a collective revolving around identity, body, feminisms, pleasure, affirmation and love, as well as a co-founder of Pinpoint TV, an artistic
research project in the format of an internet TV programme, set within intersecting art-scenes of Berlin. Her project during her SODA studies was a
research around dance and performance as a soft act of killing.

Janine Iten
ow to balance and interlink the personal,
olitical and poetic?
photo: Kaj Kotsia
I just wanted to dream in concrete ways.
But all too often I am confused about how to negotiate my way. It has become difficult to feel at rest in my own (body) space.
That’s the reason to undo, to unbolt space, to open up new spaces, to shift space, to morph in and out of these spaces, to
inhabit the interspace which is constantly changing. There I wish to find a place of endless daydreaming, a place where time
is undefined. A place where there is no duality of inner and outer, of woman or man, of depression or ecstasy.
But where can I find a place to inhabit, where do I find this space of mine?
I try to find rest in unstable qualities. I am lost at sea on a heaving ship but will not get seasick because the horizon is not
the base for an anchor. The point of reference is more the centre within myself. Rhythmically oscillating structures set out
the condition for a fragile new state of dynamic equilibrium. There is no such thing as left nor right nor in-between. The only
thing is an underlying cognitive dissonance, a constant base of uncertainty. If the grey zone is set as foundation, all colours
can be found within.

My ongoing research consists of paying attention to certain basic emotional experiences, social phenomena, and physical
principles in myself and my surroundings.
Taking these processes out of their context helps me understand my reality.
lace yourself where time is undefined.

nhabit the negative
pace.
I use the process of art-making to create an alternative, differently layered reality to show my perception of time and space,
bodies, society, movement, and fluidity. I want to create an echo in this world.
I would like to overcome loneliness by understanding my temporality, and by finding a space to call mine.

States of transition
performative installation
The installation explores the contradiction of feeling at rest in unstable qualities. A line is drawn between psychological and
physical processes by tracking moments of phase transition. Phase transition is a term from physics that is commonly used
to describe shifts between solid, liquid, and gaseous states of matter, whereas I apply it to a fluid notion of gender identity. In
states of transition I draw a line between inner and outer realities. I link my personal experience, feelings, and understanding
of having a fluid notion of gender identity to a space in constant transition.
cargocollective.com/JanineIten
photo: Marion Borriss
Welcome the audience to experience.

photo: Marion Borriss
Felix Ofosu Dompreh
llow the hand to be the window
o your mind.
Laborlaboratory

Imagine the carpenters in Africa as they use their high-tech finger prosthetic to drill through the compact wooden
surface.In this time, it is a common belief that the future is a technological terrain, a terrain as hostile as their history.
As they examine the twenty-first century archive patiently and carefully, they were astonished by the impact of
the development of the high- tech finger drill and the effect it was to have on the forgotten beings (Ancestors). The
seriousness of the forefathers and mothers of Afrofuturism touched them, and the accountability they exhibited
towards the not-yet, towards the becoming. Inspired by Kodwo Eshun
Imagine the fishermen in Africa programming and installing hand-embedded sensors on their nets, detecting fragmented
pieces of broken nets over and over.Imagine the readouts on their portable indicators pointing to the risky
and high levels of hostile projection of the broken net.
photo: Marion Borriss
You can reveal to conceal.

econfigure the history
ith your imagination.
photo:
Marion Borriss

Imagine the craftsmen with their tech-kente helmets, navigating and keeping records of their products on a
remote server, moving from the antagonistic period into the future.
photo: Marion Borriss
ost performance interventions.
Can modus operandi of labour and corporality be considered as art?
My performance work deals with the transformative potentials in traditional manual labour gestures and patterns
with mythical concepts of Afro-futurism to poeticize and construct a new corporality of movement, sound, and visual
imagery. The project entails methods of revising the societal dystopia of labour through a post-colonial lens.
The basis of my work consists of field research as tangible social investigations of documenting labour engagements
in the contrasting environments in Africa and Europe.
The poetics of the performance employs time to facilitate a gradual transformation of the labour patterns through
constant repetitions.I see physical labour more as a dance than work: it is action as well as procedure.

Pauline Payen
photo: Yamila de Pico
A Very Unique Gift
Something sticky is stuck
l
She once told me:
“I often dream of the endless party
The one where everyone gets caught in a trance
And you wonder if you are the only one who feels like leaving
You know what I mean?
And the more you feel like leaving, the more it feels like a repetitive torture
to stay
Like... Marguerite with the devil!
Or eating bar-food for dinner
The sensation of forced containment…
To avoid getting kicked out of The Society
Dancing like chewing gum
And singing like it’s the only thing to do
There is an idiotic, dark cabaret
And a cinematographic sliding diva
A frame around conversations...
A word above the absence of sight.
And elevator music, gently whispering.”

photo: Pauline Payen
The stage work ‘A Very Unique Gift’ is structured into six titled scenes: Introduction, On Board, The Shadow, Interlude, What
happened to Sophie’s Doll and Outro. Each scene is thought of as being in dialogue with the other scenes, and this dialogue
is what creates a ‘world’ for the general performance.
The audience is invited to proceed spatially in the space of the theater, which is being transformed through the opening and
closing of curtains. The black box somehow unfolds several boxes. Employing intertwined tactics of pleasing and controlling,
the performers guide the audience to experience these scenes, both as voyeurs and moving bodies, gazing and being gazed at.
Each scene uses a specific rolling object and a soundtrack. The way those soundtracks project in space and into bodies is inherited
from psychological sound-techniques aiming at either influencing the masses or inducing self-enhancement of one’s
own life. A specific attention has also been given to the sound of wrinkled papers, spitting of chewing gums, rolling objects
(conveyor belt, skateboard, rolling TV-cases etc) and sounds of falling (chewing gums, skateboard, high heel shoes)...
“In Pauline’s work, power relationships are staged in a playful way. Using materials that suggest games of superiority and submissivity,
she works with derisory, seriousness and slight irreverence. Seeing the world as a place of drag-extended practice,
her collection of personae is always growing, evolving, and returning, adopting fiction as a strategy. The narratives are built as
a riddle: elements are associated in a curious manner; to grasp a sense of it, one has to put it together with one’s own projections.
The resulting universe is often an idiotic environment, and the performer’s desperate attempts to cope with the overflow
of her own mysteries sums up as a “David Lynch meets La Ribot” type of seduction.” Jeanne de Palme
photo: Hanna Kritten Tangsoo
photo: Yamila de Pico
erhaps it is my heart. Still

t keeps on rolling. Ashes
to
photo series: Pauline Payen
“Pauline is a powerful and versatile performer. In the work
I accompanied she sets the architecture, the sound (often
based on contemporary objets trouvés), her body and those of
the spectators in constellations that create critical and visceral
tension and humor. I was personally interested in her take on
questions related to feminist Performance Art, expanding its
concerns to contemporary issues related to the representation
of bodies and subjectivi ties through the internet in late capitalist
western societies”
Antonia Baehr
“Pauline is a dedicated, self-motorized investigator of movement.
I had the pleasure of accompanying her work as a
mentor for 6 months, which were so exciting that I had to say
yes when she asked me to perform in her diploma work, so
thanks to Pauline I became a dance-tor. Her work is funny,
dark, irreverent and very powerful. She activates images that
we know, and makes them uncanny. Pauline is also an intense
and sometimes worryingly strange performer.”
Alice Chauchat (Extracts from ‘Recommendation Letter’,
December 2017.)
photo series: Hikaru Suzuk

“Shadows, secrets, assistants, casts, curtain-guards, rolling
movements, heard voices, stereotypes, images... I am
working with a family of things and concepts that have a
slippery quality. Similar to haunting: never graspable, always
present. Their presence manifests through transformation
and projection...
Concept, choreography, performance: Pauline Payen
Performance and artistic accomplices: Jelena Alempijević and Alice Chauchat
Dramaturgy/external eye: Katherine Evans and Siegmar Zacharias
Light and set design: Hanna Kritten Tangsoo
Performance coaching: Xica Lisboa
Mentors: Alice Chauchat, Siegmar Zacharias
This work is dedicated to the loving memory of Jens Seidler
photo: Marion Boriss
photo: Marion Boriss
photo: Evgenia Chertvertkova
... The chewing gum interests me in the sense that it is an
object that manifests an idea of independence (the laidback,
cool or blasé attitude it confers) and at the same time
has an addictive ‘more-ish’ quality. Because the chewing
gum fulfills its task only temporarily (it cannot be swallowed
and it loses its taste after few minutes) it is a surplus.
One needs to spit it out and/or use another one. ‘More is
more’. I also find chewing-gums interesting because it is
something that goes inside the body yet remains in a transitional
space, on the threshold of the digestive system.
It is not organic, yet it has an intimate relationship with
the organic: it is chewed, transformed by the body, taking
the shape of the inside of the mouth. When spat out, the
chewed gums are like small casts, each of them uniquely
imprinted by teeth and saliva.”
Pauline Payen
paulinepayen.net
photo: Yamila de Pico
photo: Pauline Payen
ashes, persona to persona

photo: Anze Kokalj
Jan Rozman
Nothing, nothing, nothing,
bare nothingness.
G a p s are places of not knowing. The process of studying at MA SODA was the process of exploring these spaces
in-between and finding ways to activate them; at first accidentally and later intentionally. ON SPIRIT was an investigation of
the body of voice, and places between words and sounds. ON MATTER was exploring things and ways of activating them
performativly and relating to them (sometimes indulging in anthropomorphism), working with an extended body. The sketch
for solo No. Matter! What? was the result of this process. In ON LANGUAGE the “difference” of word and action was in the
forefront. It was a short and intense process; an attempt to locate the meaning formed in the relations between words and
actions. The research was presented in a lecture performance Mean Meanings. ON STAGE brought all the previous projects
together and connected them in a hybrid work ƒ(being), staging and reimagining R.U.R. (an early sci-fi theatre play). The
project was using human performers as “recombinant performative objects” together with video, light, music and fog. It was
using gaps as disruptions, changes in the performative mode, to introduce confusion and prevent the audience to get too
settled.

A g a p is a mysterious space between spaces, a space in-between
(spectral) registers. It is a place of potentiality: not A (pronounced /ɑː/),
not B (/b/) and not AB (/ɑːʔb/) but rather the /ʔ/ (a glottal stop) in
between. There is not one single g a p.
Many different gaps exist. A g a p is a space of the poetic, a space
between the form and the content, a space between the “how” and the
“what”. It is a space between the signifier and the signified. A g a p is
between the essence and appearance of a thing. It is between a thing
and another thing. Between you and me, for example; as the complete
change of perspective and experience and as a spatiotemporal break.
It is a space between the physical and the imaginary. The elusive now
is also a g a p, a black hole of the moment, separating the past from the
future.
A g a p is an unbreachable space, but it is not totally unreachable. In
other words, we can’t grasp the whole spectrum of the g a p, but we
can tap into it, activate it, even if only on the surface to understand its
reverberating effects in the surrounding spaces.
In the accelerated world of the globalized webbed 21st century we are
living a drastic increase in the density of information and perceivable
shrinkage of time, forming a saturated experience of being. Saturation is
a lack of gaps with no space for playfulness. No space for comprehension.
Saturation is being too close to the situation to see it properly. The
senseless pursuit of profit promoted by the current dominant political
agenda is a pathological societal condition, a saturation of society’s
body with LDL, the bad cholesterol. Saturation is the cause of a clogged
vein – a gap is a diluent.
Interrupt the space!
By working with gaps we can achieve pieces of magic interruption, we
can pull saturated mental and physical space apart and activate a space
of poetic. Using gaps is a way of stimulating the audience, activating
both imaginary space and fostering physical body involvement. In my
practice I employ gaps to destabilize the state of saturation where things
stick to each other in numbing inertia. I use them to introduce friction;
destabilizing the common perception of the world we tend to (mistakenly)
take for granted. Working with gaps is a practice of disruption,
questioning and dilution. It is an attempt of deconstructing dualities,
establishing performative spaces as places of meetings in-between,
encounters belonging to no one and everyone at the same time.

e primitive in all types of operations!
photo: Philipp Weinrich

Will none of these creatures be
flesh-and-blood humans?
photos: Philip Weinreich
Jan Rozman is not. A guy with an immense smile and notorious interest to provoke confusion in everyone, including himself. Interest in causing
disruptions. Fog is a significant and essential part of his body. Despite trying he couldn’t stop his body from extending. There. Over the physical and the
imaginary. Crossing the borders of voice, objects, images, light, music.
And fog.
www.janrozman.net

ART
NO
Larisa Navojec
A SOLO TOGETHER

Through my time spent at SODA as a student, researching and working on my artist processes, searching for key questions,
redefining artistic methodologies, delivering presentations and following assessment requests, I discovered the joy of
multitasking between different bodies of identity. I define it as a saturation of the technological in the political all inside the
borders of my body, in order to discover the physicality as a new navigation system (”DOTS” & ”The Work” - 101 presentation,
1st semester/module 101 & 101 ”Showing” , 2nd semester/module 102).
Manoeuvring through hardware (external material – lights, space, time, bodies/audience, actions) and software (my experience)
by the principles of choreographic chronographie and parkouring through landmarks, I visited many layers of my
identity and became a territory that I first named ELEN (2nd semester/module 201).
Landmarks are inscribed in the body through heritage, memories, past project, experiences, and knowledge. These landmarks
became visible during the extensive process of digging through body databases and noted with the tools of choreographic
chronographie.
Choreographic chronographie is the method that I’ve developed during SODA course and it includes an observation of this
personal landmarks with an analytical eye, noting them and translating them into the performative space with the tools of
choreography: structure, dynamic, rhythm, movement research, vocabulary.
Continuing the research in the 3rd semester, the process developed. Till that time I received lot of feedback and talked
about my work many times through practical workshops and table discussions. I expanded the territory of ELEN to E.L.E.N.
(”E.L.E.N.” - 201 showing, 3rd semester/module 301). This territory had again its hardware and software.
The hardware is overloaded with history, meaning, practices,discourse. A personal archive that became an open archive for
participation of the audience and software (ways of knowing, ways of doing) needed to activate the hardware.
While in the previous phase of the research we were focusing more on the hardware, trying to extend the boarders of
ELEN’s bodies, to exhibit the hardware of her bodies and compose the territory of ELEN in which the public migrates
through collective action, in this phase- E.L.E.N. , we directed our attention towards its software. This includes strategies,
and methodologies of how this territory could be assembled and put into action. The assemblage happens through series of
participative tools that invite the audience to take part through guiding them. Their participation changes the score, offering
an unstable and exciting ground to navigate within. There is an influence, exchange, interaction and resonance happening as
a chain reaction. Collective action becomes the engine that activates the piece.
Based on this finding and reflecting on previous ones, at first, A Solo Together: chain reaction emerges (301 ”Research
Presentation”, beginning of 4th semester/module 301) was an event performance, created and performed together with
the public. Through objects that are invested with my biography, symbolic and filled with emotion, I displayed certain aspects
(particular events) of my life to the audience. These objects are then offered to audience members for translation into action.
Based on this action or their reaction I build the performative material – a solo that is performed in the end of the piece.
The intention was to show how this material transforms to create a collaborative moment, a dialog. The audience produces
choreographic input, influencing my work, resonating in me and become part of the performance choreography. In turn they
construct through my biography something that reflects part of themselves.
Later, during the 4th semester, I continued to develop this idea of creating a collaborative moment with the audience
through solo performance. I went back to my dance, to my own movement. In Croatian the {noun} pokret is understood in
relationship to an idea of movement as collective body of political thinking. Movement as an action of a person or activity of
a body of persons, a collective spirit that is busy with changing something, a choreography of community. Living in Eastern
Europe as a child, an athlete and artist lot of things needed to be changed and moved... Movement was present all the time.
It became the core of me. It became my dance.
At the end of my traveling through this course, I presented A SOLO TOGETHER (401 showing, 4th semester, 401 module)
as my final performance as part of the MA Solo/Dance/Authorship presentations, in December, 2017. The performance
thematised the notionof utopian collectivity that I remember from my childhood, lived in socialist Yugoslavia and thought
through the context of the post-socialist world. Imagined as an event performance co-created and co-performed together
with the audience. By exposing my intimate story to the audience, I invited them to create a collective thought to join together,
to gather, to create a common experience being A SOLO TO-GET-(t)HER(e). Gradually, from the beginning to the end of
the performance, I was building with the audience an experience through different formats of participation.
I conclude this text with a thought that “my personal experience is the foundation of my work”. I see the body as a performative
territory, which I constantly revisit through observing, noting, mapping, reflecting. Taking that into consideration, I am
using my past as a surface to enable new perspectives. One of these perspectives would be:
ONGER WANTS TO RESPOND TO THE
“Building a sense of community and creating a common experience with the audience by applying different formats of participation,
with the intention to question “Is it possible to create a thinking space to revisit notions of collectivity in a different
ways within a theatrical environment?”

XCESS OF COMMODITIES AND SIGNS
“I am not trying to perform a dance but a movement. A collective spirit,
a choreography of the community. What happens if we think about political
movement as a dance? How is the community moved? Or what/who moves it?
How can we become choreography?”

a solo together
a solo to get there
a solo to get her
a solo to gather
a solo
together
Author / performer: Larisa Navojec
Dramaturge: Pavlica Bajsic Brazzoduro
Video artist: Aleksandar Rapaić
Sound designer and engineer: Hrvoje Jelinčić / DJ hrwo E
Light designer: Sanja Gergorić
Hostess: Pauline Payen
Artistic advisor: Jasna L. Vinovrski
Mentor: Aleksandra Janeva Imfeld
Tutors: Rhys Martin and Ric Allsopp
Photo credit: Hrvoje Jelinčić
Production: HZT, Uferstudios
photo: Marion Borriss
UT
O A LACK OF CONNECTIONS (Jacques Ranciere)
Supported by Zagreb City office for Culture, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia and TALA dance center, Zagreb.
www.sodaworkbook-larisanavojec.com

Alejandro Karasik
oy is the risk
I think much of the final meaning of the work I do emerges not so much from the goal I set for
myself initially but from all the small choices, negotiations, transitions, limitations that the work
requires to reach the final product. Each of these small instances asks me again what I want to
say, how I want to do it, and makes me see where the work is finslly going and how I can help it to
go there.
In my processes I wait for the moment of combustion. In this catalytic moment the initial ideas of
the work mutate into something else that was potentially already there, but had not yet arrived or
perceived. And all the previous ideas stay behind and I just continue working with this unexpected
but desirable new one. I can spot works in which the artist bringd his first idea without modification
to the end of the process, and the piece is a linear product of it, hence, no ‘combustion’ takes
place. I don’t empathise with this way of conceiving the artistic processes. I crave these moments
of combustion.
I have addressed in my work diverse issues like obstetric violence, perception, family dynamics,
stage darkness, theatre apparatus and computer devices. A relevant aspect of my poetics is the
presence of references to different genres thats go from sci-fi/fantasy or grotesque to dogma 95
film aesthetics. I usually create very physical performances full of images, inviting the audience to
experience a physical interaction which is playful and associative. A playfulness which sometimes,
through exaggeration, overflows into humour or satire of the problematic it addresses. The
images I evoke point in the direction of issues that concern complex problematics, but do not
confront them directly with an antagonistic stance. Instead, the pieces work at the level of “What
if…”, supposing things work this way, as alternative ways of thinking.

Public research presentation
folktales from the future
Independent & Collaborative Research
“This presentation deals with my relationship with computers, and in so doing probably
deals with issues that many people have with computers. My relationship is real, or
slightly real, exceptionally real, scarily real, indifferently real or not real at all. You see,
this presentation happens in an alternative timeline, a folktale from the future, a present
in which things might happen slightly different. This is a Twilight Zone, a Mulholland
Drive Rodeo, a Phillip K. Dick dimension. Then probably this presentation doesn’t deal
with real peoples’ issues with computers. Anyway, real issues can find their way to
come and confront me in any reality.
In this other reality computers has developed a very thin skin under the case, a skin
made out of a lichen, a very sensitive one, and we share with them more than just data.
We call it the Cronenberg phenomenon. And it makes you really think in advance what
you really want with your computer before engaging with it.
As a product of circumstances ambassador of this other reality, I should show to you
how it works—but don’t expect precision. What you have to understand is that we have
being dealing with issues with computers for several decades already and we have a
very particular way to deal with them...”
Why are the gadgets obsessed with the shape of my tears?
photo: Ailin Formia
agic only happens outside the
omfort zone
Collaborations: Johanne Merke (costume/set design), Kai Evans (dramaturgy),
Claire V. Sobottke (improv. coach), Ailin Formia (photo and video)
Mentors: Federica Fiore, Katja Münker, Sophia New.
Tutor: Ric Allsopp
Idea and performance: Alejandro Karasik
#connected
rounded#
sel#ves
photos: Ailin Formia

Public performance
Machine of Grace
I want to show you —yes, you— the perfect exuberance of my object and fix your
attention to its rounded brightness (until it pulverizes your eyes).
photo: Marion Borriss
o not make decisions from fear
“I am always reminded of how small changes in the details of a digital design can have profound unforeseen
effects on the experiences of the humans who are playing with it. The slightest change in something as seemingly
trivial as the ease of use of a button can sometimes completely alter behavior patterns.” [Jaron Laniers] I feel that
my interaction with computers has shaped my self, my sleep, my movement, my dancing, my imagination, my
dreams, my relationships. I attempt in Machine of Grace to reimagine the bond between the computer and me.
In this performance, the sensual edges of my Macbook welcome me softly, inviting silky smooth intoxication. We
cohabitate in a shared fantasy of narcissism and nourishing dependence, and partake in divine cannibalism.
Choreographic Collaborations: Valentina Aviani, Marcelo Bizzarri, Lea Kieffer, Camila Malenchini, Dasniya Sommer
Light design: Annegret Schalke.
Mentor: Sophia New
Voice trainning: Ulrike Sowodniok, Johanna Peine
Idea, performance and costume: Alejandro Karasik
photos: Roberto Tarin

Fragments of written production
Machine of typing
Editing and some ideas are contributions from Kai Evans. Author: Alejandro Karasik
‘We will work for free’:
captured users in the digital social media net (essay)
Facebook exists only by virtue of the emotional bonds and drives of the people
using it. Without these bonds and drives and their digital manifestations, Facebook
would be reduced to empty white boxes on a screen. This movement of
transforming the “raw material” of the experience or self-definition into digital
representation not only implies the sharing of these experiences (at least the
representation of them) with others but, furthermore, this movement comprises
a commodification of personal experience, subject to be sold for targeted
advertising or other purposes. It then becomes clear that, while social media
companies employ several thousands of wage laborers to design and administrate
their websites, the unwaged laborers (i.e. the users) number billions.
(Oct. 2016)
“Learn as if you were to learn forever...”
Robots and Artificial Intelligences that
Learn Like Humans. (essay)
A new breed of robots and artificial intelligence systems (AI) is presently
touring the world. These robots and AI systems are, unlike their predecessors,
self-learning machines. The mechanisms by which they operate are based
on models of human cognitive development— In other words, humans are
recently creating robots and AI by applying models of human developmental
learning processes. The application of state of the art knowledge about human
cognition to robotics and AI constitutes a structural correspondence between
the human perception of itself and its “human-like” creations.
Robots and AIs with “embodied” intelligence is both paradoxical and consistent
with the current times. The paradoxical aspect is that while humans are
becoming more virtual, robots are becoming more “real”.
While humanity worries about continuously feeding a virtually constructed self
through social media and interaction in virtual spaces, and the whole financial
system lives in a cloud of virtual exchanges; robots are learning, observing,
interacting and actioning with real things in the real world. What represents
a consistency is that in creating robots and AI that are more human-like, we
shorten the distance between the human and the non-human, we ease and
soften the gradation, so that the exchange between human and artificial life
becomes more fluent. If the computer or robot thinks like you and acts like
you, it becomes much more familiar: The more the robots and the computers
become similar to the way humans see themselves, the easier the assimilation
between them becomes. Afterall, someone or something has to tend the food
on the stove while we are completely absorbed with uploading our last photos
onto instagram.
(Apr. 2017)
•Grace against the Machine. An authorial reflection
on the piece Machine of Grace. (Framing Statement)
I perform an animal, who has the distinctive characteristic that the computer’s
charger hangs from his penis like large testicles or a tail, tied with a BDSM
knot. Both scenes, the faun and the animal, appeal to a mythical and archaic
past which is intertwined with our technology through the presence of the
cable around my body and/or the computer. I feel that after every technological
breakthrough some part of humanity tends to perceive itself as conditioned
by technology, and to melancholically attempt to escape to times past. These
mythical past times—pretechnological times—are perceived as categorically
better: paradise, primitive origins, the communion with nature, the animalistic
archaic, etc. The fact that I evoke references to a mythical or primitive past
while entangled in technology is intentional. In the conception of the mythic or
primitive past, being in paradise or returning to an animalistic existence implies
having access to all pleasures one desires, without limitation or guilt. I think in
our neoliberal times, thanks to the abundant accessibility that digital devices
provide, these fabled conditions of the mythical past are already fearfully
reproduced in the present.
(Feb. 2018 )
photo: Marion Borriss
he numbers are numbers

Saori Hara
Da Daa Dada
e a solo
1 Introduction
The performance “Da Dad Dada” is a solo dance project
which is examining the relationship between a successful
musical dancer in the 1960’s, Ken Hara, and me, his daughter
Saori Hala. We were related by blood, but never familiar.
After his death, I started to dive into his personal life through
the archives of him as a dancer, so that I could know about
him not only as a father but also as a dancer. In this project,
I dealt with his career archive as a dancer collected over the
last two and a half years, culminating with an audio recording
of our reunion, 3 weeks before his death.
The biggest purpose of this research is to distill and decompose
several elements and constructs of autobiographical narrative,
in order to share it with an observer in an abstract way.
My general research question since I started to work with
the body is “how do we read the context of the environment
and find motives to make our own actions?”. This was born
from my perspective as a dancer with a background in
design.
2 Concept and strategy based on “Affordance”
All steps of strategy in this project are based on the concept
“affordance” that was proposed by an American psychologist
James Gibson in 1930’s. Affordance originally means
“all possibilities of an animal’s action which are recalled by
an object or an environment”. In 1988, Donard Norman took
this word “affordance” to mean the possibilities of the action
that humans can perceive from an object or an environment,
within the cognitive psychology field. Nowadays, the word
“affordance” has even spread into the design scene. I was
first introduced to this word during my studies in design. To
explain the definition of “affordance” by Norman, leading the
action of the hand is often used as an example. When you
find a flat plate on the door, you can understand that you
should push the door to open it. Or when you find a handle
on a cup, you can intuitively see which part of the cup you
should hold.
As the first study to understand this thought, I performed an
practice to read the “affordance” from specific objects.
I put out two types of chairs. One with a back(chair), and
one with no back(stool). The question was “how do people
find an “affordance reason” that shapes interaction with
these chairs?” The chair with back showed the direction that
people should sit. And the chair without back does not. But if
that chair has a square seat on the legs, it help for people to
imagine four directions to seat. But in case of a circular seat,
it doesn’t matter which direction people sit practically. These
hints to make actions are thought of the affordance that
Norman proposed. But strictly speaking that is different from
original proposal by Gibson. The original “affordance” by him
is not the specific possibility of leading that an object/environment
show to a human. It should be the all the possibilities
of the relationship between an object/environment and
an animal. Therefore, even if people do no correctly read the
context of the chairs and use it in wrong way, for example,
to sit facing the back, this relationship between an object
and an animal could be “affordance”. It is all the possibilities
which include concrete hints that an object/environment
shows an animal’s intention of reading the context. It doesn’t
matter if it is right or wrong, if it is purpose or not. Meanings
and activities themselves are forms of affordance.
Over the last several years, I was wondering if I could divert
both thoughts of affordance to my current research as I was
shifting my interest in study from design to performance and
movement. The process of that is to transform the context
that I read from the environment and the motives behind
specific action when I place myself in relation to the space.
This in an example of one of the simplest exercises that
I did to explore the relationship between space and the
body in my study and practice : First, I stand on the center
of a square room. And I perceive the 8 points in the room
the 4 corners on the floor and the 4 on the ceiling. Then I
point to one of those corner randomly with my right hand,
and the left as well. Next is legs. The right foot should step

toward one of the corners, and the left as well. The situation
should be like the game of twister. 4 actions and 8 points
in the room would make specific conditions and shape the
body belonging to it. I can also add the direction of face and
gaze(eyes), and also other points that are not only the end
of arms or legs, but also elbow, knee, pelvis etc. Eventually
even two-dimensional elements like back, belly, the nape of
the neck could be connected to the eight points in the room.
I am motivating specific action from materialistic conditions
and in doing so, looking for more complicated shapes within
the of body.
To observe the relationship which has affordance between
“space and body” and “body and body” as further step of the
practice was one of larger purpose were served by 15 people
that I invited to this piece, even though I call this “solo
piece”. I dealt with them as objects on the stage and shared
this thought with them at the first meeting. It means their
existence is the same as chairs and tables on the stage.
Another purpose was served by this these fifteen “staged
objects” was to make them become one of abstract elements
that I could compose on stage as figuration. They
became dancers, observers, staff members, storytellers,
as well as serving as a projection screen. During the whole
piece, they were asked not to express their personal emotions
and impulses to do something.
Initially I would describe the first purpose. The situation with
more than 2 bodies in the room seems complicated but it
could be possible to use the same process if they deal with
each other in a practical and materialistic way as well. But as
the fact, when we practiced to learn “affordance” between
bodies, we found the moment that bodies found the motive
to do action from not only practical but also socio-psychological
ways. Then I felt big potential to develop it, and
made 3 groups each with 5 people in order to observe their
improvisations. Eventually I took this work as the actual
element of the piece.
Some concrete instruction that I gave them:
- to understand exactly the situation of your body
moment by moment
- to observe thoroughly the situation around you,
choose the concrete reason to move, and react instantly
- to leave your motivation of moving to the environment
or other body
- not to act, dance, or have personal or emotional motives
behind doing something on stage
Additionally, I shared with them the thought of “This body is
not mine.” with giving some example like the moon reflects the
light of the sun, and the mirror reflects the light in front of it.
On the instructions that I gave, they tried to take the motive
from the materialistic situation of each other : distance,
position, height, speed etc, and look that they understand
the positions of themselves in the space and construct the
relationship with each other. As the single unit of movement
narrowed, sometimes I came to see theatrical elements
more than what I wanted and I suspended them. So I suggest
new task that they should also deal with themselves
as object more intentionally. For example, to look doubtful
with your neck is the action looks like “I have no idea” in the
context of social communication. But you can’t do this action
to act “I have no idea”, you can only do the action of “to lean
your head to one side 20-30 degrees” with materialistic
consciousness. This should not be acting to indicate one’s
intention. As another example, you can also make yourself
smile, but you have to know which degree you lift the corner
of the mouth and which direction and how long seconds you
look at. I instructed them to concern the environment with
knowing concrete shape and situation of their body as if
they control themselves by programming.
I brought all those thought that I shared with them to actual
scenes. What I needed then was the relationship that 16
bodies including me are dealing with ike sampling, understanding
the situation of the space, and leaving motive and
identity of the movement to each other. I believe that this
situation embodies affordance exactly as proposed by Gibson
all possibilities of the relationship between environment
and body.
As the second, the specific role that I gave fifteen objects,
was to be the metaphor of my father, as symbol of his job,
and the cultural and historical situation surrounding his prime
years in 1960’s concerned national character of Japan, scene
by scene. I took the method of collective actions like unison
dance, flock, procession etc. to articulate my critical perspective
regarding the present situation of my country.
Recently in the european contemporary dance scene, the
use of unison is often avoided from several perspective.
However in Japan, it is still being used widely, even by front
line artists. I insist that this is the result of the education and
the body in Japan since before the WWⅡ. Not only in the
university for dancers but also in standard primary school,
all students are required to learn the traditional health
gymnastics (which is called “radio taiso”) developed in the
now what you do not know

show what you can not do on stage
1920’s. The government directed all people towards this
gymnastic exercise in order to promote their physical health
and well-being.
This movement was influenced by calisthenic radio broadcasting
in U.S and also by the Sokol movement - an all-age
gymnastics organization first founded in Prague in the Czech
region of Austria-Hungary in 1862. Japanese radio gymnastics
started across the whole nation in 1929, and was “perfected”
in 1951. The same song and movement is still widely
used since then and is common knowledge for all ages. It
says that Sokol movement emphasized the systematics and
aesthetics, actions leading nationalism in 1920’s. So I argue
that the wide spread use of the radio gymnastics in Japan is
still affecting the national characters on levels of nationalism
and education as well. I contemplate that the Japanese
peoples’ organized character comes from “Muga”(※) which
is one of thought of Buddhism the Japanese have taken in
deeply and unconsciously. It played a big part in realizing the
meticulous national reconstruction after the war. All people
were in step and sent out with the same power in the same
direction and motivation. Consequently, Japan, which was
reduced to burnt-out ruins, could revitalize itself into one
of the strongest economies in just under 20 years after the
war. Eventually it became a host country for the Olympics -
the first in Asia - and showed off their national power. It conjured
up negative effects as well, like a leaning towards the
totalitarianism and militarism of the previous era. National
power and social conservatism increased rapidly due to two
happenings in the following 30 years : burst of economic
bubble (The age around the 60-80s was called “The bubble
economy”, because shortly after revitalization it collapsed
suddenly, as if the bubble breaks. ) in 1980’s, an Tohoku/
Fukushima’s earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Also some
behavior of the old nation including the gymnastic education
still remains. As irony would have it, Tokyo will become a
host country for Olympics again in 2020. We should see the
contrast between recent age of Japan and prime age when it
was a host country for Olympics for the first time more clearly.
So I tried to refer to those two different ages, and to claim
not only critical perspective but also a sense of crisis about
that through the method of collective actions as metaphors.
The doctrine of “non-self”, that there is no unchanging,
permanent self, soul or essence in living beings.
3. Practice of “absence”
We also realised that we could find and use “absence” as the
one of elements in the space. That is a new perspective to
embody the thought of affordance.
Here are concrete examples, I consider three patterns of
motives when we move(do) between point A and point B.
1 to create “existence” at point B
2 to create “absence” at point A
3 both of 1 and 2
We aim to deal with “absence” as the same element with
“existence”. This practice about “absence” is research to
visualise reactions summoned by absence/death/separation
etc. it means experiment “to touch nothing”. This
is different from the skills of a pantomime. I was trying to
make “nothing” be visible, this is the most biggest difference
with Pantomime. Because it is a skill of illusion that makes
people imagine existence even if there is nothing. It is not
reaction to “nothing”. My interest was what people would do
when they touch the things that they perceive as “absence”
in an epistemological way.
4. Documentation regarding “action and absence”
As the preliminary step towards materialistic “absence” as
personal research, I was collecting documentations about
“caring about death by human and animals, such as funeral
ritual, and views on life and death, in terms of body expression.
Various funeral are still taking place among human realm
over the world. Some practical and hygienic issues are always
following those ritual in terms of body treatment methods.
There are burial, cremation, open-air burial, water burial,
bird burial, scattering of ashes etc. Also cosmos burial is in
development nowadays. In Japan, there is some evidence of
people practicing the ritual for caring about their dead since
B.C. The history of the funeral went through many unique
transitions with the influence of various religions’, cultures’
views of life and death. Not only ways of treating the body,
but also the style of the ritual and grave are different in each
age. But this funeral culture could be found not only in human
beings but also in some animals.
Some research has shown that Neanderthals, a now extinct
species or subspecies of humans, may have performed funeral
rites by placing flowers with the dead. In the 1950s and 60s
in modern day Iraq, researchers discovered fossils of pollen
and flowers at a Neanderthal burial site in Shanidar Cave.
Research into mourning practices has extended to the animal
kingdom as well. Several species of animals, wide-ranging
from penguins and birds to horses and elephants, have
been reported to exhibit surprising actions as a response
to grief. Visual documentation has shown that elephants,
during the loss of a family member, have been known to
make a line in front of the dead body and stroke it carefully.
Some not leaving its side for several days. Another docu-

mentation shows a bird’s funeral where they make a circle
around a dead body for a long time. Though no one is sure if
the action is recalled by the emotion of grief yet, it should be
recalled by death at least. Even if humans and some animals
are taking different ways of mourning, what is very important
is the fact that such as universal sense is shared across
different attributes.
I personally felt a fact about separation by death through my
father’s funeral. That was “It’s extremely hard to feel reality of
absence as compared to feel existence”. That’s why lives are
at a loss and can’t look at the fact come together, and make
a ritual in order to share the fact “This body is already dead
and he/she is not here any longer”. Then live bodies surround
the dead body, look at the dead face, offering flowers,
and check the bones before/after burned. They try to make
sure of one’s death by pointing out step by step. It’s rather
impossible to keep our minds on the thought of absence.
I also realised that ”sharing absence” needs a thorough
contextualisation as I was researching that with 15 people.
We have to share the fact of existence before we share
the sense of absence. Otherwise no one could recognize
this loss. But this absence could be a very strong motive
when we would consider it as one of the elements in the
environment, however, that is not an easy task. The nature
of absence means that it is much harder to share, show, or
claim it. Being is much simpler.”
If I could say that the actions of mourning by humans and
some animals are reaction to the sense of absence, I could
say also that this phenomenon is related to affordance, as
one of possibilities of the actions are recalled by “absence”
as part of environment.
5 “Affordance” as the perspective to look at the world
I tried to divert this thought “Affordance” as also motive to
create this piece. I view human life, also Ken Hara’s personal
life, as the collectivity of action and choice that stems from
the concrete. It means that personal history comes with
a background - be it cultural, social, familial, personal, or
instinctive. I analysed my father’s life through its different
contexts as it appeared under my lens. As stated previously,
I realised that this particular temporal context would be a
defining element in my research as it was the golden age
of my father’s career in the thick of Japan’s recovery from
damages suffered in World War II. It was a greedy, joyful
and energetic age. Also, a great flood of American culture
happened and the cultural situation was changed a lot. At
the beginning, those creations were just like imitation or
homage, but it was getting originality towards 1980’s.
The film “Asphalt girl” that my father appeared was one
of example of that and it’s like a fossilized remains of the
age that Japan was a country influenced by America . As
he testified, this was created as a homage to “West Side
Story”. Unfortunately it wasn’t a good quality film and failed
at the box office. However, this is very important evidence
to show the situation of the specific age. Even though my
father was one of many easily replaceable chorus dancers in
a commercial film, he held great value in his experience that
would be deeply valued during those times as the evidence
of the age.
As I followed the Japanese situation behind my father’s
personal life and this line of research to Europe, I was uncovering
another layer, one greater than him and the sociopolitical
situation in Japan: a sensational age worldwide. For
example, the start of Vietnam War in 1960, the installation
of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the first manned space flight by
the Soviet Union and the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the
assassination of JFK in 1963, NASA’s first moon landing
in 1969...the continuing impact of The Beatles and the
rising cultural phenomenons of Bob Dylan and The Rolling
Stones...all years during The Cold War. Those political,
cultural, historical happenings should affect personal being
and its life in various ways. Simultaneously, we are then also
covered in an even larger layer, beyond the sociopolitical
and cultural, one related to the “mission” and “purpose” of
existence, such as life and death, age, legacy, to name a few.
Each country has its own culture and history but each of
those small contexts are always covered with a bigger layer.
Exploring the personal allows me entry into multiple layers
and those different levels.
Thus in the world that has multiple layers, various narratives
were born day by day, those elements make thinner layers,
and personal beings and its lives are composed. And each
personal beings are giving effect, and those activities make
the world over and over. The presence of the world has no
identity, or motive.
6 Conclusion
The thought of “affordance” proposed by Gibson, means all
possibilities of animal’s action is recalled by an object(environment)
worked as one of perspective to understand the
world for me, and helped the research of examining my father’s
personal life and the relationship between he and I. And
I developed my study of body motion through using “affordance”
as an axis, from the perspective as a dancer who has
a background in design. This “Da Dad Dada” is not a theater
piece, it’s the result of study and viewing the structure of the
world and body motion. I also believe that to create and play
this piece is my reaction to my father’s death, which means
bemusement from absence, and action to keep the fact in my
mind. So I am just like one of birds that was making a circle
around a dead body in the documentation.
be kind to yourself

Yaron Maïm

The previous page contains imprints of
the lovers’ tongues.
Interrogating the conditions and
processes of art making is a driving
force in my work, which is an
interdisciplinary research in live
drawing performance, print media,
textile, video, education and selforganization
of workshops. I trigger
my body, that I perceive as an
artistic tool, via two complementary
practices: live drawing performances
and intersectional feminist art
interventions. I wish to experiment,
challenge the idea of art as knowledge,
as well as question its methods and
validation. My work seeks to identify
the reproduction of structural racism,
transphobia, ableism and classism in
artistic contexts, and imagine other
alternatives.
How does the work extend the idea
of the physical, virtual and conceptual
page as a performance space?
How does the work complicate
conventional notions of
documentation?
How does the work engage a critique
of its institutional context, production
and dissemination; and what is the
effect of this on the form and trajectory
of the work?
The MA SODA program was my
first institutional encounter with
performance art, where art and life
merge.

ABGTTABT MFS NOTLDD UDIWO is the title of my thesis book, that can be read here:
https://issuu.com/baadbaad/docs/thesisbook_26janvier18
The complete title is A Beginner’s Guide to Triggering a Bodytool: Material for Solometrics. Night of the Living-Dead Drawing. UnDo-It-With-Others.
Material for Solometrics - Night of the Living-Dead Drawing is a performance and exhibition (12.2017, Uferstudios Berlin), made in collaboration
with: kAZ (performer & critical conversant). Fu (music composer – https://fumusic5.bandcamp.com). Krisjanis Rijnieks (creative technologist –
https://rijnieks.com). Yaron Maïm (author, performer & costume designer – http://yayamaim.com).
Image 1 (& 3 background): Drawing by Yaron Maïm. Print by ‘We make it’. Image 2: Photo by Janine Iten. Image 3: Zine UnDo-It-With-Others I by
Yaron Maïm, and invited guests (https://issuu.com/baadbaad/docs/udiwo1). Image 4: Photo by Marion Borriss.
Yaron Maïm is a live drawing performer, artist book- and video maker, self-taught fashion designer, and art educator. http://yayamaim.com

10 billions of bacteria, Audience, Agata Siniarska, Alejandro Karasik, Alejandro Pereyra, Aleksandar Rapaić, Aleksandra Janeva Imfeld, Alessio Castellacci,
Alice Chauchat, Alice Heyward, Ambra Fiorenza, Ana Maria Doria Medina, André Uerba, Ania Nowak, Antonia Baehr, Arturo Lugo, Barbara
Boeck-Viebig, Belén Resnikowski, Benjamin Schälike, Benoît Lachambre, Boyan Manchev, Britta Wirthmüller, Carla Rimola, Carlos Pereyra, Catalina
Fernandez, Cecilia Vilca, Christa Flaige-Isaac, Csilla, Daniela Schwartz, Deva Schubert, Diego Pereyra, Elsa Goulko, Emily Besa, Enrico D Wey, Erika
Wagner, Eva Meyer-Keller, Evgenia Chetvertkova, Felix Buenaventura, Felix Ofosu Dompreh, Florian Feigl, Florian T M Zeisig, Franziska Dieterich,
Frederike Doffin, Gabriel Becak, Gabriel Greca, Georgi Tomov Georgiev, Gerardo Laffitte, Gisela Müller, Grace Mendonça, Grėtė Šmitaitė, Grgur Navojec,
Gustavo Maggi, Hanna Kritten Tangsoo, Hikaru Suzuki, Hrvoje Jelinčić - hrwo E, Ivan Lušičić – Lik, Jan Michele, Jan Rozman, Janez Janša, Janine
Iten, Jasna L. Vinovrski, Jeannine Osayande, Jelena Alempijević, Jonas Wentritt, Jorge Villaseca, Juan Felipe Amaya Gonzalez, Juan Luis Pereyra, Judith
Brueckmann, Judith Förster, Julek Kreutzer, Julia Keren Turbahn, Julia Rodriguez, Julian Weber, Kaita Otome, Kaj Kotsia, Kaori Furuhara, Katharina
Anna Wieser, Katharina Deparade, Katherine Evans, Kevin S. Morrison, Kritten Tangsoo, Laia Ribera, Lara Anais Martinez Wiesselmann, Larisa Navojec,
Liadain Speranza Herriott, Liselotte Singer, Litó Walkey, Lucia Bertone, Lyllie Rouviere, Magali Auzier, Magali Karasik, Magdalena Meindl, Mariana
Vieira, Marion Borriss, Martin Nachbar, Mateusz Szymanówka, Maque Pereyra, Maximilian Stelzl, Michelle Moura, Michiko K, Michiyasu Furutani, Mila
Pavićević, Miloš Vujković, Miriam Jacob, Mmakgosi Kgabi, Mohamad Alhalabi, Mora Grinblat, my Father, Natalia Tencer, Natsuko Mizushima, Nevenka
Lipovac, Nicola Van Straaten, Nik Haffner, Nikola Pieper, Nina Kurtela, Oliver Connew, Olivia McGregor, Paula Isla, Pauline Canavesio, Pauline Payen,
Pavlica Bajsic Brazzoduro, Prof. F.Nii-Yartey, Rebecka Ekholm, Rhys Martin, Ric Allsopp, Rocío Marano, Sabine Trautwein, Sandra Noeth, Sanja Gergorić,
Santiago Torricelli, Saori Hala, Sharón Mercado, Sheena McGrandles, Siegmar Zacharias, Silke Bake, Simone Gisela Weber, SODA 2015-17, SODA
2017-19, Sofia Brito, Sofía Calizaya, Soledad Gutierrez, Sonia Fernandez Paz, Sonja Pregrad, Sophia New, Stefan Krause-Isermann, Stephan Kostropetsch,
Stephan Müller, Stephanie Soleansky, Tanja Watoro, Taylor Kendall, Tomomi Oda, Tsuji Fumie, Vera Laube, Verena Melgarejo, Vice Rossini, Victor
Karasik, Viktorija Illioska, Willem Miličević, William “Bilwa” Costa, Xica Lisboa, Yamila De Pico, Yamila Macías, Yaron Maïm, Yolanda Kleiner, Yuebing Luo,
Yumi Tapia, Zabo Chabiland.
hanks

mprint
Publisher: HZT Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz Berlin, Uferstraße 23, 13357 Berlin, Germany / Concept and Authors: Agata Siniarska,
Alejandro Karasik, Felix Ofosu Dompreh, Janine Iten, Jan Rozman, María Eugenia Pereyra Doria Medina, Larisa Navojec, Pauline Payen, Saori Hara,
Yaron Maïm / Pictures: all rigths by the authors of the projects if not mentioned otherwise / MA SODA Staff: Prof. Rhys Martin, Prof. Dr. Ric Allsopp and
Litó Walkey / Graphic Design: milchhof.net / © HZT Berlin 2018 Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz Berlin www.hzt-berlin.de /
office@hzt-berlin.de / Artistic Director: Prof. Nik Haffner / Administration: Sabine Trautwein / Technical Director: Maximilian Stelzl
The links are being provided for informational purposes only.
HZT bears no responsibility for the accuracy, legality or content of the external site or for that of subsequent links.
HZT – Inter-University Centre for Dance Berlin is the joint responsibility of the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) and the Hochschule
für Schauspielkunst “Ernst Busch“ (HfS) in cooperation with TanzRaumBerlin, a network of the professional dance scene.

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