- 21 Dec 2021 1pm UTC
- dur 6min
C.U.L.T.U.R.E C.L.A.S.H is a mixed-media dance piece on social injustice and identities who are failed by the systems they live in. This piece tells stories about borders, displaying 3 different characters who are differently connected to the subject. They resist and show resiliency but also breaking points. The characters have underlying stories and the movement research which established the now set choreography was guided by research questions. What was and still is challeging to me is that I´d like to leave a lot of room for interpretation. Therefore, the dance/movement shall be abstract. I set specific movement “patterns” which repeat itself and are sometimes shared by all characters. Which creates new questions for the spectator, such as are these three stories or rather just one? The characters merge in their storoes into one another depicting all our human FAITH is related to one another.
The chosen readings “The Body in Pain. The Making and Unmaking of the World by Elaine Scarry (1985) and “Die Tortur” by Jean Amery are part of the development process of the choreography.
This is a collaboration mixed media dance piece with artists Avital Yomdin (voice & live drawing) and Audrey Messas (painting/installation). The choreography and its stage design contains an installation of Audrey´s painting titled “America I“. Avital is part of the performance when sitting on stage and continously creating more and more drawings which fall to the floor while I dance. She ends the performance while signing the song of a Croatian refugee.
BIO:
Choreography & Dance – Diana Schuemann
Diana Schuemann, (Yugoslavien-German origin) Haifa/Berlin based, is a dancer and researcher (historian) on visual culture on the Holocaust and on Genocide. Diana graduated with distinction from the Weiss-Livnat MA Program in Holocaust Studies at Haifa University. Over the course of two years Diana carried out research in Israel discussing dance as a tool to teach about the Holocaust/Genocide. This empirical research features interviews with students, history teachers and choreographers who have created pieces on the topic.
For the past seven years she continued her dance education in Israel, studying at HASADNA Tel Aviv, Sharon Eyal – LEV Company workshops, BATSHEVA Company morning training. She extensively studied and trained the GAGA movement technique by Ohad Naharin which enable her to find her own individual approach on dance and dance theatre. Originally coming from the Berliner Hip Hop dance scene, she combines mentioned techniques and brings these in an individual manner together. Diana seeks to bring human rights matters on stage, to create dialogues through movement and to stress issues such as seeking asylum and refuge, racism, xenophobia, hatred, social injustice, homophobia, antigypsyism. Diana specifically aims to give a forum to discuss these issues openly in a reflective-proactive manner by individuals who are closests to the topics. Diana´s vision is an urban dance theatre which seeks to encounter above stated themes, to foster awareness among society. ARTIST’S WEBSITE
Voice & Live Drawing – Artist Avital Yomdin
Avital Yomdin was born in Israel to Russian-Jewish Immigrant Parents. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Theater Design from Tel Aviv University. As an artist, she began to use installations in order to create a less mediated way to interact with her viewers. Her works are characterized by beauty and tenderness, juxtaposed with harshness and the mundane. The materials are ordinary and simple: from ink from a 1 Euro Shop, hot melting glues, torn up plastic bags, to bicycle reflectors.
Plastic and memories
Educated as a theater designer, the interaction between space, actor and set is to this day very evident in my work. The stage became an installation, the actors replaced by the audience. A large part of the work deals with representations of nature by industrial materials.
This is a blurb about past exhibitions: Yomdin took part in Group Exhibitions in Tel Aviv and Berlin. In her first solo show in 2015 at the Plateau Gallery, Tempelhof Berlin, she presented five different installations following her emotional immigration journey to Berlin. In 2017, Yomdin took part in a group exhibition in the Jewish museum in Berlin. Her subjects were the refugee artists who participated with her in this exhibition, delicately binding their histories to the specific venue with its specific history. In 2019, she was invited to produce and exhibit her work in the inaugural residency program in Tossa de Mar, Catalonia. A town coined as “La Babel de les Arts” by such masters, such as Marc Chagall and André Masson. In the past year she has started a new Artist Duo with a German Iranian performance artist, focusing on soft urban interventions. Yomdin has been living and working for the past ten years in Berlin. ARTIST’S WEBSITE
Art Installation – Audrey Messas, French-Israeli mixed media artist, who lives and works in Tel Aviv.
Audrey works at an intersection of painting, dance, photography and awareness practices. Her art seeks to express and convey her view on what it is to be part of the lifeworld of a surgeon, mediator, traveller and artist. Evolving work involves the creation of 3D characters addressing more urgent collective issues such as climate change, culture wars and polarization.
Being a practicing surgeon, Audrey’s art offers a unique perspective to the body, envisioning the world as a whole living organism, with its emotions and scars. Her mostly life size creations include acrylic paintings, collages, calligraphy, textiles and short texts. Audrey’s work is anchored in Presence awareness and seeks to reveal human nature from a personal and global perspective.
From childhood onwards Audrey was drawn to dancing and writing to bridge the cultural gap between her colourful Morrocan Jewish home and the demanding provincial milieux in Strasbourg.
Moving to Paris for her medical studies ignited Audrey’s fascination for the visual arts. Vision became the central theme of her life when Audrey chose to become an eye surgeon, devoted to restoring, curing and preventing blindness. Audrey moved to Israel to further her surgical career. In Tel Aviv she rediscovers herself, engaging in a healing and spiritual life exploration. Studying Buddhism in Tel Aviv, Audrey began sketching and photography as a meditative practice. Audrey studied abstract painting at the artist’s house in Tel Aviv, and Japanese calligraphy in the Mountain and River Zen monastery in the Catskills (NY). ARTIST’S WEBSITE