Karin Pauer - We Were Never One

In the frame of the Creative Crossroad activity, Karin Pauer was selected by danceWEB to receive a 2 years structural support by the LLB network to work amongst others on her production "Planet Body // Perpetuum Mobile" and "We were never one".

This support includes a co-production support by danceWEB, residencies at MDT Stockholm and Workshop Foundation Budapest as well as the possibility to lead or participate in a workshop at STUK Leuven.

Karin Pauer is a vienna based performer and choreographer.
The exploration of relations, in-betweens, empathy and togetherness informs all of her works. She negotiates these notions combining embodied choreographic practices with language, visual arts and live music.
Since 2018 she is developing her performance series project ‚dances of the anthropocene‘ in which she works with a phenomenology that understands our bodies fundamentally part of the natural world and not separate from or priviledged to it.
Through this series she seeks to challenge our anthropocentric world view and focuses on developing deeply embodied practices of empathy and care. (for each other, various life forms, our ecosystem and the Planet itself.)
Additionally she is currently developing collaborative projects with visual artist and drawer Aldo Giannotti in which they explore ways of sculpting movement and social behavior through choreographic and visual means; investigate alternatives for socio-political, socio-cultural or socio- architectural relations and initiate interactions between everyone present in the situation.
During the Creative Crossroads cycle, Karin will finalize her current Soloproject ‘PLANET BODY’, in which she embodies Planet Earth; develop her next group performance with the working title ‘we were never one’ as well as develop further a drawing and movement practice together with visual artist Aldo Giannotti for collective encounters in Museum spaces.

 

We Were Never One at Brut Wien

„Living in a time of planetary catastrophe begins with a practice at once humble and difficult: noticing the world around us.“

Anna Tsing u. a. in „ Arts of living on a damaged planet“

Humanity is realising how much everything is tied to everything else – how much we are connected with other people and the world around us. If not before, we learned this the hard way during the pandemic. In her performance installation WE WERE NEVER ONE, choreographer Karin Pauer develops a language of the present and of mindfulness, an ‘embodied language of nowness’, translating this new state of awareness into choreography and movement.

The realisation of our overall connectedness transforms into text, embodied thoughts, hybrid objects, haunted landscapes, sounds of extinction, and encounters in the moment of movement. This creates a practice by which we can learn to perceive our damaged planetary situation. WE WERE NEVER ONE is part of Karin Pauer’s series dances of the anthropocene, which challenges and examines our anthropocentric world view while at the same time trying to devise embodied practices of empathy and care.

Artistic direction: Karin Pauer
Artistic assistance: Arttu Palmio
Performance, choreography: Anna Biczók, Arttu Palmio, Hugo Le Brigand, Karin Pauer
Objects: Maureen Kaegi
Sound Paolo: Monti/the starpillow
Light design: Sveta Schwin
Light Technique: Nicholas Langer
Costume design: Karin Pauer
Production management: mollusca productions
Special Thanks to Pauline Bouzek a.o.

Residency at Workshop Foundation Budapest

 

23.08.2021 - 03.09.2021

"During my residency at Workshop Foundation/ Budapest, I started my first research phase for my umpcoming project WE WERE NEVER ONE, which will premiere in April 2022 at Brut / Vienna.

WE WERE NEVER ONE is part of the cycle ‚dances of the anthro- pocene‘ which challenges and investigates our anthropocentric world view and seeks to develop embodied practices of empa- thy and care.
WE WERE NEVER ONE is a transforming performance installation project and an exhibition spa- ce. Bodies of sculpture and live perfor- mance fuse, gearing towards extended beings and hybrid bodies. In this work, inanimate and animate entities search towards a multi- textural and sensual environment.

The starting point for WE WERE NEVER ONE is the concept that in biological terms, human beings cannot be considered individuals, but are multicellular organisms.
WE WERE NEVER ONE aims to shape, embody and visualize this realization.

Together with my collaborators - visual artist Maureen Kägi and performer and choreographer Anna Biczók, I explored the inter-relational aspects of bodies of sculpture and the performing body in collaborative symbiotic structures.

The aim for these two weeks was to find an overall structure for the work and to analyze methods and strategies used within my practice and ways of sharing them with collaborators.

The first week I spent working with Maureen Kägi, initiating a shared process of embodiment relating with textural/ sculptural materialization of ideas.
We rendered different shapes, materialities, textures, imagery and possiblities for the spatial ins- tallation that will be part of the work.

The second week I spent together with Anna Biczók, investigating the methods for embodiment and material creation for the project based on the loose structure, that was decided upon in week 1.

We worked on an alphabet of terms relating to the anthropocene, finding physicalities and embo- died qualities for each of them - further turning it into an embodied poem of the anthropocene.

WE WERE NEVER ONE
// an embodied poem of the anthropocene

alphabet:

AIR
BACTERIA BORDERS BESTIARIES CORAL REEFS CARE
CHAINS CONNECTEDNESS CRISIS
DENIAL
ENERGY
FLOODS
FIRE
FUNGI
FORESTS
FEAR
GLACIERS GHOSTS
GOLD
GARDENS HySTERIA INVISIBLE
JOY
JUNGLE
KINSHIP
LOCAL MONSTERS MADNESS NUCLEAR WASTE OIL
POWER POLLUTION
PINK
QUEER REBELLION RESILIENCE RUINS
ROCKS
SOIL
SADNESS TENDERNESS URGENCY VIOLENCE
VIRUS XENOPHOBIA
Y WHY
Z

POEM e.g.:

- MY BLOOD TURNS INTO AN OCEAN OF SADNESS EACH TIME - TREES ENTER THIS BUILDING FROM BENEATH
- FORESTS OF HYSTERIA
- OCEANS OF PLASTIC
- JUNGLE OF JOY
- EXTINCTION IS FOREVER

Further following topics were investigated through a method of ‚thinking with the body‘:

- how human behaviour and activities shaped/ sculpted, changed the world
- influence of human behavior on athmospheric, geological and biological processes
- highlighting webs of histories and bodies from which all life emerges
- noticing the world around us (living in time of planetary catastrophy)
- every ‚I‘ is also a ‚WE‘
- art as tender activism - by giving a platform and agency to other life forms - embody them to empathize (the extinct as well as the existing and transformed)
- we are more mocrobe than human
- creating a portrait of the NOW that considers all entities and life forms"

Residency at MDT Stockholm

Karin Pauer visited MDT and Stockholm for a couple of weeks in the end of 2021 to start the process of developing new work together with her colleagues Artto Palmio, Anna Biczók and Hugo Le Brigand. The team had their first rehearsal period for the new work WE WERE NEVER ONE.

WE WERE NEVER ONE is part of the cycle ‚dances of the anthropocene‘ which challenges and investigates our human centered world view and seeks to develop embodied practices of empathy and care. WE WERE NEVER ONE is a transforming performance installation project and an exhibition space. Bodies of sculpture and live performance fuse with a textual layer which gives agency to all the main players of our times, e.g. plastic, fossil fuel, nuclear waste, viruses… It investigates a body exposed to current ecological and political conditions. A practice of thinking with our bodies about the world around us highlights interrelational webs.

MDT offered a residency within a period of two weeks, as well as a smaller co-production fee to help finance the project further.

Karin Pauer and her team was working in the studio and outside on the island to lay the ground of there new production. We had a fruitful meeting between the team and the theater, but as staff we could not be so present in the house due to new corona restrictions that were just implemented. They got to see the work that we had at the end of the season- Danish artist duo two-women-machine-show. We also co organised a workshop of two days together with the artist run residency space höjden for local dance artists.

Report:

Project title: WE WERE NEVER ONE // an embodied encyclopedia of the now

The residency at MDT marked the first meeting of the performer‘s team for WE WERE NEVER ONE which will premiere on April 8th at Brut/ Vienna.

In WE WERE NEVER ONE, an embodied language of nowness is developed in order to process and highlight the realization that we are connected with other members of our species and with the world around us. Four performers, one musician and a visual artist create a cycle of metamor- phoses that invites the audience to become aware that every „I“ is also a „WE“.

In WE WERE NEVER ONE the realization of our interconnectedness turns into text, embodied thoughts, hybrid objects, haunted landscapes, sounds of extinction and encounters in motion. This creates a practice of being with and noticing everything that is part of our current damaged planetary condition.

Together with peformers Anna Biczók, Hugo Le Brigand and Arttu Palmio, I could lay the ground for the project and clarify working methods.
In addition to explorations with the underlying ‚empathy practice‘ of the work, the overall structure was developed during the two weeks at MDT.

The basic element of the work is an an alphabetical list of the main notions we associate with the anthropocene. For these notions, embodied material was created and then taken further to emo- bodying a text, which is made up of said notions. (see next page)

In addition to creating this core material for the piece, we could also through long explorations find clarity about the role of the objects created by visual artist Maureen Kägi.
The objects will serve as a tool to create hybrid bodies and devisions in space, to influence the audience‘s behavior in space, to create varying landscapes and poetic images with.

The time at MDT gave us a focused platform to come together as a group for this project, which is the first collaboration in this constellation.

TEXT:

THIS DANCE WISHES TO BE TOUCHED
FOSSIL FUELS SHOOT THROUGH YOUR VEINS
MY BLOOD TURNS INTO AN OCEAN OF SADNESS EACH TIME YOU‘LL REMEMBER THIS ENCOUNTER FOREVER

MOUNTAINS OF RAGE

MARKETS TRADE MADNESS
MICROPLASTICS FORM SCULPTURES IN YOUR EYESOCKETS THIS BODY WILL SWALLOW YOUR FEAR
THE LABOUR OF LOVING SOMETHING LOST

CLOUDS OF DENIAL

BEES SING THEMSELVES TO SLEEP WATERS RETURN TO THIS PLACE NUCLEAR WASTE UNDER YOUR TOE NAILS MONSTERS ENTER YOUR DREAMS

THIS CALMS US BOTH DOWN

OCEANS OF PLASTIC

THE LESS YOU KNOW, THE BETTER YOU SLEEP
STAND HERE TO BE ASHAMED
MICRO-ORGANISMS PLAN A REVOLUTION INSIDE YOUR GUT RADIOACTIVE CLOUDS CREEP UP YOUR SLEEVE

THIS BODY LEAVES TRACES OF CARE RADICAL HOPE

LAVA DRIPS FROM THE CEILING
CO2 ESCAPES THE ROOM
IN A MOMENT YOUR BODY WILL MELT INTO THE CORNER OF THIS SPACE FUNGI TAKE OVER THE STAGE
RAGING JELLYFISH GET LOUDER

FORESTS OF HYSTERIA

SALMONS TRY TO GAIN EQUAL RIGHTS
THE OCEAN FLOWS OUT OF YOUR NOSTRILS WE WERE NEVER ONE
OUR VOICES CRYSTALLIZE
RADICAL HOPE CLIMBS UP TO THE SKY

GARDENS OF FEAR

GLACIERS WEEP IN A POLYPHONY EVERYTHING WILL TURN QUIET NOW
THIS BODY WILL CARE FOR YOUR DREAMS REBELLIOUS THOUGHTS GROW ON TREES CORAL REEFS CREATE BORDERS

JUNGLE OF JOY

 

Performance presentation "Planet Body // Perpetuum Mobile" at Tanzquartier Wien

„This body is fragile.“ — Karin Pauer

How is it possible to challenge and shake the anthropocentric perspective by means of empathy and care? To conduct such an experiment, Karin Pauer has chosen to embody the Earth. Starting with her own body, she searches for analogies between mankind and the planet. The perpetual movement of the Planet is juxtaposed with the body’s limitations. The performing body turns into a hard-working, fearless, tireless body. Pauer counters the notion of destruction and exploitation with a contemporary ritual. A space for contemplative rebellion emerges, filled with sound from the album Agora by Austrian electronic pioneer Christian Fennesz.

PLANET BODY is part of the series dances of the Anthropocene.
VIEW AND DOWNLOAD THE REPORT ABOUT HER CREATIVE CROSSROADS EXPERIENCE IN THE RIGHT COLUMN.