Residency Anja Müller at ICI-CCN de Montpellier – Future Voices

In the frame of the Creative Crossroad activity, Anja Müller was selected by Uferstudios Berlin to receive a 2 years structural support by the LLB network to work on several projects. She is receiving a residency at Workshop Foundation, a residency at ICI-CCN de Montpellier and a presentation possibility at STUK Leuven.

Residency at ICI-CCN de Montpellier

"Future Voices"
An ongoing research in interspecies communication and composition of plant and animal sounds by Anja Müller and Dennis Deter

"Future Voices" is an an ongoing research in interspecies communication and composition of plant and animal sounds by Anja Müller and Dennis Deter.

The ground beneath our feet and the sky above our heads are full of life. Plants that grow and exchange nutrients. Animals that sound and pursue their very own goals. Together they form a community of polyphonic voices that fray and condense, overlap and react to each other.

For the last year and a half, Dennis Deter and Anja Müller have devoted themselves entirely to listening. They listened to voices that surround them at all times but are easily overheard. Inspired by the sound and melodies of different species, they explored ways to creatively and equally engage with the non-human creatures that surround them.

Out of this research different practises of listening and being with plants and animals appeared as well as compositions, audio-installations and finally an interspecies choir in form of a hybrid concert performance.

Artists feedbacks :
« In general we appreciated a lot the residency. It is such a gift to live where you rehearse and to work in such a calm, wonderful space. We felt very welcome and valued the greeting round and interest from the staff a lot. Everything felt entangled and open. Students, with people having residencies, artists creating the evening program and the staff working on organisation and creation. It was great to be able to join the evening shows and labs. So really in total we were very inspired and although we only had 6 days of working, it was a very fruitful time for us. 

I would have loved to stay 2 weeks though. Then we could have  digged  a bit deeper. 

In the paper i sent you, the part about Becoming is actually content wise about the residency. The wish to continue working with that theme and to create a new work out if it, also arose from the residency. “

Anja Müller is a choreographer, performer and musician based in Berlin. During the last years Anjas focus has been on the physicality of live-music making and the transformation and evolution of artificial characters. She is interested in using the structures of different disciplines, like animation, concerts or film art, in order to redefine them and highlight their surprisingly absurd potential in a theatrical frame. Playfully she experiments with the idea of genre- transformation: a concert setting suddenly becomes a dance piece, a drum solo turns into poetry and a megalomanic one-woman HipHop musical exposes its fragile sides. Anja also does frequently work in collaboration with other artists. As a performer she worked such as with Meg Stuart and Alma Söderberg and in that very moment she is working with Kate McIntosh on her new creation. As a musician she is part of the performance band John The Houseband and also drummer of the Psychedalic*Noise*Pop Trio Kala Brisella, with whom she just recorded their third album.
Anjas current obsession is the pure voice. A voice as sound and rhythm in space but also as a symbolic tool. The voice as a body of sound as well as a political organ - lifting up your voice, get lifted by your voice and others. How can a single voice in all its fragility and singularity multiply, not in contradiction but in
combination. During her creative crossroad cycle she would like to explore the interdependence of bodies, sound and space.

Research residency at Uferstudios Berlin

Anja Müller used the local Creative Crossroads residency at Uferstudios to develop her initial research towards her long term project VOICES, in collaboration with dramaturge and performer Dennis Deter. Seen that due to Covid-restriction rehearsal time in the studio was very limited, and seen that the research also involved a lot of sound studies, Anja Müller adapted this first phase of her research into the observation, production and alteration of sounds, coming from the outside animals, from objects. They particularly shifted the focus on a) recorded voice and b) towards the voices of animals. Both “mediums” were to be analyzed and understood as sounds and rhythms in space but also as symbolic tools. Elaborating on the idea of voice as a body of sound as well as a political organ, they were searching for voices that might be forgotten – or not understood - , because not belonging to our time or not coming from our species, reflecting on the differentiation of voices being expressed from the center of society or from marginalized borders of our society. 

The project itself will steer towards a work that features choirs that might not only consist of different people, but maybe even different species, playing on the idea of post- anthropocentic identity politics by the tools of DIY aesthetic. 

This was an initial state of the research and the once to follow production, planned for 2022. Seen that working conditions at the time were very limited, also exluding the involvement of a greater number of people, or doing physical and voice work in studios, Anja Müller and Dennis Deter used this initial research phase to set and prepare on more experimental, theoretical, observing and listening methods, rather than going straight into physicalities. 

Anja Müller will proceed working on this project by a upcoming residency with workshopfoundation Budapest in summer 2021 and hopefully a presentation at STUK in 2022. 

Read her experience report on the research residency in Berlin in the upper right column.

Residency at Workshop Foundation

During her residency at Workshop Foundation, she will work on her new performance, using sounds and lights:

Anja was selected by Uferstudios to participate in the Creative Crossroads artist-support programme. Anja decided to do a residency at Workshop Foundation, she chose the technical residency format, because her ongoing work needed the technical equipment to be realized as imagined. Originally, Anja studied Dance and Choreography in Berlin and Amsterdam and is a drummer and soundartist. She created a great number of choreographic works, in which she is investigating the interpenetration of the matter of sound, body and movement.

Prior to the residency, Workshop Foundation and Anja longly communicated to fix the details of teh upcoming residency. The Foundation has assessed the needs and finally chose Artus studio, who has the appropriate equipment for Anja’s work. That said, Anja spent one half of her residency time at Juranyi Grabo studio, focusing on the research part of her residency , and the second half she spent it at Artus Studio, using the equipments of the space.

During her residency time at Workshop Foundation Budapest Anja, together with her long term collaborator Dennis Deter, are seeking to get in contact with the most quiet creatures surrounding us. Plants. They worked on making plants audible and searching for creative interactions with them. Working towards an interspecies choir Anja and Dennis attempt the impossible - to sing together, to sound together, and to re-imagine possibilities of how to meet across species-borders and acknowledge our shared community. They further developed their work in Grabo studio and then in Artus. They worked with plants and sound. Unfortunately, the residency was halfly impacted by COVID, Anja tested positive on her 2nd day at Artus and couldn’t continue working in the studio, only at home. Her work partner, Dennis Deter however, continued working at Artus.