Residency Wilhelm and Groener at STUK Leuven

In the frame of the Creative Crossroad activity, the duo Wilhelm & Gröner was selected by Uferstudios Berlin to receive a 2 years structural support by the LLB network to work on their productions "33 Skizzen" and "“Anatomie. Evolution. Anfang. Ende…”

This support includes support by Uferstudios Berlin, a co-production and a residency by ICI-CCN, a residency at NDA Slovenia and a stay at STUK Leuven.

View the trailer of 33 Skizzen here:
www.youtube.com/watch

 

Support by Uferstudios Berlin:

WILHELM GROENER are the artists-duo Uferstudios chosen as outgoing artists. The choice was made due to the strong involvement of WILHELM GROENER with the Uferstudios, but especially because WIHELM GROENER have developed a very unique artistic language oscillating between choreographic praxis, dance and visual arts. Their development of work evolves very organically from one process to the other, picking up lines of thoughts and enquiries from former works. They have been present in the Berlin dance scene for more than 10 years, and represent a very special stream of artistic approach that reaches beyond the main stream artistic output in the city. Yet, with their early approach towards genre-crossing of dance and visual arts, they were pioneers of an aesthetic discourse that in the last years has gained much more visibility. 

As stable and outstanding their career in Berlin was, WILHELM GROENER never really made their way into a stronger international standing. In order to push that line of career building of the duo, the Creative Crossroads format offers perfect chances to establish connections to other European venues and organizations. 

WILHELM GROENER entered Creative Crossroads with following interests: to continue their work of trilogy on different notions of reality and body, evolving into works like D.R.A.G, 33 Skizzen and A.E. And to enter stronger into questioning the concept of archive in performing arts, especially within and around their own oeuvre. For both issues the matching with partner institutions of LLB evolved organically and resulted in quite perfect connections. ICI Montpellier offered them a residency with the opportunity to work on their new project A.E., premiering in November 2019 in Berlin (Tieranatomisches Institut) with a student from EXERCE and to install a showing of a in-progress version of 33 Skizzen at ICI. NDA Slovenia will invite them to exchange and practice thoughts on archiving, one of the main streams of concern of NDA Slovenia. The exchange of expertise from both sides is planned for spring 2020. In the same context, Uferstudios agreed to coproduce the catalogue reflecting and documenting the last trilogy of WILHELM GROENER, to be published in 2020.

Simone Willeit, as general manager of the Life Long Burning project, has continuously kept contact with WILHELM GROENER, with suggestions of outreach towards the other LLB partners, exploring what matches could be most fruitful, but also in advising them on how to build an international network beyond the LLB partners. At the same time Simone Willeit gave further support to Wilhelm Groener in general questions of administration, freelance working procedures, PR work and touring. 

In general, the action “Creative Crossroads” allows the network of LLB to establish a stronger connection to the chosen artists, and to follow and support their career building on a more substantial level then with some of the other one-off actions of the project. It gives more sustainability in the connections build and offers the artists a necessary anchorage within the independent artistic scene. Nevertheless, the amount of offers from the partners flowing towards the artists within the 2-year period is a little to low for them to really gain spin. Another shortcoming that should be addressed in the future, is to establish formats and opportunities to nourish the exchange and meeting between all chosen artists of the network.  

Residency at ICI-CCN:

The Creative Crossroad artists Günther Wilhelm and Mariola Gröner are on a residency at ICI-CCN Montpellier to work on their latest production "33 SKIZZEN".

The production is followed by a work-in-progress presentation on October 11 at 18:00 in Atelier Buffard at ICI-CCN. 

Report by Wilhelm & Gröner:

Our residency at the ICI Montpellier was the first work stay with one of the partners of the network »Life Long Burning«, to which we belong from 2019-2020 as artist duo WILHELM GROENER. This first residency within the network was a great start. Here it was confirmed in the most beautiful way how much one can profit in an artistic process from the generous working structures of an institution, if one breaks away from the usual structures and moves into new, unknown realms. Some fortunate circumstances came together here for us. The building, the location, the team, the studio, the city, the surroundings were always a joyful enrichment, inspiration and support. We were able to research and rehearse for our new performance »A.E« with the dancer Oliver Connew, who had just started his master's degree at the local Exerce Program, wich is located in the same building. Parallel we worked on a new edition for our long-standing performance project »33 SKIZZEN« which was presented to the audience at the end of our residency at 10 October 2019. «33 SKIZZEN» is an ongoing performance project which takes the spatial and contextual situation as a starting point. The Montpellier edition of «33 SKIZZEN – ici/hier» was on the one hand an interplay with the given working space during our residency at ICI. On the other hand it reflected the momentary research for our above mentioned new creation «A.E.» (premiere 6 Nov. at Veterinary Anatomy Theatre Berlin) which circumscribes scenarios of origin and visions of progress. Some echos of this research were evident in «33 SKIZZEN – ici/hier». The audience was free to explore different perspectives and became witness to the performers spatial, anatomical and acoustical explorations.

In summary, we can say that our residency at the ICI was a perfect start for the opportunities which »Life Long Burning« can offer for artistic processes.

PREMIERE "A.E. Anatomie.Evolution.Anfang.Ende. …"

"A.E. Anatomie.Evolution.Anfang.Ende. …" was premiered in the frame of the Berlin Science Week 2019 at Tieranatomisches Theater Berlin on 6 November 2019.
View the evening sheet of “Anatomie. Evolution. Anfang. Ende…” in the Gallery below.

 

Online Performance Presentation "33 SKETCHES_performing@archive"

In 2001, the visual artist Mariola Groener and the dancer Günther Wilhelm combined their names for the artistic brand WILHELM GROENER, which is signified by interdisciplinary research and forms a distinctive performative-choreographic oeuvre consisting of stage performances, in-situ artworks, lectures and exhibitions. Mariola and Günther are primarily interested in the structural difference in their procedures, which marks the movement and plays with the difference between the visible and the invisible, between the known and the unknown, or between the anchored knowledge and the potentially new knowledge and insight. The interplay of meanings, often addressed in their performances, is played out in slips and altered accents in understanding and thus naming, it is precise, thoughtful and always exciting, because it uses simple means to open up, thread, layer and connect the dialectic relationships that crucially characterise our society. Together they have created more than 25 performances, many stops of their long-running project of 33 sketches, video-works and artist books.

In a procedural performance project 33 sketches the artistic tandem WILHELM GROENER puts the spatial and contextual situations in the centre and uses them as a starting point, which they associate with their current research focus. By layering and multiplying the project, focused primarily on research of materiality, creates an archive of accented topics and issues of the tandem, which opens up potential new links and connections between visual and performing art; between a two-dimensional document and the three-dimensionality of space; between the staged and documented; between presence and representation.

The CoFestival performance will be placed in the Media Resource Centre of the Mine Centre, an international theatre institute in Berlin, and their long-running research of »staging of the archive« will be the vantage point. »Staging of the archive« focuses on archival work; archiving processes and methodologies, rhythms, connotations, extensions and (re)organisation. The staging procedures, however, raise possible answers to the question of what the archive can be and what it represents; how and what can be archived of a given staging; could we understand the body as an archive; could artistic work become a transformative machine that reveals new performative aspects?

WWW.WILHELMGROENER.NET

Concept and performed by: WILHELM GROENER – Günther Wilhelm & Mariola Groener – 

Produced by WILHELM GROENER in co-production with Nomad Dance Academy Slovenija and Mime-Centrum Berlin/ITI

Organisation: Nomad Dance Academy Slovenija and Kino Šiška

 

Residency at NDA Slovenia

At the LLB/Creative Crossroads meeting in Vienna 2018 we introduced our long-term project «performing archive». It is a (re)search which aims to find new strategies and forms within our body of work, its sustainability and new approaches in relation to a performative archive.

It was a great coincidence and pleasure that our research project matched with Jasmina Zalozniks´ own special interest in archival practices. Naturally we were therefore more than happy to be invited to Ljubljana for a residency.

As hosts NDA Slovenia were extremely efficient, before, during and after the residency. Jasmina and the other associates from Nomad Dance Academy welcomed us heartwarmingly, always open for an ongoing vibrant exchange and discussion. See more details about the residency below: “artistic work during the residency”.

•   Before the residency, they always supported us in dealing flexibly with scheduling in relation to the pandemic-related difficulties.

•   During the residency, they always made an effort to keep an eye on all our needs, to accompany us and to remain in constant productive exchange, also in relation to our artistic exploration.

•   They made possible to meet up with the dance theorist, critic, curator and collector Rok Vevar. This required further inspiring conversations and questions concerning our project and an insight into his personal dance archive, which now has its own space in the Museum Metelkova. Furthermore, we were granted free access to his «Temporary Slovenian dance archive» and to the museum itself. Also great was the meeting with the museum's digital archivist, Ida Hirsenfelder who gave us an insight into the methods and the focus and principles of the collection.

•   After the residency, we continued having very constructive exchange. Nomad Dance Academy was keen to follow up on our presentation of «#performingarchive2» in Berlin (22-24 Oct. 2020), that emerged from our research residency. Furthermore another constructive joint process developed regarding our performative contribution to the CoFestival's online edition. Due to the pandemic, we decided in joint discussions to contribute a Live-Online-Performance for the 2020 digital version of the Festival: «33 SKIZZEN_performing@archive».

«33 SKIZZEN» is an ongoing performance project which mostly takes the spatial and contextual situation as a starting point for it´s development and connects it with our momentary research. Each part of the series is created on location within a short period of time in different locations aside from a regular theatre space, such as galleries, museums and other specific and inspiring spaces which initiate a performative dialogue. The online-edition for the CoFestival took place at the Mediathek of Mime-Centrum Berlin, a documentation center and archive for dance and theatre. We did a set up for a performative dialogue with the spatial and functional aspects of the Mediathek and at the same time combining it with our current research within the context of ‘performing archive`.

 

The process of the artistic work during the residency:

It was a great and inspiring residency. We had impulse-giving meetings with specialists in archiving in different ways. Rok Vevar, who opened doors to his private collection «Temporary Slovenian dance archive» in the Museum for contemporary art/Metelkova. It´s based on his long-term passion for dance and performance and accumulated over the time. A very impressive field of the Slovenian dance and performance scene is represented. This archive might be also considered as a installation/work of art and it holds its own space at the museum.

Also in the Museum for contemporary art/Metelkova Ida Hirsenfelder, shown us her desk, where she is developing and leading the museums´ archive and introduced us to the technical aspects/possibilities of the digital archiving of the museums' and partners holdings.

Those meetings were very stimulating for the questions which lead our long term project: What is an archive? What could an archive be? What could the archiving of the performative be? Could there be a performative archive? Could bodies and their means be considered as archives? And can the body of work serve as a kind of ‘transformation machine` that constantly allows for new facets of the performative?

Also, we were provided with a spacious dance studio where we were able to follow our research in our movement-memory, sound-song-creating, try-out, chance-taking practices: Pushing experiments such as transforming parts of pieces into different spaces of approach, order and reception. Finding strategies for establishing a physical practice that looks at the body as a kind of living archive. Creating soundscapes from excerpts of the notes taken during the residency and the preexisted inspirational material.

We had also an inspiring feedback session with Jasmina Zaloznik in that studio; a contextual improvisation, followed up by a discussion around our topics.

We would like to express here once again our great gratitude to NDA for making this residency possible, which will definitely be remembered as one of the highlights in our history with residency experiences.