CATALYSTS – Somatic Resonance is an installation exhibition of somatic states from the performance work of Icelandic choreographer Margrét Sara Guðjónsdóttir. The exhibition takes place in collaboration with MUU Helsinki Contemporary Art Centre.
CATALYSTS – Somatic Resonance is an installation exhibition of somatic states from the performance work of Icelandic choreographer Margrét Sara Guðjónsdóttir, consisting of 14 photographs. The exhibition is a choreography of mixed reality technologies, kinaesthetic algorithms, affects, archival material, and live bodies.
This work is created by an interdisciplinary team of artists and researchers, lead by Margrét Sara Guðjónsdóttir and researcher and artist Susan Kozel. It iss an intervention in the tensions and potential of current digital cultures. It participates in ongoing discussions around the expanded choreographies of interconnectivity of mediated bodies, healing, feminism, notions of energetic citizenship, AI and the pathology of the wider social-political body within our bodies. Visitors to the exhibition carry the states from this choreographic exhibition outwards, like ripples in a collective somatic field.
In order to enter into dialog with the resonant states of the dancers informed by Guðjónsdóttir’s deep tissue de-conditioning practice FULL DROP into the Body. Visitors are invited to download the CATALYSTS app to immerse themselves in the 14 images that compose the exhibition. Images which are embedded with visuals, triggered by the app the team created. States of affective potential arise from awakening latent energies over time, across media and flesh, expanding what dance can be and how bodies can remember.
The exhibition opening takes palce on Sat, Feb 3 at 13–15. Present at the opening is, in addition to Guðjónsdóttir, researcher and artist Suzan Kozel, one the team behind the exhibition. At 18:00 there will be a discussion about the collaboration between Guðjónsdóttir and Kozel and the originis of the exhibition. The discussion will be facilitated by Peter Mills, one of the curators of this year's Side Step Festival.
Credits
Icelandic Berlin based choreographer Margrét Sara Guðjónsdóttir studied dance in Holland and worked as a performer with various performance makers around Europe during the period 2001-2014. She co-founded the production house Panic Productions in Iceland which was active from 2004 – 2009 and focused on producing and initiating collaborative performance works with international artists for the Icelandic stage and beyond it. At the same time as she lived in Berlin creating and touring internationally her own performance works.
Since 2010 she has been addressing the pathological imprint of the social political body within our own bodies and its de-conditioning in her choreographic works as well as research into the deep tissue release practice FULL DROP. She considers her work involving de-conditioning as a direct political gesture and activism. In a larger sense her performance works engage in the ongoing discussion of healing, feminism, interconnectedness and notions of energetic citizenship within the choreographic context.
https://msgudjonsdottir.com/index.php/about/
Susan Kozel is a Professor of Philosophy, Dance and Media Technologies in the School of Art and Communication (K3). With an international profile as a contemporary phenomenologist, she applies philosophical thought to a range of embodied practices in digital cultures. Her research takes the form of both scholarly writing and collaborative performance practices. From 2012–2018 she directed Living Archives, a major research project into archiving practices funded by the Swedish Research Council. Her research into Somatic Archiving and the Performance of Memory continues by means of artistic practice and critical engagements with Augmented, Mixed (AR/MR), and Virtual Reality platforms.
Concept, Choreography & author of performance works and somatic practice: Margrét Sara Guðjónsdóttir
Philosophy, Archival Concept: Susan Kozel
Editing, Video Creation for Tablet, Visual Concept: Jeannette Ginslov
AR/MR/AI Creation and Interactive Technologist: Keith Lim
Photos by: Lasse Dahl, Jeannette Ginslov, David Kiers, Eva Schmidhuber
Original archival video footage: Jeannette Ginslov, Andrea Keiz, Eva Schmidhuber, Jens Sethzman, Antoine Verbièse
Printing of images: Magnus Denker
Original composed soundtracks: Peter Rehberg
Dancers in archival video footage: Louise Dahl, Catherine Jodoin, Laura Siegmund, Angela Schubot, Marie Topp, Suet-Wan Tsang, Marie Ursin
Production management: Jill Emerson & Till Rothmund
