A performative and architectural experiment in which the interaction between two performers, a floating wall and the audience becomes a spatial negotiation.

Intertwined. At first unnoticed, two performers intimately start to move amongst the spectators. Two microphones attached to the bodies capture the sound of their interweaving movements. Gradually, they expand their interaction and start to demand their own territories, provoking the audience to react to their individual trajectories, to decide whether to give space, or not. The negotiation between the performers and the audience creates new spaces: openings, corridors and places temporarily appear, only to disappear seconds later.
Rules and trust begin to unfold, but are soon challenged by a third spatial player: a thin and transparent wall slowly lowers itself from a vertical to a horizontal position. Gradually dwarfing the proportions of the space it challenges the field of the game, demanding new rules of interaction.

Collaborators
Corinna Didjurgeit, Elias Kurth (Performance/Scenography), Marios Athanasiou (Sound)

Length
Twenty-five minutes

Supported by
Antonia Harnack, Vincent Diezinger, Christoph Schulz, Olga Weber and Bildhauerwerkstatt, BBK Berlin

Publication
Protocol - Magazin für Architektur im Kontext

Year
2013

News

‣ February 24

Physical Ideas For Abroad
Performance as part of 2 4 0 2 2 4
21H30, Dampfzentrale Bern

‣ March 23

Landscape of Hyper
Premiere
Saturday March 23, 20H, Alte Reithalle, Bühne Aarau
Tuesday March 26, 20H
Wedensday March 27, 20H

‣ July 05

Liquid Dreams
Research Sharing
18H Gelbes Haus Luzern

‣ December 19

The Infinite Gesture
Premiere 19 December, Radialstem Berlin
by Ixchel Mendoza-Hernandez
Performances 20 / 21 / 22 December

About

Elias Kurth (b. 1984 in Aarau, Switzerland) is an artist, choreographer, performer and architect based in Marseille and Aarau. Working across these disciplines, Elias Kurth explores the tensions between fictional and factual spaces, between individual fantasies and societal realities.
The projects vary in scale, duration and media, and always draw from the human body as a source of knowledge. Using movement as a thinking tool, Kurth develops intersections between performance, architecture and visual arts. His curiosity for the yet unknown and a strong sense for spaces and emotions create situational poignant experiences. The work, ranging from sensitive gestures to brute physical acts, reveals his playful reading of internal and external realities and their conflicts.

Elias Kurth graduated from London Contemporary Dance School ‘The Place’ (2009) and worked with several choreographers such as Lea Anderson, Requardt&Rosenberg or Compagnie Shifts. He graduated as an architect from the University of the Arts (UdK) in Berlin (2018) where he studied amongst others with Jean-Philippe Vassal, Enrique Sobejano, and Alexandra Ranner. He has worked as an architect for Andrés Jaque / Office for Political Innovation and Compagnie KHZ. His own work has been shown in the United Kingdom, Poland, Germany and Switzerland.

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