Supernova #1

Figures in fantastical costumes, moving sparkling stones and words: “Sketches/Notebook” was created in January 2013 resulting from an invitation by HAU Hebbel am Ufer. The choreographer and dancer Meg Stuart led various artists to bring their different talents, backgrounds and abilities into a process of developing common proposals. From their sketches and intimate investigations arose a pulsing world of light, music, objects and gestures on stage – an exuberant laboratory for testing boundaries.

After five years of touring the group is now coming together again for two weeks at the place where it all began to create an expanded version of “Sketches/Notebook” next to carrying on with other projects – from glittering parades and a motor vehicle transforming into a clay sculpture to a poetry-reading. Under the titel “Supernova,” after the astronomical phenomenon in which a star explodes, briefly blazing more brightly than ever before, this project expands in just that way, sounding out boundaries and bringing a variety of art forms to­gether in a collective ritual.
 

from 4pm Claudia Hill: Flags from Tomorrow

”My flags are signaling devices that work where communication is challenged. I create the flags for “Supernova” to send out visual signals in response to the very volatile current state of affairs. Where other channels of communication fail, my vexillography carries the semantics of planetary care, unity, empathy, love, truce, truthfulness, and embrace of reality for the sake of evolution. Under careful consideration of these messages, I compose the flags from found and vibrant cloth, through which the traces of history and the passing of time can be sensed. The first flag was created upon invitation by Mezzanine in Porto where it was installed on top of the building of Maus Hábitos - Espaço de Intervenção Cultural and will be brought to Berlin by Ana Rocha. Collectively, the group will host the flags to mark our move-in at HAU Hebbel am Ufer.” (Claudia Hill)

By: Claudia Hill
Vexillographers: Juliette Quilici, Diane Esnault

Thanks to: Ana Rocha, Jorge Gonçalves, Patricia Shim, António MV, Svenja Tiger, Rui Catalao, Clementina Delgado

Claudia Hill: Kŏn’voi’

A group of travellers of unknown origin arrive out of nowhere into an open landscape. Over the course of a day, they explore and scan the environment with their unique handmade triangular antennae. Through their sensual decoding of information and hypnotic choreography of sign language, a necessity of care for this strange and beautiful planet emerge

By: Claudia Hill
Co-direction: Stephane Leonard
With: Ivan Ekemark, Hana Lee Erdman, Jared Gradinger, Claudia Hill, Maria F. Scaroni
Artwork & costumes: Claudia Hill
Camera & edit: Stephane Leonard
Music & sound: Stephane Leonard
Additional soundscapes: Lukasz Polowczyk
Sound mastering: Martin Silbernagl
Olfactory advice: Wolfgang Georgsdorf / Osmodrama

Produced by: Claudia Hill

With support by: Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods. Thank you: Brendan Dougherty, Anna Gaïotti, Wolfgang Georgsdorf, Roberto Martínez, Anna Nowicka, Ana Rocha.

4-6:30pm / HAU2 Maria F. Scaroni, Vladimir Miller & Supernova: Morning Service / Totentanz & Sketch for a Light Space

“This is a movement session held in the set of “Sketches/Notebook.” It lasts around two hours and is open to any moving body. Some touch will be involved as a warm up tool and it might get hot, so you might need something to change into, something comfortable. You can bring clean sneakers if you mind bare feet. There is no shower possibility.

The central activities sharing the same space are a dance mediation on equality and dying called “Totentanz” and parallel to that a silent collaborative building score.

This is a live diorama and a prayer by heretics, joining in a polyrhythm of dancing and building. If you cannot jog or run or roll, you can walk at a slower pace. If you can only sit or be in one place, you can join and experience it energetically. You can always build — all materials will be light and easily connected.” (Maria F. Scaroni & Vladimir Miller)

Live music: Marc Lohr & Brendan Dougherty 

4-8pm / HAU2 Antonija Livingstone & Supernova: Aftershocker

At the top of the stairs in the studio of HAU2, hums a satellite laboratory for queerly conceiving new life. Tubers, seedlings and grafts from the collection “Culture, Administration & Trembling”, such as “Male Breast Feeding” (2014) “Algorithm for 6+1” (2014) are proposed by Antonija Livingstone: practiced and exhibited real time. “No new ideas and only aging bodies” are lovingly nourished by the fertilizer, heat and light of “Sketches/Notebook” (2013) practiced by the Supernova ensemble and local guests.

A remedial space created by and with: Antonija Livingstone & Supernova
Sound-Installation: Brendan Dougherty
 

„Male Breast Feeding“ demonstration
With guest artists: Mir Demer, Melvin Dougherty, Peter Pleyer, Julian Scrotti, André Uerba

 

Vladimir Miller: Your house doesn’t love you like I do
text, water, mixed media

"In a house rain flows down the roof, water is provided through pipes, fluids leave the building in orderly fashion – architecture is built to control, regulate and exclude anything that is fluid. Leaks, spills, water seeping through walls and ceiling are small catastrophes, not only to the building itself but to the very paradigm of what architecture is supposed to be. A wet stain is a blooming proof of something having gone awry, it signals a breakdown not only of physical, but of the institutional structure as well. It calls for a managed effort of maintenance, for a sorting of the elements back into order. Fluids and the ways in which they merge, mix, penetrate, seep through, and enter where they are not supposed to go challenge our ideas of borders, stability and safety. Fluids seem to carry with them their own ways of negotiating and producing territories, ways that are foreign to us, ways which go against our concepts of structure and permanence.” (Vladimir Miller)

6:30-7:30pm / HAU2 Kahori Furukawa: Connect

„Like a seesaw goes up and down,
Like traffic lights turn silver and gold,
Like clouds shaped squares,
Like here and there.“

Kahori Furukawa

In „Connect“ Kahori Furukawa sets up a playground focused on our fundamental conducts, positioning and movements.

Thanks to Dominique Pollet for tensegrity modeling, scenography collaboration and light design.
Julian Weber: Volatile Substances: A Concert Dinner with Bonsais

“Volatile Substances” derived from a 3 month residency in Kyoto and is inspired by the traditional tea ceremony and Shinrin-Yoku, a Japanese term for forest-bathing. The audience is situated in a group of bonsai trees, which are connected via magnets, cables and microphones. In this environment the host serves soup, makes little dances and activates the bonsais. The audience is also invited to interact with the bonsais, which transmit the impulses to sound artist iRuuu, who is processing them live into a concert.

Concept & performance: Julian Weber
Music: iRuuu

8:30-10:30pm / HAU2 Meg Stuart, Ezra Green & Supernova: The Shape of Mercy – A Poetry Place

In the final scene of “Sketches/Notebook” is a poem by Ezra Green called "The New Rule". This time, the poet will carry the poem into a place of its own and allow it to give birth to a garden of poetry on the stage of HAU2. The evening will include recitations, musical landscapes, spells and invocations, as well as a dance oracle that audience members can consult individually. We invite you to join us as we taste the presences inside poetry on this night.
 

Concept: Meg Stuart, Ezra Green
With: Jorge De Hoyos, Kaya Freeman, Ezra Green, Brandon Johnson, Ingrid Müller-Farny, Leyla Postalcioglu, Sonja Pregard, Victor Schmidt Guezennec, Meg Stuart.
Space, costumes, visuals: Claudia Hill und Vladimir Miller
Costumes construction: Emilia Patrignani
Lighting design: Dominique Pollet

Maria F. Scaroni: Oracle Dances Shop - Individual Divination Session

“Tarots have equivocal origins, from courts, to gipsies, to Egyptian higher beings or maybe Jewish Kabbalists, a range of guesses, maybe all true, definitely they are a hybrid, contaminated bastards. A card is a collection per se, a gathering of residues from stories, numbers, archetypes, elements and other cards. They are a place where one can have moments of self recognition, instances of commonality, vast and deep and playful and frivolous. They could be a sacred message or a gossip, It does not matter, but they do need a reader, a viewer, an inquirer. They don’t exist without mutual attention.

There is nudity, crazy costumes, props, they happen suspended in a white backdrop, or in unnatural yet natural settings.
They bring people together.
They are an illusion, a speculation. they don’t produce, they activate.
(Please read again the text above and replace ‘tarots’ or ‘cards' with ‘dances’.)”
Maria F. Scaroni