Metropolis Residency 2022 – group 3

The performance of landscape and the landscape of performance
21-30 October 2022

3rd of three group residencies for artists working site-specific with performing arts

Metropolis Residency is an international residency programme in Copenhagen rooted in the performance field but with an interdisciplinary approach. The programme supports and facilitates researching, creating and producing in public space.

After 4 years with 60 residencies in Copenhagen, Metropolis has been selected by the Danish Arts Council to host a new series of residencies in 2022-24.

We will be focusing on the theme of landscape in connection with our national project Metropolis Landspace. The residency will explore the notion of the landscape as a layered, fluid and conflictual space which offers and demands new relational perspectives and a new aesthetic/artistic practice. How can the re-defining of our relationship with the environment impact on artistic and performative practices? How can artistic practices open up sites for re-interpretation and understanding? And how can one build work which in itself is also transformative?

PARTICIPANTS IN RESIDENCY 3

SONJA STRANGE (DK)
Sonja wishes to find hidden stories, myths and tales on a given place and to transfer these storis to our time and to our future. She is looking to create and work with a community. How do we wish to continue our lives? Can we live together in more sustainable ways? For the past years, the theme in Sonja’s work has been grief, and she will continue to investigate this non-space on the edge – or beyond the edge.

Sonja Strange is educated from Det Jyske Kunstakademi and from VSUP – Academy of Arts in Prague. She has exhibited nationally and abroad. She works with performance, video, text, song, textiles and painting.

MADELEINE KATE MCGOWAN (DK)
Madeleine is drawn towards developing and refining methods for her art to activate landscape transformations and ‘greenings’ through collective aestheticized bodily actions. Making the art piece a way to create concrete eco-systems, forests, planted surfaces, spaces, areas in the urban context. Working with the statement, ‘If you do not have soil under your nails, you are not modern’, she will activate planting-rituals and greening-choreographies.

Madeleine Kate McGowan works in the intersection of filmmaking, performance art and activism. Central to her work is ‘jamais-vu’ – to relive what we believe we know and to dare to risk oneself. Since 2010, McGowan has founded and cultivated various artistic and activist communities, and her film and performance work has been featured at various festivals and museums.

ELLEN KILSGAARD (DK)
Ellen will follow up and build on her experiences engaging with Skagen and the nature around during Walking Landscapes. Two themes came up: birds and sand. Related to birds, she wishes to create a dance and music performance together with a group of younger children. Related to sand, she wants to create a dance performance in the dunes in Skagen.

Ellen Kilsgaard is a modern dancer and choreographer working primarily with interactive performances, lately with and for school children and elderly people in retirement homes. She is interested in the dancer’s interaction with its surroundings: nature, other dancers, and audience bodies.

JANUS KODAL (DK)
Janus wishes to gain knowledge and to develop his own act of performative wording and remembering in a shared space, for example by creating collective chronicles of various landscapes or cityscapes. To facilitate a shared memory through talks and walks with a participating audience

Janus Kodal is educated from the Writers’ school and has since then released a series of books investigating themes such as passion and identity.

STINA STRANGE THUE (DK), MARTIJN JOLING (NL) & EOIN MCKENZIE (SCO)

As a collective, Stina, Martijn and Eoin will further research and develop their performance workshop FAILURE LANDSCAPE / “No Matter What Happens We Will Love You Anyway”.

They are working interdisciplinary with dance, performativity, bodies and objects in space based on a desire to have a broad performing arts platform to reflect within. When and why do we consider something a failure? The project investigates different ways of creating a so-called failure landscape consisting of objects used in non-normative ways. By both observing and sharing the shortcomings of ourselves and those we care for, we aim to create a vulnerable and safe space, where stories can be told, listened to, and cried and laughed about.

KATRINE FABER (DK)
Katrine started Singing Our Place in 2015 inspired by a need for climate action. The aim is to create artistically resonant interactions with places, landscapes and voices from biotopes, animals, humans, and creatures to search for new connections and to celebrate places. She wishes to create an artistic laboratory developing and interactive voice performance, exploring crying, silence and singing. All is rooted in ancient rituals and practices. Can we listen to places by singing them without words?

Katrine Faber is trained as an actress and physical performer. For years, she has researched the potentials of the human voice as a singer, performer, storyteller, and composer. She is the artistic leader of Teater Viva, creating performances, installations, concerts, community plays and more.

MARIE-LOUISE STENTEBJERG (DK)

Marie-Louise would like to explore different sites and how they affect a choreographic practice – to let her thinking and practice be informed by the surroundings and from that letting a physical response emerge. She will invite Ida-Elisabeth Larsen with whom she works in Institute of Interconnected Realities (IIR). They we have begun to research on place, manifesting in a series of site-specific works. They will explore different practices as a response to the question ‘how can bodies practice place?’ in order to find ways of sharing presence with the other-than-human, stretching gazes and getting in touch with a sense of root.

Marie-Louise Stentebjerg is a choreographer and performer with a practice-based approach to choreography and a focus on collective processes. Her practice is informed by critical thinking and a dedication to the ‘experiment’, opening new ways into choreography.

 

Photos: Thomas G. Bagge / Niels Fabæk (Sonja Strange) / Madeleine Kate McGowan / Maja Nydal (Ellen Kilsgaard) / Janus Kodal / Thomas G. Bagge (Stina Strange Thue) / Katrine Faber / Marie-Louise Stentebjerg

 

The residency programme is supported by the Danish Arts Foundation