Current Projects (2024-25)

Animalariums’ Constellations

The project utilises the innovative Choreo-constellating practice to talk about climate change through an embodied lens, and in connection to its locality. ‘Animalarium’ joins forces with Elle Sofe Company (NO), Ställbergs mine (SE) and WUK Performing Arts (AU) in underrepresented areas and communities that situate themselves between city and rural periphery. Including the arctic surrounding of Guovdageaidnu/ Sápmi and its indigenous community, Ställberg, an abandoned iron ore mine and Future Farm, on the far outskirts of the city of Vienna.

A concern for, and active engagement with, the topic of land rights, ecology and communal practices connect all our partners. What voices are not heard? How can they be given a voice? Meaning people, other animals, other living organisms and the land itself. The goal is to create performances that focus on these relevant local issues.

Beyond the implementation of the performance, the practice itself is a resource-oriented, embodied, communal practice that builds our collective capacity to deal with the challenges of our generation.

Perform Europe Grant

EUR 60,000

Partners

Artistic Works

Animalariums’ Constellations - Dawn obliges us to dream

Producers: Lena Kimming, Liv Schellander, Alexandra Wingate

text

‘Animalariums’ Constellations’ enact some of the burning issues of our time – Countdowns, Extinction, and Future Dreaming – and bring the collective unconscious onto the stage. Our performative constellations are living maps, sensory sculptures and contemporary rituals where an embodied collective storytelling unfolds in the moment. Central here is that embodiment might be a fundamental feature of thinking and relating to our world.

Through a ‘constellation’, this work creates a live enactment of a system. Qualities within that system are made tangible and become actual patterns and figures in space. The performers become representatives who embody and ‘stand for’ topics – such as a place, a human animal, or an ancestor. A desire, a question or a resource. As surrender, soil covered by concrete, or a mountain. Or even a political movement, global warming, or a collective dream at large.

Emotions and the unconscious, as well as analysis and the poetic become lived relations in the multi-layered performances where each place and collaboration result in a different version of the piece creating an anthology of several editions or ‘seasons’.