• 1
• 2

• tanztheater performance + show&tell after the performance
• body art
• prostheses
• posthuman
• feminist ecologies

• Fr., 13.10.2023, 20:00

Show and tell following 'Eingeweide'

'Eingeweide' is a ritual of coalescence between human bodies, an artificially intelligent (AI) prosthesis, and out-of-body organs. After the show, participants will discuss ethics and aesthetics of bodies, technology, and more-than-human practice.

• 1photo ©Nada Zgank, Kapelica Archives. "So beautiful and deeply disturbing, a true manifest for the adventures of creation and a massive stimulation for our curiosity as we should always remember, there are no borders, neither for our body nor for our mind." (Thomas Venker, Kaput Mag)
• 2 Vera Shchelkina, somatische Tanzkünstlerin

Despite their performances being notoriously without words, Fronte Vacuo members are keen speakers. At Ackerstadtpalast they will present the piece that inspired them to found the group: Eingeweide, by Marco Donnarumma X Margherita Pevere, with light design by Andrea Familari. In the show&tell after the performance, they will lead the audience deep into the world of Eingeweide and its vivid contrast of flesh, robots, algorithms, salt and sweat. The audience will thus be able to see, touch and explore the masks worn by the performers (one is a robotic prosthetics, the other one is made of bacterial biofilm), and discuss the interactive light design. The central question is how to effectively merge poetics with advanced technology in the performing arts in order to nurture a new language. The conversation will then expand onto ways of collaborating, and how the individual artistic ideas converge and transcend each other in Fronte Vacuo’s ongoing saga "Humane Methods".

About the venue

Acker Stadt Palast

The Acker Stadt Palast in Berlin's Mitte district is a place where established artists and newcomers meet to experiment and reflect upon contemporary discourses. The focus of the venue, established in 2012, is on the connection between contemporary dance and new music. The Acker Stadt Palast offers the independent sector a novel interface between these art forms while also being interested in diverse aesthetic forms of dance and theatre.

https://ackerstadtpalast.de

About the performance

Eingeweide

'Eingeweide' is the staging of a ritual of coalescence. Inhabiting a desolated, surreal landscape, two human bodies become violently entangled with an artificially intelligent (AI) prosthesis, out-of-body organs, relics from computer server farms and animal remains.

The prosthesis uses AI algorithms to learn in real time how to move, exist and perform on stage. The organs pulsate, leak and crawl on the floor, bearing traces of the microbial cultures which created them. Sounds from the performers’ muscular activity are amplified and transformed by AI algorithms into a visceral auditive experience, submerging the spectators.

The performers’ bodies become, thus, one and multiple, at times asserting, at times misplaced. They are the means of a drastic form of bodily experimentation, where alternate identities emerge from the convergence of human, machine and micro-organisms. In such a configuration, each element affects the other. Physicality and psyche are meshed up, shaken and probed.

About the artists

Fronte Vacuo (Marco Donnarumma, Andrea Familari & Margherita Pevere

Fronte Vacuo (co-founded by Marco Donnarumma, Andrea Familari and Margherita Pevere) is a transdisciplinary performance group born and based in Berlin. Fronte Vacuo combines body art, dancetheater, audiovisual performance and technology. Its works are defined by unexpected methods of audience interaction, radical bodily performances and rigorous work on symbolism. Their materials are human and nonhuman bodies, organic symbionts, artificial intelligence machines, spatial sounds and images interwoven into tumultuous biomes. In Italian, “Fronte” means military or political front, and “vacuo” means vacuous, without contents. “Fronte vacuo” refers thus to a militant front empty of meaning, a cynic reference to today’s blind belief in techno-capitalism.

Fronte Vacuo presents: Eingeweide by Marco Donnarumma X Margherita Pevere
from the 7 Configurations cycle by Donnarumma

https://frontevacuo.com