trial & error

Sadly, «trial & error», the experimental laboratory for bold choreography, was cancelled in the spring due to the first lockdown. Dampfzentrale Bern therefore called on artists to address questions in the digital space – this virtual world that has now become part of our everyday lives. What does this place conceal, how much creative potential does it have for choreography? This has led to a new way of exploring and communicating far beyond live streaming.

In December, we plan to present three works that examine choreography and digital space. The «trial & error» platform believes that it is better to try and fail than to not try at all.

What does sitting in front of a bodiless entity actually mean? Who or what is talking to you?
Where is the fine line between explicitly violent texts, harmless flirtations, laughable threats and a simple request?

Inspired by Peter Handke’s play «Offending the Audience», videos from drone cockpits (published by Wikileads), the survival game «Rust» and her own experience with sexual harassment and explicitly violent comments on dating sites or in social media chat rooms, Rebekka Bangerter has developed a written-word online performance. It involves examining how the Internet assaults the real physical body and explores the real-world consequences of virtual actions.

Rebekka Bangerter’s performative installations border on visual art and deal, in particular, with the question of how medialisation shapes our perception and reality and often involve the audience in some strange and unusual way.

Rebekka Bangerter’s performances are always a one-to-one experience.
Registration at info@dampfzentrale.ch
You can choose from various time slots for booking upon registration.
The number of available spaces is limited.

How can the relationship between audience and performer be reinvented in the digital space?
How can immediacy and intimacy be created in this virtual world?

To find the answer, Nina Richard combines the precision of clearly defined choreography with confusion, which also characterises «real» life. Eleven dancers from the MassHysteria Collective have dealt with video and sound, resulting in a multitude of perspectives. The choreographed desktop arranges and stages these documentations of individual realities in Portugal, Great Britain, India, Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland.

Nina Richard is a dancer, choreographer and dance teacher. She is also co-founder of MassHysteria, an all-female collective of dance artists, which won the Trinity Laban Innovation Award in 2019 and has performed at the Tate Modern and London’s Resolution Dance Festival.

How can a writing practice be seen to move?
How can the process of writing be seen as thinking?

Emma Murray invites you to a live encounter with her archive. Using an online annotation tool, she overwrites or rewrites a rehearsal archive of her performance «Monsterhood. The Making of». As a choreographer interested in language and text, her physical and tactile approach to digital media acts as a bridge between the world of the body, a world of effort and senses, and a seemingly limitless, digital world – the world of computer screens and windows, of instant and continuous transmissions.

Emma works in the field of performance and choreography, focussing especially on translating the complexity of being alive into her physical body language. Her solo or group projects utilise text and language to contextualise the movement of the performance. From 2013 to 2015, Emma Murray was Associated Artist at Dampfzentrale Bern, where her works are regularly co-produced.