WILD ACCESS COTTBUS 2022
WILD ACCESS Cottbus is an immersive dance/light production that took place at BLMK and the adjacent Goethepark. In a hybrid format that moves between audio walk and live performance, the audience is invited to a nocturnal experience that transforms the park through dance, light and sound.
What if the daily activities that take place in the park were remembered at night? What if the unknown corners and invisible creatures became the main characters and action spaces?
WILD ACCESS Cottbus builds a bridge between these visible and invisible elements of the place and plays with the many different actors in the park, be they human or non-human, natural or man-made, real or imaginary.
Artistic direction: Beatrix Joyce
Performance: Beatrix Joyce, Michela Filzi
Lightdesign & costume: Lena Gätjens
Sound design: Jethro Cooke
Funded by Dance in Residence Brandenburg
in collaboration with Tanznetz Dresden
WILD ACCESS LICHTENBERG 2022
WILD ACCESS Lichtenberg takes place on Anton Saefkow-Platz in the former East Berlin and invites YOU on a route of sounds, lights and dances through Fennpfuhlpark and the Anton-Saefkow-Platz in the former East Berlin, into a world where reality and fiction meet. A place where a rare species of nocturnal creatures gathers, swarm, collide and over a darkened pond, a stormy cityscape and an unruly square.
Artistic direction, production & Performance: Beatrix Joyce
Dance: Imola Nagy, Savina Casarin, Melissa Ferrari
Light design & costume design: Lena Gätjens
Dramaturgy & Performance: Michela Filzi
Sound design: Jethro Cooke
Sound: Jun Suzuki
Graphics: Lucas Mateluna
Audience support: Elisa Siegmund, Merav Leibküchler, Sabrina Huch, Sandra Fink, Sydney Rabin, Marie Pooth, Marius Möllenkamp
Supported by Fonds Darstellende
Arts & District Office Lichtenberg
ARM DANCES 2022
Arm dances by Niels Weijer, is a performance about gestures, renaissance sculptures, giving care, and trust. These seemingly different concepts find each other in the dancing with a large arm object. Five dancers shift between being metaphors for fingers, to parts of a tableau vivant into the working force at a museum putting up a sculpture. This performance isn’t about clear statements, it isn’t about the history of dance nor sculpture. It is about five dancers finding stories together, meaning to their movement and trust in each other.
Premiered at Kiez Kapelle, Berlin 25.09.2022. Performed at Lobeblock and Uferstudios, in the frame of AUSUFERN Berlin, 2022.
Concept, choreography niels weijer
dance, camille chapon, daniel conant, michela filzi, laura guintoli, niels weijer
dramaturgy, mike o'connor
costumes, magdalena stave
production, michela filzi
FIRE STARTER #2 - 2022
A dance performance by André Uerba.
Seven performers play with concepts of togetherness and explore how the encounter between them, the audience and also the audience among themselves can manifest itself. Fire Starter #2 is a research space in which the audience can determine its own role: it watches, it moves or it dynamically changes position. The performers themselves can become guides, "tour guides" who guide the experience during the piece.
Performed at Galerie Wedding Berlin, as part of Movement Research ACROSS, June 2022.
LINEAR ENGAGEMENT 2021
THE OCCLUDING EDGE 2021
Dance films by Mike O'Connor, as part of his doctoral thesis in the THIRD Fellowship at the DAS Graduate School. With the support of the Federal Ministry of Arts, Culture, Public Service and Sport in Vienna, and the HZT in Berlin. Improvised dance by Michela Filzi, Sophie Obermayer, Miguel Pereira and Samuel Feldhandler. Filmed by Jubal Battisti.
Presented at Universität der Künste Berlin, Rundgang 2022.
METABOLIC ENCOUNTERS 2021
Participatory performance by Michela Filzi with Matteo de Santis and Samuel von Düffel.
"Metabolic encounters" is based on a cumulative creative process that depends on its social context and environment. The public presentation is always site-specific and foregrounds the relationship between the audience and the space.
Was created for the MA SODA at the HZT, and funded by Studienabschluss Stipendium für internationale Studierende, (DAAD).
Photos by Alicja Hoppel © 2021
9 EMERGING RULES FOR PLAYING REGENERATIVE GAMES 2020
Visual Poem by Michela Filzi. Presented as part of the festival '10 Jahre Uferstudios', Uferstudios Berlin.
"9 Emerging Rules for playing Regenerative Games", is Michela Filzi's research presentation for SODA's winter semester 2019-2020. Due to the Corona pandemic, the presentation could not be done in the usual live format and therefore became a video work which she calls a visual poem, consisting of archival footage from studio and home practice, intuitively and non- narratively edited together.
Regenerative games are playful encounters between bodies, spaces, assemblages of objects, human and non-human contributors to her artistic practice. The rules emerge from the play with the environment and the concept of regeneration is based on the fact that all bodies involved are renewable resources enmeshed in metabolic relationships.
Her research on the theme of an ecology of the body-mind questions the constant sensory, physical and cognitive transformation of all bodies involved in these interactions.
TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT 2019
‘Take it or Leave it’, a collaborative performance and curation by Michela Filzi, Beatrix Joyce and Flora Dekkers.
Things we bring, things we take, things we need, things we desire, things we use, things we reuse, things we forget about, things we cannot repair. The interactive performance #4 take it or leave it explores the chaos of everyday objects that is gladly left behind. In this era of broken dreams - can we still pick up the pieces? And is it possible to leave no traces?
Presented at GlogauAIR Berlin Project Space, following a ten-day residency, in the frame of M A I D E N S P E E C H collective.
APHA 2019
A Lecture Performance with water as its focal point, not only as the primal substance (H2O) which has guaranteed life on Earth as we know it, but also as a metaphor for the concept of ‘Fluid Body’.
A ‘Fluid Body’ is here intended as an assemblage of smaller par- ticles, that merging together and forming a seem-less totality, transform their emergent properties.
The artistic research presents four philosophical concepts, scientific evidence and the relationship between them; the attention of the audince is drawn to the human body, the idea of society (as assemblage) and the urgency of the global water crisis, in an academic yet ironic way.
Presented in the frame of ‘FLUID BODIES’ Group Exhibition curated by Artburst Berlin at Organ Kritische Kunst, Berlin DE
MĀYĀ 2018
Presented at ‘BABELE, prima della fine’ performing art festival at Spin Time Labs, Rome IT, curated by SPINOFF collective.
Māyā is the Sanskrit word for 'measure', its prefix Mā is connected to the latin words 'mater' and 'matrix'. A 'matrix' is a tool used by human intellect to measure and track reality and the natural world.
In this site-specific performance the body is used as the fundamental measure through which the space is activated, traced and measured.
This work metaphorically addresses to the way in which the whole universe is regarded in western society.
Concept & Performance : Michela Filzi
Music: Louis Navarro
Presented in the frame of ‘MAIDEN SPEECH #3’ ‘infLUX’ collaborative performance and curation by Michela Filzi, Beatrix Joyce, Maria Sanchez Alonso and Flora Dekkers, at HB55, Berlin DE.
THE THROW ZONE 2018
Performed at:
The rapid development of technology and the internet has created a world full of opportunities and possi- bilities. However, with the plethora of options openly available to all also comes an indelible feeling of insta- bility, insecurity and detachment. With the overload of information and the volatility of contemporary living, the millennial is challenged to constantly adapt and accept the rate of change. ‘The Throw Zone’ reflects on the pressures of our times and addresses the Zeit- geist of a generation lost in the immensity of possibil- ities.
Two performers move as a singular entity and together caught in a free fall, create the illusion that gravity is momentarily suspended.
Moving with a gradual progression, the performers findnd stillness in unexpected poses. Their conjoined structure is completed by peculiar details drawing forth images that are both absurd and casual, real-life propositions.
Thrown, head first into the immensity of possibilities, ‘The Throw Zone’ rejects on the expansiveness of our times and unleashes the imagination in a floating tableaux vivant.
Concept & Performance : Michela Filzi and Beatrix Joyce
YOU, ME & DATA 2017
Presented at : ’Dichterbij’ Philosophy / Multimedia exhibition, at EXPOPLU, Nijmegen, NL.
‘You, Me & Data’ is a multimedia performance that plays on the notion of screened reality and the absurdity of normality in the 21st century.
Two performers occupy an apparently empty corner in space. Their main focus is concentrated on their own hand. Slowly they start engaging in movement as if hypnotised by this limb.
The soundscape created and performed by vocalist Laura Giavon fills the space with deep, guttural sounds that mimic technology, providing a vocal embodiment of electromagnetic fields.
The performance space is suddenly activated by a third element: two large video projections. These two videos are compilations of recordings of the two dancers in various locations in Berlin. Scrolling, typing, tapping - they pose in both conventional and unconventional body positions as they are entirely absorbed by the hidden protagonist of the work: the smartphone. The driving elements of the ensemble - the bodies, the voice and the images - act autonomously but feed off each other.
‘You, Me & Data’ creates an immersive experience of reflection for the audience, revealing the constant inner transformation and adaptability of humankind.
Concept: Michela Filzi
Performance: Beatrix Joyce and Maria Sanchez Alonso
Soundscape/Performance : Laura Giavon
HORIZONTAL FORMATION 2016
‘Horizontal Formation’ is a sculptural performance that plays on the notions of gravity, balance and strength and explores the relation between limitations and freedom.
Performed at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, ‘Horizontal Formation’ shifted the orientation of the performers in space with the use of an office setting installed sideways on the wall.
This created a birds-eye view that, unlike its objective use in cartography, led to a view from above that was not held at a distance.
The spectator found him or herself in close proximity to the performers, with an altered perspective of the exhibition space. Initially, the performers moved in a way that maintained the illusion of the birds-eye view. However, as the piece progressed and the body tired from exertion, the performers played with resisting and yielding, working both against and with gravity.
The illusion of a birds-eye perspective was hereby con- tinuously broken and reinstated in intriguing ways.
Concept/Performance: Michela Filzi
Performance: Beatrix Joyce and Julia Liedel