The fee goes together with the final support decisions (until the end of March) and requirements.

The proposals will be discussed with the artistic director, rehearsed and shown on May 18^th/19^th. Final rehearsals will take place between may 7^th and 17^th.

This project is also about migration, a game about reality and illusion.

Artists from the oriental side of the world, from the old east-block countries and from old Europe are art whores on the field of political correctness. The customer can
buy everything but sex. They do not show plays, they show excerpts and short stories
or songs. It is about sale!

Where and when:

Premiere: October 29th 2011 at 20.00 in „Club Escort“ – Juliusstraße 5 -  44145 Dortmund

and 30th of Oct. at 19.00 hrs, Nov. 6th at 19.00 hrs

with:

Venus Hosseini, actress (Iran/DE)

Alexandra Lowygina, actress  (Russia/DE)

Denitsa Christo, singer (Bulgaria/DE)

Antje Hamer, actress (DE)

Matthias Hecht, actor (DE)

Photini Meletiadis, dancer (Greece)

Artistic arrangement: Rolf Dennemann

Productionmanager: Dr. Monika Pirklbauer

The actor who is changing his look, once he is an old man, once a farmer, always following the clichés, he turns into a child playing with little things. He is a shaman washing the hands of an old woman, carrying trees, being the court jester and picture frame leader.
In the dark back of a barn, an old lady is sitting on a small plastic tractor. In vain she is trying to move forward. You cannot hear what she is saying; you cannot see where she wants to go. At another place she is sitting on a water bucket, wants to move, but fails.
The actress is standing in the window frame of the hayloft. She is waiting for him who will never show up. She is living on a playground telling us how lost farmers are, falling from cliffs. Wearing a monk costume she is sitting on the edge of a water basin peering into the distance – a lost creature.
A bold headed creature is celebrating something weird, a kind of ritual with bells in her hand. She moves as if she was in a new world, touching everything very carefully. Where can it be, the room for her? The lady is wandering through the bulls stable is maybe symbolizing blood which makes life living. The graceful procedures of a land dance in front of piles of wood, of old land machines, on the edges of a ducks lake, that procedure seem to carry a bit of luck.
The audience is sitting together with the artists, drinking, eating, talking, listening to music, wondering if there is a central theme.

photos: Guntram Walter

The application has been sent and will hopefully arrive in Brussels. Now we have to wait.

Project-text Rituals long engl

Essen, Sept. 16th and 17th

Dortmund, Sept 18th

Witten, Sept 23rd

Dortmund and Schwerte, Sept 24th

Final party and documentation exhibtion in Dortmund, Sept 25th

See the exact dates here: http://www.artscenico.de/aktuelles/infos-zu-landtanz-auf-bauernhoefen.html

Also have a look at our gallery

Photo: A.Steierl/New York

See the detailed project description here Rituals project text English

Read the short project description: (scroll for the Spanish version)

Rituals
occur in various spheres and serve the purpose of binding a group together and
providing confirmation and differentiation. Ritual focuses on a specific area
of life and expresses its importance, thus defining its significance. Rituals
interact with art by supporting and shaping ritualistic actions through
artistic output in areas such as music, sculpture and dance.

If one can initially link ritual to religion, initiation and major areas of social life,
one may also observe ritualisation on a small scale, perhaps even in the banal.
Interest in religious rituals appears to be declining. This is revealed in surveys about Christian festivals and their significance.  Other areas of life are increasingly
ritualised, a particular example of this is the experience felt at football
stadiums. Therefore the loss of rituals or the introduction of new rituals
expresses a shift in society, revealing what is significant and what is at risk
of disappearing.Learning the rituals of other people is a significant part of
understanding other groups and cultures and of positioning oneself; this is
interesting in terms of the much discussed parallel worlds, but also in the
context of Europe.

Europe is a conglomeration of different countries, ethnic groups, religions and traditions. What links us, where are our fundamental differences, and are there rituals that unite us as Europeans?

Does European thought enrich individual identity or does it force a retreat into the
parallel or national community? How do rituals differ in Europe and how does
art deal with them?

Does art determine rituals or does it just record real
ones? Does ritual have a solid foundation or is it increasingly disappearing in
the wake of rapid technological development?
What new rituals are there using the internet?
Los rituales

Cuando relacionamos el concepto de ritual con la religión, la iniciación y con temas
importantes de la vida en sociedad, podemos darnos cuenta de que la
ritualización está presente hasta en lo actos más banales. Los rituales
religiosos son cada vez menos relevantes. Así lo reflejan las encuestas en
relación a los festejos religiosos cristianos y sus significados. Sin embargo,
en otras áreas de la vida los rituales cobran más y más importancia,
particularmente en los estadios de fútbol. De esta forma, la pérdida de los rituales o la introducción de otros nuevos influyen también en la transformación de la sociedad, mostrando lo que es importante y lo que está amenazado de perderse.

Conocer los rituales de los demás es una parte esencial a la hora de comprender otras culturas y grupos, y de posicionarse, esto es interesante en cuanto a los mundos paralelos discutidos, pero también en un contexto europeo.

Europa es una unión de países, etnias, religiones y tradiciones. ¿Qué es lo que nos une?, ¿en qué somos fundamentalmente diferentes?, ¿hay ritos que nos unan como europeos? ¿Enriquece el pensamiento europeo a la identidad individual o fuerza este la vuelta a la comunidad paralela o nacional?

¿En qué se diferencian los rituales en Europa?, ¿cómo interactúa el arte con ellos?,
¿imita el arte al ritual o tan solo da cabida a lo real?, ¿tendrá el ritual su
lugar en el futuro o se perderá en la vorágine del desarrollo tecnológico? ¿Qué
nuevos rituales existen en Internet?

Hacemos fotografías, películas y escenificamos rituales, los descomponemos en pequeñas operaciones. Para ello necesitamos a nuestros socios europeos que quieran mantenerse también ocupados con este tema.

There will also be a symposium, organized for September 24th which is open for registration from July 1st

Frank Mählen is working for one of the biggest German television stations (WDR) as a free lance camera man and cutter

Margarita Nagel, educated at Folkwang School in Essen (dance apartment Pina Bausch), now working in Lyon (France), contemporary Dance and international video-clip work

Rolf Dennemann, artistic director of festivals, specialist for site-specific work, international workshops since 1992, actor for movies (Fatih Akim’s “Solino”)and television

Matthias Hecht, actor and theatre pedagogue, head of the theatre-educational department of the festival “favoriten”

from € 45,00 (plus mailing expenses)

Alicja Kujawska, PhDSacredness, sanctuary and art

Motto of the meetings in many European countries, quoted here: „Spaces of art. are contemporary sanctuaries” seems to me not just a beautiful metaphor, but inclined me to think about defining currently categories like: sanctuary, sanctity, art. Sanctuary, in the history of religion, is a place related to the hierophany, or manifestation of divinity. I mention that, because currently in more and more laik culture, it’s meaning is falling into oblivion. Particle of the word „sanctuary” is from the word sacrum, meaning non-human, divine forces, forces of nature, for instance, or Absolut, identified with God. Troughout the ages, people found, or rather experienced moments of time-space continnum, and connected it with Divine. I use the phrase „time-space continuum” deliberately, because most of the time they are certain moments in time in very certain places. They were accompanied by sacred stories – myths and rituals. One can mention sunsets and sunrises, equinoxes, eclipses, solstices, full moons, and new moons as well, or – just to point out the last remnant of the lunar calendar in the Western world – the Easter, celebrated at the fist Sunday after the first spring full moon. These short moments are characteristic because the time was/is losing it lineal form, started to running round and round, inside of the circle of the sacred stories. Spaces like forest, or deserts, summits, or caves, secluded and „wild”, were believed to be places visited by gods. It’s very interesting that gods in the cities had to reside only on the tops of ziggurats, or towers of mosques and cathedrals, always above the crowd, while in the country preferring old oaks and other trees, lakes, fiery bushes, lightnings, and crossroads. The place of the epiphany used to be protected afterwords as a sacred place. It was guarded by phisical, symbolical and mystical gates: veils, guardians-angels-animals,  mazes. It shows that to meet the Divine forces, only the brave one was chosen. Those chosen onces were – apart from shamans, magi, alchemists, or ministers, also artists. A famous anthropologist with an excellent wit, said once that the first art. was gekochtes – a piece of meat, or in wider sense of the word, an art of cooking. There is something in it, indeed. It seems trifle, but it leads our thoughts into forming an idea: every form of concious (and it need to be stressed – concious, aware) human activity, who aims to make human life more profound and meaningful, can be taken as art: baking, playing harph,  poetry, dance, cave painting, waving, chorus singing, gardening, writing Orthodox icons, theatre, or love – just to mention Ovid among the others. And also skills that used to be called art., and now defined as crafts (with a trace of it in a word Meisterstoeck, for instance), a masterpiece, a piece of art. of the master in its craft. So what seems important was not the domain of art., but the excellence achieved.

And if there is excellence, a mystery happens: people who meet it, and contact with the masterpiece emotions are awakening, whose who can not be restrained, sometimes awakened by the beauty of the storm, the view of the horizon or playing child – feelings of perfection and completion. And another feeling: oneness. We all long for these feelings of perfection and oneness. Time and space become less meaningful, or have no meaning at all. Excellence in making piece of art. – be it samurai sword, butoh dance, or calligraphy, seem to be out-of-this-wordly, and sometimes even non-human and „talk to” us troughout the centuries and continents.

A contact with sacredness understood this way, required very special preperations and education, sometimes also sacrifices (have you noticed, that the word sacrifice also is referring to the word sacred?) like fasting, training of the body, self-discipline or transformation of the body, and – last but not least – alienation, or isolation. That who were to experience contact with the Divine was „not in this world” too sacred, and too strong for the other people (by the way: a word „święty”, sacred, in Slavic languages means strong). I’m sure that most of you, us, can recognize yourselves in this description, as well as your artistic work: moments of noetic experience, once called intuition or inspiration, time spent on working, perfecting the idea, and then – coming back to the world to present the results of our work. Sacred space is also a save place, a shelter, or a refuge, a protection, like a cave or a monastery. A place when one can hide safely. Return back to reality must be painful, but we still can not reside in a sacred place all the time, as we can not look at the sun without harm.

Maybe the art. is not contemporary sanctuary – or ancient, or future. Maybe it’s the human who can be more oneself, the real one, unlimited by the form of the „cottage of the body” expression of the sanctity of life when – as gods – he creates. Then any space can become a space sancified (!) by the aware spirit. I have to agree and disagree with the motto of the Sanctuary project, presenting my version: „Human is a space of sanctuary, and art. is his/hers expression and refuge”. Wherever they are.

Dr Aurelia Mandziuk, PhD

Sanctuaries – picking up this subject is quite difficult in Poland for too easy associations of religious nature: „Sanctuary, a place taken as sacred, when God is bestowing  us with distinquish graces”. So, how to approach the subject still keeping in mind all aspects of the word „sanctuary”? We are looking for a PLACE/SPACE and DIVINITY.„Spaces of art. are contemporary sanctuaries” is a phrase describing my personal attitude towards the subject, and proposed by me, as motto of our meeting. The word „space” has a double meaning, describing both place and – in a certain way – art.Then I have invited you to places that are distinguish to the local landscape: old factory halls, palaces transformed into art. spaces.  Old factory warehouses, Gardener’s House are the parts of Goldner’s factory complex, where PATIO Art. Centre of University of Humanities and Economics is operating, and one of the Grohman’s palaces – the seat of Museum of Artistic Book turned into meeting places and artistic activities, very much connected with our search for contemporary sanctuaries. This quest for contemporary sanctuaries, in my opinion, has it’s purpose not in finding the answer where modern human can extract some power, or what kind of „graces” we want to obtain, but much rather is just asking questions, related to ourselves and the reality that surrounds us.

I have asked many artists to, in their own way and in their own style, approach the subject. This resulted in proposal of intermedia exhibition – the idea of a show of many means and techniques, when context of the space and art. – especially when it comes to „Sanctuary” – is very important.

As for the Sanctuary project is realized in the spaces of university (University of Humanities and Economics in Łódź), I have invited artists – professors and students of fellow Artistic Department in Pedagogics Academy in Kraków, Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Łódź, and from University of Humanities and Economics.
Space of the art., as a place itself, can be a kind of laboratory, where one can „check” various artistic offers. It is an open, unique space that absorbs creative initiatives.And what apart from places/spaces?But ART., of course. She allows us to have a fresh vision, helps us to break patterns of thinking, stimulates imagination and sends us off to the land of our inner freedom, where each one of us is making one’s own – so the only real one for us – vision of the world. It applies to both artists and audience. Art. breaks axioms, throws away conventions of perception and communication, and – what’s the most important – allows us to experience what’s beyond the Language and beyond the Culture.

Is a sanctuary as an art. space, only an idea?Just recently we have had a pleasure to host an artist and „creator of  states of emergency”, as he describes himself. Gerhard Jürgen Blum – Kwiatkowski, who presented a documentary of the one of a kind – in world’s scale – An Open Book Project. Blum – Kwiatkowski, in cooperation with many famous artists, had created in German village of Hünfeld very original ensamble of visual poetry on the walls of the village houses. This small village then became „a Mekka” for artists involved in visual poetry, and for the inhabitants and the city hall, the art.  in public space became their pride. One can say, that Gerhard managed to bring a sanctuary into life in Hünfeld – something we are looking for in our project.