Shoulda Coulda Woulda - almost all people in the current experience of lockdown know this feeling of 'what would have been, hadn't…' all too well. As an artist affected by the worldwide shutdown of any kind of cultural and artistic institution, this feeling of losing contact to the public which is so basic to any artistic experience can be extremely frustrating: My work as an artist is always directed towards a potential viewer and it is probably the most vulnerable yet most exciting step in the creatioon of an artwork when I've decided to 'release' my artwork(s) out into the wild, unknown public and the first feedback starts coming in. I would have loved to experience that scary, yet immensly inspiring feeling with the project 'Shapes' - a project which was condemned to never be seen nor heard by any public eye or ear due to the cancellations on the aftermath of the worldwide outbreak of Covid-19. 

'Shapes' was conceptualized as an interdisciplinary performance, bringing together the Arts of Dance, Theatre, Visual Art, Scenography and Music in the extraordinary challenge to to translate specific mathematical equations into sounds, spoken word, movements and a strong visual identity. The project would have brought together a director/choreographer from London's Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, Julia Sudzinsky, an Australian/London-based minimal music composer, Michael Clulow, 5 dancers and theatre actors from above-mentioned Trinity Laban Conservatoire and me, a scenographer/visual artist from Germany. The public performance (you might remember as mentioned above: the scary and exciting moment!)  of this devised piece was scheduled to take place just this month on April 4th at the Dance Studio of East 15 Acting School in London and it really was a project of the heart… or should I say: of several hearts? 

With the performance cancelled because of the Coronavirus, what's left of the project are drafts, drawings and prints on paper with a visual language based on mathematical formulas, a few of which I am still trying to get out into the public under the title of 'On the Movement of Shapes' by publishing this project. The drawings/prints show shapes - square, circle, triangle: all based on scientifically proven formulas, the untamed mass of natural shapes neatly broken down into controllable and describable signs. Yet, despite their adamant appearance, there is a very choreographic aspect in these man-described shapes: A square can be easily turned into the outline of a circle by rotating it at high speed, two triangles together can form a square and so on.  Just like the above mentioned shapes, choreography constantly redefines its place between encouraging either the natural movements of human beings or restricting the natural mass of the human body to a highly artifical body language. Since us humans have invented adjectives to describe the character and the effect of shapes, the visual design of the piece as conceptualized in the drawings strove to recreate these feelings and impressions alongside the dancers by creating a suitable and subtly perceptible atmosphere for each part of the choreography, i.e. for each shape. 

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On the Movement of Shapes #unseen