For a creative challenge launched by Berlin-based brand Grover and Studio Uncoated, I have created a minimalist, slightly Pop-Art influenced concept, that represents both visually as well as contentwise Grover‘s aims and their mission statement they stand for as a tech-renting online company: In my series I connect examples of Grover’s tech-products and their physical shapes with associations of experiences of flying, zero gravity, boundlessness, floating and hence bring these items into a new, positively connoted context in the spectator’s eye. Accompanied by a visually appealing colour palette evoking a sense of easy goingness, the series promises a life-changeing experience in the use of Grover’s products: No more commitments, except to yourself, your life(-style) and your dreams! The customer isn’t held back any more – with the rental of a technical product by Grover they are free to fly, to soar, to explore, to discover, to float, to launch off to their higher potential and eventually have time and capacities to dream beyond familiar limits and perspectives by becoming detached from the dreary thoughts and necessities that might come along like maintenance, high costs etc. – this is how inventions and new visions have space and time to emerge with Grover serving as the crucial support in this creative ‚launching process‘. My series aims to give the variety of customers enough scope of associations depending on their personal backgrounds in order to respond to Grover’s approach that tech-products should be available and accessible for everyone. With its tongue-in-cheek humor, my artistic concept captures and continues the witty, down-to-earth and customer-oriented and -friendly way of communication Grover maintains on their various social media channels. The light, colourful colour scheme of my series is inspired by the colour palette of Grover’s current advertising concept and implies ease, levity, freedom and an invigorating feeling in interaction with Grover and its tech-products. I hope, my minimalist approach can inspire you to a lot of associations! 

Transformers

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. 

On the Movement of Shapes #unseen

The day he caught her, she learned to consent. But through the haze of nodding, she slowly starts mouthing her first own word: No… While #metoo turned society’s attention to sexual assaults against women, one group, who are prone to suffer a similar fate, remains mostly unseen as they’re too young to having the same means to speak up publicly: kids. How can their voices be made audible? And how can they gain access to ways to make themselves heard before it's too late? I made the ‚Olimpija‘ drawings while working on a short film dealing with the same topic.

'Olimpija' - the drawings

‚dry run‘ is an ongoing series of digital pictures drawn in Photoshop. Imagine me sitting in front of my laptop and creating these pictures with only the preinstalled tracking pad (I swear to God, I’m not joking!). Does it seem like a desperate attempt? Of course it does! But sometimes extraordinary times require extraordinary methods and even if I can’t really tell you what ‚extraordinary times‘ I am talking about in this case, it is an extraordinary method so don’t knock it until you’ve tried it! It requires a little bit of patience, some good music and a strong will to master the Art, though, so be warned…

dry run

'The Seagull', an excerpt based on Anton Chekhov's Play 'The Seagull'
Director: Jonathan Heidorn
Stage, costumes & props: Yvonne Schäfer
premiered on January 16th, 2019, at Theater im Kunstquartier, Salzburg, Austria

You're mine, I'm yours - deciding to focus exclusively on the relationship between the main characters Nina and Kostja, our interpretation of this well-known classic followed them through the highs and depths of a love affair that's right away deeply troubled and unstable. Why do we love someone? How far do we go in loving someone (or is it rather: ourselves?)? And how dangerous can we get in striving for our goals to actually 'own' someone? Besides telling the story of a turbulent relationship Chekhov dedicated his Play to the discussion of Art and the role of the Artist which is pointedly interwoven in the plot as Nina struggles to become an actress and Kostja to gain the acclaim of both critics and his mother as a playwright.

all photos: (c) Thorben Schumüller

The Seagull

Inspired by Andrei Tarkovsky's startling film 'Ivan's Childhood' and two major works of the Russian Avantgarde - 'Black Square' by Kazimir Malevich and 'White Circle' by Aleksandr Rodchenko - this short animation film recounts the Brothers' Grimms' tale 'Rapunzel' from the prince’s perspective and turns it into a many-layered story: the human side - telling about our daily desires and aims, our ways to achieve them, our failures and unexpected twists and turns life can take; the technical side - how an animation film works and how a character must be designed to make it successful with the audience; the art historic side - presenting two major artistic phenomenons in Russian Art History and rendering Malevich's idea of Suprematism comprehensive and showing how sometimes by chance we come across some of the most inventive and revolutionary ideas. 

The short film was screened at following film festivals: International Shortfilm Festival Oberhausen, TrickyWomen Festival Vienna, Juvinale Salzburg

Technical details: 
Animation, script, sound: Yvonne Schäfer
Total running time: 2'56 min
Year of production: 2016

Technical Information: 

Molodets!

'Owen Wingrave', an opera in two acts by Benjamin Britten
Director: Alexander von Pfeil
Musical director: Gernot Sahler
Stage & props: Yvonne Schäfer
Costumes: Michael Hofer-Lenz
premiered on January 20th, 2020, at 'Max-Schlereth-Saal', Mozarteum University Salzburg, Austria

Based on the short story 'Owen Wingrave' by Henry James, the eponymous opera by British composer Benjamin Britten tells the story of a young man, bound to serve (and eventually die) in the army by honour and tradition of his family, who refuses to follow his mapped-out path and takes up the struggle against his family's believes to stand in for peace and humanity. This hauntingly timeless piece is deeply rooted in the conscience of Britten who refused to take up arms in WWII and who strongly opposed to the Vietnam as well as the Korean War. Far from being an only-historic opera, for our interpretation of 'Owen Wingrave we set out to recreate the gloomy and oppressive atmosphere that haunts Owen throughout the plot and to get his feeling of being trapped across to the audience - consisting mainly of people who (thank God!) hadn't witnessed any war. All parts were sung by students of Mozarteum University Salzburg.

All photos: (c) Judith Buss



Owen Wingrave

In many ways, Art is considered to stand above the mundane events of everyday life. It's supposed to talk about life and death, the world, its tragedies and - most of all - to provide an answer to the ever-nagging question about the meaning of life, thank you very much! But despite all the expectations concerning Art (and moreover: despite the many ideas of what it 'should' and - even more - 'shouldn't' be), as an artist myself, I've experienced that the 'perfect moments', the potential motives for a good photo or a painting, happen, quite unceremoniously, in everday life between getting off and on a train, passing by a random stranger in the street or just sitting somewhere in a busy place for about two hours, doing perfectly nothing else than simply watch out. Because, you know, eventually THAT moment will come! 

In order to honour those many loveable, quirky and somewhat outstanding moments which show us humans as we really are - off-guard, vulnerable, absorbed into something or simply trying and failing, getting up and trying again - I created the ongoing series '(un-)seen' which features characteristic drawings in an illustrated, somewhat comic-like style of people as I've had the chance to spot them on the street (or somewhere else). All of these characters (for they really were!) had something very Special and unique to themselves, which I found inspiring. In these drawings I try to catch the essence of how I perceived someone and turn them into characters. Because after all: It's in these small and hardly noticed moments that life presents itself to us as what it really is: A masterpiece – if even a very humble one…


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Yvonne Schäfer