Renaissance Reflux - The Tower
Performance, with Paulina Nolte, 2022, 35 min.
Renaissance Reflux is a performative collaboration between the artists Rosanna Graf and Paulina Nolte.
In Renaissance Reflux – The Tower two women find themselves undergoing states of radical transformation in which the act of “Weirding” becomes a survival strategy. They are popping up in different realities as different characters with contrasting sensibilities and confronted with strange outcomes, while performing an alchemical experiment. Objects made of metal continue to transform: They are worn as emblems of power, function as hands on a clock, are placed in the earth like plants and finally melted down and fused with nature to form a new hybrid object. Distilling ideas of human nature and the perils of Neoliberalism, Renaissance Reflux is a playful and observant take on an anti-human, bureaucratic and digitized future, whilst yearning towards a more interconnected, social and earthly in-between state; where roots are tugged on and the mycelium is tickled awake.
Divided into four acts (I: The Office, II: The Tower, III: Into the Garden and IV: Lady Mystic) the performance uses a pseudo film-script oscillating between self written, surrealist storytelling, scientific jargon and found text fragments. A supposed Re-Renaissance is taking place, in which the cult of the individual – taken to its extreme – threatens to falter. Beliefs and elements of society that were suppressed during the first Renaissance are now re-emerging in new guises. Ghosts of the old such as rationality, linearity and individualism are challenged by an openness to irrationality, queerness, spirituality, cyclical concepts, and a new sense of collectivity.
Text and music by Rosanna Graf & Paulina Nolte
With quotations by Derek Jarman (Modern Nature), Clarice Lispector (Agua Viva), Stephanie Lahar (Roots: Rejoining Natural and Social History) and Ellen Lupton (Mechanical Brides).
Renaissance Reflux, performance, 2022, Les Gardiennes, curated by Lisa Klosterkötter and Alicia Reymond, Kunstmuseum Bochum, 2022, documentation photos (photos: Lisa Klosterkötter and Daniel Sadrowski)
Renaissance Reflux, performance, 2022, Renaissance Reflux, curated by Rachel Monosov and Jorgina Stamogianni, Centrum, Berlin, 2022, documentation photos (photos: Goscha Steinhauer and Rosanna Graf)
Renaissance Reflux - The Tower
Performance, with Paulina Nolte, 2022, 35 min.
Renaissance Reflux is a performative collaboration between the artists Rosanna Graf and Paulina Nolte.
In Renaissance Reflux – The Tower two women find themselves undergoing states of radical transformation in which the act of “Weirding” becomes a survival strategy. They are popping up in different realities as different characters with contrasting sensibilities and confronted with strange outcomes, while performing an alchemical experiment. Objects made of metal continue to transform: They are worn as emblems of power, function as hands on a clock, are placed in the earth like plants and finally melted down and fused with nature to form a new hybrid object. Distilling ideas of human nature and the perils of Neoliberalism, Renaissance Reflux is a playful and observant take on an anti-human, bureaucratic and digitized future, whilst yearning towards a more interconnected, social and earthly in-between state; where roots are tugged on and the mycelium is tickled awake.
Divided into four acts (I: The Office, II: The Tower, III: Into the Garden and IV: Lady Mystic) the performance uses a pseudo film-script oscillating between self written, surrealist storytelling, scientific jargon and found text fragments. A supposed Re-Renaissance is taking place, in which the cult of the individual – taken to its extreme – threatens to falter. Beliefs and elements of society that were suppressed during the first Renaissance are now re-emerging in new guises. Ghosts of the old such as rationality, linearity and individualism are challenged by an openness to irrationality, queerness, spirituality, cyclical concepts, and a new sense of collectivity.
Text and music by Rosanna Graf & Paulina Nolte
With quotations by Derek Jarman (Modern Nature), Clarice Lispector (Agua Viva), Stephanie Lahar (Roots: Rejoining Natural and Social History) and Ellen Lupton (Mechanical Brides).
Renaissance Reflux, performance, 2022, Les Gardiennes, Kunstmuseum Bochum, 2022, documentation potos (photos: Lisa Klosterkötter and Daniel Sadrowski)
Renaissance Reflux, performance, 2022, Renaissance Reflux, Centrum, Berlin, 2022, documentation photos (photos: Goscha Steinhauer and Rosanna Graf)