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Sophie Schweighart is a Düsseldorf-based visual artist whose interdisciplinary practice spans performance, video, and installation art. She is known for creating immersive environments that blur the boundaries between the physical and digital realms. Her works often explore themes of surveillance, intimacy, and the dynamics of observation and being observed.
Schweighart’s art invites viewers to confront the complexities of contemporary existence, where the real and virtual intertwine, and where personal boundaries are continuously negotiated. Her installations are not merely aesthetic experiences but are designed to provoke critical reflection on the structures of power and control that permeate everyday life. In her artistic endeavors, Schweighart employs a variety of media to create situations that are directly tangible, emphasizing the importance of physical presence in experiencing her work. By intervening in real spaces, she constructs scenarios that lead audiences through the interstices of the real and digital, revealing nested structures of power relations. This approach tests the dynamics of intimacy and publicity, challenging viewers to reconsider their roles as observers and participants in the art-making process. Through these interventions, Schweighart’s work fosters a deeper understanding of the complexities of contemporary life, encouraging a critical examination of the forces that shape our perceptions and interactions.
She is our upcoming guest in the Digital Agora by the FREIRAUM, who will present her first intervention on the online space the 5th of August, while building future itinerant interventions on the next dates:
The 15th, 29th of August and a last one the 12 of September.
Her prescense on the Digital Agora will count as an small retrospective of her work.
curated by Paula Pedraza
Shieldlessness is an artistic project by Daria Nazareko that explores practices and conceptual approaches in which bodies, intentionally or unintentionally, become shields. This project is presented as an on-site exhibition in the art space Gemeinde Köln and the Digital Agora. The project is inaugurated both physically and digitally in April, with 4 interventions throughout the month, announced online.
„We want to create different openings of content in the online exhibition, by launching an online element with new content multiple times – parallel to the same physical exhibition at Kunstraum Gemeinde Köln , Daria Nasarenko will have a series of different performances with her hip hop community, which will be showcased in the Digital Agora.
The first performance will take place on the 11th of April as the opening of the exhibition and the launch of a dance film shot by Daria Nasarenko and Moïse Daouda Fall in the Senegalese countryside. One of the online launches will include an online video dance performance between Daria and Moise bridging Senegal and German Online Community the Digital Agora.“
Wir, Lara Pilloni und Julia Monschau, sind zwei Tänzerinnen und Choreografinnen aus NRW, genauer gesagt aus Essen und Wuppertal, die ihre Leidenschaft für die Verschmelzung verschiedener Kunstformen und Hintergründe teilen. Unsere künstlerische Vision, sowie die verschiedenen Hintergründe, verbindet Elemente der Fotografie, der bildenden Kunst, der urbanen Künste und der Kampfkünste und schafft so eine große Bandbreite unterschiedlicher Ausdrucksformen. In unserer Arbeit erforschen wir die komplizierte Verbindung zwischen Geist und Körper und versuchen, die tiefgreifenden Auswirkungen mentaler Prozesse auf die Körperlichkeit zu verstehen. Durch unsere Recherche wollen wir die Komplexität der menschlichen Erfahrung hinterfragen und versuchen zu entschlüsseln, was im menschlichen Geist vorgeht und wie sich dies im körperlichen Ausdruck manifestiert. Im Mittelpunkt unserer künstlerischen Philosophie steht die Verpflichtung, pure und authentische Darbietungen zu schaffen, die von der Authentizität des Lebens selbst inspiriert sind. Unsere Kreationen sind von Ehrlichkeit geprägt und schöpfen aus persönlichen Erfahrungen und Beobachtungen der Welt um sie herum.
Unser Projekt „Eleven: Eleven“ beschäftigt sich mit dem Thema des “Limbus” und lässt sich dabei von Dantes Inferno inspirieren. In Dantes Erzählung befinden sich die Seelen in einem Zustand der Vorhölle und können weder in den Himmel noch in die Hölle gelangen. Dantes „Limbo“ wird als eine Domäne des Leidens beschrieben, die jedoch nicht von physischen Qualen geprägt ist. Hier verharren Seelen in einer ewigen Unvollständigkeit und streben nach etwas Unerreichbarem. Ähnlich untersucht das Projekt, wie sich Individuen in der heutigen Gesellschaft in einem Zustand des „Limbo“ gefangen fühlen können, gekennzeichnet durch passive Akzeptanz und fehlende Zukunftsperspektiven. Gesellschaftliche Strukturen tragen oft zu diesem Gefühl der Ungewissheit bei, indem sie Ungleichgewichte und ein Gefühl der Isolation erzeugen. Die Erkenntnis dieses Zustands führt dazu, dass Individuen die Diskrepanz zwischen ihrer aktuellen Situation und ihrer angestrebten Zukunft erkennen, einhergehend mit einer gestörten Wahrnehmung von Zeit und Raum.
The archive of tenderness* is a collaborative platform and an unstable collection of tender moments, sounds, gestures, theories and stories. An exploration into what it means to engage with the world in a tender way. The archive* asks, if a tender relation to the world can be a mode of resistance and open possibilities for transformation of social structures and ingrained habits.
The first constellation of the archives* works was called landscapes skins fabrics and combined a small artist-book with performances, drawings, recordings and sound. The second constellation soft earth, unburned took the shape of a performance with accompanying video recordings.
“HOLD ON, still not live” is a 15 min artistic film made in 2020 about the production „HOLD ON”.
„HOLD ON, still not live“ is a dance film working around the topic of sexual fantasies from the gaze and perspective of women. We worked as a team on creating an atmosphere which holds out head’s focused ideas of a picturable female sexuality produced by medias and commercials. Against an aesthetically shaped women sexuality, this short film is a mirror to an utopia idea of a not picturable sexual fantasies and allows no restrictions of forms. Here women bodies are not seen as objects, but as a subjects of sexual desires; women bodies are shown as a place of feelings, sensations and power.
DIRECTION Celine Bellut
CAMERA & EDITING Maylis Sanchez
STRAWBERRY’S VIDEO Anne Weyler
PERFORMANCE Clara-Marie Müller, Nejma Larichi and Charlotte Virgile
COSTUMES : Neomie Baumblatt
LIGHT : Maylis Sanchez and Markus Becker
MUSIC : Rameau: Les Indes galantes, Quatrième entrée „Les sauvages“: „Forêts paisibles“ (Zima, Adario, Sauvages) Siner Sabine Devieilhe
VIDEO BASED ON THE STAGE PERFORMANCE „HOLD ON“
Artistic direction and choreography: Céline Bellut
Dance and performance: Nejma Larichi, Clara-Marie Müller, Charlotte Virgile
Voice and performance: Britta Tekotte
Video and outside eye: Anne Weyler
Costume design: Noemi Baumblatt
Lighting and technology: Markus Becker
PR and production management: Caroline Skibinski
Set designer: Phillip Müller
Graphic designer: Saskia Holte
The production „HOLD ON“ is a co-production from Tanzhaus NRW Düsseldorf
Funded by: Kunststiftung NRW and Kulturamt der Stadt Köln
Partners: Tanzfaktur Cologne, ZAIK, Quartier am Hafen
Guest performance ed by: Ministerium für Kultur und Wissenschaft des Landes NRW, NRW Landesbüro Freie Darstellende Künste, Sonderprogramm Gastspielförderung 2020 des NRW Landesbüro Tanz
Media Partner: Kulturservice
Céline Bellut is a French choreographer and performer based in Cologne, Germany. In 2021 she premiered her latest work „A performance is a long quiet river“ at Tanzhaus NRW Düsseldorf. With a team of two dancers, two visual artists and a music composer, she questioned the supposedly clear distinction between activity and passivity in a production between visual art and stage performance, challenging Jean-Paul Sartre’s understanding of the agency of human bodies. This piece was nominated for the 2022 Cologne Dance Prize and programmed in Favoriten Festival 22.
She is currently working on her next production „Suddenly a sloth crosses the street“ on the topic of Disobedience, that will premiere in Tanzhaus NRW Düsseldorf in May 2023.
Die Schimmelreiterin (work in progress)
The mythical image of the centauress is taken up and gets located within a dystopian future scenery. Characterized by time-shaping, swinging tails and their sensual bodies, a game of manipulation and submission emerges. The concept of Die Schimmelreiterin and the collaboration between Luise Flügge and Katharina Maister emerged in the context of Calm Your Horses. In Calm Your Horses Katharina Maister explores choreographic working methods in which the works of visual and performing arts are equally brought together. Luise Flügge accompanied the research with her camera and photographed the rehearsal. It is important to her to see herself as part of the performance and to accompany Katharina through the process. The photographs stand for themselves both as independent works and as evidence of the process.
Calm Your Horses was funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media within the framework of the initiative NEUSTART KULTUR, aid program DIS-TANZEN by the Dachverband Tanz Deutschland.
Luise Flügge has been studying for her Diploma II at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne since 2019. She mainly works with photography and video art. Shaped by her studies at the Folkwang University of the Arts from 2014 to 2019, which she completed with a Bachelor of Arts in Photography, she feels very connected to other forms of performing arts. From 2019 on, she mainly works with self-portraits and acts as a performer in front of the camera. Since 2022 she increasingly has been working with performance artists and documented e.g. the series „Open a Door a Window“ in the Kulturbunker Mülheim photographically. In 2020, Luise was awarded the Young Art Prize of the Friends and Sponsors of the Academy of Media Arts for her self-portrait series „Inner Life“. She lives and works in Cologne. www.instagram.com/luise_fluegge
After completing her bachelor’s degree in musicology and ethnology with a focus on aesthetic research, Katharina Maister received her master’s degree (V.I.E.W.) in dance at the German Sport University in Cologne in 2017. Since then she has worked as a dancer, performer, choreographer and dance mediator. Her dance work is significantly influenced and shaped by her many years of research into fine motor skills and numerous years of further education in somatic practices. Katharina Maister’s productions are primarily characterized by a slightly morbid, emphatically sensual, finely differentiated aesthetic. They have a feminist drive, are looking for alternative stage formats and possible interfaces between visual and performing arts. Her current artistic interests are set in rural areas, community participation and sustainability issues. www.katharina-maister.com , www.instagram.com/katharina_maister
MEMORY EMPYRE is an interactive application that guides one through a fictitious game mechanics and makes the processes within it emotionally tangible. It functions like a classic adventure game, but in a poetic way makes one think about about ontological, psychological or sociological processes. MEMORY EMPYRE describes an interdisciplinary digital project in which various artists from different disciplines work together in cooperation with the University of Applied Sciences Düsseldorf and the exhibition space of „Institut für alles Mögliche“ in Cologne.
Mit dem Projektvorhaben Memory Empyre wird ein interaktives, wachsendes Theaterstück entwickelt. Durch die Integration verschiedenster Akteur*innen wird es sich über die Zeit verändern und die Form eines lebendigen Werkkörpers annehmen. Der Künstler Henning Arend, der Musiker Philipp Höning und der Architekt Moritz Riesenbeck werden impersonalfigure an der Akademie repräsentieren.
exc is an anonymous artist collective founded in 2016 in Düsseldorf, Berlin and New York. exc works in the fields of installation, artistsbooks, short film and virtual reali-ty.
In 2020, Nico Hartwig (musical performer and director) and Malte Viebahn (music producer) founded the avant-garde pop duo „Gulliver DeLarge“ in Cologne. Their intention was to make queer, electronic pop music with German lyrics, which they have missed until now and find clearly underrepresented. Last year they released their first EP „DER GROSSE KOPF“, with which they ventured into a new sound that is both narrative and ethereal and sensual. For the single „In die Zeit“ they produced a music video, which was released last October.
Brigitte Huezo is a dancer, performer and choreographer. They were born in El Salvador and currently work and live in Cologne. They are interested in deconstructing our perception of the body and its future in an increasingly technological and virtual world. Proceeding from dance, they deal with various media interfaces by combining 3D design, technology, and fashion in their pieces. Their works are often in collaborative and interdiciplinary settings.
„DEAD CODE MUST BE ALIVE!“ – Using the metaphor of an endless dystopian body of data, it explores the hyperreal visibility of cyberfeminism in hybrid spaces.
Inside Ground
One of my most profound experiences as a child growing up on a farm were moments when I had the overwhelming sensation of being one with nature, the starry skies and the forest surrounding our house. I`ve always wanted to find a way of expressing that state of wholeness visually. However, I haven`t.
This video however is an expression of the desire to melt into the material that forms the planet.
The soil of the forest is the forest itself
Andrea Isa was born in Germany in 1969, she trained as a photo lab technician and later studied art at the Western Galilee College in Israel, where she lived for 10 years. Her artwork includes video art, collage and assemblages, performance, drawings and installations. She is a member of the cooperative gallery “Produzentengalerie plan.d. She lives and works in Düsseldorf.
www.andrea-isa.de
Instagram.com/Andreaisa326
FACING THE MUSIC is a scenic research and a digital performance project to access the different faces pianists show while playing. The possibility to come very close with a camera lens lets us experience the particular expressions these faces show in concentration. All pianists are professional musicians. They played one piece by heart and one by sight-reading sheet music.
facingthemusic.de/#black-white-silent
THE LAST DAYS OF YOUTH
When I was 16, my life was dominated by self doubt, emotional chaos and the need to fit in. Where I wanted to fit in remained unresolved for me. The youth is a time that has influenced me enormously and is lived through by everyone. Is this phase one of the most incisive in terms of our self-discovery? The young generation of today is forced to deal with current crises such as war, climate change and the pandemic. How do these issues affect the everyday lives of young people? In order to explore this, I have been accompanying teenagers from Germany between the ages of 14 and 19 who come from different social backgrounds since 2019. These areas range from village to city life, from socially weaker to more affluent social groups. Where do the lifestyles differ or resemble each other? What does this say about our society? I photograph the young people outside their family environment to show how they present themselves on the stages of everyday life, how they distinguish themselves from others, but also how they show weakness and insecurity. In this exhibition space you can see an excerpt from the already created chapters.
Katharina Kemme Portrait-Documentary Photographer based in Essen/NRW
www.katharinakemme.com
Instagram @katharina.kemme
Zwischenwelten
The roles in our ‚life direction‘ has changed in recent years and have been partially recast. We need to rethink, re-motivate ourselves, reactivate connections between people and places of encounter.Social connections, spaces, meeting points need to be re-established to breathe the same air again. Where are we now? We stand in between. Between our inner and outer world; behind wanted and imposed boundaries. When we move away from others (bodies), are we moving away from ourselves? How do our bodies reflect this reality? Three figures in an old swimming pool reclaimed by nature. The attempt to save what was and to reinvent themselves in this place. Moving bodies in an in-between world, with the will to strengthen the togetherness. Between the old and the new world, they support them with all their strength so that they do not collapse and are still here, spinning joyful rituals of reconnection.
Production : Kompanie merighi | mercy, Wuppertal
Concept and Artist direction: Pascal Merighi, Thusnelda Mercy
Choreography: Pascal Merighi
A co-creation with the dancers: Narumi Saso, Kenji Shinohe, Julio Cesar Iglesias Ungo
Sound: : J-Lawton aka Julio Cesar Iglesias Ungo
Costume: Janin Lang
A production commissioned by the Cultural Office of the City of Krefeld as part of the format „MOVE! in town“, funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia as part of the „Mittelzentrenförderung Tanz und Performance“ for the cultural center Fabrik Heeder.
www.merighi-mercy.de
Instagram @Kompanie merighi | mercy
Lap Dogs – A reimagining of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s vision of Russian nihilism through fragments from his novel „Demons“ and scenes from Perestroika cinema, depicting physical and political apathy in domestic settings.
Danila Lipatov was born in Moscow in 1989. Graduated from the Moscow State Linguistic University with Diploma in Translation Studies. Since 2016 studies experimental film and performance at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. His works were shown at Artdocfest, International Video Art Festival Now&After, MIEFF, Ruhrtriennale, Videonale and Visions du Réel.
Ying Xiao genießt es, grenzüberschreitend zusammenzuarbeiten, mit neuen Medien zu experimentieren, die Beziehung zwischen Improvisation und Choreografie zu erforschen und sich auf aktuelle asiatische und europäische Partykulturen als Hintergrund für seine Arbeit zu konzentrieren. Er lebt und arbeitet er in Essen, Deutschland.
Wie orientiert sich der Mensch, wenn der Spalt zwischen Realität und Virtualität vollkommen überbrückt wird? Wie gehen Individuen mit zwischenmenschlichen Beziehungen um? Was kann Kunst an dieser Stelle bewirken? All dies führt zu einem großen Fragezeichen: Wie können sich Menschen in der postpandemischen Welt miteinander neu vernetzen? Im Projekt Wir sind keine isolierte Insel, startet der Künstler Ying Xiao verschiedene mediale Experimente um den Begriff “Beziehung” und dessen Möglichkeiten zu thematisieren.
