Simone Aughterlony & Hahn Rowe: BIOFICTION (DE/CH/US)

Photo: archive of City of Women Association

Biofiction is a rare love story between many, an unexpected clearing on a wilderness that offers a close-up on human and non-human assemblages and their affects. Situated within an inquiry into vibrant matter, a choreographic poem emerges that is both careful and utterly libidinal.

Gathering the remains of the previous two works in The Biofiction Trilogy – the hot pink flesh placeholder, wood and crafting tools, the rope that weaves, the natural and artificial entanglement of fluids and materials – Biofiction creates a new horizontal terrain that renders a plurality of agencies without ontological hierarchy. What may ordinarily be considered inadequate stimuli is now attended to for all its sensual and specific qualities, cultivating an irrational love of matter. The intimate rapport, the dance that spectrums acts of labour, pleasure, cohabitation and simply ‘being with’ refuses the normative divisions between nature and culture, male and female or any such binary.

Within the 22. International Festival of Contemporary Arts – City of Women, part of  the Biofiction Trilogy.

Performance: Simone Aughterlony, Jen Rosenblit, Hahn Rowe
Concept: Simone Aughterlony
Live Music: Hahn Rowe
Dramaturgical advice: Saša Bozic, Jorge León
Costume:  Judith Steinmann
Light Design: Florian Bach
Technical Director: Ursula Degen
Production Management: Sina Kießling
Production: Simone Aughterlony / Verein für allgemeines Wohl
Supported by: the NATIONALES PERFORMANCE NETZ (NPN) Coproduction Fund for Dance, which is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media on the basis of a decision by the German Bundestag, Stadt Zürich Kultur, Kanton Zürich Fachstelle Kultur and Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.

Simone Aughterlony is an independent artist based and supported in Zurich and Berlin, working predominantly in dance and performance contexts.  Over more than decade, Simone she has been devising and producing choreographic works in collaboration with friends, visual artists, musicians, academics and dance artists.  She has collaborated with makers such as Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods, Forced Entertainment and Jorge León, Phil Hayes amongst others. Simone has most recently been thinking about and engaging with alternative forms of kinship. Inside her process new constellations of family emerge as possibilities for reconfiguring a culture of togetherness that foster both familiar and unknown quantities. Finding affinity with temporalities that facilitate a sensitive and sensual rapport with the materiality of all bodies gives access to forms of intimacy we may not yet recognize. Her works playfully compose with representation and its saturation, seeping into and embracing the phenomenology of mis-recognition and the absurd. Simone approaches the performance genre as a world building practice where she navigates the contradiction between the domination of desire alongside the agency of all elements. Together with filmmaker Jorge León, Simone conceived, curated and directed an artistic project on the subject of domestic service that premiered at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts Brussels (2010). In 2015, Jorge and Simone joined again to devise the project «Uni * Form» which premiered at Zuercher Theater Spektakel and is currently touring in Europe. In the same year, she was awarded the Swiss dance award for outstanding female performer. Alongside this she has been touring «Supernatural» which is a collaboration with artists, Antonija Livingstone and Hahn Rowe as well as the «The Biofiction Trilogy» in it’s entirety. She is currently collaborating with Jen Rosenblit on the project, «Everything Fits In The Room», a commission from HAU Hebbel am Ufer and Haus der Kulturen der Welt.

Hahn Rowe is an internationally renowned violinist, guitarist, composer, and engineer/producer involved in a wide range of projects. As a musician, he has worked with Glenn Branca, Foetus, Swans, Ikue Mori, R.E.M., David Byrne and Moby. Behind the boards, he has engineered and produced recordings for Bill Laswell, Antony and the Johnsons and Yoko Ono among many others. Hahn’s long-standing collaboration with Brussels/Berlin based choreographer Meg Stuart has resulted in the creation of eight evening length dance works.

Jen Rosenblit is a New York City based performance maker. Recent works focus on an improvisational approach to choreographic thought, locating possibilities for being together amidst impossible spaces. Rosenblit is a recipient of a 2014 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Emerging Choreographer for Natural Dance. Rosenblit was included in MoMA PS1’s Greater New York exhibition in October 2015, and has received commissions from The Kitchen, The Invisible Dog, New York Live Arts, Danspace Project, and Issue Project Room. Rosenblit’s newest project with Geo Wyeth, Swivel Spot, premieres at The Kitchen (NYC) March 2017. Rosenblit has also collaborated with artists including Young Jean Lee, Ryan McNamara, Yvonne Meier, Sasa Asentic, Anne Imhof, Miguel Gutierrez, A.K. Burns and Kerry Downey. www.jenrosenblit.net

75 min

Ticket prices: 7 eur, 5 eur (students, seniors)
Information and reservations: info@bunker.si, +386 51 269 906