Listen to the Broadcast HERE

What’s your relation to the ocean?
Is there an element of the ocean that is particularly relevant to you?

The Oceanographies Institute(TOI) focuses on the relation between two bodies of water: the human body and the world ocean. The institute studies the relations of hands to mud, ears to the breaking of waves, feet to the feeling of sinking, rather than the ocean “in itself”, as if devoid of human presence. TOI collects and reenacts people’s personal stories about their encounters with the ocean. Where scientific researchers use microscopes and petri dishes, TOI uses microphones and the sound of the voice, or the sound of objects –a pencil, as it draws the sign of infinity, for example– as a means to study human-ocean kinships.

The format of the radio is new and exciting to TOI. In this framework, the institute explores the threshold between speech, sound and song with its polyphonic protocols. With its Ocean Demonstrations, it is summoning different ocean elements – such as “immensity” or “horizon”- by letting ocean soundscapes emerge from the interactions between humans and objects.

TOI Artistic Coordination: Marialena Marouda
TOI Artistic Collaborators: Elpida Orfanidou, Charlie Usher
Broadcast Editing: Charlie Usher
Vocal Training: Johanna Peine
Outside eye & ear: Marcus Bergner

Frozen Sea (Parole Gelees) written and performed by Marcus Bergner. Co-sound editor: Myriam Van Imschoot

Production management: arp vzw. and HIROS vzw.
Coproduction: Kaap (2020-21), WAB 2020, C-takt (2020)

The broadcast was realized with the support of Q-O2, Brussels and financed by an Activiteiten Premie of the Flemish Government.
In 2020-21, TOI is supported by a development grant by the Flemish Government.

The fish within

Oceanographies Workshop #1

How much of jellyfish, fish or amphibian is still present in the human body and voice? In this workshop we try to get to the bottom of this question by exploring the movements of early phylo - and ontogenesis in connection with the sound of our voice. According to the phoniatrist J.Abitbol, the human larynx developed from the gills of fish. Likewise, our ears were already present in fish. So what distinguishes marine mammals like whales from other fish? Why can they sing ?

In a journey through the evolution of the voice, we will encounter these phenomena and questions in a practical way and at the same time unfold the potential of the voice.

No prior knowledge requested.

Bio

Johanna Peine is a teacher of the Alexander Technique, a certified opera singer and a state-certified singing teacher with many years of stage and teaching experience. She teaches at the University of the Arts and the Hanns Eisler University in Berlin.

http://www.q-o2.be/en/event/oceanographies-workshop-1-with-johanna-peine/

c-takt.be/2020/09/01/c-takt5-dag-3-19-september-lucas-de-man-ugo-dehaes-marialena-marouda-marie-bink-van-vollenhoven/

Who knows what an ocean is?

What is your relation to the ocean?

Is there an element of the ocean that is particularly relevant to you?

The Oceanographies Institute, initiated by Marialena Marouda in 2018, functions as a collaborative platform for artistic practices that study human-ocean kinships. Its focus is, essentially, the relation between two bodies of water: the human body and the world ocean. TOI gives particular attention to affectual and sensual encounters between the two bodies. The institute therefore studies the relations of hands to mud, ears to the breaking the waves, feet to the feeling of sinking, rather than the ocean “in itself”, as if devoid of the human presence. It collects, analyzes and reenacts people's personal stories about their encounters with the ocean. Performance, sound art, and storytelling are primarily the tools it uses for this study.

Where scientific researchers use microscopes and petri dishes, TOI uses microphones and the sound of the voice, or the sound of objects –a beanbag, as hands sink into it, for example– as a means to study human experiences of the ocean. Currrently, the research evolves around the practice of polyphonic reading and storytelling. During public performances of TOI fragments of language(s) from a multiplicity of voices –the actual voices of the performers and the virtual voices of the initial interlocutors–, sounds of objects, textures and sensations conspire to summon the ocean, making it appear as if by magic, by recreating the circumstances in which it was encountered.

The choice to work as an Oceanographies Institute came from a need to reclaim the validity of certain knowledges of the ocean, the ones that are inherent to encountering it, the ones that perhaps are considered too fragile and therefore are unaccounted for. A main reason for gathering these situated knowledges is their strong political and social connotations. The question of one’s relation to the ocean reveals a complex network of interrelated issues: from the study of the lives of small shrimp to seasickness to the gentrification of Ostende’s Vismijn district. For the Oceanographies Institute, each singular relation to the ocean manifests that the personal is political.

By and with The Oceanographies Institute

Performance: Marialena Marouda, Elpida Orfanidou and Charlie Usher

Dramaturgy: Nassia Fourtouni

Coproducers: nadine vzw., C-Takt and Kaap

Further Residencies in: Q-02, WorkspaceBrussels and BUDA Kortrijk

For the year 2019-2020 TOI was supported with a trajectory subsidy of the VGC.

https://www.budakortrijk.be/nl/residenties/marialena-marouda-gr-the-oceanographies-institute

During the residency at Q-O2, Marialena Marouda will collaborate with composer Charlie Usher on the polyphonic performance of the Ocean Conversation scripts and scores. On the one hand, they will work on a compositional method for performing those conversations. Some of their questions are: When and how can speech transform into music and song? How can one play with this threshold? How can the musical relation between two voices be explored? And how can this constellation summon another -third- voice, namely, the one of the ocean, to which the speech refers? A rewriting of the conversations scripts in order to make their musicality more apparent is the second focus point of the residency. In this sense, the scripts of the Ocean Conversations will be transformed into musical scores for two voices.

http://www.q-o2.be/en/event/marialena-marouda-charlie-usher/

Duet #4: sonâmesonhameçon

performed by Émilia Giudicelli & a rod for fly fishing

In the fourth duet of the series, the performer Émilia Giudicelli is collaborating with a rod for fly fishing, which she has made herself. First as a piece of “raw” material and then as a polished bamboo rod carved in the right length, the two performers have accompanied each other in different stages of their development.

To fly fish is to deeply listen to the different ecosystems that the angler is in contact with and to tune into them. Catching a fish, is not an end in itself, but rather the confirmation of a successful “reading” of the water, whose surface lets appear the movements of the wind, whose transparency might render discernible the vegetation of the bottom. Following the complexity of the situation, the fly rod is not a single object but rather a family of objects and of bodies. It can function as an extension of the human body but also as a lever made up of bamboo and line, in order to cast a tiny knot of a string fly onto the surface of the water. Flies are studies of the insects of the specific wet biotope in all the different stages of development. They “play” the fish and queer the fly angler community, still mainly male-gendered, with their colorful garments of paillettes and feathers. In the end the question remains: who catches whom?

Concept: Fabrice Mazliah
Choreography: Fabrice Mazliah in collaboration with Emilia Guidicelli and Marialena Marouda
Performance: Emilia Guidicelli and a fly-fishing rod
Dramaturgy: Marialena Marouda
Production management: Johanna Milz
Technical Direction: Matthias Rieker

http://workofact.net/fabrice_mazliah_works_manufactured.html

See work description on festival website here

See description on festival website here

See critique of the festival here

Duet #3: The Artisan is Present

performed by Elpida Orfanidou & Pontian lyra

In the third duet of the series, the musician and dancer Elpida Orfanidou is collaborating with a Pontian lyra. This lyra, also called a kemenche, is a traditional musical instrument from Pontos, a region in modern day Turkey adjacent to the Black Sea. The creation process of this duet unfolds simultaneously with the fabrication of the lyra itself: Elpida and her performance partner enter in a dance of manufacturing and of being manufactured in the months preceding the premiere of this creation. What is shared in this duet, is this processes of the craftswoman learning how to touch and be touched, how to shape and be shaped, how to play and be played by the instrument.

After all, what is an instrument exactly , what is involved in making it and in playing it? Entering in relation with its material also implies a listening to its songs, a dancing of the dances that it summons when the bow and the strings come in contact with each other, from time to time.

Concept: Fabrice Mazliah
Choreography: Fabrice Mazliah in collaboration with Elpida Orfanidou and Marialena Marouda
Performance: Elpida Orfanidou and a pontiac lyra
Dramaturgy: Marialena Marouda
Production Management: Johanna Milz

Technical Direction: Matthias Rieker

Who knows what an ocean is? Or, for that matter, what counts as valid knowledge of ocean(s)? Apart from more or less objective –and objectifying– definitions, isn’t an ocean a thing that each person would define in a different way? As different human bodies encounter this immense body of water differently and singularly?

Oceanographies is a research project that seeks to access and to collect stories and performances on the relation between the human body and the vast body of water the ocean is. The work focuses on the intertwinement of hands to mud, ears to the breaking of the waves, feet to the feeling of sinking, rather than on the ocean “in itself”, devoid of human presence.

During the performance, the collected ocean conversations and demonstrations are shared with a small public. After 3 presentations of the research project on land, water finally carries the material of the research -and lets it drift.

Performance: Justine Maxelon & Marialena Marouda

Buratinas Captains: Loes Jacobs, An Goovaerts

Following a 3 week residency at the workspace wpZimmer in Antwerp, Oceanographies will be presented as part of Zimmer's public presentation platform, the Open House.

Oceanographies is an exploration of the wor(l)d ocean by means of performance. The ocean is understood here as a vast, liquid space, where the “ground” is not soil but water, and in which the (human) body becomes potentially sinkable. Performance is, in turn, understood as the investigation into how one affects this space and is affected by it. What does an encounter with the ocean consist of? 

The research project started within the framework of the artistic research program apass (advanced performance and scenographies studies). Finishing the program, it will be presented together with works of Luisa Filitz, Eunkyung Jeong,  Ekaterina Kaplunova, Shervin Kianersi andEsther Rodriguez-Barbero.

More info following soon.

Oceanographies is an exploration of the wor(l)d ocean by means of performance. The ocean is understood here as a vast, liquid space, where the “ground” is not soil but water, and in which the (human) body becomes potentially sinkable. Performance is, in turn, understood as the investigation into how one affects this space and is affected by it. What does an encounter with the ocean consist of? 

At this year's edition of the Wandering Arts Biennale (WAB), organized and curated by Nadine, Oceanographies will have its first public presentation yet!

The archive of (un)familiar things is a performative archive focusing on subjective experiences of inhabiting a contemporary city that are so common that they are often overlooked. It proposes an ecology of listening to the city in which we live, and listening to the activity of urban living. What does this activity entail, how are bonds formed with people, animals, objects, spaces and sounds that we encounter everyday, often without taking notice of them? And how could the storytelling of these subtle bonds influence dominant political and historical narratives? The archive of (un)familiar things proposes the activity of inhabiting -and the interrelations and multidimensionality that this activity implies- as a form of knowledge. This nomadic, participatory archive that grows with every city that we visit, aims at bringing to the foreground, practices of relating to the city space and to each other.

In Terni, the archive of (un)familiar things is inhabiting the International Performing Arts Festival. For the opening of the festival, we propose to turn CAOS, the festival’s main venue, into an archive of urban sounds. We invite participants to contribute a sound of Terni that they feel particularly attached to, to the archive of (un)familiar things. In a two-day workshop, we will collect those sounds and perform them, forming a choir of urban sounds. 

Many of our experiences of life in the city are so commonplace that they are not consciously perceived. Yet it is precisely these “minor” experiences that define our inhabiting the city. The archive of (un)familiar things collects such stories of inhabiting and passes them on to the visitors. Three performers exercise themselves in a self-invented practice of storytelling, going beyong a merely funtional way of speaking. In their Poetry Exercises, which take place in the space between the storytellers and the listeners, the nomadic archive enters into a dialogue with the official collection of the Frankfurt Institute for City History.

The vsitors are invited to take their time to move through the archive of (un)familiar things and to expand it through their own experiences.

Concept, idea: Marialena Marouda | Performance & choreography: Katja Cheraneva, Marialena Marouda, Malte Scholz | Installation: Eleni Mouzourou | Dramaturgy & Production: Maja Zimmermann | Sound: Ingo Müller, Harry Schulz I Light: Camilla Vetters
 
Funded by the Cultural Office Frankfurt am Main and the Hessian Ministry for Science and Art. Supported by the Institute of City History Frankfurt am Main, wpZimmer Antwerp, BUDA Kunstencentrum Kortrijk and ID_Frankfurt.

Watch the trailer here

How is it possible to relate to each other and to the world surrounding us by means of our language and by listening?
The poetry exercises focus on the forms of oral language for which there is no time in our everyday working life. Three performers face the difficult task of formulating their thoughts and experiences on stage, thereby revealing their vulnerability. By means of language, they examine their environment on the basis of its capacity to be perceived. In collaboration with a sound designer, they pursue the facets of language that go beyond the efficient transmission of information by developing playful language exercises and games.
They focus on language’s repetitions, melodies, rhythms, and the grain of the voice...

Idea & Concept: Marialena Marouda
Choreography & Performance: Caroline Creutzburg, Marialena Marouda, Malte Scholz
Sound Design: Steffen Martin
Dramaturgy: Leonie Otto
Production management assistance: Eleanna Kerasidou
Voice Coaching: Ursula Mühlberger, Johanna Peine
Graphic Design: v-a

Thank you: Fabrice Mazliah, Eleni Mouzourou, Michael Reiche, Harry Schulz, Joey Weisenberg

A coproduction of Workpace Brussels.
Supported by the Artist-in-Residence-Program of Tanzlabor 21/ Tanzbasis Frankfurt_Rhein_Main, wp Zimmer Antwerpen, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt Lab, Uferstudios Berlin, and the cities Frankfurt am Main and Giessen.

In the framework of the exhibition: "Mehr oder Weniger ist Mehr", by Samuel Moncharmont and Sébastien Basdevant.

Workshop on 10.05.14 @ 14:00

In the Framework of "Garden State" by MAMAZA and the exhibition "Changing Places":

CHANGING PLACES / ESPACIOS REVELADOS exchanges the interior of the theatre for the wide scenery of the capital. Abandoned residential and commercial buildings, imposing empty banks, a railroad bridge over the Riachuelo, and terraces high above the city, as well as walls and facades in public places are converted into a stage by outstanding theater and performance artists.

When the doors of long vacant buildings are opened in March 2014 and their rooms fill with people, a location transformation will take place in many respects: The transformation aims to mobilize people in the city to explore new places in two districts, Microcentro and La Boca, which will be connected by shuttle buses, and to experience how these places and their architecture have changed through artistic ideas. In the process, people’s perspectives of urban environments also change and another map of the city can be drawn.

Artists have been asked to respond to specific placesand urban situations with their own proposals. In their works, they assimilate the visible and invisible traces a city leaves behind in the course of its development. They shift time and space, and evoke the imagination, doubt, and hope found in the people and the city in which their work is embedded. They also occupy places with words and send messages into the public space, which they bring into play as a central element of community identification.

http://www.siemens-stiftung.org/en/projects/changing-places-espacios-revelados/events/

A warm invitation to the upcoming performance of Walking in the City: on the Poetics of Space, this coming Saturday the 11th of January, from 15:00-18:00 in the Mousonturm in Frankfurt.

The participative performance takes place in the framework of the choreographic Garden State of MAMAZA. For more info on Garden State, its actions and performances please visit: www.mousonturm.de

It would be wonderful to see you and walk with you soon in Frankfurt.

Warm regards and best wishes for the New Year!

The workshop consists of walking through Athens according to specific guidelines and with a stack of post its in hand - to be used as a notebook. In a nutshell, "Walking in the City" involves walking through Athens and noting those perceptions that are so familiar that they usually go unnoticed: passing by an open window and listening to the TV coming from inside, stepping on a paving slab that is broken or unstable or slippery from the rain and trying to balance, passing by a metal gate and stroking it with your hand, passing by a store window and using it as a mirror. The task is to focus on the details of walking and specifically on those that make Athens seem most familiar – to realize them and write them down on a post-it. After the walk, the notebook is disassembled and the post-its are used to create the ever-growing “Map of Walking Poetics”. This map is at once a trace of an ephemeral action and an archive of bodily perceptions.

Timeline for both days:
  17:00-18:00: Introduction and Warm Up
  18:00-19:00: Walking in the City
  19:00-19:30: Discussion
  19:30-21:00: Construction of the Map of Walking Poetics


Link to the Project Description on the Athens Biennale Website

BER-AMS-BXL: AN INVESTIGATIVE CONFERENCE ON THE CONDITIONS AND RESPONSIBILITIES FOR FLOURISHING ARTISTIC BIOTOPES IN THE CITY
THURSDAY 5, FRIDAY 6 AND SATURDAY 7 SEPTEMBER 2013 IN AMSTERDAM AT HET VEEM THEATER AND DE BRAKKE GROND

"Reflecting on the development of performing arts in Amsterdam, we can trace a history back to the impact that this city has had on international, groundbreaking innovations: from the radical Actie Tomaat (Tomato Campaign) in the 1960s to the avant-garde theatre produced by the Mickery theatre in the 70s and 80s; and in the fruitful cooperation between European players that gave rise to new networks, artistic alliances and experimental educational programmes such as Amsterdam’s Mime school, SNDO, Masters of Choreography and DasArts.
[...] Out of curiosity about the various urban infrastructures and artistic environments in Amsterdam, Brussels and Berlin we will gather to think together and learn from each other about current structures, urgent concerns and effective strategies to understand, problematize and influence the environment for healthy, inspiring and buzzing artistic biotopes in the city – particularly in relation to the small-scale investigative contemporary performing arts scene.
[...] CRITICAL PRACTICE Het Veem Theater will host four international emerging critics, theoreticians and cultural analysts as part of the conference. These events are supported by the Life Long Burning (LLB) network and the EU Culture Programme, and fall under the Critical Practice training program. The participants have been invited to engage with, reflect on and write about this three-day conference. The theoretician Konstantina Georgelou will guide them, and their contributions will be published online and offline.
Participants: Angelina Georgieva (BG/MA), Marialena Marouda (GR/DE) and Tom Engels (BE)."

Text quoted from the press release of the conference (see attachment)
 

On the 24th of August 2013 we have the opportunity to show "Walking Exercises" again in Berlin! The show takes place in the context of the Walking Symposium "Zusammen Kommen. Zusammen Gehen", curated by Martin Nachbar:

"Auch wenn nicht alle Menschen gehen, um sich fortzubewegen, ist Gehen eine der Grundgrößen menschlichen Daseins. Der dauerfhafte, aufrechte Gang kann sogar als Definitionsmerkmal dienen, will man den Menschen von anderen Spezies unterscheiden. Die Praxis des Gehens rückt immer wieder in den Fokus anthropologischer und kulturwissenschaftlerischer Forschungen. Aber auch in den Künsten ist Gehen spätestens seit den 60er Jahren ein wichtiger Gegenstand der Untersuchungen.

Das Symposium lädt Künstler und Wissenschaftler ein, ihr Wissen über und durch das Gehen zu teilen. Der Kulturwissenschaftler Ralph Fischer referiert über das Gehen in seinen anthropoligischen und performance-wissenschaftlichen  Dimensionen, Katja Münker lädt Teilnehmer zu einem ihrer Feldenkrais-Walks ein und Marialena Marouda zeigt drei Studien über das Gehen, auf der Bühne. Darüberhinaus soll in Diskussionen Gehen als Alltags- und künstlerische Praxis ausgelotet werden. Weitere Referenten sind geplant."

Lecture Performance Exercise
by Marialena Marouda. In collaboration with Enad Marouf

Cicero’s Art of Memory is an exercise in rhetoric. The good orator follows the red thread of his argument by mentally walking through a familiar space. In this space he sees his speech all around him – all he has to do now is to speak it to the audience. In “Lecture Performance Exercise” I practice in making my speech become a familiar space and vice versa.

The Entropic Institute Berlin is an exhibition space and performance platform where mythology entagles with choreography. We invite you to a constantly updated programme structured by exhibitions, lectures, choreographic concerts, films and hands-on experiences. Each day the Entropic nstitute and its collection of choreographies and topics are rewritten, retold and reinvented by the musicians, composers, philosophers, dancers and performers of the Entropic Institute as well as its visitors. Each day you are invited to choose your own path through the Institute and its displays. The Institute will open at 19:00 hours and close at 24:00 hours. You are free to spend as much time as you want.

Instituted by: Kattrin Deufert, Alain Franco, Miriam Jakob, Ana Laura Lozza, Marialena Marouda, Thomas Plischke, Marcus Steinweg, Elke van Campenhout, Marysia Zimpel. 

See: www.entropischesinstitut.net

„Walking Exercises“ handelt vom Gehen als das verbindende Element zwischen einem einzelnen Performer und dem Bühnenraum, der ihn umgibt. In der ersten Gehübung wird mit einem Metronom der Rhythmus des Gangs geübt. Ziel ist es für Malte Scholz, mit seinen Schritten dem unveränderlichen Takt eines Metronoms zu folgen. Die Gänge, die er dabei erfindet, resultieren aus motorischen Veränderungen seines Körpers, wie z.B. Gewichtsverlagerung, Richtungswechsel und Schrittgröße. Dabei übernimmt der Takt des Metronoms die Struktur einer Stadt, die mit ihren Gassen und Straßen den Gang lenkt, und den Fußgänger auffördert mit ihr zu spielen.

Konzept/ Choreographie: Marialena Marouda
Performance: Malte Scholz

"Physical dramaturgy seeks to explore and exhaust the realm of meaning triggered by moving bodies, as well as the various materials and ideas that populate a creation process. In order to facilitate artistic research within a creative process, it insists on analyzing one’s own practice and stimulating an awareness of the underpinnings and contexts of one’s work.
Physical dramaturgy embraces an ethics of collaboration and regards practice and theory, research and making, movement and reflection as imbricated activities: as an oscillating in-between space it may become a discursive site, a place that enables a critical understanding of time, space, perception, and the production of meaning.
Physical dramaturgy entails a set of methods and strategies, such as: creating containers of materials; post-it sessions; walking around a conceptual scene; writing, mapping and drawing exercises; putting discourse to a literal and physical test; exhaustive reading of bodies wrapped in choreography; shifting awareness toward intention, physical precision, conceptual clarity or urgency; inquiring into the specificity of different formats."

Workshop by Martin Nachbar and Jeroen Peeters

In „Walking Exercises” üben drei Performer nacheinander unter- schiedliche Aspekte des Gehens: Rhythmus, Orientierung, Erinnerung. Mit Metronom, Pfeilen & Blindenbrille sowie Sprache werden drei Versuche unternommen, nicht die Perfek-
tion des Gangs zu zeigen, sondern mit Hilfe von Bezugspunkten etwas sichtbar zu machen, das über das Gehen selbst hinausreicht. Dabei tritt jeder Performer unausweichlich in die Fußabdrücke der anderen und lädt das Publikum ein, seine Gehver- suche zu beobachten.

Konzept/Regie: Marialena Marouda; Dramaturgie: Verena Billinger; Licht/Ton: Katharina Runte; Performance: Malte Scholz, Caroline Creutzburg, Enad Marouf.
Mit herzlichem Dank an Sylvia Lutz und Line Spellenberg.
Diplom-Inszenierung Angewandte Theaterwissenschaft Gießen.

Gefördert von der Hessischen Theaterakademie, der Gießener Hochschulgesellschaft und dem Kulturamt Gießen. Mouson- Koproduktion.