June 22, 2013
The Fieldshift Further team of Alexx Shilling (choreographer), and Arthur Kell (composer) and I have arrived at Ebenböckhaus in Germany for an intensive fieldwork artist residency. Just in time, the translations of my texts in German by poet Uljana Wolf, and voice compositions in German by composer Rozalie Hirs.
We’re delighted to be here! And as the snapshots show, this beautiful old building and its gardens are evocative and quite marvelous to exist within.
Ebenbockhaus is a former candle factory in Munich, a few building aways from the Gestapo and SS headquarters and torture sites at the old Rathaus. With the formal garden and tall casement windows, surrounded by birdsong and green, we are in our own space within a space within a space. Last night, I dreamt that our building was attached to a fishing line, and we were being pulled by a thread through all of Munich. And that’s what it feels like, our house within a city within a world, each of them moving at different rates of speed….
We’ll be working on several projects in the Mercy Killing Aktion body of work, a project of Creative Capital. In particular, we’ll focus on Volkerkunde/Anthropology, Charité, Klitzekleine Urne/Tiny Urn, Sonderbauten/The Special Block, and a few new pieces that we’ll develop while we’re here. It’s feeling like home with the upright bass, the movement studio taking shape upstairs, and a vast assortment of cameras and typewriters skittering around…
Along the way we’ll be holding open studios and open practice to exchange work and ideas with folks in Munich, and also three performances of works-in-progress and artist talks (July 5 and 6 at Ebenböckhaus, and July 7 at Jüdisches Museum München).
Field reports coming soon, but here are a few photographs of our workspace and our candle factory.