NERVOUS SYSTEM 2020
2019
Choreography : Guillaume Marie,
Conception, Scenography, Video artwork : Marcel Weber (MFO),
Original score : Gediminas Žygus (J.G. Biberkopf)
Crédit photo : © Helge Mudt, Grégoire GITTON, MediaBooker, Geso, DR
Nervous System 2020 is an installation-performance comprised of dance, spatial sound and holographic imagery. It is created and directed by visual artist Marcel Weber / MFO (DE), choreographed by Guillaume Marie (FR) and features music written by J.G. Biberkopf (LT). The piece plunges into the throes of the information age. An immaterial omnipresence, net and server based, enchants the modern world, daily life became unthinkable without constant technological company.
The piece invites the spectators to meander the currents of this new world. In a space without clear orientation marks they’ll find a Youtuber, who teaches emotional studies to an audience of bots/algorithm/AI, an Otaku, blinded and obsessed by the beautiful dazzle of technological relics, and a runner who seeks the best version of herself in telemetric spirituality. Each of these characters reside in one of three transparent chambers, which are spread out in the wider audience space, de-centralized and separated from each other. Filled with haze, projections form luminous shapes within the chambers, surrounding the performers, who thus becomes inter-actors inside holographic displays. The music, despite its apparent autonomy, connects chambers and space, performers and audience. It takes notions from many places, mutates and blends them, constantly changing it’s shape, appearance and affect, while it’s ingredients align and build one experience.
Elements of Gaming Culture, Dekotora and K-pop, of Photoshopping, Fashion and Trigonometry are hidden in the piece like Easter eggs, while notions of Narcissism and Neurosis, of Over-Stimulation and Ecstasies, of Ritual and Submission are present all along. The performers show gestures and postures of contemporary lifestyle in abstract interpretation, isolated, energetic, highly specialized: nervous cells of an invisible, all-encompassing network.
With our physical and virtual realities increasingly intertwined, Nervous System 2020 is a reflection about this complex relationship and the transformative processes to modern data-driven society.
NERVOUS SYSTEM 2020
2019
Choreography : Guillaume Marie,
Conception, Scenography, Video artwork : Marcel Weber (MFO),
Original score : Gediminas Žygus (J.G. Biberkopf)
CAST
Performance Installation In Situ
Duration: 30’
Conception, Scenography, Video artwork : Marcel Weber (MFO)
Choreography : Guillaume Marie
Original score : Gediminas Žygus (J.G. Biberkopf)
Created in collaboration and performed by:
Angèle Micaux, Carlès Romero Vidal & Maria Stamenkovic-Herranz
Premiere : Berlin Atonal on August 28, 29, 30, 31 and September 1st 2019
CAST
Performance Installation In Situ
Duration: 30’
Conception, Scenography, Video artwork : Marcel Weber (MFO)
Choreography : Guillaume Marie
Original score : Gediminas Žygus (J.G. Biberkopf)
Created in collaboration and performed by:
Angèle Micaux, Carlès Romero Vidal & Maria Stamenkovic-Herranz
Premiere : Berlin Atonal on August 28, 29, 30, 31 and September 1st 2019
PRODUCTION
Premiere: Berlin Atonal on August 28, 29, 30, 31 and September 1st 2019
Production – Management:
Outer Agency represented by Harry Glass +49 174 8585 141 – harry@berlin-atonal.com
Touring:
Tristan Barani +33 (0)6 16 75 12 94 – tbarani@gmail.com
Technical director:
Constantin Schägg +49 157 302 051 54 – c.schaegg@gmx.de
Production: Berlin Atonal
PRODUCTION
Premiere: Berlin Atonal on August 28, 29, 30, 31 and September 1st 2019
Production – Management:
Outer Agency represented by Harry Glass +49 174 8585 141 – harry@berlin-atonal.com
Touring:
Tristan Barani +33 (0)6 16 75 12 94 – tbarani@gmail.com
Technical director:
Constantin Schägg +49 157 302 051 54 – c.schaegg@gmx.de
Production: Berlin Atonal
Crédit photo : © Helge Mudt, Grégoire GITTON, MediaBooker, Geso, DR
Press Release
(…) On the first floor of the gigantic building on the banks of the Spree, the three giant plasticized aquariums – designed by the scenographer and artistic director in charge of the festival’s spatialization Marcel Weber to serve as a stage for the theatricalized sequences of actors in the Nervous System 2020 performance (…) easily translate this choice of a more global immersion in the architecture of the venue, with fewer installations and strong artistic choices.
Laurent Catala, Trax Magazine, 09-2019
Close to each other three lightboxes are spread across Kraftwerk Berlin’s raw, concrete floor. Spectators take their place, and ‘Nervous System 2020’, the genre-defying project created and directed by Marcel Weber (MFO), be- gins. Choreographed by Guillaume Marie, three performers, one behind each screen, start to move to sounds by J.G. Biberkopf. The title, a nod to the near future as well as the body’s electrical wiring, finds expression in the performers’ robotic movements. One delivers a particularly unsettling display of abrupt motions of combat. Rebelling against an invisible force, her movements remain somehow restrained, controlled and limited.
When Berlin Atonal, a festival for experimental sonic and visual art, returned to Kraftwerk last week for its 2019 edition, it presented a programme of pulsating tracks and flickering images onto the building’s landmark grid of cold, concrete pillars. Located on Köpenicke Straße next to the Spree, the industrial facility used to supply East Berlin with heat until the fall of the Wall. Today it is home to Tresor, the city’s symbol of its post-unification club scene; Tresor’s new floor, Globus; and OHM, which occupies the building’s former battery room. Looking at the contemporary visual art that was brought into the club space, the focus was on the affectual and on that which came to most significant effect not in white cubes but swallowed by darkness. The more intriguing aspect, however, was in how the pieces employ an element of distortion. Whether through twisted mirrors, translucent dividers, speed or computational editing, they all managed to distort our perception, casting blurry visions of tech-saturated worlds.
Johanna Hardt, Berlin Art Link, 06-09-2019
(…) In addition to concerts and DJ sets at the interface of noise music and club culture, art objects, installations and films are also presented. Nervous System 2020, a spectacular installation of dance images, sounds and holographs by Guillaume Marie, Marcel Weber and J. G. Biberkopf, features three figures in large glass cases whose movements are less dance than abstract movement analysis. The other highlight will be Cyprien Gaillard’s live performance on Saturday, featuring an adaptation of his “Ocean II Ocean” contribution to this year’s Venice Biennale.
Volker Like, Der Tagesspiegel, 29-08-2019
They look like windows onto an early 1980s cyberpunk dream: three vitrines, full of fog and pulsing washes of juicy, rainbow coloured light. Each contains a dancer making considered minimal movements in response to their changing environment: shymmying though slats of light like a jewel thief across a filed of lasers, or just jogging on a treadmill though a sluice of gathering fog.(…)This performance pens each night of Atonal, and it’s both a mesmerizing introduction to the festival and a metaphor for what it’s like to attend.
The Wire, n.429, November 2019
The gigantic former power plant doors will open to host and witness a myriad of advanced proposals from the contemporary sound and visual art scene. Sometimes sound goes hand in hand with visuals or vice versa, lights, visual effects, smoke and noise will multiply its impact in the immensity of the venue, immersed in a grey cloud, and where time seems to dissolve, at least during these five days. The festival open on Wednesday at Stage Null with the installation-performance Nervous System 2020, a work that merge dance, sound, and holographic artworks. Choreographed by Guillaume Marie with music by J. G. Biberkopf and visuals by Marcel Wber/MFO, the genre-defying project is created and directed by Marcel Weber. The piece shows Angèle Micaux, Carlès Romero Vidal & Maria Stamenkovic-Herranz performing minimalist motion, mundane gestures, and postures of contemporary lifestyle, in an abstract interpretation. The performance will be on view every afternoon after the screenings program which also happen in the ground floor stage.
Maria Munoz, Chromart, 09-2019