Tearoom Relay – Pit Stop

An afternoon of performances presented by students of Frankfurt’s Städelschule.

Pit Stop is the fourth iteration of a series of gatherings that bring together a group of artists who are current or past students of the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. They come together with a collective curiosity in exploring performative formats as means to create friction, nurture unlikely combinations, and build community. Starting from the simple commitment of sharing space and time, the group hosts intimate gatherings that allow for experimentation in various forms of performance, including readings, screenings, sonic and choreographic scores, meditations and talks among others.

SCHEDULED PERFORMANCES

In addition to works on view throughout the gathering, twelve scheduled performances will take place across the day.

Chapter I: 14:00 – 15:30

Ian Waelder
An impersonation of Norm Macdonald telling two jokes.

Imaan Sattar: The Question of Function
A lecture on the question of function in furniture.

Yu Yang: Search Game
A performance featuring a childhood game, rekindling our awareness of the surroundings and the intriguing connection between the literal and the visual.

Zishi Han and Wei Yang: Hairpin beneath
A performative reading exploring the potentials of alternative queer existences through the lenses of historical and contemporary cultural practices in China.

Chapter II: 16:00 – 17:30

Elisa Diaferia and Juri Simoncini
A multi-part intervention encompassing a video projection, a performative assembly of two sculptures and a listening session.

Coline Gouriou
A sound piece and reading performance inspired by the myth and history of the French river Bièvre, from its sacred past to its disappearance in the present.

Moritz Tontsch: how to potentialize your resonance
A performative recording of a singer in voice-training exercises. It draws on techniques from the context of entertainment, business communication and gender affirmation, as well as from singing exercises that expands one’s vocal range.

Thuy-Tien Nguyen
A participatory grain-sorting game inspired by the Vietnamese folktale Tam Cam, which emphasises routines and patterns, followed by a musical collaboration with artist XAI.

Chapter III: 18:00-19:00

Emmilou Roessling: Bruce
Bruce is a staged reading of selected texts written collaboratively with Lucas Eigel for the performance Copernicus Drift. Loosely inspired by the form of a Kunstgespräch, in which two characters ponder on the notion of paradigm shifts and the tensions they generate.

Aerin Hong: A Script for Ventriloquist
An acousmatic performance with Stina Fors. Fors will ventriloquize to reenact the hotel room phone call scene from Chantal Akerman’s film Les Rendez-Vous d’ Anna.

Augustine Paredes: Obliterations
A reading performance narrating the poetics of a migrant’s existence through gestures of disappearance.

In between chapters

Arnaud Ferron: Complications
Complications is an audio recording of voice actor Redd Horrocks listing the 57 horology complications of a Vacheron Constantin Reference 57260 watch.

On view throughout the gathering

Etienne Le Coquil: Untitled
Extract from the installation Arson, this looping video on a Nintendo Switch examines the relationship between intimacy, the domestic and the different media through which they are composed.

Eden Sebban: Untitled
A video and sound installation investigating the relationship between secular and religious mysticism.

Ludvig Wilén: A96630
A96630 is a single-channel video, drawing on the posthumously published writings of Simone Weil, written during her time as a factory worker in Paris.

Ian Waelder: Moth Joke (print on paper) and You who are the stranger (Moth Joke) (video)
Moth Joke is simply the best joke ever performed and written, heard for the first time from comedian Norm Macdonald. Moth Joke will consist of an A4 print taped to the entrance door, and You who are the stranger (Moth Joke) is a 9 minute video playing in a loop.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

Ian Waelder is an artist and publisher. His practice explores memory and trace by isolating archival histories and language in relation to his biography, working through the poetics of the accident and the repurposing of the discarded.

Yu Yang works across performance, installation and video, exploring the intersections of visual arts and literature within contemporary societies.

Imaan Sattar plays with the possibility of furniture as medium rather than mode. She hopes she is on a path oriented towards beauty.

Zishi Han works across installation, sculpture, video and drawing to probe masochistic attachment to power structures. Drawn to forms that hold and let through, he constructs possessed and perverted apparatuses to dismantle previous relations and incubate unexplored desires.

Wei Yang explores human beings as a geographic subject in diasporic spaces. He layers collective memories to create hybrid images through myths, history, and personal landscapes, which serve as sites of resistance against grand narratives and archival neglect.

Elisa Diaferia works with video and installations. She plays with language as a tool for imagination, weaving fact and fiction together in order to create elaborate visual narratives.

Juri Simoncini looks, through sculpture, into the phenomenological manifestation of objects and visual codes. He observes the space between intent and delivery in different communicative strategies, and questions the possibility of signifiers to implement their potentials.

Coline Gouriou works with sound, videos and installations to explore power relations between different beliefs in their physical and historical existences.

Aerin Hong‘s works delve into the psychological compulsions related to themes such as beauty, femininity, discipline, occidentalism and drama.

Thuy-Tien Nguyen explores the deformation of personal and collective memories, particularly emphasising notions of home and homeland. She works with sculptures, installations, photography, and situations, often marked by deliberate clumsiness and accidental happenings.

Moritz Tontsch engages with contemporary media culture, its structure, communities and technological underpinnings. His works, involving sound, images, performance, websites and installation, are mostly produced in collaborative and collective situations.

Emmilou Roessling works with sculpture, choreography and text. Her practice is concerned with issues of representation, display and perception, often striving towards forms of opacity and camouflage.

Augustine Paredes is a multi-disciplinary artist questioning what it means to desire in light of migration, identity, and longing. He works with image-making via photography, painting, poetry, and installation.

Aranud Ferron is an artist. His work examines the sociological, political and economical implications of the contemporary Western taste through conceptual strategies

Etienne Le Coquil creates installations imbued with melancholy, where anthropomorphized animals, exhausted bodies, and home furnitures depict power dynamics within the domestic space.

Eden Sebban produces works that explore the structures framing contemporary living by investigating societal distinctions and emphasising the common experience.

Ludvig Wilén repurposes familiar objects and structures through their relationship to commodification and production. He works with sculptures, moving-images and installations.

CREDITS

With thanks to the support of the participating artists from DAAD and Städelschule Portikus e.V..

This event is part of the public programme of Cyphering, Vibrating, the fifth iteration of our periodic theme Performance as Process. This season is supported by M Art Foundation.

Students of Frankfurt’s Städelschule present an afternoon of performances