• Performative Strategies for the Embodied Mind

    A significant part of my work addresses how cultural systems, such as art and religion, influence individual subjectivity. One aspect of my research involves my own artistic practice, which focuses on the performative and interventionist exploration of embodied knowledge and aesthetic experiences. Another aspect is a theoretical and empirical cultural-scientific approach that examines socio-culturally and aesthetically grounded strategies, such as the empowerment strategies of contemporary Pentecostal communities.

  • Disaster Rituals I-III

    Performance Series

    Aesthetic re-contextualisation of embodied trauma via repetitive and interactive, material-semiotic activity. 

    Political and religious collective coping rituals are often offered when a society is shaken by a crisis. These rituals attempt to provide reassurance in moments of overwhelming uncertainty, to re-establish a sense of order, and to strengthen collective resilience. With DISASTER RITUALS I-III, I offer aesthetic rituals for crisis management that embrace contingency, thereby opening up a new space of possibilities—for myself and for others. Both the outcome and the effect transform through their own dynamic processes.

  • APHASIA

    Performative Research in Progress


    What is a word? A word is a symbol. It has meaning (s), context (s), history. It can be joyous, intriguing, ironic, iconic, and also hurtful, contaminated, contagious. Aphasia describes a condition in which a word is just a word. Bare, stripped of subtext and meta levels.ng empowerment and participation.

    Aphasia denotes a sudden gap after a severe disruption, a ___, a liminal moment between the not-anymore and not-yet-again of linguistic implicitness. In neurological terms, it is defined as a disturbance of the comprehension and formulation of language following a breakdown of the two-way translation that establishes a correspondence between thoughts and language (Antonio Damasio 1992).

    As a research project, Aphasia is interested in the epistemological potential of liminality in performative aesthetic experiences. If we break down the immediate linguistic translation, what is our embodied mind telling us? (How) can we track and extract embodied knowledge, and the way we exchange it?

    Aphasia is an aisthetic research on the gap, on the embodiment of disruption, and the potential of aesthetic liminality to unleash unconscious embodiedknowledge. The focus is set on the void between the not-anymore and the not-yet in the individual and collective processing of disruptive moments and the resulting potential gain of knowledge and paradigm shift. Digging into the gap, however, includes an exploration of the before and after, and of body techniques that allow a conscious perception of the void.


  • POSITIONs

    Performance

    Positions was a four-hour-long physical contemplation of the early years of the Covid-19 pandemic. The performance sought to address the overwhelming flood of unverified information and the constant pressure to react to it. How could one trace their own thought process and record their evolving positions within a spiraling discourse that questioned the very foundations of shared reality? Engaging with this question on a physical level, Positions also became a confrontation with how isolation, caution, and the pandemic itself had altered our physical repertoire of expressions. In doing so, the performance revealed the effects of the social crisis on the individual body and the aesthetic consequences of the power structures that had been activated.

    With Matthew F.Edney // Kultur im Sommer Rüsselsheim [2021]

  • Strategies for the Embodied Mind:

    Empowerment and the Transformation of Individual Subjectivity in the Context of Contemporary Pentecostalism

    Research Paper

    This paper explores the transformation of individual subjectivity within the empowerment strategies of contemporary Pentecostal churches. Case studies on two churches in Gauteng, South Africa, indicate that these churches’ ability to initiate individual and cultural transformations is closely tied to how they structure aesthetic experiences. A brief introduction to the key findings will highlight different structural levels of these transformation processes: a performatively heightened and destabilising sensory aesthetic experience; its materialised mediation and immediate contextualisation through sensory management; and the stabilisation of its interpretation through social reassurance, cultural anchoring, and internalized technologies of the self.

    Within a broad concept of aesthetics, referring to aisthesis, symbolic patterns and individual symbols can be examined in their aesthetic dimension and their impact on personal meaning systems and perception. In conjunction with collective effervescence and technologies of the self, the socially powerful and culturally productive potential of aesthetics—and, conversely, the collective and cultural influence on the initiation, contextualisation, and stabilisation of aesthetic experiences—become apparent.

    By introducing aesthetic experience as a systemic nexus of individual and cultural transformation processes, this research aims to develop a toolset for future analysis, evaluation, and practical implementation of sustainability strategies that foster empowerment and participation.

    Full text on request









Designed with WordPress