Open Futures Fluid 1

Talk

The Field

Im Rahmen von Open Futures: Fluide Resonanzen

This open conversation bringst together Monica Ursina Jäger with Lucia Gugerly and Raphael Portmann. Monica Ursina Jäger is a visual artist, who is presenting er work RETE MIRABILE (counter-current) (2020) in the exhibition Collective Resonance at Shedhalle, while the dance artist Lucia Gugerli is a member of The Field, the dance collective in residency at Tanzhaus Zürich that will conduct research around water with choreographer Meg Stuart in 2022, and Raphael Portmann is a climate scientist at ETH.

The talks opens with a screening of Monica Jäger's video work RETE MIRABILE (counter-current). By means of superimposed image streams, this seven-minute video is an observation of the interactions between biological bodies: a marvelous contemplation of forces and counter-forces, of influence and currents. The title of the work translates to “marvelous network” and refers to the network of capillaries that surround the veins or arteries and that act as temperature recuperators in mammals or, to the contrary, as coolers in reptilians. These countercurrent networks regulate the temperature of living beings.

This complex natural balance is reflected in the climate system as well, which is also a network of biological, chemical and physical elements and processes. Life, in its many forms, is a means of retaining water on Earth since most bodies, from flesh to plants, from trees to humans, contain at least 50 percent water, if not often more. Thus, life as a way of retaining water on the surface of the planet makes «transpiration» possible, meaning: the evaporation of water in the atmospheric system, which is the means of regulating the earth’s temperature.

All of this evokes associations about breathing and the rhythms of the life cycle, such as the metabolism of the Earth's biosphere over the course of the year: evident is this “heartbeat of nature” in an animation derived from NASA observations. Living bodies, temperature regulation, sweating, flux, fluidity, all of this naturally indicates a primary dance of life on Earth. Hence the metaphor between the human body and the planetary system. A metaphor that is not new by itself since the human body has often been understood as a mirror of the larger environment or the cosmos throughout the ages, from ancient animistic philosophies to medieval cosmology to today.

In those correspondences between the micro and the macro levels, we again encounter the motif of “Resonance” that informs the title of the exhibition. Resonance is, as the German sociologist Harmut Rosa puts it, a movement of being “affected” by the world around us, which in turn generates “e-motion” as the capacity to respond meaningfully to our surroundings. Our dance as living beings in the world is thus always also a dance with the world.

In this conversation across fields of research, we explore permeabilities, crosspollinations, and commonalities between visual and dance/choreographic practices embedded in the atmospheric system of the earth.

Prior to the research talk, The Field invites guests on a walk through the neighborhood around the Tanzhaus Zürich. Starting at 17:30, Take Your Body For a Walk asks participants to specifically explore the nearby riverbanks of the Limmat and Sihl. Inputs will be sent via chat messages, which invite guests on a sensory adventure.

  • Studio 2
    Tanzhaus Zürich
    Wasserwerkstrasse 127a
    8037 Zürich
  • Wheelchair accessible

  • Wheelchair accessible

  • The conversation will be held in German.

  • This event is free of charge

With

Monica Ursina Jäger, visual artist and research associate and lecturer at Zurich University of Applied Sciences ZHAW, Zurich
Lucia Gugerli, dance artist and member of The Field, the dance collective in residency at Tanzhaus Zürich
Raphael Portmann, climate scientist at ETH Zurich

Co-moderated by

Camille Jamet, production and communication of Open Futures, freelance curator
Isabelle Vuong, initiator of Open Futures

Film still Monica Ursina Jäger

The research conversation is presented in collaboration with Shedhalle.

The Field

The Field is a collective of dance artists who have been working together since 2019. The collective has collaborated with local and international artists to create a range of works from large scale performances to intimate artistic exchanges. So far, The Field has developed works with Meg Stuart (Waterworks), Isabel Lewis (Scalable Skeletal Escalator), Simone Aughterlony (The Best and the Worst of Us) and is currently developing a piece with Ofelia Jarl Ortega.

The collective came into being from the necessity to create flexible, versatile, sensitive and enduring forms of togetherness, to find ways of articulating our cultural, social and political concerns through dance experiences. Their commitment to non-hierarchical forms of working shapes all of The Field’s artistic outputs.