ANARCHIV#1: I am not a zombie

[By and with] deufert+plischke, Jeroen Peeters and Marcus Steinweg [Costumes] Sasa Kovacevic [Production] Barbara Greiner [Thank you] Susanne Bentley, Jos Indesteege, Edy Poppy, Marialena Pouskouri, Jan Ritsema and Lucie Tuma. A production of deufert&plischke and Gemeinschaftspraxis Hamburg e.V. Supported by the Hamburg authorities for culture, sports and media, National Performance Network (NPN) and Kulturstiftung Hamburg. Coproduction: Kampnagel (Hamburg), Sophiensaele (Berlin), PACT Zollverein (Essen), BUDA (Kortrijk), WP Zimmer (Antwerpen).

At night in a graveyard the zombie appears as a living dead, wounded and ravaged by life.
Archives contain documents from a past that the living want to preserve.
A collection that seeks to maintain what once was, though its form changes over time.
Anarchiv #1: I am not a zombie, by and with Kattrin Deufert, Jeroen Peeters,Thomas Plischke and Marcus Steinweg,
doesn’t aim to bottle up the past, nor to awaken the dead. Instead, the genealogies of living materials,
traces and memories that make up their respective oeuvres are being explored, reformulated and given a future.
Anarchiv #1: I’m not a zombie is a journey through the unruly landscape of one’s own archive, scattered with illegible scraps,
defunct videotapes, fading memories, marks and tattoos covering the body. Listening closely,
one can still hear a subtle muttering from the twilight zone of the past, haunting the present:
“Do you exchange blood for language?”, “Clothes make the man”, “Ça a toujours recommencé” or “I am not a zombie!”
Departing from the work’s effervescence, Anarchiv #1: I’m not a zombie proposes conceptual scenes, topologies and textures.
As scores waiting to be actualised time and again, they are an expression of restlessness and curiosity, and a quest for precision
in the uncertain.Anarchiv #1: I am not a zombie is an invitation to enter this imaginary world, rich with things to be discovered:
prick up your ears!

The first joint creation by the choreographers deufert +plischke (Hamburg), essayist and dramaturg Jeroen Peeters (Brussels) and philosopher Marcus Steinweg (Berlin), Anarchiv #1: I’m not a zombie departs from a long shared history, with roles becoming fluid and collaboration tightening over the years. In March 2001, Plischke, Deufert and Peeters occupied the BSBbis during ten days with a group of 80 befriended artists, sharing life and work, questioning the conditions for creating and presenting work. After staying awake for several days and nights, Deufert and Plischke performed Luxury gap, a lengthy sleeping session in the theatre. Ever since, they have been connecting holes with holes, knitting their life and work as artist twins, which yielded a large variety of performances and videoworks, including the directory trilogy (2003-06) and reportable portraits (2007). As a trio with Peeters, who has written extensively about their work, they curated the queer laboratory B-Visible (Vooruit Ghent, 2002) and created the poster installation Lectures/Demonstrations (deSingel Antwerp, 2005).In the framework of Dictionary of War they met Marcus Steinweg in Berlin. A shared interest in the figure of Antigone lead to several collaborations, including the workshop "Kinship and other monstrosities" (Steirischer Herbst Graz, 2007) and the Theatertreffen Berlin 2008. Steinweg’s publications include Bataille Maschine (Berlin, 2003) and Behauptungsphilosophie (Berlin, 2006).

Anarchiv#2: second hand

by deufert+plischke / DD Dorvillier /Cecilie Ullerup Schmidt //text Marcus Steinweg // music Bernhard Schreiner //production management Barbara Greiner //production deufert+plischke / Gemeinschaftspraxis Hamburg e.V. / supported by the Hamburg City Council for Culture, Sports and Media / the National Performance Network (with funding provided by the German Federal Cultural Foundation as part of its project Dance Plan Germany) // co-production Kaaitheater (Brussels) / PACT Zollverein (Essen) / Kampnagel (Hamburg)

Choreography as a knitting-work

In their anarchiv series, the German artists Kattrin Deufert and Thomas Plischke, together the artistic duo deufert&plischke, look back at the choreographic material they have created together over the last nine years. They reformulate characteristic themes and motifs in a new work, not as a sort of ‘best of’ or an instructional glimpse behind the artistic scenes, but as an active re-writing of archive materal. For each anarchiv project they cooperate with other artists who are familiar with their work. They offer their material and let their guests open it up, analyse it, adapt it, and change it to suit themselves.

The German choreographers Deufert and Plischke draw the most radical conclusion from the current state of affairs. Their belief is that, just as one can never reconstruct someone else’s work, one’s own work also defies reconstruction and even complete understanding. Work always takes shape at a point where many influences meet. Even the spectator has an influence on it. For this reason they often invite other choreographers to turn their work upside down and reshape it. (Pieter T'Jonck / De Morgen)

Deufert and Plischke’s procedure of composing is related to the process of knitting: work happens in formal strictness, in silence and in a community of ‘strangers’. Patterns are passed on, extended, analysed and rendered more precise. Out of a thread (the shared question) and a knitting pattern (the circular passing on of material) a complex structure emerges. The holes (in the material) are held by loops, which can be unstitched at any time, in order to create new patterns.
For anarchiv #1: I am not a zombie, Deufert and Plischke cooperated with the Belgian curator, dramaturge and artist Jeroen Peeters, the German philosopher Marcus Steinweg, the Swiss artist Lucie Tuma and the Greek philosopher and stage designer Marialena Pouskouri.
For anarchiv #2: second hand, they reformulate their work together with the American choreographer DD Dorvillier, the Danish performance artist Cecilie Ullerup Schmidt and, once more, the German philosopher Marcus Steinweg. ‘Give me your material and I will show you what you are not doing with it’; this could be their motto. The choreography of the performance has been fully and literally written out beforehand in accordance with the principle of the game of consequences. The four of them handed their descriptions of movements on to each other with the request to add to and make the description more precise. This gave rise to a complex set of written movements in four notebooks which together make up the choreography they perform on stage. So, very unusually, in this production the written archive precedes the movement itself. In the second part of the performance the choreography is analysed once again and handed on to the audience in separate scores for a second ‘second hand’ interpretation. Bernhard Schreiner is creating the live music score.

directory: tattoo

...is the third "directory" of deufert +plischke. Together with Maria Baroncea (RO), Eduard Gabia (RO) und Willy Prager (BG) the artistwin worked for several months in Rumania and Bulgaria. Departing from ideas and themes of their previous directories the relation in-between "memory as an anatomy" and "movement as an alter ego" became the main focus. For this the artistwin developed a process in which the generating, passing on, transmission of movement happened exclusively by writing. The resulting written material was constantly passed to another performer until the complete material was shared and continued. In this way the group could initiate another process (without the concept of imitation): a choreographic  process of shared movement as memory, a passing on anatomy as an alter ego. 

“Thomas Plischke and Kattrin Deufert are, at least from a political point of view, the most important dance-artists in Europe at the moment. Not because their work is always a big artistic success, nor because it is easily enjoyable, but because they consistently choose to go against the current taste for a kind of dance that is “politically correct”, i.e. a dance form that prefers not to put questions but rather gives all too easy answers. Deufert & Plischke on the other hand show how exacting and difficult it is to make a full portrait of reality in all its confusing diversity. Their recent work “Directory 3: Tattoo” is a brilliant effort to explore the connection between writing and moving. This has led to a performance in which the dancers share a common dance-language which they generated through a repetitive process of moving and writing down movement. They use this language only to show how different the use of this one and same language can be. Amongst them, these five dancers as such provide a compelling miniature-portrait of the diversity of the world. The political relevance of this portrait is hard to miss, but at the same time it is an outstanding performance. There are but a few of these strong-headed choreographers. We should cherish them.”
(Pieter T’Jonck in the Ballettanz Yearbook 2006)

To bring a position of listening and telling via fiction and confession into the theatre we have developed the "Directory Project" in-between 2002 -2006. This performance cycle suggestes a gradual shift: starting from an audio-video play (“Europe Endless”) we developed a score of occasional movement and action (“Songs of Love and War”) to arrive at a complex dealing with choreography as a mediator of meaning instead of the singular gesture itself (“Tattoo”). A mediator that embarks on formulations in the experience of loosing its own presence. So we stopped with processes we knew from the field of choreography, with processes of showing movement and imitating movement, with processes of reconstructing movement from a rehearsal video and started to write down, pass on and knit them instead.

Sofia SP // science is ficiton

A Science-Fiction Performance by deufert + plischke
with Greta Gancheva, Mila Odazieva, Willy Prager and Maya Stevanowa

We write the year 2468. The former space station "Sofia / SP" has been changed into a centre of cultural and scientific research. A, B and C are supposed to dig out memories on earth that were lost in 2007 after a big interplanetarian crash. Some of the gone memories shell be reactivated via a duty free freezing of the senses. Thus sharp images and pure fragments of the human being will be filtered. This procedure leads to a new, nonlinear restructuration of data that will be sent every 13 minutes by the interplanetarian comission AbbA (agency of big and beautiful adaption).

a production of Goethe Institut Sofia, Odavision (Sofia) and deufert +plischke

As if (it was beautiful)

for marianne

In this performance deufert + plischke focus again on space like a schizophrenic acoustic machinery. It is the story of three: Bonny ,Clyde and Bonny & Clyde. Three voices, multiple faces, no mouth, ten fingers and bodies with exits to uncertainty.The basis of the machinery is the solowork „fleur (anemone)“ of 1998 that became an essential part in the shared life of the artistwin deufert +plischke. It was the performance that created the desire to work together. Now, after three years of a shared live and work it becomes the proposal for yet another work
In the annual report of the belgian theater critics the performance as if (it was beautiful) is mentioned as best performance 2004 by Elke van Campenhout and as one of the best five performances by Jeroen Peeters.

movements, sounds, images by deufert + plischke
with texts by ghérasim luca
sound and light coordination: harry schulz
production: heike albrecht

a production by frankfurter küche (leipzig)
coproduction: De Singel (Antwerpen), Schaubühne Lindenfels (Leipzig), Künstlerhaus Mousonturm (Frankfurt);
with very special thanks to: ImPulsTanz / Vienna International Dance Festival

InExHaustible (RW)

The idea to work with exhaustion and inexhaustibility of theatre came up during a workshop on “Subversive Bodies” in summer 2001. The work with a group of people happened continuously during 10 days in a situation, where the common clichés of body images, social processes and working methods were stripped, deciphered and transposed through the repeated confrontation with texts and films. The possibilities that arose from this kind of process were used and developed for Inexhaustible with regard to theatre. After endless processes of filtering, different elements developed their own logic, activity and logistics of placement. During the rehearsal process the components were reduced to a few fragmentary forms. Only the condensation of these forms created an intensity, which allowed them to superpose the elements through repetition and variation and through this, to discover again other intensities.
During the performance of inexhaustible (RW) the audience is facing each other and is seated symmetrically along-side a stage corridor, which divides the theatre space as a longitudinal axis. The spectators look into the corridor, they see the spectators on the opposite side and a video projection on a screen above their heads. The performance passes between two vanishing points, the ends of the corridor right and left from the audience and thus, does not deliver a frontal image, but a passage. This set-up reminds us of places and graphics from the age of renaissance, where the symmetry and the golden section makes the actors appear in a fixed and motionless manner. Some of these places (and their models) become visible in the film and video images, but the vanishing point dissolves through the constant turning of the camera and blurs into a horizontal movement.


Concept and Performance: Kattrin Deufert und Thomas Plischke
A Mouson production in coproduction with BSBbis Brussels, Tanzquartier Wien, Kunstencentrum Vooruit Gent, BIT Teatergarasjen Bergen.

Reportable Portraits

Reportable portraits is the second choreography for a group of 5 performers by Kattrin Deufert and Thomas Plischke. It was created working on their process of re-formulating together with Helena Golab, Hanna Sybille Müller and Benjamin Schoppmann. The creation process consisted of a research on the communicability of movement. It started from an examination of the speechlessness of the painted portrait. Consequently it did abstain from any showing or imitating of movement during the whole creation. Instead the movement material was created along a procedure of writing: texts and notices were exchanged with the other participants, and the written material was then re-translated into movement, commented, written down, passed on and re-translated again. This resulted in movement material that shared a collective authorship (even in a literal sense, due to the writing). This process asked all the participants to constantly take the position of the material of the others and thus was not the output of individual physical skills or knowledge.
In a second process the generated material was analyzed concerning its potential inter-relations and then superposed. Similarities and relationships started to mark the spacial and temporal interface of the choreography. The resulting score was one of a polyphony of speechlessness. The performances of REportable are accompanied live by the electronic sound modules of Hubert Machnik. The music becomes itself another voice in the presence of the choreography‘s speechlessness, much like the room, made of black paper and wood that has been created for REportable by Herman Sorgeloos.

Choreography: Kattrin Deufert, Helena Golab, Hanna Sybille Müller, Thomas Plischke, Benjamin Schoppmann
Musikc (live electronic): Hubert Machnik
Stage Design: Herman Sorgeloos
Costumes: Anne Cathérine Kunz
Dramaturgy / Documentation: Sandra Noeth
Production management: Felix Wittek

A production of Gemeinschaftspraxis e.V. Hamburg.
Funded by the Kulturbehörde der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg.
Coproduction: deSingel, Antwerp. Kampnagel, Hamburg. PACT-Zollverein, Essen. steirischer herbst 2007, Graz.
Supported by the National Performance Network with funding provided by the German Federal Cultural Foundation as part of its project Dance Plan Germany.

Notice Me!

Notice Me! consists of three parts. The artistwin introduces its working methods by re-opening the process of the choreography "REportable" for the audience. The first part is about getting into conversation with dance itself, and therefore the artistwin reads a letter it wrote to dance: "How are you, dance? Do you still lough about the adversities that happened to you?"Choosing the form of a letter the artistwin departs on reflections about collaboration in art and about the shared risk of work. In the second part the audience itself repeats part of the working process of REportable: the will collectively create movement by writing. The third part is a concert in which the borders of viewers and performers blur: Everybody is invited to do the movements that were commonly created. For this concert Hubert Machnik performs his "Empty Rooms" live.

Concept and Performance: Kattrin Deufert und Thomas Plischke
Music (live electronic): Hubert Machnik

A production of Gemeinschaftspraxis e.V. Hamburg.
Funded by the Kulturbehörde der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg.
Coproduction: deSingel, Antwerp. Kampnagel, Hamburg. PACT-Zollverein, Essen. steirischer herbst 2007, Graz.
Supported by the National Performance Network with funding provided by the German Federal Cultural Foundation as part of its project Dance Plan Germany.

konSequenzen / conSequences

In their konSequenzen-series deufert+plischke describe performances that that have specifically conceived for theory-practice encounters.
In June 2008 in the framework of a thematic emphasis "Dies ist kein Spiel" [This is not a game] they developed an installation work in which spectators could invent games and players could search and at the same time fill the room with instructions for playing the game.
For the "Giving Away Instructions" Island, the artist duo exhibit themselves, spread across two separate action venues. The audience receive detailed instructions of what is to be done. The instructions are addressed to each individual as a letter. There are three possible ways of dealing with the text of the instructions. One and/or the other are repeatedly available. Affect, intention and action (do not) come together differently. The spectators / observers / actors decide on the outcome of the evening.

Anarchiv#1: I am not a zombie

The first joint creation by the choreographers deufert +plischke (Hamburg), essayist and dramaturg Jeroen Peeters (Brussels) and philosopher Marcus Steinweg (Berlin), Anarchiv #1: I’m not a zombie departs from a long shared history, with roles becoming fluid and collaboration tightening over the years. In March 2001, Plischke, Deufert and Peeters occupied the BSBbis during ten days with a group of 80 befriended artists, sharing life and work, questioning the conditions for creating and presenting work. After staying awake for several days and nights, Deufert and Plischke performed Luxury gap, a lengthy sleeping session in the theatre. Ever since, they have been connecting holes with holes, knitting their life and work as artist twins, which yielded a large variety of performances and videoworks, including the directory trilogy (2003-06) and reportable portraits (2007). As a trio with Peeters, who has written extensively about their work, they curated the queer laboratory B-Visible (Vooruit Ghent, 2002) and created the poster installation Lectures/Demonstrations (deSingel Antwerp, 2005). In the framework of Dictionary of War they met Marcus Steinweg in Berlin. A shared interest in the figure of Antigone lead to several collaborations, including the workshop Kinship and other monstrosities (Steirischer Herbst Graz, 2007) and the Theatertreffen Berlin 2008. Steinweg’s publications include Bataille Maschine (Berlin, 2003) and Behauptungsphilosophie (Berlin, 2006).

[By and with] deufert+plischke, Jeroen Peeters and Marcus Steinweg
[Costumes] Sasa Kovacevic
[Production] Barbara Greiner
[Thank you] Susanne Bentley, Jos Indesteege, Edy Poppy, Marialena Pouskouri, Jan Ritsema and Lucie Tuma.

The soundtrack contains a.o. Frank Zappa’s “Mozart Ballet” from the album "You Can’t Do That On Stage Anymore. Vol 5".

A production of deufert+plischke and Gemeinschaftspraxis Hamburg e.V. Supported by the Hamburg authorities for culture, sports and media, National Performance Network (NPN) and Kulturstiftung Hamburg. Coproduction: Kampnagel (Hamburg), Sophiensaele (Berlin), PACT Zollverein (Essen), BUDA (Kortrijk), WP Zimmer (Antwerpen).