Invigorating the City of Holstebro

The Ship Bridge (1991) was a collaboration with Odin Teatret. It took place on a parking lot on the roof of a supermarket in the middle of Holstebro, a city with some 50,000 inhabitants in west Denmark

Intermedial Performance and the vertical perspective

Why Does Night Come Mother can be considered as a focus change or paradigm shift in relation to intermedial performing arts. The performance re-inscribes reality in the participatory process that takes place in the body of the consciousness of the spectator. At the same time the performance is a staged construction with an audience taking part. The performance destabilizes the balance of the spectator’s sense of vision

Ellen and creative relations

Ellen (2010) comprises two different kinds of theater. It was played in five different towns and changed from town to town by involving local guests and what was being talked about locally. One part was a careful staging of a new text by the poet Morten Søndergaard, whose poetry paraphrases the name Ellen. Through binaural headphones the audience listens to the recitation of text as well as the precisely choreographed rhythms and directed gazes of the three actors. In the second part 3-4 guests participate from each town. From Silkeborg an interior designer, from Svendborg a hotel director, etc. The guest sequences were set to last some 6 minutes for each guest. To some extent this was prepared, but not rehearsed. In the part without headphones actors interviewed the guests and talked about what the actors had discovered about the town. In this chapter we will shed light on a theater production as a collective production containing a variety of creative individuals and creative strategies

Navigare – The Inauguration of Arken in 1996

Navigare (1996) was specifically created for the inauguration of ARKEN - Museum of Modern Art as a ‘baptismal’act in the name of art in time and space

Remediering og dramaturgi: Triers Univers, Gob Squad, Granhøj, Lollike og Biering

Nogle teoretiske fremstillinger og eksempler på remedialisering. Remediering er i vores senmoderne iscenesættelseskultur en form for sofistikeret karaoke, som fremhæver kopiens egenværdi

Kunsten at snuble: Om serendipitet og benspænd

Erik Exe Christoffersen skriver om konstruktionen af serendipitet specielt i kunstneriske processer gennem obstruktion

Intermedial Performance

Hotel Pro Forma er et yderst kvalificeret bud på den performative kunst, der opstod i 90’erne. Der var primært en fokusering på materialer, mediers opførelsespraksis, en undersøgelse af kunstneriske kommunikationshandlinger i tid og rum. Hotel Pro Forma udnytter forskellige mediers opførelses- og fremstillingstraditioner, tilskuerpositioner, tekster, lys, objekter og kuratering af bevægelsesmåder. Opførelsesformer, konventioner og tilskuerpositioner bliver geniscenesat som handlinger i tid og rum. De bevæger sig mellem teater, billedkunst og udstilling, opera og rumkunst. Teatret er inden for de sidste 30 år i stigende grad blevet intermedialt og performativt orienteret og inddragelse af fx video, billedprojektioner og lysteknologi har været medvirkende til at ændre teatret. Hotel Pro Forma har bidraget til denne proces, hvor hørelse og syn, rum og billede adskilles og sættes sammen på nye måder. Det betyder at værkerne skaber et polyfont eller mangestemmigt rum, hvis grundlag er dissensus. I mange år har der været en distinktion mellem performance og teater og senere postdramatisk teater og dramatisk teater. Det går tilbage til avantgardens opgør med tekstteatret. Men disse distinktioner er vanskelige at opretholde, fordi der forekommer en konstant udveksling mellem scenekunst, som et iscenesat fællesskab og som et differensrum med en flydende dramaturgi og en permanent gentænkning af de intermediale muligheder, der opstår, idet værket tænkes performativt med vægt på den reale kommunikative handling i tid og rum mellem scene og tilskuer. Hvorfor blir' det nat mor? (1989) gør selve tilskuersituationen til en handling, som involverer flere forskellige sanser som syn, hørelse, vestibulære og proprioceptive sanser og skaber en opmærksomhed på, at interferensen mellem forskellige medier inden for samme værk, skaber en erfaring om mediers forskellige funktionsmåde, og dermed også en erfaring om at sanser og viden som sådan er medialiseret i interne hierarkier, som kan forskydes og forandres. Ekspliciteringen af mediernes forskellige funktionsmåder frisætter så at sige kunstgreb som konventioner, der kan vælges eller fravælges. Dermed bliver det også muligt at skabe modsætninger eller kontraster mellem forskellige sanse og perceptionsformer indenfor samme værk

Bare Interior Grey light: Iscenesættelse af blikket på det tomme rum

In his article »Bare Interior Grey Light« Christoffersen discusses an attempt to orchestrate a division between the theatrical and the performative levels in Beckett’s Endgame (1958) by a special staging grip, which he names the vertical optic

Prologue

Hotel Pro Forma is a Copenhagen-based international laboratory for performing arts – a small production company with substantial influence on the performing arts in Scandinavia and Europe. Since 1985 Hotel Pro Forma has staged more than 50 productions shown in more than 30 countries around the world from New York, Sydney to Taipei. Productions are developed through an intensive period of research, and different themes are taken from a wide-ranging field of interest. This special English issue  presents selected Hotel Pro Forma productions. Most readers will probably not have seen the performances, which is why we have been at pains to describe the different productions. We have selected those we consider to have influenced the performing arts the most by expanding the medium of the performing arts. Further we wanted to include a number of photos for the reader to get a more precise impression of Hotel Pro Forma’s pioneering works. Some of the articles have previously been published in Danish in: Skønhedens Hotel, Hotel Pro Forma, Et laboratorium for scenekunst, Aarhus University Press, 2015