Tanzquartier Wien

„what is a stage? a stage for staging staging? a stage for staring? a stage for sharing? caring? a stage for staging the unstageable? a stage has a voice and a body. a stage can move and be moved. a stage can think thinking. a stage can disappear. let’s stage the stage underneath the stage besides the stage before behind beyond the stage stage. imagine a shy stage, a screaming stage, a still stage, a stuttering, a stumbling, a shivering stage: a sentence is a stage for words. a word is a stage for letters. a letter is a stage for sounds. a sound is a stage for breathing.“ — Andrea Maurer

a sentence is a stage for words brings together artists from different disciplines to engage into an experimental exploration revolving around expanded notions of poetry, sculpture, typography, scenography and performance. approaching language, objects, space and sound as raw materials that can be used as devices to dig into and unsettle the relationships between form and meaning, in order to think of a stage in its widest sense: not the stage that is inscribed in us, but rather a stage that we don´t quite know how to speak about. something we are searching for as a tool for something else. an instrument or a container for communication. a unknown stage for unspoken words. a stage for for all senses.

The lab opens up a space between artists and thinkers on artistic methods of defamiliarisation. Defamiliarisation as a strategy of shifting perspectives and constellations by means of specific aesthetic practices. Defamiliarisation as a (trans)acting recollection of phenomena, social realities or norms concerning art, politics, the body, the economy, knowledge, society. Defamiliarisation versus alienation: at the same time, we negotiated in the lab our roles as artists vis-à-vis institutions and politics, their modes of operation, their utilisation logics, their value creation.

With Claudia Bosse, Abdalla Daif, Barbara Holub, Anne Juren, Sophie Klimis, Lucie Strecker, Yosi Wanunu

*Bertolt Brecht