performances

The Gray Voice Ensemble, Sleep (is the mystery tune)

With Ailsa MacKenzie, Annika Stadler, Elisabeth Wood (dir.), Eva Ulm, Geneviève de Larminat, Hen/i, Iris Dankemeyer, Isabell Schulte, Jana Papenbroock, Judith Lavagna, Maria Miottke, Olivia Berning (with guests: Cristina Druga, Hilal, J.R. Blank, Kathrin Schömer, Laura Brophy, Ori Behr, Richard Murphy, Sam Gahr).

costumes by Maria Miottke, audio tech by Marcus Fister.

West Germany, Berlin, November 18, 19, 20, 2022. Neuruppin music festival, 27 May 2022.

Supported by Neustart Amateurmusik 2022. Image credit GVE.

—

VERTIGE

Film, 1h45,2020

Adaptation and artistic direction: Sandrine Nogueira
Image, camera, editing: Joris Dragoman
Sound design: KHMGNFF (Barbara Khamouguinoff)
Sound arrangement: Mathieu Mardouhahev

With Catherine Bauder, Vincent Bouchard, Eliane van Cachou, Cloé de Coquereaumont, Anne-Sophie Debrabant, Marie Hoffmann, Judith Lavagna, Oriane Mack-Mallick, Axel Polybe, Chloe Risbourque, Frieder Wormser.

—

The Gray Voice Ensemble, ICH MACH DICH WIEDER SCHöN

With Ambika Thompson, Amélie Bonet, Anne-Sophie Debrabant, Cristina Druga, Elisabeth Wood, Friederike Jäger, Fritz Stilling, Geneviève de Larminat, Han Tsé Desjardin, Jaime Heather Schwartz, Judith Lavagna, Kathrin Schömer, Laura Brophy, Manuel Stotzka, Marco Macrì, Melone, Marta Karolak, Matthias Hofmann, Nori Niki Nori, Olivia Berning, Ori Behr, Richie Murphy, Sunny Pudert, Teddy Glickman, Verena Buttmann, Xia Wei.

27.10.2019, 18h, 20h – Alte Feuerwache @ Marchlewskistraße 6, 10243 Berlin

03.11.2019 , 18h, 20h – JuKuZ Jugendkunst- und Kulturzentrum „Gerard Philipe”, Berlin

All image copyright The Gray Voice Ensemble.

—

IRRÉDUCTIBLES

Texts from Martin Crimp, Noémie De Lattre, Eve Ensler, Catherine Léger, Magali Mougel, Pauline Payrade, Sarah Pèpe.

Adaptation Sandrine Nogueira, assisted by Bérengère Emma Seven, Théâtre en Français, Berlin.

With Catherine Bauder, Mélinée Benamou, Vincent Bouchard, Julie Cartier, Mélanie Chamalot, Cloé De Coquereaumont, Anne-Sophie Debrabant, Quentin Dequiret, Bérengère Emma Seven, Marie Hoffmann, Sophie Jézéquel, Chloé Kayser, Judith Lavagna, Oriane Mack-Mallick, Chloé Risboourque, Camille Roduit, Astrid Rostaing, Nicolas Theys, Elodie Vince, Frieder Wormser  Lumière Sylvain Faye.

Theaterhaus Mitte, Berlin, 14-16 June 2019

—

The Cosmic Working Group – report on findings to date

Text on wooden stand and performance, Judith Lavagna, 2016-2018

The Cosmic Working Group – report on findings to date is coming from The Cosmic Manifesto, a fictional, speculative text composed during the workshop led by the Russian art collective Chto Delat in Düsseldorf in 2016.Influenced by the multiple heritages of social realism and soviet cosmology as well as by the collaborative process of this exhibition, The Cosmic Working Group plays with the idea of an invisible community, exploring the geographies of human introspection and cosmological models. The performance took place during the exhibition Notes from a trembling community in a wilful state of flux together with the work Transcription by Season Butler.

Hotel Maria Kapel, Hoorn (NL), 8 September 2018.

—

The Gray Voice Ensemble, Glamor and Danger in Warwarwar

Glamor and Danger in Warwarwar: The Pool
Invited by and produced in cooperation with Kinderhook & Caracas (Christopher Kline and Sol Calero)
TROPEZ im Sommerbad Humboldthain, Berlin, June 30th 2018.

Glamor and Danger in Warwarwar: The Salon
Invited by and produced in cooperation with Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff.
Volksbühne im Grünen Salon, Berlin, July 1st 2018.

Image credit inkAgop, GVE. Flyer: JR Blank.

—

The Gray Voice Ensemble

THAT GRATITUDE ATTITUDE An Early Fall Concert Program

With Aida Ulrich, Amélie Bonet, Anna Momburg, Anne-Cécile Desjardin, Daniella Kaufman, Elisabeth Wood, Esra Altin, Joel Cocks, Judith Lavagna, Katharina rahn, Kathrin Schömer, Marlene Denningmann, Matthias Hofmann, Michael Silverberg, Nori Niki Nori, Olivia Berning, Paul Aràmbula, Philip Schafer, Sam Gahr, Steffen Klotz, Tim Faraus

‘That Gratitude Attitude’ is the story of a singer who receives an invitation to a birthday party they don’t want to go to so they cut school and hitch a ride to a festival where they meet characters that will change their life forever.

The Gray Voice Ensemble (Berlin) is an ongoing, since 2013, experiment in community directed by Elisabeth Wood. The anonymous voice of Albert McCloud is the vehicle.

Schinkel Pavillon, Oberwallstrasse 1, 10117 Berlin, September 30th & October 1st, 2017.

Image credit JR Blank, GVE.

—

Universalism
International Summer School Bauhaus Denkmal

Residency, workshop how to curate a building? conceived by Dutch art historian and curator Renske Janssen.

Lecture / performance Bauhaus Revisited by Judith Lavagna, 13 August 2016.

Interested in the historical legacy of the Bauhaus modernism, I start researching on the educational experiments that took place in the cities of Weimar, Dessau, Berlin and Bernau between 1919 and 1933. I was attracted by the utopian conception of the ‘new artist’ and its programmatic vision, as well as the idea of ‘designing life processes’ through the practice of art, craft, architecture and technology embedded in an emancipatory space: a building ‘of the Future’ that was both conceived as a spatial function and a social process for the production and the circulation of means and people.

In relation to my curatorial practice and field of interests, I took a closer look on the theatrical performances and choreographies taught by Lothar Schreyer and Oskar Schlemmer from 1921 to 1929 (the Bauhaus Stage, the Bauhaus Theater, the Bauhaus Dance).

One image especially draws my attention: ‘The Bauhaus as a stage’, taken by Eric Consemüller in Dessau in 1927. A choreography of human bodies wearing costumes and objects that emphasizes the verticals and the diagonals of the building through their movements. Here, the dancers and the building are playing in a spatial conquest geometrically defined by the human body and at the same time by the building’s structure.

During the workshop and the living experience at the Bauhaus building of Bernau, I focused on the idea of rethinking this architecture and its site as a performative stage and as a body, and extend this research by taking its historical context as an intuitive material and as a narrative that is affecting our human being. I also tried to sense the reality of this environment and to reconstruct the history of a place that has been forgotten and set aside since 1933.

Supported by Stiftung Baudenkmal Bundesschule Bernau (Foundation for the Preservation of the Trade Union School Landmark Bernau) and Handwerkskammer Berlin (The Berlin Chamber of Crafts). Thanks to Holger Friese, Simone Hain and Thibaut de Ruyter for their creative inputs.

Bernau bei Berlin, 08 – 13 August 2016

Image credits (on top): Judith Lavagna

The Building as a Stage, Bauhaus Dessau, photo: Erich Consemüller, 1927. Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin / © Dr. Stephan Consemüller.

—

To perform an exhibition

Conceived and performed by Jessica Cooke, Joana Dias, Marcela Donato, Renata Har, Judith Lavagna, Todd McQuade, Alexandra Sebag, Jasmin Schaitl and Caique Tizzi (Agora Collective).

To perform an exhibition is a body-based project developed by Agora Collective for Month of Performance-Art Berlin. To perform an exhibition took the situation of the group show as reflexive subject matter. The artists performed collective actions in response to the individual works presented by the artists participating in L’Atelier’s program, as well as to the relational behavior of the spectators and the general frame of the gallery itself. The collective occupied the basement of the gallery during 9 hours, after two months of workshop study. The actions produced in To perform an exhibition has been prompted by a mediated information system. Video taken from cameras in the gallery recorded the performances of the contributing artists and played back on monitors viewed by the collective. This outsourced visual information becomed the departure point for investigating how the group performs an exhibition, helping to inform and illustrate Agora Collective’s chemistry.

3rd, 4th, 5th of May 2012, L’Atelier-ksr, Berlin
In the frame of Month of Performance Art Berlin 2012.