care station – the haunted garden
of the kleines schauspielhaus wuppertal
*
pedro ramirez (soft concert)
wellsgoodness (soft concert)
remote control (video art)
julius reifen (artistic food intervention)
katja klaus (massage expert)
*
06.05.2022
under construction festival
08.05.2022
Caring Shadows
The inner gardens in the Kleines Schauspielhaus Wuppertal are a location on time transitioning and travel. In the region at the beginning of the 80s, the garden was designed by AKIRA SATO, a Japanese landscape architect who came to the city of Wuppertal and commissioned the design of the inner garden in the theater, while simultaneously traditional Japanese gardens were spread across the region, like the Botanical Garden in Wuppertal, same decade. We can see these phenomena as an exoticization practice and a form of peripheral orientalism combined.
Through the inquiry part of our participation in the under-construction festival (2022) in the garden location, we attempted to gather stories, resources, and literature on what was the vision of the landscape architect, with little success, it seems even her own writing about landscape design seem to be a challenge and further than accessible for us. Almost like a myth, or a ghost behind the anecdote of the one author for the commission.
Furthermore, there is a strong connection between the Pina Bausch Company and the physical phenomena of the theater, all its aura and power displayed over decades as a renowned performer and dancer who manufactured her vision, almost still nowadays possessing their bodies, a matter of biopolitics1and geomancy2 that reverbs over the place, like an apparition with lots of agency over time. Even crimes and their opacity have occurred in place, where people had died inside3, all related to the engineering of the building, - About the alleged perpetrator: The 49-year-old house has been an early pensioner since 2012 and has lived in Wuppertal-Elberfeld without contact with the public since then. His father was the famous German architect and theater builder Gerhard Graubner-. It seems like the house was made for ghosts and horror, like a premonition.
We identify 22 specimens of plants in the gardens, some clearly coming as foreigners part of the design plan and other locals that manage to land and add to the abandoned picture of the garden, where a manner of maintenance-care is the only present. Care is a complex activity,that comes from an affective commitment to the simple preservation of animated agents or assemblages, and intra-action between human and nonhuman forces. Currently, the garden is being trimmed, but the tiles and design mapped are consumed by the forages and tree roots, possessed by the material forces of time along with the human narratives inscribed in its actual state.
— We make here a bridge —
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The emanation of smell is considered the spirit of a plant in all magic spells, alchemy, and poetry. As to speculate in a way to recall and invoke the ghosts in the theater courtyard, they have witnessed time travels, their possessions, and even death.Ghosts and apparitions are worth subjects of study for us, a surrogate to traditional ontology or ways to gather certainty. Spoked-out people conceal their presence, while we can learn from them and give a plausible future, that operates as a decolonial device and justice maker of what these walls have beheld and attended.
We see the garden as the core and passage between the outer speculations and the local non-human inhabitants of the theater, plants time works differently than human time, it is slow therefore long-term observers of the change, as well as have developed within trials of failure and success in spreading techniques that carry on how to settle in the urban landscapes. They live day and night there, from dormancy to fertile seasons, they remain, rather than humans coming to rehearsals, meetings, and social encounters, they have seen it all, we want to commend them with this text and our fragrance, soft concerts, massage sessions, and installations, we want to be the sleepwalker and take over their hard work for some nights.
Our presence aims to be performers of a ‘limpia’4, to drain out the spiritual blockages, and to make justice in an intersectional manner, that involves us new migrant bodies encountering the contingency of Wuppertal city, as the same as the plants did, we share a phantasmagoric nature and observer dubbing between all the bureaucratic languages to transition when outside of the home - we are clarividents, intimate human narratives, and the scars of institutional precarity. This is a political presence a civic manifestation, to reshift the gaze towards a non-anthropocentric and beyond a chain of command, approaching a participatory advent of a compound and articulated future of the Schauspielhaus Wuppertal that acknowledges and activates its memory.
1— Biopolitics refers to the political relations between the administration or regulation of the life of species and a locality’s populations, where politics and law evaluate life based on perceived constants and traits.
2— Geomancy (Greek: ‘earth divination”) is a method of divination that interprets markings on the ground or the patterns formed by tossed handfuls of soil, rocks, or sand.
3— “Playhouse under suspicion” — w/ Pact Zollverein Essen, Workshop led by Alessandro Bosshard, Savvas Ciriacidis, and Alex Lehnerer in collaboration with Pact-Zollverein.
4— A limpia is a Latinamerican Spiritual Cleansing ritual. It cleanses the body, emotions, mind, and soul from negative energies or thoughts. Traditionally it is used to get rid of blockages. Some people believe that it removes witchcraft, curses, and hexes. After a limpia we may feel light, peaceful, and happy. It uses communication with the spirit world. A limpia can also be performed as a preparation ritual for a ceremony or a “trabajo” (spiritual work).
back to top ↑
care station – the haunted garden
of the kleines schauspielhaus wuppertal
under construction festival
06.05.2022 — 08.05.2022
back to top ↑
Caring shadows
The inner gardens in the Kleines Schauspielhaus Wuppertal are a location on time transitioning and travel. In the region at the beginning of the 80s, the garden was designed by AKIRA SATO, a Japanese landscape architect who came to the city of Wuppertal and commissioned the design of the inner garden in the theater, while simultaneously traditional Japanese gardens were spread across the region, like the Botanical Garden in Wuppertal, same decade. We can see these phenomena as an exoticization practice and a form of peripheral orientalism combined.
Through the inquiry part of our participation in the under-construction festival (2022) in the garden location, we attempted to gather stories, resources, and literature on what was the vision of the landscape architect, with little success, it seems even her own writing about landscape design seem to be a challenge and further than accessible for us. Almost like a myth, or a ghost behind the anecdote of the one author for the commission.
Furthermore, there is a strong connection between the Pina Bausch Company and the physical phenomena of the theater, all its aura and power displayed over decades as a renowned performer and dancer who manufactured her vision, almost still nowadays possessing their bodies, a matter of biopolitics1and geomancy2 that reverbs over the place, like an apparition with lots of agency over time. Even crimes and their opacity have occurred in place, where people had died inside3, all related to the engineering of the building, - About the alleged perpetrator: The 49-year-old house has been an early pensioner since 2012 and has lived in Wuppertal-Elberfeld without contact with the public since then. His father was the famous German architect and theater builder Gerhard Graubner-. It seems like the house was made for ghosts and horror, like a premonition.
We identify 22 specimens of plants in the gardens, some clearly coming as foreigners part of the design plan and other locals that manage to land and add to the abandoned picture of the garden, where a manner of maintenance-care is the only present. Care is a complex activity,that comes from an affective commitment to the simple preservation of animated agents or assemblages, and intra-action between human and nonhuman forces. Currently, the garden is being trimmed, but the tiles and design mapped are consumed by the forages and tree roots, possessed by the material forces of time along with the human narratives inscribed in its actual state.
— We make here a bridge —
We see the garden as the core and passage between the outer speculations and the local non-human inhabitants of the theater, plants time works differently than human time, it is slow therefore long-term observers of the change, as well as have developed within trials of failure and success in spreading techniques that carry on how to settle in the urban landscapes. They live day and night there, from dormancy to fertile seasons, they remain, rather than humans coming to rehearsals, meetings, and social encounters, they have seen it all, we want to commend them with this text and our fragrance, soft concerts, massage sessions, and installations, we want to be the sleepwalker and take over their hard work for some nights.
Our presence aims to be performers of a ‘limpia’4, to drain out the spiritual blockages, and to make justice in an intersectional manner, that involves us new migrant bodies encountering the contingency of Wuppertal city, as the same as the plants did, we share a phantasmagoric nature and observer dubbing between all the bureaucratic languages to transition when outside of the home - we are clarividents, intimate human narratives, and the scars of institutional precarity. This is a political presence a civic manifestation, to reshift the gaze towards a non-anthropocentric and beyond a chain of command, approaching a participatory advent of a compound and articulated future of the Schauspielhaus Wuppertal that acknowledges and activates its memory.
1— Biopolitics refers to the political relations between the administration or regulation of the life of species and a locality’s populations, where politics and law evaluate life based on perceived constants and traits.
2— Geomancy (Greek: ‘earth divination”) is a method of divination that interprets markings on the ground or the patterns formed by tossed handfuls of soil, rocks, or sand.
3— “Playhouse under suspicion” — w/ Pact Zollverein Essen, Workshop led by Alessandro Bosshard, Savvas Ciriacidis, and Alex Lehnerer in collaboration with Pact-Zollverein.
4— A limpia is a Latinamerican Spiritual Cleansing ritual. It cleanses the body, emotions, mind, and soul from negative energies or thoughts. Traditionally it is used to get rid of blockages. Some people believe that it removes witchcraft, curses, and hexes. After a limpia we may feel light, peaceful, and happy. It uses communication with the spirit world. A limpia can also be performed as a preparation ritual for a ceremony or a “trabajo” (spiritual work).