Sergiu Matis
Extinction Room (Hopeless.)
The western population of the Siberian crane now consists of a single male. For ten years, this creature has lived alone. It is just one of the endangered bird species whose extinction is described by three performers in the park at the Ringlokschuppen – seriously, lovingly and accompanied by living bird song from decades-old sound recordings.
Ringlokschuppen Ruhr (Outdoor)
Language: English and German
Entry is free of charge. Registration in the online sales
The birdsong is taken from Cornell University’s archive of animal sounds and the citizen science project xeno-canto. These provide the background for the stories of bird life and extinction. Here scientific accounts meet myths of creation and the end of days, folk dances and folk songs.
Each member of the audience is able to assemble their own experience and wander freely from one bird story to the next. The selection includes: birds that are extinct because their feathers were sought after to decorate hats. Birds whose existence is threatened because a new dam has been built to protect human beings from flooding. Birds that are supposed to learn their flight routes from miniature aircraft because they are being raised in a breeding programme without any parents. EXTINCTION ROOM (HOPELESS.) is one of humanity’s desperate attempts to conserve what has been irretrievably lost as a result of environmental pollution.
Credits ›
Concept and choreography: Sergiu Matis
Choreographic collaboration: Martin Hansen, Manon Parent
Performance: Sergiu Matis, Nicola Micallef, Manon Parent
Sound installation and composition: Antye Greie aka AGF
Text: Philip Ingman, Sergiu Matis, Mila Pavićević
Species research: Philip Ingman
Dramaturgy: Mila Pavićević
Sound: Martin Lutz
Production management: 4Culture Association
Distribution: Distribution: Danila – Freitag, Agentur für Performative Künste
Production ›
A production by Sergiu Matis in co-production with 4Culture Association and WASP Studios. Funded by a grant from the Capital Cultural Fund and by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe. Co-financed by AFCN – The National Administration of Cultural Funds, Romania, the Romanian Cultural Institute and the Europalia Arts Festival, Belgium. With support from the Nationales Performance Netz (NPN), Centre For Drama Art, Zagreb, Art Radionica Lazareti, Dubrovnik, and ICI-CCN Montpellier Occitanie. Animal recordings are used with the kind permission of the Macaulay Library at Cornell University’s Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the xeno-canto Foundation.
Biographies ›
Antye Greie (aka AGF) is a vocalist, musician, composer, producer, and new media artist. She was born and raised in East Germany. Her work explores speech and the spoken word, combined with electronic music. She also works on sound installations, moving image, audio visualization and real time video processing, and has written scores for feature films as well as theatre and dance performances. In 2011 she initiated the arts organization Hai Art on the island of Hailuoto, Finland, and acts as its curator and executive producer.
Martin Hansen is invested in forms of embodied inhabitation as a mode of performance, and has performed extensively with Tino Sehgal, Sergiu Matis, Alexandra Pirici, Laurie Young, Ligia Lewis, Christoph Winkler, Chunky Move and Not Yet It’s Difficult, among others. Martin choreographs bodies, language and objects to investigate economies of time and the politics of remembrance. He is a graduate of the HZT Berlin, and works between Berlin and Melbourne. Martin is committed to the social politics of art making, and develops frameworks and structures, meaning, collectives and events in Berlin. Martin was Germany’s ‘Dancer of the Year’ in 2012 and a danceWEB Scholar in 2013.
Nicola Micallef was born in Malta in 1999. She began her training in classical ballet at the age of 7. In 2010, she found her interest in contemporary dance and went on to further her training in this field. In 2018, she joined ŻfinMalta – National Dance Company of Malta as an apprentice, with Paolo Mangiola as artistic director. She joined full-time for the successive two seasons, where she had the opportunity to work with numerous internationally renowned choreographers and artists such as Roy Assaf, Jacopo Godani, Sergiu Matis, Jose Agudo and Jorge Crecis. Nicola has since found her base in Berlin, collaborating with Sergiu Matis, Sebastian Matthias and Agudo Dance Company, touring throughout Europe, as well as performing in the Expo 2020 Dubai.
Sergiu Matis is a Romanian choreographer born in 1981 in Cluj-Napoca. He received his dance education at the Liceul de Coregrafie in Cluj and the Mannheim Academy of Dance, and began his career at Tanztheater Nuremberg. He has been living and working in Berlin since 2008, creating his own works In 2014 he completed his masters in Solo/Dance/Authorship at HZT Berlin. His dance practice could be considered a relentless search through corporeal and digitalised archives, in order to place a critical lens on what has been filed away, salvage what was presumed lost, and reinvent what was undocumented. The accumulation of history serves as an old map, which becomes a departure point towards the revelation of a new imagining of dance.
Manon Parent is a choreographic and sonic artist based in Berlin. Trained at the Paris Conservatoire in contemporary dance and classical violin, since then she has dedicated her search to the interconnections between sound and movement. Now working as a dancer, musician, composer and choreographer, she searches beyond styles and aesthetics for the most honest bodies and voices. Manon currently collaborates with Ioannis Mandafounis, Jean P’ark, Kareth Schaffer, Sébastien Laurent, Margot Dorléans, Laurent Durupt and Roni Katz.