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Friday August 7- Monday August 10, 2020
International Interaction Laboratory
Interaktionslabor, the media lab founded by Johannes Birringer, continues
its smaller scale series of "plein air" workshops - pursued via
the intersections of painting - writing - moving - filming - and photographing.
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"Electric Dance", outdoor plein air 2020 workshop (c) Intakt
Interaktionslabor took place in the abandoned coal mine Göttelborn for 10 years. The experimental media lab, with its international residency program, now holds a distinguished place amongst a few similar ventures that had been created, in the 2000s, especially in Essen and the Ruhr area (North-Rhine Westphalia) in Germany after the demise of coal mining and the old industrial labor of working underground. Most known amongst these are PACT Zollverein (Essen) with its artistic programs and dance research. Similar wokshops in disused industrial sites have been created in other parts of the world.
After 2014 Interaktionslabor shifted activities to smaller-scale projects - to place at different locations in the Saarland, involving small groups of artists who use retreats as a method of focussing on new skills and somatechnic practices.
Inspired in turn by Birringer and Michèle Danjoux's London-based Design and Performance lab (DAP-Lab) – the summer projects continue the utopian idea of an independent “Performance Academy.” The plein air workshops engage performance-media design, interactional and wearable concepts, and investigations of gestural processes, protocols, and social choreography through painting, drawing, writing, photography and walking.
2020 and the Covid-19 pandemic caused a challenge of unknown dimensions, but we decicded to hold the lab in August, and eight artists attended. We will return to the ;ein air workshop in August 2021.
For information on the precursor workshops up to 2018 (METABODY) - please visit the online platform (http://www.metabody.eu/).
Johannes Birringer and Michèle Danjoux have collaborated on the Madrid platforms (2014 and 2015) and directed the London platform (2016) and further developments of the kimospheres (kinetic atmospheres) in 2016-19: documentation of the event can be found also in these pages. Birringer's new book on Kinetic Atmospheres: Performance and Immersion was completed a few weeks after the conclusion of Interaktionslabor, and will be published by Routledge in 2021.
10 Years of Interaktionslabor:
Vanessa Michielon interview with Johannes Birringer
Knecht Veranstaltungstechnik
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