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BECOMING DINOSAUR

work in progress

“A world is a future we can believe in. A world is an artificial, living thing. A world dreams up a place. A world has values. A world has one language. A world can grow. A world can collapse. A world has magical powers, especially the power to filter what matters. “

Ian Cheng- Emissaries Guide to Worlding 

In Becoming Dinosaur Josefine Mühle explores in an intimate setting with her six months old son Rio, her partner and the costume designer and friend Justyna Gmitrzuk what it means to create and nourish a world from its early beginnings. Becoming dinosaur is transdisciplinary, ongoing research and is a futuristic container for growth and beauty that gives value to the human relationship to planet Earth.

Accompanied by research on dinosaurs and made accessible to babies, the work opens up a strange yet tangible tension between planetary past and future scenarios. The first stage of the work (realised in Oct. 2023, DOCK 11 Studio 4) was dedicated to creating the placefor the work. Together with Marcus Prinzen (light, camera, set) Justyna Gmitrzuk (costume and textile design), Rio Prinzen and Paul Fechner (baby performers) and myself (artistic direction, adult performer) we realised a spacial setup, with a textile volcano as prototype for the place. This volcano became the stage for 2 baby performers and one adult performer. In this first rehearsal face we created video material that will be edited into a video work.


︎RESEARCH DOCUMENTATION

password on request





ARTISTIC DIRECTION, INSTALLATION CONCEPT : Josefine Mühle
PERFORMANCE: Paul Samuel Fechner, Rio Prinzen, Josefine Mühle
CAMERA, LIGHT: Marcus Prinzen
COSTUME, TEXTILE DESIGN: Justyna Gmitrzuk 


With generous support from the TAKE HEART process funding of the Performing Arts Fund

The video series LOTUS explores the depths of human consciousness focussing on different perspectives on that issue.

LOTUS PORTALS INTO PURPLE touches upon Julian Jaynes controversial theses about the bicameral psyche. Jaynes argues that before the development of consciousness, humans perceived auditory memories or ideas hallucinatorily as clear inner voices and as commenting or commanding guides. The video work takes up this thesis and ventures into a pre-conscious, mystical realm populated by voices, visions and masks. The diversity of religious experience is broken down into a hypnotic film work. Aiming to be a medial ceremony, “LOTUS. Portals into Purple" for alternative forms of cross-species coming togther. Fiction becomes a prophet.

︎REVIEW 

PERFORMANCE, EDITING: Josefine Mühle
CAMERA: Alicia Hoppel, Marcus Prinzen, Josefine Mühle n
MAKEUP & COSTUMEDESIGN : Justyna Gmitrzuk
SOUND: Björk Human Behavior, field recordings

ada studio Berlin
19th/20th June 2021 

TRAILER

The LOTUS video series explores the depths of human consciousness focussing on different perspectives on that vast topic.






Informed by horror and science fiction scenarios LOTUS THE CHILD WAS STUNG imagines a intrauterin body that we no longer remember. This work investigates psychological and neurobiological studies on prenatal experience and fuses it with a cinematic stimmulation of the senses. The intrauterine body emerges as a sensual landscape of micro-dependencies. A cinematic collage of fragmented territories of fierce connection with what lies beyond the reach of adult perception.


REVIEW ︎








ARTISTIC DIRECTION, EDITING: Josefine Mühle 
CAMERA: Marcus Prinzen, Josefine Mühle, Noam Gorbat
PHOTOGRAPHY: Aisha Mia

ada studio Berlin 
14./15th November 2020

TRAILER 

“A person of love is also a destoyer, craving to catch the softly burning flame of desire.”








Innocent, cute, dependent - the evening length piece BABY CHOIR throws socially accepted baby images overboard and is interested in the monstrosity of the baby archetype. The piece composes psychopoetic journeys decaying pleasures and sucking muscles. A space for tenderness and rotting, a dirty body surface and a shifting composite.
BABY CHOIR provides a german audio description as integral part of the work. The audio description was developed within the working process.

TRAILER

CONCEPT, CHOREOGRAPHY Suvi Kemppainen, Josefine Mühle CREATION,PERFORMANCE Xenia Taniko, Johanna Karlberg, Suvi Kemppainen, Josefine Mühle SOUND DESIGN Fjóla Gautadóttir (LEMONBOY), Reetta Nummi (SITOI) SET, LIGHT David Eckelmann COSTUME Moran Sanderovich AUDIO DESCRIPTION COORDINATION Xenia Taniko AUDIO DESCRIPTION CREATION Pernille Sonne, Emmilou Rößling ASSISTANCE: Luna Madlena Khalo LIVE DESCRIPTION Emmilou Rößling DRAMATURGICAL WORKSHOP, OUTSIDE EYE Isabel Gatzke PHOTOGRAPHY Venla Helenius, Mayra Wallraff VIDEO DOKUMENTATION, TRAILER Christina Voigt PRODUCTION, CARE Tiphaine Carrère

pictured performers: Josefine Mühle, Johanna Karlberg, Xenia Taniko, Suvi Kemppainen  

Supported by the Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. Media partner: taz.

premiere 16.12.2021 SOPHIENSÆLE, Berlin


      

A CHILD HAS BEEN BEATEN is part of Kemppainen & Mühles broader
research Visions of Masochism which takes space for the phenomena of masochism as a subversive force for action. The title of the piece references Siegmund Freud’s essay A Child is Being Beaten (1919) that is historically placed as a contribution to the study of the origin of sexual perversions. Through appropriating Freud’s writing the artists reclaim dominant male supremacy notions of masochism in approaching them beyond the binary of submission and dominance. They offer movements of desire by poking the heteronormative contract and finding a molecular level of sensitivities that could exist.

In the evening length piece two bodies accompany each other on an insistent and monstrous path in a shared space of becoming a body that has lost it´s function. A CHILD HAS BEEN BEATEN  identifies masochism as an autonomous phenomena and empowering agency. Based on their individual and shared desires, Kemppainen and Mühle zoom into the impact of normative structures in their personal histories offering a poesis of solitude and companionship. The viewers are invited to work with their responsibility as spectators, with matters of intimacy and dark joyous satisfactions.


︎VIDEO 








CONCEPT, CHOREOGRAPHY, PERFORMANCE: Suvi Kemppainen, Josefine Mühle
GUEST PERFORMANCE: Camille Käse
LIGHT, VIDEO, STAGE: Suvi Kemppainen, Josefine Mühle, David Eckelmann
SOUND: Suvi Kemppainen, Josefine Mühle, Fjóla Gautadóttir
DRAMATURGICAL SUPPORT: Isabel Gatzke
THANK YOU: William Wheeler, Sandra Umathum, Sandra Blatterer, Meimei

pictured performers: Suvi Kemppainen, Josefine Mühle
photos: Gerhard F. Ludwig

A production by Suvi Kemppainen + Josefine Mühle in co-production with SOPHIENSÆLE.

TANZTAGE BERLIN 2020