Artistic leaders and curators: Emilia
June 23–24 2023
Co-produced by Dansehallerne
Fabrikken for Kunst og Design Opening at 18:00
It is an ongoing artistic research between Emilia Gasiorek and Karis Zidore, materialised in spacial and atmospheric scenes – it’s a piece in itself. With a beginning and an end. An intervention, a scenography, a dramaturgs speech, a performance, another performance, and a stage staged in the middle of a big, bright and breezy space.
All these bits of the piece called thecarrierbag festival have been chosen through the bodies of the two curators. The works were curated because they triggered affective responses. It started with a tickle, crept through their bodies and ended in quite a mood.
thecarrierbag festival is a two day festival at Fabrikken for Kunst og Design with four choreographic works, four interventions, two dinners, one DJ-set, and all the in-betweens.
thecarrierbag festival is a project initiated by Emilia Gasiorek and Karis Zidore, but it has previously been realised in collaboration with Sandra Liaklev Andersen in 2017 and Stine Frandsen in 2019. In the previous editions the festival has taken place at Danseatelier. Danseatelier has, in this way, continuously supported and framed the festival. The concept of the festival has grown from the tissue of Danseatelier and the ongoing curiosity into that which holds an artistic practice. Within the context of Danseatelier it is the physical space, the group and organisational structure that is in focus, whilst within the context of thecarrierbag festival we zoom in on that which holds pieces.
18.00
18.30
19.00
19.45
Doors open
Grand Drape Pull
Intervention by Emilia Gasiorek and Karis Zidore
Dirgy Dancing
Performance by Lisen Ellard
Break with food and open bar
20.45 the incense of assembly
21:00
21.30
22:00
Intervention by Olivia Riviere & Nanna Stigsdatter / Danseatelier
It Doesn’t Look Like Anything To Me
Performance by Jules Fischer & Josefine Opsahl
Break with open bar
Peony – a singing bar
Intervention by Barbora Vilkaitytė
18.00
Doors open
19.00 Pattern Recognition
Performance by Angela Goh
19.30
20.30
21:00
22:00
22.30
23.00
Break with food and open bar
carry gather assemble fold
Intervention by Storm Møller Madsen
Masterpiece
Performance by Luisa Fernanda Alfonso
Break with with open bar
LOVERS REVENGE
Concert by Heva Vaupel & Camilla Lind
Dziffi
DJ set
This text pulls back the curatorial choices of this piece called thecarrierbag festival, making visible how decisions always shape artistic endeavours. The text is neither the piece itself nor the heavy cloth of drapes hanging in front of the stage. It’s your eyes sliding over sentences, the words making visible, your gaze pulling the drapes to reveal the curatorial choices on display in the stage lights.
It’s 2015 — and in between the two cities, we, Emilia and Karis, found ourselves tapping out long emails to each other. We were in between a forming friendship, a collegial correspondence, a co-writing session, and a stretched out conversation about how to organise ourselves around dance. In these emails we wrapped our thoughts around each other’s thoughts, disrupted sentences with sentences and carried each other’s words with new words. This is where thecarrierbag festival started.
It’s 2023 — and in the same city we, the curators, want to meet the festival anew. For this year’s edition, we tend to thecarrierbag festival as if it were a piece in itself. We do this to remind ourselves that the choices we make, like when making a piece, are not neutral but do something. Choices — organisational, curatorial, artistic — are decisions that are situated, that shape and give form. We are affected through our bodies, our bodies are oriented towards objects, certain objects are within our reach, our reach is shaping our dreams, our dreams are the immaterial matter of our pieces. In order to unfold the idea of the festival as a piece, we have worked with a dramaturg and a scenographer, borrowing structures and roles from the logic of performance making. Storm Møller Madsen’s dramaturgical reflections have helped us situate our knowledge, turn towards our oversights, stretch our ways of thinking, and encounter our 8 year old work afresh. Anna Moderato’s scenography is a visual and tactile contemplation on concepts at the heart of the festival – a sculptural set design for the periphery, for that which happens off stage and in between acts.
We work with the idea of curation as selection and curation as situation. Curation as selection is about recognising that curation is a process of choosing, always by a not-neutral someone.
We selected performances that do something to our bodies, they move something in us. All of the performances sparked affective responses — from small itches of feelings to large crushing states. Lisen Ellard’s Dirgy Dancing presses gently on our hearts, rests in our throats, and leaves us with dances and loss. Jules Fischer and Josefine Opsahl’s It Doesn’t Look Like Anything To Me hits us with a raw softness, an overexposed intimacy and a saturated tenderness. Angela Goh’s Pattern Recognition feels full of muted contrasts between the crisp and the sticky, the composed and the erratic. Finally Lusia Fernanda Alfonso’s Masterpiece teases us with its loading, thrilling and melodramatic nature. Curious about why these affects do what they do, we followed and traced them like a map, connecting feelings with positionality.
Curaton as situation is about seeing curation as something that forges an encounter, shapes moods, builds scenarios and invites for ways of being together. The programme is made up of performances and interventions, and these interventions are expressions of curation as situation. They are small performative actions or moments that blow life into the space in between the performances. They are crooked welcoming speeches, damp dancing, and tasty food.
It’s now — and the stage has been staged in the middle of the space, like a prop in a scene in a piece called a festival. The performances are placed on this stage in the middle of the big, bright and breezy space in the even bigger, brighter and breezier midsummer nights. The big theatrical island in the centre trembles with impressions. The audience sit on all four sides. Literally gathering around the performances. Later, outside, the audience will sit around the bonfire. They will rest their backs against the scenography of the festival, where conversations will begin and narratives will be acted out. The June night sky, the vast background to this scene, is full of diagonal crossings that mix up the mood. This is a grandiose setting for a homey piece to unfold.
We invite you into the curatorial choices, the curtains in front of the scenes, the pieces, the in-betweens, the montages, the interventions, the climaxes, the speeches, the flat notes, the longings, the laughings, the lingerings, the light-settings, the low intensities, the last drinks, the next day, the fictions, the feelings, the chapters, the beginnings, the sittings, the dancing, the given and the givings. All of the scenes that the piece thecarrierbag festival holds, inside the big, breezy container of Fabrikken for Kunst og Design, inside the home, at the theatre, underneath the bright June sky that stretches into the horizon.
Welcome!
Written by Emilia Gasiorek and Karis Zidore, curators and artistic leaders of thecarrierbag festivalDATE
TIME
CREDITS
JUNE 23rd
18.30
Grand Drape Pull is a metaphorical drawing back of the curtains to reveal the piece called thecarrierbag festival. In this performative intervention, Emilia
Gasiorek and Karis Zidore will open the festival with a welcome speech. The curtain will fly, the lights will come on, and the festival will begin!
Emilia Gasiorek and Karis Zidore are the artistic leaders and curators of thecarrierbag festival, and have worked together as a curatorial duo since 2015. They are interested in giving attention to the around and in between, with the festival format as a departure point. Their duo practice exists as a way to be carried next to their individual dance and choreographic practices. Their curatorial practice takes shape around ideas of curation as selection and curation as situation-making. In this curation is seen both as a process of choosing and sorting and as something that forges an encounter, shapes moods, builds scenarios and invites for ways of being together. Throughout their practice they are drawn to the affective – from pieces that spark small itches of feelings or large crushing states, to understanding where emotions are placed and what they do. With the belief that organisational or curatorial frames are not neutral, they actively deal with making all layers involved in creating a festival visible. They are both part of Danseatelier.
Photo: Edited photo from intervention at thecarrierbag festival 2019, original photo by Nadia Marilena Roccato.
19.00
By: Lisen Ellard. Lament dances by and with: Johanna Chemnitz, Julienne Doko, Khamlane Halsackda and Lisen Ellard. Sound design: Elize Arvefjord. Production: Johnson & Bergsmark. Photo: Milja Rossi.
– /dɜːrdʒ
Dirgy Dancing is a collection of lament dances by and with local dancers from different places. Dances that are dedicated to people, memories, times and places, like a way to perceive the unmentionable of what’s lost.
Collectively, we look back at what has been in order to be able to face what comes after, and that there will be an after. The lament dances create space to be in the presence and in care of what has passed and no longer is.
Lisen Ellard works with three local dancers for Dirgy Dancing and at thecarrierbag festival it is lament dances by and with: Johanna Chemnitz, Julienne Doko, Khamlane Halsackda.
Lisen Ellard and director Mattias Lechhave collaborated for several years around themes of death and its rituals, which resulted in the performances Funeral and DEATH. With the dance anthology Dirgy Dancing, Lisen Ellard continues this investigation of loss and the relationship between grief, memory and movement.
the incense of assembly
by Olivia Riviere and Nanna Stigsdatter / DanseatelierDATE
TIME
JUNE 23rd 20.45
Light my fire through the longest night
Tread into your step, feel the heat of the moment
Picture this **
Inhale the scent of the assembly
Olivia Riviere and Nanna Stigsdatter are choreographers and members of the dance collective Danseatelier, which has hosted the previous editions of the festival. Whilst thecarrierbag festival is a project initiated by Emilia Gasiorek and Karis Zidore, Dansatelier has continuously supported and framed the festival. The concept of the festival has grown from the tissue of Danseatelier and the ongoing curiosity into that which holds an artistic practice. In this spirit the intervention ‘the incense of assembly’ is a bridge between Danseatelier and thecarrierbag festival.
JUNE 23rd
21.00
Choreography: Jules Fischer. Performers: Andreas Haglund, Beck Heiberg, Jupiter Child, Thjerza Balaj. Composer: Josefine Opsahl. Cello: Andrew Power. Costumes: Camilla Lind. Commissioned for Enter art fair 2022 as part of the program “Tales of love and fight” curated by Irene Campolmi. Special thanks to original cast members: Sall Lam Toro & Hrafnhildur Marta
Guðmundsdóttir. Photo: Julie Nymann.
The title refers to the sci-fi series Westworld, where the hosts (robots) use the phrase:” it doesn’t look like anything to me” as a fail-save response in encounters which make them question their own reality. Choreographically the piece is the beginning of a bigger investigation of masculinity and patriarchy. The movement material is searching for vulnerability, softness, and collectivity in found material from sports, movies, and folk dance. The music is an elegant negotiation between a live cello and electronic loops constructing a filmic and epic soundscape.
The composition lets us feel the organic and emotional body rub against the strict and minimal electronic loops. The piece is playing with ambivalence and illegibility as an escape from binaries, while questioning hegemony is a “natural” trait.
Jules Fischer is a visual artist and choreographer. Their practice is centered around large-scale performances and creating immersive experiences through different media, a multitude of perspectives, senses, and bodies. Basic feelings such as love, loneliness, and grief, are often central for Jules, but always from an ambivalent and queer perspective.
Josefine Opsahl is a composer and artist. Extending her background in classical music into contemporary medias of expression, her works unfold in the intersection between tradition and renewal, the analogue and the synthetic. With an emphasis on tactility, movement and virtuosity she pushes the limits of what genres and artistic expressions can be focusing on renewing larger formats like the opera, the ballet and symphonic sound worlds.
“It Doesn’t Look Like Anything To Me” is a collaborate piece created by composer Josefine Opsahl and visual artist Jules Fischer.
DATE TIME
CREDITS
JUNE 23rd
22.00
Peony is made possible in collaboration with the Lithuanian Cultural Attaché in Sweden, Finland and Denmark, supported by the Lithuanian Culture Institute. Photo: Monika Pietarytė.
Peony (Pinavija) gathers romance, religion, longing, and dreams. It is a reminiscing of early 2000, when we listened to CocoRosie, Antony and the Johnsons, had friends over and travelled to Berlin and Paris… Everything was far away, yet so possible. One moment like a dandelion, yellow and full of happiness, another moment like a pappus in the air, spreading new lives.
Barbora Vilkaitytėis a dancer, choreographer and performance artist based between Stockholm and Vilnius. Creating sight – specifically, she brings New Eastern European identity, hybrid performativity, feminism, personal archive, and today’s consumerism from the perspective of the ancient, ‘expressionistic’ and the emotional.
DATE
TIME
CREDITS
JUNE 24th
19.00
Dancer and choreographer: Angela Goh.
Photo: Angela Goh, Pattern Recognition, 2023, Image courtesy of the artist and Fine Arts, Sydney.
Pattern Recognition is a new work by Angela Goh that brings into proximity recurring gestures of the mouth from her previous works, specifically Desert Body Creep (2016), Body Loss (2017), Uncanny Valley Girl (2018) and Sky Blue Mythic (2021).
Across these works the mouth has represented an uncanny passageway between the inside and outside of the body. The mouth is rendered as both flesh and void, and as a threshold breached —— an alien-like tongue escapes, a voice erupts and is sucked back in, liquid is ingested or seeps out, hands reach in only to reemerge as another image of a mouth. By looping back and collecting these gestures together, Pattern Recognition highlights an evolution of form, expanding and entangling a body of work into new territories and trajectories formed by processes of recursion and deviation. Pattern Recognition is originally created as an exhibition of performances at Fine Arts, Sydney in May 2023.
Angela Goh is a dancer and choreographer. Her work has been performed at the Sydney Opera House, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney, Performance Space New York, Auto Italia, Baltic Circle, Shedhalle, and Taipei Performing Arts Center. She lives and works in Sydney.
how do we carry how do we gather how do we assemble through sites of tenderness and accountability how do we fold together and apart who is the we and the I that carries, gathers, assembles, folds …. together
Storm Møller Madsen is a queer, non-binary performance studies scholar, dramaturg, and curator. They are a PhD fellow at The Department of Arts & Cultural Studies at The University of Copenhagen. Their PhD project focuses on performance art by trans artists. In both their academic, dramaturgical, and curatorial practice they are invested in critical reflection, political awareness, and forward-thinking methodologies.
TIME
CREDITS
JUNE 24th
21.00
In collaboration with: Peter Rubel. Costumes by: Isabelle Marie Lange. Production by: HZT Berlin. With special support from: Leila Hekmat, Diego Agulló, Jule Flierl, Stine Janvin, Daniel Ernesto Müller, Shade Thérèt, Estefanía Alvarez Ramirez, Ernesto Cárcamo Cavazos, Anna Philippa Müller, MA SODA, Margie Medlin, Maria Camila Alfonso.
Fernanda Alfonso embodies and turns around the archetypes of the Character Dancer and the Mariachi - characterized for being hyper-dramatic, hypervirtuous and hyper-gendered.
Masterpiece explores both their excesses in the tumult of nostalgic and Latin American associations, hijacking the dance from its legitimacy, legacy and traditions.
How can we create conditions for these archetypes to exist with us today? How to find pleasure in spaces where we no longer know how to position ourselves? What resonates through our simultaneous fascination and irritation?
In collaboration with composer Peter Rubel and an abundance of loudspeakers, Masterpiece deals with the poetics of building, unbuilding, repeating, modulating, interrupting and abandoning dances and songs, which attempt to exist within consonance and dissonance.
Luisa Fernanda Alfonso (Colombia, 1995) studied Limón Technique in NYC, the B.A. in Dance at the Folkwang University in Essen and the M.A. SODA at HZT in Berlin. Her work Masterpiece has been part of Les Urbaines Festival, TanzNRW Festival, The 200th anniversary of the Kunstverein München, and was an opening act for The Düsseldorf Düsterboys.
of her fascinations and frustrations, Luisa
DATE TIME
JUNE
LOVERS REVENGE is a show by a duo consisting of Heva Vaupel and Camilla Lind. As partners they search for a place in between each of their fields: music and sound design, dance and choreography.
Within the format of a concert consisting of 15 shorter songs, they are searching for a place for performative exploration ranging from energetic pleasure to more intimate vulnerability. Here they weave an almost genre dysphoric experience and with songs as dramaturgy, they take the audience through several doors from something well produced to more raw and intimate material. All with style references to the ’’performed as lesbian” pop duo T.aT.u, and musical references to both metal, trance and pop rock. They aim to push the boundaries of both formats, and the relations of art and life.
Camilla Lind (B. 1989) is working as an interdisciplinary artist based in Copenhagen, Denmark. She workswith performance, painting, sculpture, music and styling. As she is educated in dance and choreography the body is a continuous entrance point in her work. With references to mythology, popular culture and subculture her work explores performativity as a means not of production but of transformation. Through both imagination, grief, and pleasure she suggests the stage as a place for collective vulnerability. She aims to push the narratives around the production of the body, and the taboos that emerge from such. Ranging from psychic vulnerability to sexuality and gender, all with an energetic and humorous twist.
DATE
TIME JUNE 24th 23.00
Influenced by afro rhythms and transcendental hymns, their sound is dedicated to an exploration of peripheral black electronic-music. As their fueled by a frantic lust, the CDJs become a means of acceleration towards the imaginative soundscapes of their endless desire.
Excited to share with you the joy of music, Dziffi will bring you a wide ranging selection of their favourite tunes - expect high-energy selections, nostalgic tunes and eclectic blends.
Curbside Gathering by Anna Moderato
DATE JUNE 23rd – 24th
Curbside Gathering is a sculptural set design for the periphery, for the actions and events that happen off stage and in between the acts. It brings together elements and textures from the cityscape, and features from home decor, molding these into an active backdrop against which backs can be rested, conversations begun and narratives acted out.
Anna Moderato (b. 1984 SE) is a visual artist working primarily with sculpture, and the setting up of spatial narratives and site specific interventions that seep into the spaces of everyday life.Type
Choreographic festival
Duration
5 hours
Venue
Fabrikken for Kunst & Design, Sundholmsvej 46, 2300 CPH S
It is possible to have a wheelchair and companion seating at the venue. Please give us a notice in advance if you need such a space.
Bar and food Vegan sandwiches from Foodie will be available to buy. Foodie is a North African take away shop on Amager.
Getting there
Curators/Artistic research: Emilia Gasiorek & Karis Zidore Producer: Marlene Bonnesen
Dramaturg: Storm Møller Madsen Scenographer: Anna Moderato Co-production: Dansehallerne, DH-producers Sofie Pedersen & Anne Mette Berg Administration: CYRK thecarrierbag festival is co-produced by Dansehallerne and supported by Statens Kunstfond, William Demant Fonden, Amager Øst Lokaludvalg, Roskilde Festival.
