TECHNICOLOR DREAMZ
2022
Trailer out now: Watch it here.
| „our responsibility is to keep the mind open.“ adrienne maree brown
Technicolor Dreamz speculates on a future where synesthesia – a perceptive phenomenon in which the senses merge in unusual ways when reacting to stimuli – acts as a utopian, fictional superpower. As a counter-concept to mainstream science fiction narratives that worship technological progress, highlighted through themes of oppression and power, this work shifts its focus back to empathy and sensuousness among all species and life forms. |
DATES
26 – 28/10/2022 Premiere and shows at Tanzhaus Zürich
04 – 06/11/2022 Premiere and shows at brut wien
CREDITS
Artistic Direction/Performance: Malika Fankha
Video: Tina Kult
Costume: Goran Bugaric
Make-up/Headpiece: Valerie Reding
Silicon Objects: Nagi Gianni
Lights: Marek Lamprecht
Sound: Dark Euphoria feat. Bernd Ammann
Sound Layout: Matthias Brunner (Tanzhaus) & Philipp Schäfer (brut)
Videomapping: Dario Stefanek
Research: Andrej Barla
Movement Coach: Karin Pauer
Outside Eye: Stefan Roehrle
Production: mollusca productions
Dramaturgical Advisor: Lea Moro
Coproduction: FANKS, Tanzhaus Zürich, brut Wien
Photocredit: Tina Kult
With the kind support of the City of Zurich’s Department Of Cultural Affairs, City of Vienna’s Department of Cultural Affairs, Canton of Zurich Fachstelle Kultur, the Austrian Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport, Pro Helvetia – Swiss Cultural Foundation, the Swiss Embassy in Austria and Bears In The Park.
Special thanks to Sebastijan Geč and Asher O’Gorman.
—°§°§°§°—
L U M I N O S A I
2021
in collaboration with
ImPulsTanz Festival and Klangforum Wien
©TimTom
Luminosa I is a collaboration with Impulstanz Festival and the contemporary music ensemble Klangforum Wien and was presented in the course of „100 years Stanislaw Lem – Performance and Music move Outer Space“ during the festival in Vienna. The work is a utopian ritual, a synesthetic trip to a place where the human condition is only one of many and our sense of self is ever-changing. It is a future scenario that does not worship technological achievement and monolithic thought as its master narrative but celebrates a new sense of togetherness and exchange among various species. The ability to be malleable and transformative becomes a survival strategy, a tool to evolve on a sensory level, to invent new intimacies, pleasures and frictions.
Cooperation with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, a cultural institution operating under the auspices of the Polish Ministry of Culture, National Heritage and Sport. The project is part of the Institute’s Lem and Thinking About the Future core programme.
SHOWS
29.07. – 01.08.2021: ImPulsTanz Festival Vienna (A)
CREDITS
Artistic Direction, Performance: Malika Fankha
Composition: Mikolaj Laskowski
Music: Klangforum Wien feat. Dark Euphoria
Dramaturgy: Asher O’Gorman
Sound Research: Andrej Barla
Lights: Gerald Pappenberger
Costume: Valerie Reding & Goran Bugaric
Makeup & Hair: Cleverson Ronaldo Cosmo
Masks: Valerie Reding & Ana Rajcevic
Moss Objects: Pauline Bouzek
Production Management; ImPulsTanz/Johannes Maile
Coproduced by: ImPulsTanz & FANKS Productions
Supported by: Prohelvetia
—°§°§°§°—
AWOL
2020
© TimTom
In AWOL (Absent Without Leave) Malika Fankha explores the synergies between humans and natures’s mystical creatures. Elves, trolls and all kinds of hybrid forms of living might resemble the human shape yet manage to evade the notion of normativity. Due to their queer and volatile essence they challenge our thinking in stereotypes and dualities and embody the concept of identity as a malleable force. The work questions the hierarchy of corporealities in the physical, spiritual and virtual realms and advocates new ways of coexistence and kindred among species. In Awolonia, a place better than reality, residents are mercurially utopian, they keep secrets, shift shapes, change names, and appear in myriad disguises. They uncover and liberate their desires and torments, transgress boundaries, they slip into and out of dangerous and vulnerable places in an ongoing craving for connection, haunting the liminal spaces between imagined and artificially constructed borders.
SHOWS/RESIDENCIES
15.06. – 20.06.2020: Residency at Brunnenpassage Wien (A)
01.09. – 01.10.2020: Residency at SoArt Millstättersee (A)
15.10. – 02.11.2020: Residency at BUDA Kortrijk (BE)
30.11. – 20.12.2020: Residency at Tanzhaus Zürich (CH)
11.02. – 16.02.2021: Premiere and shows at brut Wien (A) — CANCELLED due to Covid 19
30.04. – 02.05.2021: Shows at Tanzhaus Zürich (CH) — CANCELLED due to Covid 19
CREDITS
Artistic direction, performance: Malika Fankha
Costume: Goran Bugaric
Makeup: Valerie Reding & Cleverson Ronaldo Cosmo
Objects: Ana Rajcevic
Lights: Marek Lamprecht & David Baumgartner
Sound: Dark Euphoria feat. Mirza Kebo
Video: Timotheus Tomicek & Jannik Schleicher
Dramaturgical Advice: Anna Mendelssohn, Denice Bourbon
Choreographic Assistance: Asher O’Gorman
Production: mollusca productions
Dramaturgical Production Advice: Marc Streit
Coproduction: FANKS, Tanzhaus Zürich, brut Wien
Residency partners: SoArt Millstättersee (A), BUDA Kortrijk (BE), Tanzhaus Zürich (CH), Huggy Bears (A), “The Artists Are Present” Brunnenpassage Wien (A)
AWOL is supported by Stadt Zürich Kultur, Kanton Zürich, Stadt Wien Kultur MA 7, BMKOES, Prohelvetia, Austrian Cultural Forum Brussels, ACT OUT (initiated by IG Freie Theater, supported by BMEIA) and Embassy of Switzerland in Austria
°§°§°§° NOTE: Due to the pandemic the live shows had to be cancelled and the team decided to produce 3 music videos instead: KARMA, ODE, LAVA.
KARMA is about abundant consumerism of online content, new age spiritualism and the emotional and social culture around it. In a stream of buzzwords in random order and rapid succession, it tries to bridge the gap between an over-engineered reality and the desire to reclaim a connection with nature, or whatever is left of it. watch
Both elegiac and tempestuous, ODE is a synesthetic meditation on craving connection with other bodies, textures and spheres. It celebrates desire, the multitudes of sexualities and sensory pleasures, the moments we fully inhabit the illusion of a shared experience trying to evade solitude. watch
To all lovers who had to disguise and justify their longing, those who could withstand the resistance against their way of expressing desire, to those who keep challenging a monolithic depiction of intimacy despite the viscous restrictions of societal norms. To all the broken and glorious hearts who keep reimagining what we call “human” and “natural”. Let LAVA transform fear into possibility and peril into exuberance. watch
—°§°§°§°—
OXY MORON
A CYBORG UTOPIA
2019
© Valerie Reding
“Resistance is no longer sufficient. We need to turn things upside down, create new contradictions and illegibility.“ – Ch. Schlingensief
Oxy Moron is a play of multiple selves and their constant, seamless shape-shift between fiction and reality, magic and science, present and future. Using the modern day cyborg as a metaphorical narrative that unites both human appearance and machine-like behaviour, the work juggles with stereotypes and challenges different concepts of a perceived norm. Identities, corporealities and social status pass through a precarious transformation between self-empowerment, self-enhancement, self-optimization and self-deformation questioning the significance of the physical and the human in a digital age.
SHOWS
30.03.2019 Residency Showing at im_flieger with imagetanz Vienna
05.06.2019 Tanzhaus Zürich (Premiere)
06.-07.06.2019 Tanzhaus Zürich
09.11.2019 Swissnex San Francisco
09.-11.03.2020 imagetanz Festival brut, Vienna
CREDITS
Artistic direction, performance: Malika Fankha
Makeup/Costume/Stage: Valerie Reding
Technical Direction/Lights: David Baumgartner
Sound: Dark Euphoria feat. AC/BOY
Outside Eyes: Anna Mendelssohn, Denice Bourbon & Simone Aughterlony
Production: mollusca productions
Coproduction: FANKS, Tanzhaus Zürich, Brut Wien imagetanz Festival
Residency partners: Workspacebrussels/Kaaitheater (BE), Campo Ghent (BE), Tanzhaus Zürich (CH), im_flieger Vienna (A), Counterpulse San Francisco (USA)
Oxy Moron is supported by Stadt Zürich Kultur, Stadt Wien Kultur MA 7, Pro Helvetia, Bundeskanzleramt Österreich, Nestlé Fondation pour l’Art and the Swiss Embassy in Vienna
—°§°§°§°—
SAUNA
2018
© Maria Ritsch
SAUNA is a meta-fictional reflection about identity, cohabitation and survival stragegies. Told from the perspective of an unborn child inside a womb it questions the reliability of narration, juggles with knowledge and facts that are largely obscure and thus suggests a new metaphorical Virtual Reality.
The obsessive personality of the prenatal storyteller is driven by an unconditional claim for self-determination while at the same time being tied to this other body via the umbilical cord, a symbol of pure dependence and connection. Contemplating dystopian future scenarios, witnessing the trivia of everyday conversations or indulging in excentric navel-gazing, the tale evolves around the contradictions and promiscuity that shape our lifestyle: the either radically intimate or radically superficial.
CREDITS
Artistic direction, performance: Malika Fankha
Assistance: Maureen Kaegi
Stage: Jakob Neulinger, Noushin Redjaian
Sound: Dark Euphoria feat. Alexander Kasses
Photo: Maria Ritsch
Costume: Goran Bugaric
Hair & Makeup: Cosmo Cleverson
Coproduction: WUK performing arts
Production support: Huggy Bears, SUPERAMAS
Residency partners: ImPulsTanz Vienna (A), Campo Ghent (BE), Life Long Burning (EU), Cullberg Ballet Stockholm (SE), Dampfzentrale Bern (CH)
—°§°§°§°—
PISSING EVERYWHERE
IS NOT VERY CHANEL
2017
© David Payr
co-produced by Malika Fankha, SUPERAMAS, imagetanz Festival
premiered March 19th, 2017, brut Vienna
In a subjective reenactment of SUPERAMAS’ show „superamas local“ (1999), MF deals with the material created by a heterosexual, male choreographer and his perspective on domination and vulnerability in patriarchal power structures. The narrative evolves around a manufactured auto-fictional persona whose driving force is to find various ways of self-empowerment by challenging stereotypical behaviour shapeshifting seamlessly between personal history, metaphysical theories and customized utopia in a culture of disposability and fast pleasure.
„you wanna get boned, you wanna get stoned, you wanna be rich, you wanna be kitsch, you wanna be the bastard of yourself, you wanna get burned, you wanna get turned, you wanna get fucked in side out, you wanna be ruled, you wanna be fooled, you wanna be a woman like a man.“ – Damien Rice
CREDITS
Artistic direction, performance: Malika Fankha
Sound: Dark Euphoria feat. Alexander Kasses
Stage/Props: Markus Kuscher
Costume: Sabine Aberle
Coproduction: brut Vienna, imagetanz festival
Production support: Huggy Bears, SUPERAMAS
—°§°§°§°—
MORE ISSUES THAN VOGUE
2016
„I speak like anyone else: for clarity’s sake. Sometimes the thought demands a sentence, or a paragraph, and sometimes it calls for something else; a poem, a picture, a movement.“ – Paul Chan
In a montage of polyphonic short stories and anecdotes, Fankha’s fictionalized self talks about the unbearable lightness of being a self-ironic representation of her own generation, about the awkwardness of human behaviour and the grotesque nature of the mondane. The use of acuminated imagery as a poetic means of narration, the breaking of literary templates and the satirical, comical travesty give rise to a language that juggles with effects, that explores the friction between the meaning of a word and its materiality, texture and physicality.
CREDITS
Text, sound, choreography, performance: Malika Fankha
Scenography: Jakob Neulinger, Noushin Redjaian
Movement Coaching: Asher O’Gorman
Sounddesign: Alexander Kasses
Video: Maureen Kaegi
Costume: Sabine Aberle
Coproduction: FANKS, Tanzquartier Vienna
—°§°§°§°—
O.W.L. – the words are not what they seem
2014
produced by Malika Fankha, supported by im_flieger
O.W.L. explores the body of the word: it highlights its plasticity and texture, reveals its musicality. Words are chosen because of their melody, their shape and the sensory reaction they evoke in both the speaker and the listener. By reconfiguring the relationship between the meaning of a word and its materiality, Fankha aims to collapse the confines of intentional speech and “pointless”, non-functional vocalization. From there appears the possibility of transformation: new words emerge with their own logic which enables a sensory rather than a conceptual understanding of reality.
© Malika Fankha, filmstills
SHOWS
22.06.2014 im_flieger Schokoladenfabrik, Vienna
23.10.2014 Science Salon Verein 08, Vienna
08.02.2015 Artist’s Kitchen, Vienna, curated by Sibylle Omlin
Occupy the museum
2013
© Mélisande Rouger
This 15 minutes long performance was part of a performance parcour at Weltmuseum in the course of ImPulsTanz Festival 2013. It looks at ways to approach the individual’s boundaries and confines that appear unconsciously from the inside or are intentionally defined by the outside. It conflicts with either too many restrictions or too much freedom, self-inflicted or imposed on the individual by its environment. Values and principles are being dismissed, reinvented or forgotten. There is the constant desire to touch the unreachable, to discover the forbidden, the possibly precious, wannabe precious, the faked, the naked, the wishful truth, the superficial truth, the lie and to break rules to become visible and alive, to expose oneself to the utmost in a context full of restraints, to break through the pious silence of a museum.
Premiere: August 2013, ImPulsTanz Festival Vienna, coproduced by Weltmuseum Wien,
curated by Michael Stolhofer and Ong Ken Sen