Breaking the Spell: Caroline Kapp/Bodies of Knowledge

The festival ticket (4 x Breaking the Spell July 14-17 for 20 Euro)

Bodies of Knowledge. Learning session(s)

bodies of knowledge (BOK) is a place where people can learn from each other. Things one usually does not learn in institutions or through medias, told by voices that are not always heard, from different parts of society and the world. In BOK we exchange knowledge that feeds a more just and humane society, introduced by life experts rather than professional authorities. It is a space to listen, to ask, to connect. It is a nomadic classroom, an art project, a community.

In the framework of Breaking the Spell in Munich, BOK collaborator Damla Ekin Tokel will search for local “bodies of knowledge” and invite them to share. Everyone is welcome to attend this learning session to listen a (surprise) subject, that will have been shared with her the days preceding this public presentation.

BOK was initiated by the Belgian artist Sarah Vanhee. Damla Ekin Tokel is part of the current artistic team since August 2021, together with Flore Herman, Jean-Baptiste Polge and Sarah Vanhee.

You can attend the learning session of Bodies of Knowledge (8-9 pm) free of charge by registering in advance at: olivia.ebert@kammerspiele.de

Hold on to your dead. Performance von Caroline Kapp

Unexpectedly the performer has lost several people that she was close to last year and, as it happened, saw most of them dead at their funerals. A question arouses: how can she hold on to her dead? Not an easy question, as for now the dead women in her family are all in various stages of decomposition underground. Contrary to the rather melancholy German commemorative traditions on All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, she develops other forms of holding on and being with, which she wants to share this evening. For why let go of the dead if we would still like to sit with them?

The director and performer Caroline Kapp, born in Mainz in 1988, studied cultural and communication studies and theatre direction at the Otto Falckenberg School in Munich. She won the Körber Studio for Young Directors in spring 2020 with her final project Messy History Lessons on voids in female* historiography. Her research-based works repeatedly question memory politics, the body in it and identity constructions in relation to Germany.

Notes by Ivana Müller.

The concept of Notes is inspired by the 19th century practice of ‘marginalia’, which cultivated a gesture of “personalizing” a book before offering it to a friend or a lover by writing notes in the margin. In the frame of Breaking the Spell choreographer Ivana Müller invites four artists to select a book and annotate it one after the other. In the process, four perspectives complement and overwrite each other to form a collective trace. For Breaking the Spell in Munich, Samara Hersch, Giorgia Ohnessian Nardin, Antonia Sagh and Swoosh Lieu selected the book Spells: 21st Century Occult Poetry, edited by Rebecca Tamás and Sarah Shin, and annotated it with personal notes, embroidery and other additions. Since April 2022, the book has travelled from Paris to Ireland, from Ireland to Italy, from Italy to Turkey - bearing the traces of its readers and its journeys - and is now coming to Munich. From 14 - 17 July, the book with the original annotations of the artists will be made accessible in a small installation in the Therese-Giehse-Halle and invites you to new personal encounters in a cosy environment: alone or in a small group, you can leaf through it, read it (aloud) and look at it.

The Installation open daily from 19h30. On Thursday, 17 July, as part of the evening programme of Breaking the Spell, there will be a talk with Ivana Müller and the participating artists about the project and the process (moderated by Marta Keil and Olivia Ebert).