OFF THE GRID – AV LIVE DANCE PERFORMANCE
Tofa feat. Amigo at Tanzhafenfestival
Linz – 10.2022
OFF THE GRID is an audiovisual dance performance which had its premiere at Tanzhafenfestival Linz in October 2022.
The audiovisual piece breaks with conventional patterns.
Kadir Amigo Memis’ body language deforms the visual space which I created for this show. The viewer becomes part of the symbiosis of dance, visual power and sound. Berlin based dancer and choreograph Amigo takes the audience on a journey through the abstraction of digital worlds, he rethinks the grid, reconstructs, breaks with conventions, immerses himself in shadow and light. It´s a clash of creating and destroying in momentum.
OFF THE GRID visualizes the body in empty space and provides a metaphor for breaking rigid habits. Together, Amigo and myself created a sense of boundlessness to form a dystopian metamorphosis of digital matrix, escape options, blackout paranoia and contemporary art.
The 30-minute art performance is spatial with clear, minimalistic mapping projections, which acoustically and visually form an evolving and dismantling micro-universe on wall and floor, with which Amigo intervenes in dance, thereby reflecting our daily confrontation with digital overkill.
With an eclectic dance performance, he dives into another dimension, being sucked into the digital grid, but still finding escape routes through his own body language, which are visually symbolized by portals that come and go.
”Amigo is a really good friend of mine since almost two decades. In the past our paths have crossed again and again on joint projects like backjumps, we have worked together in Tokyo and also done amazing light painting sessions together in Berlin. And the good thing is, that we also share the same interests in urban art, graffiti, calligraphy and visual image aesthetics.
With the chance to create a new media art project together, we had a great stage and opportunity at the Tanzhafenfestival Linz in autumn 2022 to develop a piece that acts outside the box, that´s really OFF THE GRID.”
Amigo: “In the beginning I had to process the amount of image information in order to be able to do something with it in dance.
But I immediately liked the fact that I could immerse myself in a fictional space and become one with the set, so to speak, without being in the spotlight all the time. In this case, less was really more and also left more room for the audience to interpret it individually.”
The metaphor of resilience through a free artistic interpretation with projection, sound and dance became an impressive show.
The second part of artistic collaboration was coming first in the festivals program: BOUZUQ∑∑ – a live painting and dance performance by Amigo which I underlined with soundscapes to processes the history of Berlin’s Jazzstylecorner, taking the audience on a journey of discovery of urban culture influences, hip hop and graffiti.
Dance, costumes, painting and sound are based on the principle developed by RAMMELLZ∑∑ of taking the collage and sum of various materials to the extreme to the point of iconoclasm. From the abstraction of the letter to the abstraction of a lettristic organism, this performance became an explosive painting of movement, color and music. The live iintuition mixed with your own biography and thereby wrote a new story.
https://www.metofa.com/offthegrid
https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/761656664/privacy
CREDITS: Concept: Tofa & Amigo Dance: Kadir Amigo Memis Visuals/Sound: Chris Noelle aka Tofa (Modulux) Costüm: Iriedaily Berlin Camera: Joel Teodoro Photos: Joel Teodoro/Chris Noelle Production: Tanzhafenfestival 2022 Curators: Cornelia Lehner, Ulrike Hager, Ilona Roth Support: Sonnsteinloft Team Location: Sonnensteinloft Linz
