testing grounds
2024
by Katrin Hornek, Zosia Hołubowska, Karin Pauer and Sa
testing grounds is a new, immersive live installation conceived by Katrin Hornek and developed in a collaborative process involving artists as well as researchers and scientists from different fields. The collaboration with Karin Pauer, Sabina Holzer, and Zosia Hołubowska lays a foundation for the work, which addresses a sensitive, urgent matter: At stake is the measurable evidence of radioactive radiation around the world as a result of the testing and use of nuclear weapons in hundreds of above-ground tests since 1945. A local soil sample at Karlsplatz, in which minimal amounts of plutonium could be detected, as its starting point, testing grounds follows the permanent imprints left by nuclear fallout in our bodies, in plants and earth archives.
Embedded in an installation that evokes images of decaying landscapes, twice a week three dancers perform a score choreographed by Pauer. A recent scan of the “Baker” crater on the seabed of the former US nuclear bomb test site in Bikini Atoll spreads across the ceiling. On handheld devices shaped like turtles and tortoises, so-called "messengers", texts created by Sabina Holzer and Katrin Hornek provide multi-layered narratives on the subject matter, which enter a subtle, intimate dialogue with specially composed soundscapes by Zosia Hołubowska, while with their movements, the dancers delve into the depths of body archives. Together, the elements of the live installation create a sensual, immersive experience, a test set-up of the embodiment of the unspeakable.
Zosia Holubowska created a four-hour-long soundscape for nine speakers, divided into chapters exploring the site as future ruins, an industrial laboratory, a forgotten beach, and a site for speculations on nuclear guardianship.
Premiered at Secession on 08.03.2024
Credits:
Concept, Artistic direction: Katrin Hornek, Choreography: Karin Pauer, Sound: Zosia Hołubowska, Text: Sabina Holzer, Katrin Hornek, Performance: Cat Jimenez, Karin Pauer, Mani Obeya, Martina De Dominicis, Costume: Karin Pauer
Messengers:
Text: Sabina Holzer, Katrin Hornek, Editing, translation: Lisa Rosenblatt, Voices: Alex Zehetbauer, Arthur Trembanis, Greg Mello, Karin Pauer, Karipbek Kuyukov, Martina De Dominicis, Michael Wagreich, Sabina Holzer, Objects production: Klemens Waldhuber, Programming: Franz Gasser
Production management performance: mollusca productions, Technical management: Hans Weinberger, Scenographic advice and production: Hektor Peljak (Studio Peljak), Artistic assistance: Ivana Lazić, Consulting: Anne Faucheret, Julia Hohenwarter, Michael Wagreich
Katrin Hornek’s work playfully engages with the strange paradoxes and convergences of living in the age of the Anthropocene, that is, the new geologic epoch where the effects of capitalism, colonialism, and extractivism are written into the body of the earth. Both her artistic and her curatorial practice assert an understanding of the entwinement of nature and culture, implicitly arguing for more complex formulations, ones that reflect how our bodies, cultures, materials, and thoughts are all composed of the other creatures and rocks and air and water that make up our world.
https://katrinhornek.net/en/
