Transformance
Transformance is a video-event-work that activates and documents a five-month durational performance. Over this period of time, Nina Kurtela establishes a daily practice of visiting and witnessing the changes at the building site of the Uferstudios, Wedding, Berlin – the warehouse for the repair of public trams and buses becomes a dance institution. She is spectator to the making of an institution, an art institution, the making of the theater stage. The camera acts as a witness to her performing/witnessing. The piece emerges as a case study of an individual subject’s encounter with the radical transformations of social structures and operative models within the performing society. The artist is present at the birth of Berlin’s new contemporary dance center, an institution that will certainly come to play a part in shaping and organizing the dynamic of the city’s dance community. The work emerges in the force field of a commitment to the daily execution of present-ness in relation to the specific context where this act takes place: the building site of the theater. What unfolds is a 8-minute work with multi-faceted implications. The body is rendered a statue through the changes of time. The screen becomes the performing skin.
Nina Kurtela
Nina Kurtela (born 1981 in Zagreb) is a visual artist and a dance maker who works with choreographic and site-specific practices. While questioning notions of immaterial labor, identity, belonging and home, trough her performance and time-based art practice, she is interested in duration, dedication, daily practice, presence and matter of chance. She creates works across wide range of forms; namely video, installation, performance, choreography and dance. Her work is presented internationally in a variety of contexts – in museums and galleries, theater and dance festivals, and in public space: Tanz Im August, Berlin; MUMOK Vienna; Transmediale, Berlin; Survival Kit, Riga; X-border Art Biennial, Sweden; Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb; HKW Berlin; Tokyo Opera City Gallery; 104 Paris; MMOMA Moscow; Ars Aevi Sarajevo, etc. She was granted residencies at: Q21, MuseumsQuartier Vienna; Cite internationale des arts, Paris; THAV, Taipei; HIAP, Helsinki; GeoAIR, Tbilisi; CEC ArtsLink, Portland, Oregon; KulturKontakt Austria, Vienna. And received following awards: Japanese Media Arts New Face Award, Tokyo; X-border Art Biennial Award, Sweden; Henkel Art Award (Young Artist’s Prize CEE), Vienna; Essl Art Award CEE, Vienna. She studied “Dance, Context, Choreography” at the HZT, Universität der Künste Berlin. And has an diploma (equivalent to MFA) in visual arts from The Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb.
She is a founder of Zagreb based art organization Jagoda – practice and research based platform for opening up new fields of communication and exchange through innovative art practices.
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