1   < schedule     (Demo 1+9) JÖRN J. BURMESTER (DE) & IGGY MALMBORG (SE) Jörn J. Burmester is a performance artist, based in Berlin, where he is also lecturer at the department for Theatre Studies at Free University, Berlin. He is a Co-Founder of Berlin n@work (now renamed Emanuelle) and a founding member of Performer Stammtisch, a network of live art professionals in Berlin. Iggy Malmborg is an actor and performance artist. He is a student at the Theatre Academy in Malmö and member of the independent theatre group Teatermaskinen. In his works Iggy gives the body a central position and puts it in a dialectical relation to civilization and everyday life. Iggy Malmborg is working as an actor at Institutet, right now in the performance “Triptych on Essence”. What are you going to do at MIT DEMO 08? Swedish Actor Iggy Malmberg and German Performance Artist Jörn J. Burmester will interrogate and challenge each others concepts of reality in two life demos and a two day workshop. They will try to determine a common core of stage(d) reality bridging the gaps between their artistic backgrounds and convictions, cultures and generations.     2   < schedule         (Demo 2) INSTITUT DES RECHERCHES MENANT A RIEN (FR) The name of this French company is extracted from John Cage´s lecture ”Discours sur rien” (Lecture on nothing). This gives one a clue to what the 6 artists will present at MIT-DEMO 08 – researching what ‘nothing’ in relation to ‘reality’ is or means. In each project they follow different artistic approaches, basically working with silence, empty stage places, sounds, music and live improvisations. What are you going to do at MIT DEMO 08? “We will continue with the work on our two projects. Space, time,weather and conditions will influence our work. Lecture on nothing is the base of our work. It allows us to create several discourses on nothing. Our wish would be to push the theatrical dialectics towards an end to get closer to the presence of things, sounds and bodies. Thanks too NOTHING, SOMETHING can achieve its maximum of existence […]” 3       < schedule         (Demo 3) GORO TRONSMO (NO) Goro Tronsmo is a Norwegian artist and stage director working in Norway, Stockholm and Berlin. As a result of being trained as an actor (so sensitive), and living in 3 countries, the context she finds herself in decides what representation of reality she enters. Due to the nomadic life, and the rather illimitable function towards the material she stages (actors), her understading of reality is based on who hates her the most, and where her paranoia is heading- no, just kidding- (again, serious now:) her understanding of reality is framed by the swapping of personal functions and identities, this again generating material for the projects. In her stage performances she is working with a blurred line between a staged social setting and the actual social structure within the company, searching for a situation that in itself is real, and this is what in the end is performed, not a representation of something else. By manipulating the idea of that there is a narration, and also adapting the performance to the venue in a nomadic site-specific manner, the core of the work is what happens in the room; the meeting between the project and the audience. What are you going to do at MIT DEMO 08? At mit demo she will hold a lecture about understanding of reality (no, I mean: a lecture about documentary strategies in her work). Blog for mit.demo_ www.gorotronsmo.blogspot.com     4   < schedule         (Demo 4) RAKEL + ANTTI + ANNA (SF) Rakel Liekki, visual artist, Antti Ahonen, multi functional artist and Anna Pöllänen, lighting designer, have known each other since they were teenagers. They share an ambivalent urge to create art, but in a way that differs from the traditional. Antti and Rakel have painted and performed together in the end of 1990's, and the group was first founded in 2000 to produce Merkillisiä kuvioita-exhibition. After this the group scattered to specialize in different forms of art on their own. Experiences during the past ten years inside and outside art have matured an understanding which will materialize for the first time in Malmö. What are you going to do at MIT DEMO 08? We plan on nestling down to the space. In this process we will create a homely enviroment to the studio. In the demo we will invite audience to participate the action that we prepared for us all. Our demo wont be a theatre act, but a joint effort where audience is taking part in defining real action. We have been thinking and discussing about different forms of action and considering what kind of action could be real and then tried them out in real life. Some of the stuff we tried out is climbing trees, baking traditional finnish carelian pies and comparing them to the industrially produced pies. In addition we have been playing games and thinking about competing as a form of real action. All the stuff we have done has been documented and will be posted to our publig blog shortly. http://realactionblog.blogspot.com/     5   < schedule             (Demo 5) INSTITUTET (SE) One of the organizing groups of MIT-DEMO 08. Institutet is the continuation and perpetual examination of the contextual circumstances around its own process of becoming. Institutet works with presenting the environment with its negative to make visible the power relations that inevitably structure and limit what is possible and what is not in artistic production. What are you going to do at MIT DEMO 08? Institutet recently experienced a chock by loosing the space where we have worked for several years. That means a loss of identity and a transition from residents to nomads. Therefore, Institutets demo will respond to a sudden, yet expected loss by staging utopia within a defined frame. Although the frame is a limitation of our outlook on the world we need its sense of false protection. We don´t know what we will do inside of that frame but we will do it. P.S. There might be a sense of impossibility and also a sad distance from the spectator that seems hard to overcome. The question is: Is reality within reach of any action or not? D.S     6   < schedule       The picture is taken from a work by Teatr Weimar (Demo 6) TEATR WEIMAR (SE) / MALMÖ THEATRE ACADEMY (SE) TEATR WEIMAR (SE) Teatr Weimar is a text based theatre group that examines language as means of communication in different ways. They also play with the concept of performance in their work with the ambition to explore the theatre act as action. Teatr Weimar is one of the organizing groups at MIT-DEMO 08. MALMÖ THEATRE ACADEMY (SE) A group of students in the 4th year of the actor’s education at Malmö Theatre Academy will participate in cooperation with Teatr Weimar. What are you going to do at MIT DEMO 08? -     7   < schedule         (Demo 7) JOHANNES SCHMIT + SEBASTIAN SOMMERFELD (DE) Johannes Schmit, director, and Sebastian Sommerfeld, actor, are members of the Skala, a cultural space created in August 2008 as an experimental stage and part of Sebastian Hartmann´s Centraltheater in Leipzig, Germany. Both Schmit and Sommerfeld are working together for almost 4 years now, questioning the issue of representation in Brechtian didactic plays and German nazi-melodrama. What are you going to do at MIT DEMO 08? I will put one actor in front of me. Have his body painted black. Give him almost nothing to do. Abuse him with my gaze. the gaze / the gays the anus / the wound the white male heterosexual : the winner the black male heterosexual : white eyes staring out of the walls of a European rehearsal space real action : the countersexual / audience waiting for the show to begin     8   < schedule         (Demo 8) EISENÄCHER/HARDER CLAIMS (DE) Janine Eisenächer and Joy Harder aka Eisenächer/Harder CLAIMS work as performance artists and artist-activists for more than 2 years now. They work with interventions and artistic interview methods in public and art spaces: The aim of their method lies in transforming the interview as a means of evaluation and interpretation of “real people” into an artistic dialogue between the artist/activist and the passer-by. They create spaces that exist for a limited period of time and allow for creative statements of non-creative people. What are you going to do at MIT DEMO 08? We will tempt workshop participants to challenge the supposed to be-reality of Malmö. Together we will turn Triangeln into a crime scene and motivate the Swedish audience to commit the crimes they always wished to happen. http://www.eatwork.de/projekte/crime/crime.php