Exquisite Corpse

Exquisite Corpse at is a dialogue between architecture, dance, music, design, film, photography, fashion and art in London’s most experimental and renowned architectural institution. It will stage a performance that challenges thearchitect’s static structure and the dancer’s body in movement. The programme eschews rehearsal in its traditionalsense in favour of establishing networks between interconnected creative activities that come together in thrillingtension.

‘Exquisite Corpses’ uses a series of events as the means to develope creativity and innovation within SpatialPerformance and Design. Through the overlap of the various disciplines these events are by default experimental,often unprecedented and this way a task to make the impossible possible.

Three applied events that form the framework of the creative process. For these events to take place in a professional and deliverable way each performance builds up and extents on the experience of the previous.

The ‘Exquisite Corpses’ series explores the possibilities of how a interdisciplinary collaboration between theperforming arts and design can create a genre defying cultural environment. In April 2011 events commenced withthe performative installation at the Matadero, Madrid. In collaboration with the artist group ‘New Movement’ and music producers ‘Boilerhouse Boys’ the projects merges fashion, dance, music and architecture to form onecontinuously changing environment.

In a second phase these performative spaces were tested through installations and constructions in the urbansetting

of Cologne. The overall project is placed within the specific socio- political environment of the ‘Design QuartierEhrenfeld’. How can performances and ephemeral structures act as ‘Urban Generators’. Here a stage set and a collection of interactive structures becomes the setting for the extended dance performance of ,New Movement‘ thatincorporates the events of Madrid to make it one transformed assembly.

The series concluded in a week long event in London The Architectural Association building itself played host to the event – an unlikely ‘stage’ of multiple rooftop terraces, strange vistas through the nooks and crannies of a Georgian terrace block, vast projection screens and performers in amongst the audience, blurring the lines between active participant and passive viewer.

Building on the Architectural Association’s reputation as a font of pioneering creative endeavour this event is a result of the collective work of the AA Interprofessional studio, run by Theo Lorenz and Tanja Siems in collaboration with dance professionals ‘New Movement Collective’ and music producers ‘The Boilerhouse Boys’ and ‘Hochschule furMusik Cologne’.

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