absence#2

The French philosopher Michel Foucault spoke of countries without places and history, which emerge as utopias in people’s heads – in the spaces between their words, in the placeless place of their dreams. But what happens when the performing body finds itself in the stage object in its own utopia; the video images pull the audience into these rooms in order to lose themselves there?
In 2020 the Cologne company »IPtanz« around the choreographer Ilona Pászthy started her series »absence« about the disappearance of aspects of our life. »Absence # 2« looks at people and their relationship to ‘disappearing’ space, on reflections on fantasies in visionary space, topographies of forgotten space and spaces of memory … In individual perception, spatial perception can be very different – always depending on the external Conditions in which the respective person moves. Social Mechanisms of Racism, escape or war as the “measurable” disappearance of a space play just as much a role as the reality perceived by the individual as threatening and indefinable.
From a mathematical point of view, space is only an abstract or concrete structure, for example the binary representation of virtual spaces, which, on the other hand, occupy an ever larger space in the present and change our perception, reception and relationships.
»Absence # 2« is a choreographic, fictional approach to topics in this context. A layered consideration of people and space, of fear, dreams, abundance and emptiness. The dancers and performers weave projections, stage objects and live music in a game with illusion, creating constantly changing spaces that can open to infinity, distort and dissolve again, which reshape the limited surface of the object and the power of the real space.

A physical / sensual introduction for the audience as well as an exhibition on the background of the artistic process complete the presentation.