Searching for Mary at thefidget Philadelphia, 2015
My child! Forgive me for coming late.
Morenita! My Morenita!
O my little Miriam, Maryam, María, Mary!
thefidget space is pleased to welcome the artist Kerstin Fuchs (a recent transplant to Philadelphia via Berlin) who will lead a series of research workshops in March around the theme Searching for Mary.
The workshop will meet on some Saturdays in March, with exact dates and times to be determined based on participants’ availability. Please RSVP to gaillard.kerstin[at]googlemail.com. This workshop is geared towards anyone interested in the research topic; participants need not be skilled in any particular discipline to apply. Kerstin is gathering research and ideas for her next project, therefore there is NO FEE to participate
Together with the participants I want to get closer to or further away from the vague idea of Mary.
There is no fixed idea or explanation to begin with of what or who Mary is or should be: it could be the name of your neighbor, an old friend, an actress, a character, the middle name of a male writer, it could be a memory, a smell, a political discourse, a gender discourse, THE female figure of several religions, and so much more.
Sitting around the table I will lay out already researched materials, such as songs, movements, texts, pictures, short performance instructions, backgrounds. I also will ask participants beforehand to bring in their own related materials.
Going into the space we will perform in a very casual non-acting way selected materials, such as parts from a song, a movement, a text or others. We will discuss the materials, exchanging thoughts and finding potential new combinations and/or connections. We also will think about possible presentations.
An important point of the research workshop is to have in mind that participants and me as an initiator will be performers and audience at the same time. As soon as we share the physical workshop space, we are performers and audience for each other as well as for ourselves. There is no intention of teaching a certain performance technique or knowledge, unless technique or knowledge is a necessity to a used material.
The participants should be open to the blurred borders of the workshop and to a maybe non-linear working practice, they should be open to try out practical exercises without being necessarily a professional performer in any of the artistic fields. Participants should enjoy thinking and possible discourses. The materials we use will be adjusted to the form and requirements of the group.
The research workshop Searching for Mary is a starting point for myself, after my move from Berlin/Germany to Philadelphia last year, to continue my work and to go further in the form of the working process I used to work with my performance art ensemble company Berlin. At the same time I want to figure out more about my own working process, and discover the best medium to carry the emotions and questions I am looking for. In this way Searching for Mary should be seen as a working title and not the title of a final product.
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