Object trouvé with Andrea Gunnlaugsdóttir – AIRY MATTERS
Andrea Gunnlaugsdóttir talks about the book The Forgetting of Air in Martin Heidegger by Luce Irigaray that plays an important role in creating her upcoming project AIRY MATTERS, which will be presented at brut nordwest in autumn 2021.
AIRY MATTERS is an experimental film documentation of what was thought to be a performance. It embraces the breathing landscape as a potential field of intelligence. A landscape starts to activate through the interactions between the breathing body and the objects. A space awakened by the vibrations of sounds in a subtle dialogue with the unravelling of events. Airy Matters is a gentle tribute to the female perspective and a soft contemplation on the reappearing and disappearing world. The first breath and the last.
In the year 1983, the feminist thinker Luce Irigaray wrote the book ‘The Forgetting of Air in Martin Heidegger’ where she brings western philosophical traditions, which for centuries had focused on thought, into a new frame centred on the element most male philosophers had “forgotten” about. The air. The source for all life, action and therefore thought itself. In order to counterbalance this philosophical heritage, and undo philosophy’s exclusion and dubious incorporations of women, Irigaray proposed a new philosophy – a philosophy of breathing.
ANDREA GUNNLAUGSDÓTTIR (Concept / performer / direction)
born in Reykjavík, Iceland is a choreographer, dancer and a performer living in Vienna. She graduated with a diploma from the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance in 2014 with a major in choreography. Previoulsy she studied at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance and the Dance Academy of Reykjavik. Gunnlaugsdóttir has presented her own works at brut-Wien. Her performance Blank Blank was recently invited by the Austrian Cultural Forum in Beijing and was presented at ReActor Festival, Power Station of Arts in Shanghai in 2018. Gunnlaugsdóttir has collaborated with many Vienna based artists such as Doris Uhlich, Alix Eynaudi, Andrea Maurer and Veza Fernandes. She was a performer and an artistic assistan to Michikazu Matsune from 2015-2018. Her most recent collaboration was with Costas Kekis and Anna Prokopova for the performance Knuckles become clouds in Tanzquartier Wien in 2019. Gunnlaugsdóttir received the Start Stipendium of the Austrian Federal Chancellor’s Office in 2015.
Performance/direction Andrea Gunnlaugsdóttir Sound design Masha Dabelka Light design Sveta Schwin Supervisor/outside eye Lise Lendais Camera/editing Claudia Lomoschitz Production management Almud Krejza Object co-development Sebastian Doplbaur
AIRY MATTERS is a co-production by Verein Eyjafjallajökull and brut Wien. With the kind support of the Cultural Department of the City of Vienna. Supported by the Raw Matters Residency Program.
brut all over Vienna
brut nordwest
accessible
Nordwestbahnstraße 8-10, 1200 Vienna
Subway: U1, U2 (Praterstern), U4 (Friedensbrücke), U6 (Dresdnerstraße) Tram: 5 (Nordwestbahnstraße) Bus: 5A (Wasnergasse)
accessible
studio brut
not accessible
Zieglergasse 25, 1070 Wien
Subway: U3 (Zieglergasse), Tram: 49 (Westbahnstraße / Zieglergasse)
not accessible
Gropius Bau Berlin
Niederkirchnerstraße 7, 10963 Berlin