I KNOW WHAT TO DO
with Lau Lukkarila und Slim Soledad and music by Marshall Vincent, 2022/23 45 min
I know what to do is a choreographic research into gestures taken from Country/Schlager music videos, asking how “butchy” figures like Andreas Gabalier are, and what it means to mimic these gestures ourselves. A collaboratively written voiceover by Slim Soledad, Lau Lukarilla and Sunny Pfalzer guides the audience through an intimate, reflective process, echoing a teenager posing in front of a mirror while trying on these identities.
(c) Sunny Pfalzer, Jospeh Kadow
FEELING SEEN
solo 2024, 40 minWhat does it mean to feel seen? Do I need to share to my outside what I feel inside in order to be happy? Myself? Or would it rather help to camouflage what I feel inside in order to be.. protected? Presentable? .. in the end we exist across the inside and outside if such a distinction can even be made..
Through movement and language - poetry and quoted text - this work holds three forces in tension: somatic experience, the economics of performance, and the machinery of image-making and representational politics. A choreographic inquiry into the gesture that feels true because it has been practiced.
(c) Sunny Pfalzer, Aimee Súarez
SCORES FOR FAKE AUTHENTICITY
with Ronald Berger and Kevin Bonono, 202350 min
Scores for fake authenticity is a performance built from gestures that seem authentic in public space but are, in fact, rehearsed. Three performers move gently among visitors. Leaning on walls, daydreaming, singing with headphones: actions that feel spontaneous yet are carefully choreographed. As the audience observes these intimate micro-moments, the work reveals the inherent performativity of everyday life and how authenticity itself can be practiced. The quiet simplicity of the performance sharply contrasts the surrounding billboards that suggest an epic spectacle.
(c) Sunny Pfalzer, Jospeh Kadow
RUB YOUR FACE ONTO YOUR SHOULDER
with Marshall Vincent, 2021-ongoing30 min
Rub your face onto your shoulder transforms the costumes from my performance Hold a Ghost into soft banners and pillows, forming an immersive installation activated live by Sunny Pfalzer and R’n’B musician Marshall Vincent. The activation blends listening meditation, poetry and a durational musical composition, shifting the energetic choreography of the streets into a calm space of rest. The textile sculptures invite visitors to lie down, dwell and feel held, extending the work’s sense of care beyond the performance.
(c) kunstdokumentation.com
CRIPTO SIRENAS
Anna Ehrenstein and Sunny Pfalzer with Lucy Tomasino, Alexa Evangelista and Josh Davila, 202460 min
Cripto Sirenas is a temporary collective with Anna Ehrenstein, Alexa Evangelista, and Lucy Tomasino, a science-fiction and multimedia worldbuilding venture aimed at speculating on tech-solutionism, totalitarian algorithms and the impact of these growing realities on our bodies and environments. Rooted in a hydro-feminist worldview, the work centres on water, fluidity, and moisture as an embodied conduit for defying contemporary and future systems of oppression and exploitation that enforce rigidity, binaries, and categorization. In various fable and dreamlike scenes, from public urban monuments to remote watery natural locations, the project highlights how developing economic and resource extraction models rely on forms of crypto colonialism rooted in the old world and threatening to haunt future ones. (Didier Morelli)
(c) Marc Tatti
DWMX x X SUNNY
in collaboration with Jojo Gronostay, 2021 durational/site-specific
DWMC (Dead White Men’s Clothes), a conceptual fashion label by Jojo Gronostay, traces the global circulation of second hand garments from production in China to sale in Western malls to resale markets in Ghana. In collaboration, the artists bring them back into a mall space through performance and developed site specific scores that activate the mall as a hyper neoliberal, semi public environment shaped by desire, exclusion, and standardized global aesthetics. Especially during the pandemic, when malls remained open but emptied of consumption, the space became a ghostly stage where capitalism persisted without its actors. The work interrogates entangled economies and exchanges between Europe and Africa, drawing on the Ghanaian term Obroni Wawu, meaning dead white men’s clothes, which reflects early perceptions of imported garments as remnants of lives elsewhere.
HOLD A GHOST
in collaboration with Ronald Berger, Marie Carangi, Olivia Hyunsin Kim, Rebecca Korang, Billy Morgan2020, durational/site-specific
In Hold a Ghost a gang of performers crawls through Berlin between M*street and the Humboldt Forum. While spraying pink color on each other in a slow dance, they link the vandalization of public monuments to those two sites and address their violent colonial and racist history. The performance is a poem about political action and was developed and performed with Ronald Berger, Marie Carangi, Olivia Hyunsin Kim, Rebecca Korang and Billy Morgan.
WHEN THE BATS FLY
with Theresah Akomfah, Sharon Sedem Kamassah, Sel Kofiga, Austin Nortey, Julius Yaw Quansah, Awuhdu Suleman and Martin Toloku, 2020durational/site-specific
“The spam of blood and justice runs daily through my LTD. Destruction goes before pride and fall before spirituality. Aggression from the 2000 runs daily through my LTD. Imported frustration, exoticized and scam-friendly.” In 2020 during a residency at perfocraZe International Artist Residency in Kumasi, Ghana together wit local artists we developed When the Bats fly as a performative intervention at the Kejetia Market. The bats move in a pack, have an ultrasonic awareness of their surroundings and are a common, as well despised animal in Ghana.
FROM ETHICS TO AESTHETICS
with LaCollectiz!, 2019durational/site-specific
Now it is 4K and LGBTIQA+. Arriving from the dark depths of outer space, a group of cockroaches, a virtual xeno-gang cuddles in dirty corners, aggressive and sensitive, fierce and cute at the same time. Dancing between laws and rules, moving in grey areas, where everything is given and permission is predictable. Don’t judge me, my truth is brutal, materialistic, formalistic and functional.
In collaboration with Tel Aviv based dance collective LaCollectiz! we performed the intervention From ethics to aesthetics in the grey areas between the Tel Aviv Court, the HaKirya military base and the Tel Aviv Museum in December 2019, questioning how these state-owned institutions shape and affect the private lives of the performers.
LAS TRENZAS
with Carolina Bailón, Suavitel Paper, Dalinka Flores, Anahí „Dragonzito“ Juárez, Safo Mami, Karla Frías & Natalia Marmolejo, 2017durational/site-specific
Las Trenzas (eng.: The Braids) is a performance that takes place in different spaces like urban areas, online or within the exhibition context. The first action of Las Trenzas is the performance documented in the video above. It lasted for five hours and took place in the „Sistema de Transporte Colectivo“, the public metro system of Mexico City. A three-minute song and a choreography were performed in four stations, the moments in between are improvised
Las Trenzas are inspired by hooligans, cheerleaders, superheroes, military task forces and aliens. The lyrics are inspired by Hito Steyerls The Wretched of the Screen, Ursula Biemans documentary Performing the Border, Gloria Anzalduas Borderlands and Mexico City.
EDIT ME PLEASE
in
collaboration with Sergio Valenzuela, 2015Who is the appropriator? Who is appropriating whom? How do these notions of understanding and misunderstanding evolve through collaboration? Through the duration of the performance, this exchange is emphasized via a point-of-view camera from my own perspective. Providing documentation of the action and aesthetically addressing the preconceptions of modern dance techniques.