To: my future body is a dance-based performance investigating significant links between movement, memory and archiving within the context of performance. The intergenerational dance project opens up a physical, sensual and intimate access to archives. What happens when diverse human bodies come together? When memories, perceptions, emotions and visions are evoked by movement? What happens when individual human archives meet, gather, encounter, converge and how do these bodily archives interact with each other?

During an intensive three-months period, Woltmann and Wüstenhagen worked with a group of 14 participants of mixed ages and different experiences. Together they have experimented, asking questions about archiving memories through movement. The resulting dance-based performance To: my future body was publicly presented in January at KW Institute for Contemporary Art.

Artist talk
After the last performance presentation, the processes and experiences of the project were reflected in an artist talk. Choreographer Janice Parker and artist Emmie McLuskey, who were exchanging experiences and working methods with Patricia Woltmann, Christina Wüstenhagen and the KW mediation team throughout the whole process, accompanied the talk.

Parker and McLuskey showed a performative installation at KW in 2017, addressing questions of archiving and performance. The installation depicted Parker’s personal summary of her last 45 years of dance and performance practice in relation to contemporary and social history. On the basis of their joint work, a dialogue with KW’s mediation team arose around the complex question of how to archive dance, performance and life itself in frames and formats of art institutions, as well as the desire to delve deeper into this topic as part of an outreach project, inviting different audiences to take up KW’s spaces – the intergenerational dance project To: my future body was just the first step towards this vision.

Choreography and concept
Patricia Woltmann, Christina Wüstenhagen

Participating performers
Emma Lusena Ash, Johannes Berger, Ron Engels, Jessica Fischer, Anna Gelbe, Simikka Hansen, Carsten Horn, Marett Klahn, J.K. Langford, Maria Martinez, Marie Purschke, Kerttu Saraste, Maja Toaspern, Signe Tveskov

Conceptual collaboration
Emmie McLuskey, Janice Parker, Duygu Örs, Katja Zeidler

Sound installation
Norbert Lang

Initiator
Katja Zeidler

Project management
Duygu Örs

Video documentation
Janine Graubaum

Photography
Frank Sperling