Participants from Pakistan
Kunstareal Fest in Munich

Performative installation in Kunstareal Munich
Idea: Miro Craemer
Curated by: Sara-Duana Meyer and Miro Craemer
Open workshop: June 11-15, 2017
Rehearsals: June 18-24, 2017
Performance: June 25, 2017, Kunstareal Fest

The body is motion, is transformation. The body is an island by itself, a decisive part of a system, and a microcosm of the universe. The body is barrier, is vehicle. The body is political.
 

The performative Installation OVERxCOME explores the relations between bodies, borders, surfaces, and materials, with movement as the imperative element. The project draws from both South-Asian as well as European/Bavarian cultural heritage in the fields of dance, theater, music, and fashion art in order to reference and examine complex questions.

In a two-week workshop, dancer Joshinder Chaggar from India, Pakistani actor Sunil Shanker, German fashion and social designer Miro Craemer, and Cairo-based curator and writer Sara-Duana Meyer create a scenic-choreographic project in cooperation with dancer and choreographer Katrin Schafitel, brass-player and indologist Simon Otto and other local actors, dancers, and musicians.

OVERxCOME operates from the understanding of constructive movement and sound to explore and transcend boundaries, but also as an expression of survival. In the Pakistani megalopolis Karachi, home to two of the project’s protagonists, this concept acquires a particularly existential emphasis with contemporary dance being considered as a subversive artistic medium per se.
The project references in different ways critical topics such as the Pakistan-India conflict, the binary oppositions of man and woman, and cultural reservations and stereotypes. The trope of the kite, whose particular attraction finds an expression in festivals in South Asia, will also be translated into the project.

The textile concept of OVERxCOME deals with the allegedly opposite, requiring the audience to question first impressions, take up a position, and hence to become a decisive part of the performative installation. Inspired by Albrecht Altdorfer´s historical painting "Alexanderschlacht", painted in the 16th century and exhibited in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, fashion and social designer Miro Craemer has developed costumes that play with color, material, meaning and shapes. Depicting a battle between the so-called oriental and occidental world, Altdorfer assigned color schemata to the different parties, thus continuing the conflict on yet another symbolic level. Deliberately and ostensively working these codes into the design, the textile part of OVERxCOME plays on notions of the oppositional and the complementary and asks the audience to reinterpret historical as well as contemporary assumptions of distance and proximity, separation and connection.

By adding the medium of music, the performative installation acquires yet another dimension that allows to create trajectories and pathways of connection within the grid of museality. Already during the workshop, musicians and protagonists develop artistic forms of expression beyond standardized genres to reinterpret different cultural traditions based on improvisation, communication and exchange.
 
OVERxCOME entsteht im Auftrag des 3. Kunstareal-Festes 2017 und wird mit freundlicher Unterstützung des Kulturreferates der Landeshauptstadt München und weiteren Förderern finanziert. OVERxCOME findet statt in Kooperation mit Tanztendenz München e.V.
 

Workshops:

People interested in dance, acting and body awareness are invited to join a series of workshops in the first week. In the second week the main protagonists and selected participants will focus on the performance.
More information about the instructors, the workshop program and the project on Facebook at Mode-Kunst-Integration and under the sign-up link
 

Protagonists and Curators

Joshinder Chaggar, born in India, grew up in Nigeria, studied contemporary dance at the Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, and has been living and teaching as a professional dancer in Karachi, Pakistan for about ten years.

Sunil Shanker, born in Pakistan, studies acting at the National Academy of Performing Arts (NAPA) in Karachi. Together with Joshinder Chaggar he realized a series of experimental performance projects in various locations in Karachi, Pakistan.

Katrin Schafitel, awardwinning dancer and choreographer, has worked internationally with notable dancers and choreographers and has been an active and influential member of Germany’s independent dance scene since 1999.

Simon Otto is currently writing a dissertation on Classical Indian Music and has been a member of several of Munich's most iconic music formations like Express Brass Band or Embryo with whom he tours extensively since 2008, most recently in Brazil.

Rahul Sharma is a contemporary tabla player from north India who specializes in classical Indian dance Kathak. Besides, he has worked with various contemporary dancers and has been conducting workshops in different world music exchange programs.
 
Miro Craemer, fashion and social designer based in Munich, Germany, conceived the performance project TOGETTHERE_walking_ACT for the Kunstarealfest 2015. The idea for OVER / COME arose  in Karachi during an artist-in-residency of the Goethe-Institut Pakistan and Vasl Artists’ Collective where he realized the textile installation CORD OF DESIRES.

Sara-Duana Meyer, Cairo-based cultural producer, writer, and curator in whose work interdisciplinary approaches, urban space and art & resistance are recurring themes. Most recently she curated the yearlong project "Urbanities – art and public space in Pakistan" in Karachi and Lahore, Pakistan.