The Interrelation Project: choreographic research at Platform Living Room (Rotterdam)

-- Janosch Horn

During the months February/ ́March the dance maker, performer and teacher Janosch Horn (Germany) had the opportunity to conduct artistic research at Platform LivingRoom. Each week he and the composer Guillem Gongora Moral (Spain) had a couple of hours time to build the foundation for their collaboration and to approach in a playful way what the “Interrelation Project” could become.
The research is based on Janosch ́s assumption that we cannot separate the components of this world. That means any person, object, performance, picture etc. stands always in relationship to its surrounding. And it will be only understood in relation to its surroundings.

So Janosch ́s interest is how the same movement or the same position is perceived with different surroundings. As an simplistic example: a performer just standing in the center of the stage, then standing in the left-back corner, standing right in front of the audience. This would be only a change of the placement in space. Then there is the possibility of a change in direction if the performer stands directly in front of the audience, it makes a huge difference if the performer is facing them or if he has his back turned to them, or if she is standing profile etc. So the combination of the placement in space with the directions gives already lots of possibilities.

But what if we consider music. What if the performer stands in the back left corner with sad-melancholic music? What if it is a buddhist mantra that is played while he is standing there and how about some aggressive metal music? It will all bring the same picture to trigger something totally else in the viewer's mind.

What about objects? What if the performer is standing in the center of the stage but in front of her is a table? What if he is standing with his back to the table and what if he is standing on the table? What will the light change?

The idea was to explore one picture, movement or posture in many different contexts. Hopefully to allow the observer to realize that one thing can be understood in many ways (depending on perspective and context).

So these thoughts and ideas that Janosch had played with in the past and brought now into this new collaboration with Guillem.

“We took this in total 24 hours of research at Platform Living Room really as a research ground. We went into the process, having this core idea of interrelation but not knowing if that concept will only be used by us as a tool to conduct and understand our work. Or if interrelation will be indeed the focus and theme of our creation.

Also we had to get to know each other as collaborators and needed to spend time and energy on understanding each other's approaches and our common interests in the work”

Guillem and Janosch are coming out of this research period, with a couple of good starting materials for further research and development. They started to figure out at what pace and in which ways they can collaborate well. And last but not least they got the interrelation project to start rolling and hope to continue working on it soon.

If covid-19 and life goes well they are planning to bring the result of this project in form of a live performance back to Platform Living Room on July 2nd.

Janosch Horn, born and raised in Germany is a 25 years young dance maker, performer and teacher. His background is in the breakdance scene but in 2014 he started studying contemporary dance in Germany (Center for contemporary dance - Cologne) and later in The Netherlands (ArtEZ University of the Arts).
Janosch always insists on a clear and coherent concept while the work itself can be placed somewhere between dance theatre and conceptual work. Janosch strives for honesty and realness in dance and in life. His works have been performed at festivals like “Its Festival” and “Hoogte80 Festival”.

https://vimeo.com/472931343/3abca18afa