conversations in ten (+3) questions 57: Michael Maurissens

© Joerg Letz

Born in Brussels and based in Germany, Michael Maurissens produces works both as a dancer/choreographer and as a director focusing especially on dance films. 

Maurissens  who came to Istanbul for 3 months through the German Cultural Fund, also carries out various joint studies in Turkey with the Goethe Institute and Kulturakademie Tarabya. Continuing his productions as a producer, cameraman and editor in the field of film, Maurissens' documentary film The Body as Archive, which focuses on the body as an archive and the memory storage and processing mechanisms of the body, and also explores different ways of archiving especially in the field of performing arts, screened at Zone60 Atelier on June 7th and at Kadir Has University on June 9th. Maurissens also held a dance-film workshop in Duende with the support of Kunststiftung NRW between June 8th-11th. 

We asked questions for you to Maurissens, whom we hosted in our conversation in ten question series.

Ayşe Draz & Mehmet Kerem Özel

What is the essence of dance in your opinion

 From my perspective and experience, I see dance as a space for negotiation, interconnection and hybrid forms of expression between the body and its environment: It is in the medium of dance in which ideas of culturally diversified societies emerge.

Do you believe in the transformative power of art? How?

I am particularly interested in the manifold interconnections and dialogue spaces which can be experienced between dance and transculturality. For example, to negotiate transcultural perspectives on dance through methodological and theoretical concepts, such as cultural transfer, migration, and gender. Moreover, dance practices can constitute powerful instruments and initiate resistance and action for change in social and political conflict zones.

When you are working on a piece, what sources inspire you?

It is different every time but it always starts by being curious about something. A work can be trigger by an encounter with someone, the need of understanding, of experimenting, of questioning. Being intrigued by a concept, an unusual constellation of elements. I enjoy as well the preparation: searching, researching, analyzing, setting up a path, a plan of action for the process and the creation.

When do you decide to give a title to a piece you are working on if it already does not have one?

The title often comes at the beginning. It helps creating a focus, keeping a direction. Sometimes the title does change during the process, but the original title was always and important and helpful departure point.

Is there any artist or person whom you think influenced your art most? And if there is such an artist or person, who would that be?

The composer Jóhann Gunnar Jóhannsson, the Italian painter Boticelli, the Icelandic–Danish Artist Olafur Eliasson.

When you consider the current state of the world in every sense, what is the most important and urgent issue for you as an artist?

To my eyes, the key is how we interact with each other. Everything start with me as an individual, how do I relate with my peers. To listen. To respond. To confront. To care. To take position. Be courageous. To share. To question. To support. To take risk.

As an artist, I believe dialogue is the key approach to all practices.

You are both a dancer/choreographer and a documentary film-maker among other things, how do these two identities interact in your case?

Film making and dancing are very close in my practice. I am fascinated by observing, capturing and conveying movement. I just turned 50 and I am finding myself in a sort of an organic transition from being a dancer, to continue working with the knowledge I have accumulated from the fields of performance and choreography within the medium of film. I love to compose, to create, to craft with elements that are present in both practices: working with light, with movement, with layers, with dynamics, with narrative, on the relation body/space, with sound …

What triggered your interest in the notion of archiving and the preservation of collective knowledge and what was the process that led you to co-write and direct The Body as Archive? How did you select with whom to talk for the documentary?

My original motivation for the film ‘The body as archive’ was to highlight the role of dancers in the preservation of knowledge acquired and developed during their career. Dancers work on many projects, invest themselves immensely, build complexed-level coordination and intelligence, work under pressure, in collaborative processes, contribute and engage to artistic endeavor, commit and dedicate hugely, develop an enormous amount of skills and sensitivity …

Where is that knowledge located? How to access that knowledge?

I also wanted to trace back to the simple understanding of what a movement is? How does the body, the brain process movement? Where does a movement start? For this, in the film, I have interviewed brain researcher, neuroscientist but also art researcher, choreographer and dancer in order to hear how, each of them from their own perspective, understand movement, understand physical intelligence, body memory and shared physical experience.

I quote from your comments in the documentary “…trying to perform choreographed material brings up the inevitability of differences, while improvised material brings up the inevitability of repetitive patterns…”, can you elaborate on this?

This is something that arise after many years of dancing and practicing improvisation: one tempts to understand that during improvisation, movement and ideas come freely and without much effort but actually it is very hard work to avoid repeating yourself, to avoid moving in known and safe ways. It takes a lot of practice to recognize what your (movement) habits are and to work ‘against’ what your brain would naturally go for.

While working on choreographed material, the more you practice the choreography, you train your brain to remember the choreography, your body starts to ‘own’ the steps, then you realize that even within the constricted frame of set choreography, one can find a lot of ‘freedom’, a lot of space for negotiating, interpretation, playing, improvising and still respect the choreographic frame.

What brought you to Istanbul?

Turkey and most specifically Istanbul always was intriguing me: the different layers the city is built on, being a crossroad of cultures and civilizations, being a place of colors, of arts, of joy and at the same time being a place for social, territorial and political tension. All these contrasts kept me curious and as I read about the residency program of the Kunststiftung NRW in Istanbul, I did not hesitate a second to apply and my joy was immense when I received the positive response and the invitation to spend 3 months working, researching and collaborating in this magical city.

What are your observations on the approach of cross disciplinary working and thinking? 

Engaging in dialogue with other arts forms and practices has, for me, always been a good exercise: having to define, formulate and set my intentions and line of actions in the most articulate way for myself and with the artists I am collaborating with. Once that step is done, cross disciplinary approach to artistic creation opens up an exalting space for possibilities and exploration. In my practice, dance often acts as a medium for communication, an ‘agency’ to convey values, to promote critical thinking, to stimulate joint learning, to challenge boundaries and perception of our surrounding world. As well, it is in cross disciplinary approach that one understands better the potential and the limitation of his/her own artistic practice.

You are, as well, leading a series of screendance workshops in diverse frames such as universities (Bilkent University and Hacettepe university in Ankara) and independent structures (PALizmir in Izmir and Duende Tiyatro in Istanbul). How do you set up and frame the workshop?

I see these frames as a platform for knowledge transfer and as well to inspire and animate the participants to challenge the perceptions and perspectives of the world we are living in, to motivate synergistic and collective participation, to stimulate cross-disciplinary exchange, to destroy prejudices, to open horizons, to offer the experience of thinking and operating as a community. As well to encourage social and cultural critique that is attentive to the everyday and the extraordinary, the sensorial, the forgotten, the obvious, the messy and to build on these critiques by considering sensory, embodied and affective knowledge to be significant, by working with critical approaches in reassembling, reimagining and rebuilding the disciplines of research and artistic creation.

The participants are invited to engage in artistic collaboration exploring the visual, the textual, the urban, the ecological, the spatial, the poetic, the political, the narrative, the performative, the improvised, the embodied, the reflexive, the kinetic, the emergent, the creative and the imaginative in the artistic practice. 

For these workshops, you are collaborating with various organizations in Turkey, what is the focus? What are you plans, ideas for the future? 

I hope these collaborative projects offer and promote a sense of community to the participants, I believe it is very important for the development and establishing of the contemporary dance scene in Turkey. When collaborating with structures and institutions, I propose topics and themes that go along the frame of the organizations.

The workshop in Izmir took place in the frame of PALIzmir’s ongoing project ‘Thinking bodies for climate justice’, therefore, the topic of the workshop was: how to make art in times of climate crisis? How does the environment affect my body? 

The participants in Ankara were coming from both film and dance university departments, it has been a wonderful experience to witness curiosity and engagement from all fields. The given topic was: What moves me? How does the environment impact my body/my movement? How do I perceive time? In Istanbul, the workshop took place in the Kadiköy urban context, I proposed as a research frame to reflect on the public space, its functionality, flexibility and how it might display or hold artistic interventions as forms of political acts.

Besides the creative and artistic aspect of developing screendance works, this approach also proved to be important for documenting and archiving the performing arts and dance in particular. Together with Mine Söyler (researcher at SALT Istanbul) we are considering different projects, ideas and formats that could support the training of videographers specializing in the documentation of dance.

[The Turkish version of this conversation was published in unlimited.]