port performance

"First I like to say „thank you“ to the organisators Angelika Fojtuch and BBB Johannes Deimling for having this great week in Gdansk. For me this week was a new experience, a very good possibility to reflect about my body, behaving and thinking about my body in art. I think the most interesting thing for me was to be in totally another place than in art academia here in Germany, to be confrontated with another thinking of art and the learning in art.

It also was so good that we didn’t stay all the time just in Modelarnia, that we changed the place for the daily work. I think that gives more inspiration.

Reflections about teachers in life and in art started to get concret, in my case.

Also very important for me was the scriptwork as an exercise to communicate with each other. Responsibility. Take care of the others and of yourself, peripher viewfield. Very good for daily exercise, I tried out now. Get connected with people. Meeting. The importance to make something (together) not anything.

For me this week was very full of ups and downs, feelings like I was just swimming without knowing but in the end it was absolutly great because my view on things, on that what I am doing, changed.

It continues in Mainz, perhaps it also will continue in Estonia."

Anne-Louise Hoffmann

"The streets and pavements in Poland are very exciting. I love the way how they are constructed, damaged and patched. It seems like Friedensreich Hundertwasser created the polish streets. I really like to walk on those natural Hunderwasser streets, because you cannot be sure, every step is an adventure and walking like this trains you to see more and to be more attentive. It gives you creativity and another way of looking. Not like in Switzerland where everything is done and straight. There is everything ready and a walk isn't that interesting like here."

Dinoys Dammann

"First of all... thank you. thank you for your time. for your ideas. for your patience. for the 'really spoko' attitude, for being friends sometimes, masters the other times and the times which you don't want to remember probably but i always will - being papa and mama. thank
you for organizing the whole thing. for letting us in into the closed shipyard area. for taking us to the seaside. for doing silly things. and doing wise things. for trying to speak polish, german and english at the same time. for sharing with us all some parts of you. for baking 'drozdzowka' and learning how to pronounce it (really, you should've chosen to bake something easier to pronounce...) for asking many questions. and giving some anwers. and for 'what is black is white'. and for 'what is silent is loud'. for taking us to the place we love. and the place we hate. for being nice most of the time and being stressed out once. being human. and just being yourselves. for seducing us with one other. for forcing us to dig deep inside ourselves and find some hidden places out there. for tempting us to touch. to interact with other bodies. to hit. to stroke. to kick. to cuddle. to hurt. to lick. to take care. to sing. and shout. and dance as if no one was watching. but then can't escape from others and sleep in one room with six other people when some of them were snoring so much that we couldn't sleep. but this is the charm. to hear others breathing. breathing quietly. and breathing loudly. but breathing."

Agata Anna Nitecka

First of all I can tell you that it was a really intensive week for me. Also in these three weeks after the workshop I thought a lot about the exercises, about Modelarnia & Stocznia and about what I was experiencing during this week.
It was a great pleasure to have had the possibility to work and practise in Modelarnia and Stocznia, such a place which normally isn't that easy to reach and to see in the way we did. Angelika & Johannes, you did a great job in organization and you prepared an interesting and a culturally rich program.
So it was also interesting to get to know other performers and other artists from other countries and to get in contact with the polish contemporary art. During the exercises I got to know the workshop participants above all by body communication & gestures...and of course that was strange, somehow crazy and out of normal behaviour. I think it was also this kind of behaving which made the workshop so intensive and so it was performing, acting and concentration on the tools of your body.
Concerning critiques you used your pedagogical ways and I think it would be really interesting to participate also in some of the next workshops - to move on and still get to know these ways better-, also because once we got to know you it's maybe easier to deal with some situations. I like that you're openminded and that you want to pass this attitude passionately to others.

Ines Dunemann

First I want to say, for me it was a very personal week. I started to think about myself very much. I think, I know now more clearly what I want and what is inside of me I can work with.Very high concentrated stuff in one week. New land, new language, new people is very much to handle all at the same time in the same moment. But very interesting and I reached some borders and sometimes pass them over. This was a good experience and I want to continue with this kind of work. I love doing performances, because in this way I can speak very clearly. For me the process and the things that happens when you do a performance, and you never know what all can happen, is the most interesting thing.

Nina Hofmann

There are a lot of moments in my life when i’m feeling unable to do art. when i think that i don’t have the power to do something, that i’m to weak to get over that day-to-day life and that i don’t want to do anything anymore. I don’t believe myself when i’m walking down the street that i’m really walking down the street. I have the feeling that somebody is observing me the whole time and that nothing is my decision. In those moments i don’t feel like i’m doro. there is no power. i don’t care about myself, i don’t care about anybody and nobody cares about me. Then i need something that gives me my feeling for myself back. This could be a journey in a country which is very dangerously, or where i get to know my borders in another way. And i also get power when i see good art. When i can feel it, when my heart begins to beat, when i never want to do anything else but art. That portperformance workshop in danzig was very intensiv. We worked very concentrated in very tight constellations with unknown persons. It was a very
interesting experience to observe how fast we changed our moduses in working with our bodylanguages, our voices and to come in that short time to a very close group. We learned much about that giving and taking in life not only in
refer to performance art. In addition to that, was it very exciting to get to know danzig and it’s history at the shipyard where we worked. It was a wicked atmosphere to work in an area where in the half area the shipyard workers still worked and you heard to whole time that klong klong klong of these and you saw the cranes standing everywhere and to have in the other half area galeries, artinstitutes and halls where painters are living and working. Amazing. I really enjoyed my time in Danzig and it gave me a good kick to go on.

Dorthea Meyer