l i s a s t e r t z

... is a German artist and educator, who works in the performative and healing arts. Through her studies in media, philosophy and art she became both, a savant and a maker. Lisa's interest in movement based practices led her to be a sojourner of Butoh, Noguchi-Taiso, Baguazhang, Taiji Quan, and meditation. Currently she is in an apprenticeship to become a Dervish Teacher.

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Lisa Stertz: The Body WithIn [de/en] – weekly class

Lisa Stertz: The Body WithIn [de/en] Manoah – Bewegungszentrum, Urbanstraße 118, 10967 Berlin

DE

08.10. - 10.12.2021 | freitags 09:00-10:30 8 Termine | ganzer Kurs 100€, einzeln 15€ Anmeldung per email via [email protected]  oder Whatsapp via  [phone] Teilnehmer:innenzahl: 10

»The Body WithIn« ist eine Reise, die den eigenen Körper als Medium für Kommunikation und kreatives Schaffen sensibilisiert. Dazu nutze ich, als Performer- und Lehrerin, Techniken und Methoden, die mich geprägt haben. Zu  diesen gehören Tanz, Kampfkunst, Meditation und das Performen an sich. 

EN

Oct 8 - Dec 10 2021 | fridays 9.00-10.30am 8 slots | whole course 100€, single class 15€ Registration by email via [email protected]  or whatsapp via [phone] Capacity: 10 participants

»The Body WithIn« is a journey, that puts attention to the/a body as a tool for communication and creative output. As performer and teacher I use techniques and methodologies that shaped my making. These include dance (internal) martial arts, meditation and performing as a practice.

http://lisastertz.com/the-body-within.html https://www.manoah-zentrum.de/kurse

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»Hold It« nº2

...has been a responsive performance to the photographic exhibition "WAS IST ICH – Auseinandersetzung zum SelbstPortrait" [What is I – contestation on self/portraiture] at SPRECHSAAL, Berlin Mitte

Curated by Miriam Zlobinski, Jana Ritchie, and Lars Dreiucker this exhibition shows eight perspectives and approaches to which Lisa Stertz will take position in her very own medium of art.

Photographs by Ben Lenhart and Melanie Wiener

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PSYCH*O*POMP at lítost gallery, Prague November 2018

The PSYCH*O*POMP as a performance is my first undertaking to let a performance (concept) travel and to re-perform the ritual (aspect) to every locale and audience anew. Thanks to the invitation from Nadezda Nazarova I was presenting the PSYCH*O*POMP in Prague. All Photographs by Svetlana Lopato

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»Hold It«, October 2018, aff Galerie Berlin

»Hold It« has been a responsive performance to the exhibition “Was ist ICH – Auseinandersetzung zum Selbstportrait” curated by Jana Ritchie and Miriam Zlobinski at aff Galerie during the European Month of Photography in Berlin. Photographs by Ben Lenhart.

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Ernesto Pujol: The Listeners

The Kunsthalle Osnabrück invited together with city stages to the "Friedenssaal" (Hall of Peace) of Osnabrück's Town Hall on August 25. In the context of Lab Europe the European Heritage project, that brought young people from all over Europe to the city in August 2018, Ernesto Pujol created the group performance: "The Listeners". People aged 18 to 80 practiced quiet and attentive listening with Pujol for one week. During the cultural night on August 25, from sunrise to midnight, they lent their ears to everyone who wanted to "get rid of" something, tell a story or arrange his or her thoughts by speaking them out loudly. The Hall of Peace, in which the peace of Westphalia was signed back in 1648, became the important place to remember that listening is one of the most important skills in resolving conflicts. The performance contained different layers of performers: the ones that would introduce an audience to the concept of the performance and invite them to take part, the ones that would guide them to the peace hall and instruct them to the concept of “speaking” and “listenting”, and the listeners themselves. – I assisted to the first category of performers.

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6 wrong pieces

Japanese ink on glossy sticker paper – 29,5x42cm – feb 2019 (on) view at lllsstudio

1 do you see me

2 whirl thought

3 circle manner

4 the poem

5 first try

6  eye shut

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PSYCH*O*POMP

***PSYCH*O*POMP***

The psychopomp are an ancient, religious, mystical, and real figure. They are a "soul guide” [originating from the Greek word ψυχοπομπός, psuchopompos] They accompany the soul to a safe passage from one life state in/to another. They act non-judgemental. They can be of human, animalistic, or divine nature. They are also a mediator between the conscious and unconscious realms. [manifested Carl Gustav Jung] They are your inner healer. They are you.

 Can you here them?

PSYCH*O*POMP is a meditative research, where I investigate in possible play outs of the figure in today’s (socio-political) life. With the showing at TAMAGO, I am premiering (in) a performative output.

Many thanks to Elana Katz, Anton Peitersen and Alessandro Rauschmann for their kind invitation and help to make this performance possible in the frame of the ongoing experimental curatorial project “Aktionen im Merz”, dedicated to performance art. Further thank you’s go to Ben Lenhart for his support in documentation.

Lisa Stertz, April 12 2018

References:

Jacques Derrida: Politique de L’amitié. ––– Carl Gustav Jung: Man and his Symbols. –––Dieter Mersch: Ereignis und Aura. ––– Michel de Montaigne: Sur L’amitié. ––– Tom Robbins: Jitterbug Parfume. ––– Shunryu Suzuki: Zen Mind. Beginners Mind.

photos by Ben Lenhart and Elana Katz video snippet filmed by Elana Katz

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MOLT trailer 

Concept & Costume - Hermes Pittakos Performance - Federica Dauri & Lisa Stertz Music - Kris Vango Video - Ouroboros

"“(H)uman beings longed for their other half so much that they searched for it all over and, when they found it, wrapped themselves around it very tightly and did not let go. […] This is the origin of our desire for other human beings; […] Our greatest wish, if we could have it, would then be […] to melt us into one another so that our souls could be at one, and share in a common fate.” – Plato, Symposium, The Myth of Aristophanes (c. 400 BC)"

Performance première 9th November at Buffer Fringe Festival. Bedesten-Old St Nicholas Church, Nicosia, Cyprus

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RED Velvet Tart

for sign, CIAT – Contemporary Institute for Art & Thought in Berlin Kreuzberg and their event CAKES&TARTSIV in the frame of Berlin Art Week, September 2017

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flutun|d|fall

...was an opening position to the exhibition “Die nächsten 100 Jahre” at tête gallery in Berlin, that presented four artistic approaches to Tschernobyl, its consequences and question of future. The double meaning of the title Flut und Fall [flood and fall] and Flutunfall [flood accident] plays off the political, i.e. state-official attitude of sudden escape and rash evacuation that overpowers conscious listening, seeing and thus responsive acting. How can an accident, that shall be erased from our history be cured for our days to come? »flutun|d|fall« came into being through the kind invitation of Ellen Luise Weise.

concept/costume: Melanie Wiener and Lisa Stertz installation: Tarek Meyr and Conny+Lisa+Michael Stertz photos: Melanie Wiener

http://tschernobyl.ellen-luise-weise.de/

http://www.tete.nu/_performance-flutun-d-fall-lisa-sterz

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O u r w O r l D

O u r w O r l D had been a closing meditation on a one-week-laboratory at performance space in Folkestone, Great Britain. Led by Helen Spackman and Ernst Fischer (LEIBNIZ) a small group of artists investigated in the fractured notion of “Human(W)Rites : The Book Of Blood” through a set of performative exercises(, and further through living, eating, chatting together). Human(W)Rites to me unfolded in a three-step understanding: (1) The human rights, as phonologically on would understand it, as being something artificially created(, but) under the premise of dignity, in order to save this as a primordial human condition. (2) The human writes, as the capability of a human being for creation, writing as a means of (creative) communication. The wheel of time towards. A motor of being. (3) The human rites, as our expression of belonging (together): stories, sagas, habits, ceremonies, etc. – cultural codices to identify unity. Also in thinking (again) the second thesis of my work on love, which stated that we are social beings, we are mate for mating. During the workshop, in an exercise with Kimvi Ngyuen, we had been pointed at our material use, mimicking our skin colors and thus creating a hierarchy between us, whilst our approach had been coming from a very different theme. Being struck by the fact, that we had been misread so easily, I intended to confront the five major skin colors that divide us humans visually, culturally, spatially, and politically to make them one and disappear: (1) I lay out a circle of salt. White. Cleansing. Sterilising. White also for white supremacy and the fact that it had been white men writing the human rights. I then (2) applied black and white chalk powder onto the circle. The cardinal distinction. Further I used yellow tumeric, red chili and brown cocoa powder to add to my fictional map. At last (3) I would spray this micro landscape wet, and let colors and salt become one mixture. This I divided into an uncounted number of parts to be given to the audience.

photographs by Manuel Vason

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Ereignis – Ephemeres – Flüchtiges 28.9.–30.9.2017 in Zürich >> zum Programm

Abschlussworkshop der AG Kunst und Wissenschaft des Ev. Studienwerks Villigst in Kooperation mit dem Forschungssschwerpunkt Transdisziplinarität / Windtunnellabor an der Zürcher Hochschule der Künste. 

Im Workshop wird ein Windtunnel Bulletin entstehen, das 2018 erscheint und mit finanzieller Unterstützung der Andrea-von-Braun-Stiftung realisiert wird. 

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Ohne Titel, ohne Worte

performance for Ema Discordant during Fall Apart Discordant’s photographic exhibition at Polyphony, Berlin, June 2017 duration: 45min

“Ohne Titel, ohne Worte” had been a responsive performance to Ema Discordant's exhibited photographic work. I drew lines between the composed still imagery exposed to me, but owned by an other, and my moving life body, owned by me, but exposed to the other/s.

photos by Jana Henschen and Ema Discordant

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»Atlas Fractured« (2017), digital video by Theo Eshetu, Documenta 14

As one of the 31 faces, I am making an appearance in Theo Eshetu’s video essay on humanness under the lens of ethnicity, psychology, politics, and philosophy. A thoroughly thought-through work to (again) admit in all its heterogeneity and complexity – just like the last voice in the video says – that “we are more alike, than unalike.”

Other participants are: Elena Agudio, Martin Ambarra, Peter Becker, Richard Berger, Tawahinga Butt, Alfonso Serrano Clemente, Samuel Debbas, Eryka Dellenbach, Paul-Jasper Dittrich, Zoe Dunster, Theo Eshutu, Hafiz Hanafi, Viktoria Hellwig, Tiare Maldonado Hucke, Anneke Kaan, Clara Kueckelhaus, Mary Anne Maffiol, Ila Magdefrau, Samuele Malfatti, Diego Marchi, Meron Maricos, Noel Peiris, Meryl Prettyman, Karen Rathey, Judith Rosmair, Denise Sengül, Nicolas Simoneau, Amos Turner, Yasuyo Uemura, and Melanie Wiener.

»Atlas Fractured« (2017) Digital video projected on banner, color, sound, 35 min. (Kassel version) Coproduced by Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg GmbH; Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD, Berlin; and Tarabya Cultural Academy Neue Neue Galerie (Neue Hauptpost), Kassel

Athens version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xJIQyDzysw

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OPEN LOSS

performed during OPEN12, February 2017 at HH Art Spaces, Arpora, Goa duration: 2h photos by Dheer Kaku

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|– axes [access] of home –|

"|– axes [access] of home –|" was presented in the realm of 3AM Filaments and Voids in Berlin. The 3AM event series “is a multi-disciplinary event that brings together artists and audience in order to challenge, experiment and reinvent the formats of presentation, and / or to propose a moment where works can be tried out in a welcoming environment.” It is funded by the Senat Department for Culture and Europe.

"|– axes [access] of home –|” attempted to deal with the notion of home as a precarious one: How may we locate home? How may we step into a home? From where do we look at home? Squatting on the balcony – my temporary home – of the Arena building in Berlin Treptow, I invited audience to join me there on June 4 between 7pm-12am. Everybody was welcome, no one turned away.

In the end this try-out performance had been 12h long, including in- and deinstall –the making and dismantling of home –, including the extension until 3am in the morning – the lingering at home – with audience, friends, and the meta-squatters Guillermo Santamaría, Rodrigo, Ana, and alexandra, who stayed at my temporary balcony home the entire time, creating their own performative space in my performance, blending with me the notions of exposition and invitation, and keeping a living room alive.

photos by Zeynep Akbal and #lllss

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E-rase M E-go

May 11 - 13 2017 at DOCK11, Berlin

A three-hour walk-in live installation, an experiment, spreading over three days and a total of nine hours. Playing with the elements of text, voice, sound, dance, performance, and sculptural objects.

Performance artists Lisa Stertz (DE) and Sajan Mani (IN), visual artist Morvarid K (IR) and butoh dancer Yuko Kaseki (JP/DE) shared an invasion of parallel universes. The central subject in this combination was the human body in its physicality, its temporality, meaning its vitality and mortality, and its mediality – its communicative capacity. A race against the ego, yet against the outside ego/s. 

An immediate attempt failed due to its timely lack of growing. Trees need time to grow, so do humans; socially as individually. The habitude of being can only be broken violently if it has to be broken in a sudden instant. Trying to fast kills love, warmheartedness and generosity, and protective walls of violence towards the outside, including a stubborn and silent cry from the inside, get built.

Special thanks to DOCK11, Theaterscoutings, Evgenia Chetvertkova, Aurora Costilla, Alexandre Dupeyron, Hikaru Inagawa, Elana Katz, L'être Lambda, Maco, Arata Mori, Lena Nachtigall, Michael Stertz, Saverio Tonoli, and Melanie Wiener.