Throughout August 2022 award-winning artists Nina Malotta and Samuel Hof are artists-in-residence at Studio 88. They are performing artists and heart and head of the independent theatre company O-Team.
O-Team not only regularly work together with other theatre professionals, but also with musicians, visual artists, writers and architects. The form of the projects develop according to the topic and oscillate between the areas of visual theater, performance, figure- and object-theater, or immersive/interactive formats. O-Team sees its work as cutting-edge theatrical research aiming to further develop an innovative and experimental contemporary theatre.
Since 2010, Nina and Samuel have created 25 performative productions that have been shown in different German theaters and festivals, as well as in other European countries.
Recently they finished their CRASH project series, in which they explored the accident as the dark side of technology and progress. All four projects of the series deal with technical objects, which themselves become actors and narrators.
Nina and Samuel are based in Stuttgart, Germany, and active members of Kunstverein Wagenhalle e.V., a self organised artists association providing studios for more than 120 artists which runs a professional project exhibition space with 450m2 on a former railway site.
Nina and Samuel’s aims for the residency
For 2022 we have two main tasks; one is to work on a new performance that will be developed step by step over the year and the other is to re-think and re-structure our artistic work and make plan for the upcoming years.
We want to take a step back and start again with basics: drawings, simple choreographies, collecting material. Thematically, we will delve into the topics of night, sleep and dreams. The day is used productively, consciously perceived and brightly lit. The night, on the other hand, stands for the unreal, the unknown, the mysterious, the uncanny, and for everything that cannot be strictly conceptualised. In this nocturnal period between the past and the coming day, we experience a more intense sense of time. Out of the daily routine, this time intensified attention, feelings and thoughts. This can manifest positively (as security, peace or relaxation) or Negatively (as nightmares or insomnia).
We spend a large part of our lives sleeping and dreaming. We want to experiment with a more holistic performative practice that also includes this “other” state of the human being with its nocturnal regeneration, reflection and distraction. For us, this includes the reflection on nature and our relation within it, trying to listen to our non-human companions too. We also want to ask how could we implement our artistic practice more often outside the rigid and sterile environment of a closed theatre space? To start, it would be great to work in a beautiful and challenging jungle environment such as can be found around Chiangmai.
Studio 88 Artist Residency 