by Carina Otte, Michael Tsouloukidse, Stephanie Benze

Based on Anna Halprin´s Parades and Changes (1965), Anne Collod presented her work parades & changes, replays in Berlin in August of 2009. 

Assembled right in the heart of Kreuzberg, between Landwehrkanal and an ever evolving city of pushed boundaries, the audience of the Tanz im August Festival applauded the award winning piece of movement narration. Representatives of the press wrote articles on the social dimensions of the work and recommended to visit the piece. Spectators shared oral opinions. Discussions were being made. Flyer were being spread. Posters were looked at on walls. People might have felt inspired, provoked, enthusiastic even. The play was living material residing in the streets of Berlin.

Looking back on parades & changes, replays today– after twelve summers have passed – the question of what is left of the play now arises. Are there traces to find and archives to visit? How did the play inscribe itself in the city? Is there a collective archive for such matters? Is there a shape to recognize as the trace of a memory that we all agree on?

Three different approaches to this documenting this question convene in the following, showing that the interplay of parades & changes, replays and the city Berlin through a performative act opens up many layers of interest in its lived experience. Layers that don’t anticipate meaning, but layers that add up to the meandering archive that Berlin turns out to be. 

(re)searching, observing, perceiving …

… materials, objects, fabrics, colours, lights, bodies, sounds, voices, fragments, scores, red, flesh, skin, paper, movement, reflection …

… (re)calling, (re)thinking, (re)creating …

Which original do you (re)visit? 

... traces within.

The Performance as the trace

The Performance as the archive 

The Performance as the mirror 

Thinking of how parades & changes, replays left traces in Berlin lead to the question of the performance being the creator of traces or the collector of them

Every space transforms through and with what moves within it

Is the performance the archive or the creator of traces? Does it offer new perspectives or does it collect and incorporate what is already there? 

parades & changes, replays as the ultimate collector

the audience as the reflection 

Is Berlin mirror and archive, trace and creator of all things moving within and with her? 

Are you not as the reflection a trace and creator of the performance all at once? Can you not only perceive an artwork based on what has already perceived you? Is archiving not the translation of yourself into a new context?

It all leads back to one constant

Our bodies as experience creating and reflecting places 

Our bodies that have the capacity to feel, what the collective memory poured into a form, for art to reflect, neglect and think beyond