by Hannah Wimmer and Maximilian Prag
Hannah Wimmer (choreography, performance) and Maximilian Prag
(Transmedia Art) have been collaborating on projects at the interface between art, technology and performance since 2019. Their works deal with the body located simultaneously in virtual and physical space.
In our age of total fusion of digital and analogue, the continued existence of materiality and physicality is being questioned more than ever and calls for a rediscovery in the midst of an abundance of information and data. What parameters and anchor points can we agree on in our interactions and how do we want to encounter each other and ourselves in cyberspace?
Based on movements captured by a motion capture suit, the space is explored performatively and translated and trans-formed into virtual and offline worlds. Collaboratively and always in the face of digital (dis)continuities between overload and intuitive understanding of the body, doublings of worlds are renegotiated in transreal+.
The two artists dedicate themselves to the inseparable relationship between bodies and digital space and venture a look under the skin, at the structures and meta-physical conditions of our time.
During the exhibition, the exhibition will be continuously adapted through three performative interventions and the relationships between the worlds will be further entangled.
Central to the open lab is the question: How do we perceive and embody ourselves within the virtual realm? In the collaborative project transreal, contemporary dancer Hannah Wimmer and transmedia artist Maximilian Prag traverse the boundaries of flesh and code, becoming vessels for a symphony of prosthetic reembodiment. Here, computers and devices become whispers of our identity, sculpting narratives that transcend the digital horizon and echo through the corridors of our collective consciousness.
video & editing by Maximilian Prag
Crafting moments of gameplay. Internet-Aesthetics of Vapourware, Cybersigilism and Chrome3D are deconstructed and we are virtually confronted with our phone and finally our own virtual body, that we meet in virtual space.
The performance was shown in the framework of the award show of the Best Austrian Animation Festival.
video documentation by Martin Kaljuorg, edit by Maximilian Prag
In folkcore 5.0 the artists Hannah Wimmer and Maximilian Prag collaborated on a realtime multimedia performance shown in Tartu Estonia at the European Capitals of Culture Family Meeting.
In their research, inspired by a former project and master thesis of Hannah Wimmer, they worked with the queering of Austrian folkdance through different lenses.
Through methods of queering, the duo updated elements and reconstructed traditional elements of music, costume and dance and present them in a new media driven performance.
video documentation by Felix Lenz, edit by Maximilian Prag
transreal, a collaboration project between the contemporary dancer Hannah Wimmer and the transmedia artist Maximilian Prag was born out of the artists´ desire to explore how movement and self-experience can be translated into a virtual environment. The costume by Anna Schall creates an interskin between the performer and Avatar and extends the motion capture technology, allowing for an in-depth exploration of the body and how it moves and interacts with both physical and virtual spaces. The sound set provided by MARAws accompanies the performance and embodies and aestheticizes the performative relations.
The artists` investigations of how the physical and virtual can co-exist simultaneously include ideas of author Legacy Russel. Her Manifesto Glitch Feminism is a key element of this performance, encouraging audiences to break down traditional ideas of gender and identity through the glitch (1) and explore how these concepts can be deconstructed and reimagined. By using the 'body', we give material form to what has no form, an abstract assemblage. Taking advantage of both the real and virtual worlds, the contemporary self-body incorporates virtuality and transforms it into another manifestation.
The title, heralded as “transreal” a term created by Micha Cárdenas, is to describe the virtual in this exchange between realities (2). Through the virtual, we have the freedom to alter ourselves, becoming a “complex new expression of prosthetic reembodiment through which our physical bodies and subjectivities extend themselves into the virtual terrain.” as Legacy Russel states. It is a fragmented self-body that is born as a virtual artifact, but becomes tangible as physicality and perception. In their performance, the dancer glitched in both her virtual and physical self and was encoded in new life while being complexified through 3D Scanning techniques. Computers and devices become our invisible second selves, an extension to define our personal and cultural identity.
We are asking ourselves the increasingly conscious question of how the Internet affects our current notions of identity and can grow beyond binaries and structures, becoming visible in our transreality. In the digital worlds, parallel identities can co-exist and we can recreate our personality parts as whole entities. Our identity becomes refracted and newly perceptible in the blurred transitions between the digital and physical.
Although the performance is rooted in digital art practices, it differs from their traditional form in its complexity and interactivity. Unlike digital art that is often experienced solely through a screen, this performance allows us to perceive a live process, creating an immersive experience that blurs the boundaries of reality and sketching us a new interpretation of what bodies within a space can be.
video documentation by Chris Gütl, edit by Maximilian Prag
She draws inspirations from other art forms and has collaborated with different artists from all over the world.
Her current interests within her work focus on feminist politics, queer theory and connected body and identity issues that can be addressed both in the physical as well as in the digital landscape.
The body itself is always the main material and source of her practice and research but using props and other art forms to enhance and support the feeling of opening up and taking up space and therefore collaborative and collective work with other artists has become more and more important in her artistic and performative endeavors.
Hannah finished her MA degree in Expanded dance practice (Choreography and performance) at London Contemporary Dance School, validated by the University of Arts in London.
They are interested in contemporary imagery, internet culture and experimenting with phygital experiences exploring new interactions in between our mixed realities, online and away from screens.
The collective work, community and collaborations are important parts of their artistic practice, always engaging in projects outside of their individual practice, from music videos, stage design, live visuals, virtual exhibition design or fashion design.
Maximilian is working as a 3D designer for the Vienna based media arts festival CIVA by sound:frame, which they accompanied from its inception and had an integral part in its conceptualization and is part of the artist-lead collective room69, with whom they are creating new formats of exhibitions in phygital spaces.
They are currently studying Graphic Design and Transmedia Arts at the University of Applied Arts, living and working in Vienna.