Fabrice Mazliah’s durational project “The Manufactured Series” is composed of ten concentrated duets with one human and one non-human body each. The duets concentrate particularly on the non-human bodies, their hand-made quality and thus their close links to the human hand.

In the sixth duet of the series, Claire Vivianne Sobottke chose to work with Dolores, a sex doll who shares her approximate weight and heigh.
The relation between Claire and Dolores led to a multiplication of bodies and objects. Dolores already being an objectified, sexually exploitable “double” of Claire’s female-identifying body, we thus continued replicating, focusing on female representations in anatomy and the history of art. The work therefore explores how socially and politically imposed ideas of the female body define what we perceive it to be -and to be capable of- also physically. The act of multiplying those representations is our tool for imagining a shameless and shapeless body, in charge of its own representations.
Duet #6 aspires to form an alliance between Claire and Dolores as a way out of abuse and objectification through a playful sexuality, sensuality, ecology and collectivity. In the process, the female voice increasingly emerges as an urgent, eloquent and forceful physical presence.

Premiere: 3th - 6th February 2022, Kunstverein Familie Montez, Frankfurt

A production of Fabrice Mazliah / Work of Act in co-production with Künstlerhaus Mousonturm and Kunstverein Familie Montez. Supported by NATIONALES PERFORMANCE NETZ – STEPPING OUT, gefördert von der Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien im Rahmen der Initiative NEUSTART KULTUR. Hilfsprogramm Tanz, Hessisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kunst and Kulturamt der Stadt Frankfurt.

        

        

In the fifth duet of the series, choreographer Michele Di Stefano meets Andy Warhol’s diaries.  In every duet until now, the object, through its functions, proposes the duration of the work, according to the time it needs to reveal itself. In the case of the diaries and their 807 pages, the book demands a length of 72 hours in order to be read in its entirety. As a consequence, di Stefano and the book will spend three full consecutive days and nights together on stage, in a reading ritual/marathon in which the public can partake either in person, during various public windows, or virtually, via livestream. 
What happens while reading? This simple question gives rise to complex physical dialogue. A book consists of nothing but white paper and black letters. However, it opens up intimate, mental spaces which the reader navigates thanks to her/his imagination. This unusual duet explores the relationship between materiality and immateriality, between the process of reading and being read, inviting the inner voices of the spectators, their imaginary worlds, to merge with those of Di Stefanos and the book.

72-hour Livestream on Youtube (24.09., 19h till 27.09. 19h)
Livestream made possible by Hessisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kunst in the frame of "Hessen kulturell neu eröffnen".

Composition / Sound: Lorenzo Bianchi-Hoesch

Premiere: 24 / 25 / 26 / 27 September 2020, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm

A production of Fabrice Mazliah / Work of Act in co-production with Künstlerhaus Mousonturm in the context of Tanzplattform Rhein-Main. Funded by International Coproduction Fund - Goethe Institut, in collaboration with Goethe Institut Madrid. Supported by Kulturamt der Stadt Frankfurt.

With many thanks to Miguel Oyarzun and Isla Aguillar.

In the fourth duet of the series, the performer Émilia Giudicelli is collaborating with a rod for fly fishing, which she has made herself. First as a piece of “raw” material and then as a polished bamboo rod carved in the right length, the two performers have accompanied each other in different stages of their development.

To fly fish is to deeply listen to the different ecosystems that the angler is in contact with and to tune into them. Catching a fish, is not an end in itself, but rather the confirmation of a successful “reading” of the water, whose surface lets appear the movements of the wind, whose transparency might render discernible the vegetation of the bottom. Following the complexity of the situation, the fly rod is not a single object but rather a family of objects and of bodies. It can function as an extension of the human body but also as a lever made up of bamboo and line, in order to cast a tiny knot of a string fly onto the surface of the water. Flies are studies of the insects of the specific wet biotope in all the different stages of development. They “play” the fish and queer the fly angler community, still mainly male-gendered, with their colorful garments of paillettes and feathers. In the end the question remains: who catches whom?

Premiere: 29 – 31 January 2020, Frankfurt LAB

A production of Fabrice Mazliah / Work of Act in co-production with Künstlerhaus Mousonturm. Supported by Kulturamt der Stadt Frankfurt am Main.

In the third duet of the series, the musician and dancer Elpida Orfanidou is collaborating with a Pontian lyra. This lyra, also called a kemenche, is a traditional musical instrument from Pontos, a region in modern day Turkey adjacent to the Black Sea. The creation process of this duet unfolds simultaneously with the fabrication of the lyra itself: Elpida and her performance partner enter in a dance of manufacturing and of being manufactured in the months preceding the premiere of this creation. What is shared in this duet, is this processes of the craftswoman learning how to touch and be touched, how to shape and be shaped, how to play and be played by the instrument.

After all, what is an instrument exactly , what is involved in making it and in playing it? Entering in relation with its material also implies a listening to its songs, a dancing of the dances that it summons when the bow and the strings come in contact with each other, from time to time.

Premiere: 26 - 28 September 2019 Künstlerhaus Mousonturm

A production of Fabrice Mazliah / Work of Act in co-production with Künstlerhaus Mousonturm and PACT Zollverein. Funded by Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien within the framework of Bündnis internationaler Produktionshäuser. Supported by NATIONALES PERFORMNACE NETZ Koproduktionsförderung Tanz, Kulturamt der Stadt Frankfurt and Hessisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kunst.

In the second duet in the series, Tilman O’Donnell is collaborating with an Eschenbach porcelain cup produced in Germany in the mid 20th century. The cup, as a container, can be said to mirror the container that is the human body. However, it has to be transported rather delicately – the fragility of its material having been used historically to signify social refinement and sophistication. This is a dance of reciprocal moulding and being moulded, pouring and being poured, during which, possibly, slowly, form appears and re-appears.

08 March 2020 – Theater im Viertel / Tanzfestival Saar

27 June 2019 – Hong Kong International Choreography Festival

Premiere: 29th - 31st March 2019 – Künstlerhaus Mousonturm

A production of Fabrice Mazliah/Work of Act in co-produktion with Künstlerhaus Mousonturm. Work of Act is supported by the Kulturamt der Stadt Frankfurt.

In the first duet, dancer Katja Cheraneva joins up with a wooden Cathedral Radio built in the 1980’s. As both bodies converge, their features become visible – surfaces textures such as skin or wood, the sound waves produced by one and received by the other. Ear and antenna come into contact, a conversation ensues, while intimacies become movements.

Premiere: 17th-18th December 2018 Künstlerhaus Mousonturm

"...Dieses erste (Duet) hat sich als sich als ein Stück künstlerisch-praktischen Philosophierens erwiesen und ist damit gewiss ein Wagnis eingegangen, sowohl in Richtung Tanz als auch in Richtung Philosophie. Der Gewinn ist ein spannender Diskursbeitrag auf intelektueller und körperlicher Ebene" (FAZ, 20.12.2018)

“Manufactured” is a study on the art of making things, and the art of things making (in return). To make things is not, after all, simply giving form to formless matter. Materials themselves move, guiding the human body and its actions. Things invite the gestures of the hand that gives them form. Making is much more a dance between the human body and the materials of the world, a following and being followed, a shaping and being shaped. Things come into being in the process of this dance.

Fabrice Mazliah in his new creation for the students of La Manufacture zooms into this dance. He asks each student to choose an artifact and study it thoroughly, to listen to the things and the materials that make them up. This act of listening to the language of things, discovering their history, their way of being in the world, becomes a motor for the initiation of movement and choreography. If dance is not only a priviledge of the human body, can it instigate a process of transformation into the things that surround us?