Collaboration (Die Institution)

Stuttgart, March 2023

«Meters of files with the inscription ‘Spinner!’. In it, the archives of the Max Planck Society collects proposals never realised by independent project makers since 1900: a European Mother Council, the formulas for achieving stable world peace or educational reform projects. Why were these proposals rejected? Which institutes never founded? What knowledge is excluded? And which researchers? What story was not written?
Herbordt/Mohren saw these files and staged a new research society online and on stage in the Theater Rampe in 2020 and 2021 on this basis: across generations, participatory and committed. With guests from the arts, science, civil society and the neighbourhood. In preparatory online laboratories, everyone involved designs and realizes the knowledge on which society could be founded and how this knowledge can be stored, expanded and told. Knowledge was shared, new approaches were worked on and the fictional society was further developed. The theatre hall of the Theater Rampe in Stuttgart was only one venue of many. Other shareholders were from Berlin, Istanbul, Reykjavík, Salvador-Bahia, Vienna and Zurich.
In the Schaudepot you can expect: an introduction to ‘The Society’ as a performance and a new research society with Melanie Mohren and Bernhard Herbordt; an encounter with a: a partner; a video archive of all previous encounters; the opportunity to become a partner or to propose such. And a board game. You will just feel the rain on your palms or start the conversation with an extensive silence».
Fragment from The Society project, taken from the website of Die Institution.

Thanks to Melanie, Bernhard and Die Institution (@die_institution ) for being such wonderful hosts. Thank you for allowing us to share our project in Schaudepot, a space with endless possibilities.
Thanks again to all the women involved in this project and with them nothing could be possible.

Link: http://www.die-institution.org

Melanie Mohren and Bernhard  Herbordt are theatre makers from Stuttgart, Germany. Both graduated from the Institute of Applied Theatre Studies at Giessen’s Justus-Liebig University, Germany. They have been creating transdisciplinary projects under the label Herbordt / Mohren for many years. Their  performances, installations, exhibition projects, radio and stage plays, musical theatre works and book publications have been presented in a wide variety of international settings, equally related to the world of science, the fine arts and the performing arts, and have received numerous prizes. Both were fellows at Stuttgart’s Akademie Schloss Solitude and artist members of the Young Academy at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. Herbordt / Mohren work on extended concepts of theatre and are engaged in an institutional critique within the performing arts. Their ongoing performance series ‘The Institution’ (since 2012) investigates the „Andersmöglichkeit“ (a German neologism for alternative possibilities) of institutions, and explores possible updates and renewals of the institutional form. They are continually publishing their research results, e.g. in their book Vorgestellte Institutionen / Performing Institutions (2015). They are invited to teach as guest professors at the Institute of Applied Theatre Studies at Giessen’s Justus-Liebig University (forthcoming).

Photos

Dominique Brewing