Dialog as Art Form | Anna Zett and Hermann Heisig on their participatory research Resonanz

Resonanz is a transdisciplinary collaboration between the artist and writer Anna Zett and the dancer and choreographer Hermann Heisig. Their research centers dialog as a playful group improvisation, in which the responsibility for the course of events is shared among everybody present. The topic that is being processed narratively and performatively on this dialogical playing field is the GDR – the defunct state, where both were born in the early 1980’s. Corresponding to their practice, the talk is also taking the form of an open dialog. Using practical examples, Hermann Heisig and Anna Zett reflect on the dynamic links between fiction and history, form and content, game and rule, research and impulse, art and participation.

Resonanz is supported by the Berlin Grant Program for Artistic Research/ gkfd. In this context, the following performative presentation and documentation was created in September 2020: https://vimeo.com/482302018

Anna Zett is a Berlin-based artist, writer and filmmaker. Their work combines historical confrontation and technological critique with a playful dialogic practice. Since 2014, their films and videos are being shown internationally, mostly within the field of contemporary art. They have written and (co-)directed two experimental radio plays for German public radio. In 2019 Zett published their first book of writings Artificial Gut Feeling (Divided Publishing) and presented two solo exhibitions (at Zionskirche Berlin and Or Gallery Vancouver). Within the live arts Zett develops and hosts formats of group improvisation involving narrative, voice and/or movement. Since 2020 they have been focussing their practice on the participatory research Resonanz in collaboration with the dancer and choreographer Hermann Heisig.

Hermann Heisig is an artist working with Choreography and Dance. Born 1981 in Leipzig, in the end of the 90s he began to be interested in contemporary dance & performance art through developing a practice of performing auto- didactic solo performances in galleries, clubs and various off spaces. This continues to inspire an idiosyncratic movement vocabulary that resists efficiency and celebrates uneasiness. Among his recent works are slave to the rhythm (2018), a group work for 5 performers freely interpreting Dalcroze Eurythmics. Following up this research and focussing on the connection between movement and voice, in 2019 singing machine was created as a solo choreography. In collaboration with the artist, author & filmmaker Anna Zett, he has been working on the participatory performance Resonanz since 2020.