N e w s
2025
November 15
Performative Intervention – Symposium
Berlin Museum of Medical History at the Charité
Lucie Strecker and Mariella Greil will present a performative intervention entitled Shaken Grounds, Porous Zones: Where Body and Landscape Tremble, focusing on the body’s innate capacity to tremble as a way of releasing stress, tension, and trauma. The performance foregrounds the interweaving of physiological and psychological processes to offer embodied insight on the seismic landscape of an ecologically, politically, and economically shaken world community. By addressing the terrain in which the distinctions between body and landscape dissolve, this work responds to rising ecological grief, recognizing that, like the Earth itself, bodies register tremors and ruptures. Through somatic art practices, these shockwaves can be transformed into contemporary rituals of resilience, where land and bodies are understood as porous, interwoven entities, each holding memory, trauma, and history. Encountering and cultivating responsibility and care toward shared futures rests on our capacity to live in resonance with the Earth’s deep rhythms.
November 8
Discussion
Vienna Art Week
A panel discussion organized by Mariella Greil, daniela brill estrada, Monica LoCascio and Rychèl Thérin Scott.
Reflecting on how far Western systems of intelligence creation and taxonimisation have extrapolated embodied knowledges from the process, how do we now look to prioritise and preserve the body, the thinking vessel, the soul and our humanity within knowledge making?
The practices of Greil, brill estrada, LoCasico and Thérin Scott all prioritise embodied knowledges from varying standpoints – embodied knowledge as movement, embodied knowledge as research, embodied knowledge as taxonomy, embodied knowledge as inheritance, embodied knowledge as ethics, embodied knowledge as native, embodied knowledge as gut reaction, embodied knowledge as power, embodied knowledge as anarchy, embodied knowledge as community.
The panel will offer thoughts, artworks and investigations on how craft as a method of creation serves as an exploratory research modality, and how it contributes specifically because it is RITUALISED, rather than DIGITISED. What risks emerge when the body is excluded from decision-making, knowledge-making, problem-solving, and investigation in general in the age of AI?
Vienna Art Week – Austria
October 20-24
Workshop
Tanzquartier Wien
Mariella Greil and Peter Kozek collaborate on a workshop with the title “A Kiss Under Water” at Tanzquartier Wien!
Thales of Milet fell into the water and understood that water is the source of life. We will fall in love and kiss the muse underwater, explore the diversity and abundance of the moist nature of living creatures, and dive deep into the molluscs’ qualities of our bodies of and in water.
Recognizing water as a human right, we engage in choreo-ethical assemblages as amniotic encounters bound to playful performative situations. We develop and create modular costume pieces to experiment with water as part of the body and the basis of life itself. Together, we will dive deep, float in hydrocommons (Neimanis, 2009), listen across for radical connection with (other) others, and celebrate hydrofeminist practice as embodied relations spanning across deep time and liquid space.
Tanzquartier Wien, Studio 1, Museum Quartier
Vienna – Austria
October 8
Lab Opening
TQW OPEN HOUSE
The new artistic directors of Tanzquartier Wien, Isabel Lewis and Rio Rutzinger, invite you to an open house from 6 to 11 October. For one week, all rooms of the building will be open for performances, workshops, labs and concerts – freely accessible and with free admission. Visitors are invited to discover the diverse programme of local artists, theorists and musicians and to try it out for themselves. Shaken Grounds – a collective of artists Nikolaus Gansterer, Mariella Greil, Peter Kozek and Lucie Strecker in collaboration with Victor Jaschke and Werner Moebius – will open their laboratory Shaken Grounds: Trembling Bodies at the TQW Studios on 8.10. from 15:00-18:00 and invites visitors to a screening of the short film Shaken Grounds, Shifting Skies. The film explores the unstable terrain of the Campi Flegrei, Vesuvius, the island of Vulcano in Italy and the retreating Pasterze glacier in Austria. Interwoven with studio scenes and reflective questions, the performative-choreographic film explores how tremors and changes in the environment reverberate in the body and psyche. The focus is on seismic zones where tectonic instability is increasingly influenced by human activities: climate change, groundwater extraction, mining and littering. The film offers a poetic journey through landscapes that are both ancient and contemporary, asking where – and how – we find stability when the earth’s crust beneath us is shifting. Following the presentation, we invite the audience to participate in a discussion, somatic practice, and the joint drawing of a seismographic line.
TQW OPEN HOUSE, Museum Quartier
Vienna – Austria
September 26
Open Lecture
Iceland University, Fine Art Department
Shaken Grounds is a cross-disciplinary artistic research project that began in October 2023, funded by the Austrian Science Fund and based at the Angewandte Performance Lab (APL). It explores fragility, resilience, and transformation in unstable geological, social, and existential contexts. Combining artistic research, performative practices and film, it investigates the literal and symbolic tremors shaping our shared world. Once seen as purely natural events, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are now often linked to human activities such as climate change, groundwater extraction, geoengineering, and renewable energy production. In this shifting context, Earth is understood not as a passive backdrop but as a living, responsive body—one that trembles, resists, and transforms.The project engages contemporary artistic perspectives to reflect on the challenges of the Anthropocene, emphasizing the importance of collective resilience. It highlights art as a seismographic practice—an act of witnessing and engaging creatively with a world defined by instability. By weaving artistic, mythological, scientific, and political views, Shaken Grounds develops layered narratives that aim to open up new ways of sensing and responding.
Iceland University of the Arts, Laugarnes Lecture Hall, Reykjavik – Iceland
May 27
Presentation/Celebration
TQW Paper Launch
Publication of TQW Paper: a collection of the voices of most guests to our respective programmes, taking the form of a glossary. TQW Body & Performance Practices and Theory, warmly invites you to TQW Studios to celebrate the publication. There will be readings, food, music, and a guest singing act by Veza Fernández.
TQW Studios, Museum Quartier
Vienna – Austria
April 11
Symposium
Shaken Grounds: Seismography of Precarious Presences at IMAGINE CLIMATE DIGNITY
Impulse lectures, performance and audience discussion on the recording of geological, social and psychological tremors.
The PEEK project Shaken Grounds is represented at the exhibition IMAGINE CLIMATE DIGNITY by an intermedial installation by Nikolaus Gansterer, Mariella Greil, Peter Kozek, and Lucie Strecker, in collaboration with Victor Jaschke and Werner Moebius. With additional artistic and scientific contributions by Valerio Acocella, Arno Böhler, Oscar Fernandez Bellon, Helga Franza, Sabine Folie, Nicolas Freytag, Nicola Fornoni, Sylvia Scheidl, and VestAndPage (Andrea Pagnes / Verena Stenke).
Künstlerhaus, Karlsplatz 5, 1010 Vienna
Vienna – Austria
April 1, 19h
Book presentation (English)
POETICS OF LISTENING: Inner Life, Social Transformation, Planetary Practices with Brandon LaBelle.
From self-determination to social participation, somatic healing to collective repair, political recognition to ecological engagement, listening is supportive for negotiating our most fundamental challenges. Poetics of Listening considers listening to be not only important to social struggles, but also a form of poetic imagination and communion. It moves listening toward a broader application and view, which includes the ability to listen across human and more-than-human worlds, to listen into or with one’s body, or to listen out for futures to come as well as addressing unfinished histories, and it challenges us to think more broadly about what it means to hear and be heard within today’s complex environments.
Together with Ricarda Denzer, (kkp/apl), Mariella Greil, PhD, (apl), universität für angewandte kunst wien & Brandon LaBelle, artistic director, The Listening Biennial
Depot Breite Gasse 3, 1070 Vienna – Austria
March 1 – June 9
Opening: February 28
Exhibition
Shaken Grounds, Shifting Skies at IMAGINE CLIMATE DIGNITY
The topical starting point of the project IMAGINE CLIMATE DIGNITY is a broad interpretation of dignity that does not limit to human dignity, but includes the dignity of nature, all living beings, and all available resources. A joint project of the Austrian Ministry for European and International Affairs, the Austrian Cultural Forums, and the Künstlerhaus Vereinigung.
Curated by Barbara Höller and Simon Mraz.
Künstlerhaus, Karlsplatz 5, 1010 Vienna – Austria
February 9-22
Performance-installation
Sweet and Tender Collaborations: Attempts of Togetherness
Are we in this together? In times of uncertainty, the question of togetherness is central. The performance installation Attempts of Togetherness is an initiative of Sweet & Tender Collaborations, a collective of international artists founded in 2006. Now, after more than a decade, the artists from Sweet&Tender are reuniting in Hamburg at the invitation of Hamburg-based choreographer Jenny Beyer to explore new forms of collaboration. Attempts of Togetherness’ is a polyphonic gathering and an invitation to Kampnagel audiences to practice community in current times, creating a space to re-imagine how we relate, listen and discover ourselves in a movement of negotiation. Join us as we embrace the urgent need for connection in these unstable times.
Kampagnel, K2
Hamburg – Germany
2024
November 15
Dialogue with Iris Julian and Isabella Schlehaider
IN:DIFFERENCE IN:DIALOGUE
Mariella Greil, Iris Julian and Isabella Schlehaider immerse themselves in Kristoffer Stefan’s evolving structure “in:difference”.
Amidst the structure, they explore the sense of the “self” to discuss the urgency to rethink the human subject in a singular-plural way, namely situated and embedded in various environments, the art gallery being one of them.
GREY ROOM STUDIO
Vienna – Austria
November 7-29
Exhibition
Shaken Grounds, Shifting Skies
Shaken Grounds: Seismography of Precarious Presences reflects on the interface between climate change, seismic forces and art. The exhibition shows videos of a series of artistic interventions carried out in the area of the Phlegraean Fields on Vesuvius, on the island of Vulcano and on the Pasterze glacier (Grossglockner), as well as interviews with two geologists from the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) in Naples, the Austrian art historian and curator Sabine Folie and the Austrian philosopher Arno Böhler. A short documentation of the recent symposium Shaken Grounds, Shifting Skies: Art as a Seismography of Precarious Presences held at the MAXXI Museum and the Italian Volcanic Attitude Festival, and the film collage Vulcanalia by VestAndPage provide insights into the artistic research process.
Austrian Cultural Forum in Rome
October 31-November 3 Performance by Cranky Bodies
VIEW.POINT.MARY
With VIEW.POINT.MARY, Cranky Bodies a/company celebrate Mary Overlie, the original anarchist of postmodern dance. Her legendary horizontal laboratory is created in the landscape of EDEN Studio 300, where dance, sound, costume and sculpture move in ever-changing contexts.
EDEN in Berlin
October 25
Panel 7. Invisible Flows and Sensory Perception
Shaken Grounds, Shifting Skies
Nikolaus GANSTERER, Mariella GREIL, Peter KOZEK and Lucie STRECKER, in collaboration with Victor JASCHKE and Werner MOEBIUS. Shaken Grounds, Shifting Skies
The video showcases film scenes from explorations of Campi Flegrei, Mount Vesuvius, Volcano Island in Italy, the Pasterze glacier in Austria, and the art studio. It also features excerpts from interviews with art historians, philosophers, and geologists. These film fragments are designed to raise questions about how the external environment resonates within our physical bodies. The film serves as a document of art-based research in the field of seismography.
October 22-27
Opening & Symposium & Screening Exhibition
Shaken Grounds, Shifting Skies. Art as a Seismography of Precarious Presences
The artist collective Shaken Grounds revisits the continental margins of southern Italy, exploring the intersections of natural seismic activity and anthropogenic environmental damage through an interwoven mesh of artistic experiments. They recognize that the trembling of the earth, once regarded as one of Gaia’s natural forces, is now being driven by human interference as well. Art, as research and practice, excels in detecting and expressing the changing relationship between humanity and our evolving, technologically influenced, and highly damaged geological environment. In the course of the symposium “Shaken Grounds. Shifting Skies – Art as a Seismography of Precarious Presences”, October 22-27, 2024, the artistic research collective and guests will present a combination of talks, performances and screenings that incorporate process-oriented video imagery. Audience talks will offer space for questions about how film, performance art, and geology intertwine within artistic research.
Videogallery of MAXXI, Museo nationale delle Arti dell XXI secolo, Rome, Italy
October 5
Lange Nacht der Museen/Performance-Lecture Amaryllisation
MOVING CONT|r|ACTS Performance
Performative book presentation of Bare Bodies – Thresholding Life by Mariella Greil with Werner Moebius and K. T. Zakravsky. The fluid transitions between sound and speech blur boundaries, create subtle submergences of soundwords. The concert performance celebrates the inherent musicality within language but also encourages to reflect on the connection between sound, expression, and communication. This onomatopoetic sound(e)scape explores the interrelation of frequencies and investigates the acoustic phenomenon of slipping between abstract sound and concrete language and will be followed by a photo score and dialogue with K.T. Zakravsky and Mariella Greil based on the book Bare Bodies – Thresholding Life
FLUSS in Wolkersdorf – Austria
Mariella Greil 