Sergiu Matiș: Extinction Room (Hopeless.)

Concept, choreography: Sergiu Matiș
With: Lisa Densem, Sergiu Matiș, Orlando Rodriguez
Sound installation and composition: AGF aka Antye Greie
Text: Sergiu Matiș, Mila Pavicevic,
Species research: Philip Ingman
Dramaturgy: Mila Pavicevic
Sound: Martin Lutz
Animal recordings from the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the Xeno-canto Foundation.
Production management: 4Culture Association
Financed by AFCN – The National Administration of Cultural Funds, Romanian Cultural Institute, Europalia Arts Festival Brussels
A Sergiu Matis production.
Funded by the Capital Cultural Fund Berlin, the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe
Coproduced by: 4Culture Association, WASP Studios, ICI-CCN de Montpellier – Occitanie as part of Life Long Burning (LLB) – Towards a sustainable Eco-System for Contemporary Dance in Europe, supported by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union, Centre of Drama Art Zagreb and Art workshop Lazareti Dubrovnik
Supported by: the NATIONALES PERFORMANCE NETZ International Guest Performance Fund for Dance, which is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.

Extinction Room (Hopeless.) is a performative multi-channel sound installation consisting of recordings of extinct and endangered bird species. It explores the idea of nature in western society and its representation in artistic and cultural products, at a time when climate change specialists have given us permission to panic.

The audience will be guided through a soundscape developed in collaboration with composer AGF (aka Antye Greie). The performers will tell the stories of these species as we listen to their calls, cries and songs from the speakers that hang in the space like cages. The birds’ extinction narratives will interweave with their myths. Folk songs and dances will be brought to life. The emotional load – the sorrow – will be augmented by the performer, who will skillfully guide the visitors through these traumatic experiences of loss.

The first phase of Extinction Room (Hopeless.) was shown in June 2019 at Art Radionica Lazareti in Dubrovnik. Following the Berlin phase it will be presented at eXplore dance festival in Bucharest and at Craiova Art Museum on September 27, then Bozar Brussels, as part of a special commission for Europalia Romania Festival exhibition – Brancusi: Sublimation of form, and back to Berlin for Tanznacht in September 2020. The bird sounds are courtesy of the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the Xeno-canto Foundation.

Sergiu Matis is a choreographer born in 1981 in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and now living and working in Berlin, Germany. His movement practice “visible thinking body”, a method of thinking the body in motion, forms the base of his performances. Contaminated with ballet technique at an early age in freshly post-communist Romania, Sergiu now seeks a new virtuosity, learning from machines, scrambling fragments of history, skipping and swiping through archives – both personal or belonging to Western dance history. He writes his own performative texts, choreographing meaning and ideas, flirting with poetry and theory, with a pinch of visceral filth and groovy noises. The voice dances as much as the body in a Sergiu Matis performance.

eXplore festival #14
Producers: 4Culture Association and WASP Studios
Cultural project co-financed by the National Cultural Fund Administration (AFCN)

The project does not necessarily represent the position of AFCN.
AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or the way the project results can be used. This is entirely the responsibility of the beneficiary of the funding.

Partners: Balassi Institute – The Hungarian Institute in Bucharest, Brancovenesti Palaces Cultural Center, Geological Institute of Romania – National Museum of Geology, Craiova Art Museum

Media partners: Radio România Cultural, Modernism Punct Ro, Zeppelin, ARTA Magazine, Designist, Feeder, IQads, Romania Pozitiva

Photo credit: Birdcollage1 © Philip Ingman