Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm

Biography
Nuno Ramos

Nuno Ramos (born 1960 in São Paulo) studied Philosophy at the University of São Paulo and is active as a painter, graphic artist, sculptor, writer and filmmaker. He lives and works in São Paulo. He has represented Brazil at the Venice Biennale in 1995 and the São Paulo Biennial (in 1985, 1989, 1994 and 2010). In 2006 he was presented with the Barnett Newton Foundation’s Grand Award in recognition of his life’s work. In 2008 he was awarded the Portugal Telecom Prize for Literature for his book ‘Ó’. In the final stages of the most recent Brazilian Presidential election in 2018 he staged the performance  AOS VIVOS – DEBATE No.3 (TERRA EM TRANSE) at the Instituto Moreira Salles with a large cast as an improvised live re-enactment of the Brazilian news channel Globo lasting several hours.

Biography
Akira Takayama

Akira Takayama (born 1969) founded Port B in 2002. He develops projects together with this collective that break the existing theatrical framework and interact collaboratively with other media. His work aspires to a contemporary form of the so-called “architecture of the theatre” in which he extends the practice of the theatre and the audience into society and the urban space. Takayama’s audience-focussed works are an attempt to experience a theatre that transcends the physical theatre space to establish itself as a new platform with an altered function in society. In recent years he has developed works in diverse genres including tourism, urban planning, art, literature, fashion and mass media. In these, he uses theatrical ideas to open up new potential across a broad spectrum of media and disciplines.

Akira Takayama created his first theatrical works as a stage director – these included the Japanese premieres of several pieces by Elfriede Jelinek. The projects that he develops in collaboration with the collective PortB are usually devised in close collaboration with prestigious cultural institutions around the world, such as the recent large-scale participatory project ‘Our Songs’ for the Biennale of Sydney in 2018 and the ongoing research project ‘Heterotopia’ for the Onassis Cultural Centre in Athens and the Sharjah Biennial in Beirut.

In 2014 Akira Takayama / Port B developed the project ‘EVACUATE FRANKFURT’ together with the Mousonturm, in which 30 S- and U-Bahn stations across the entire Rhine-Main region became starting points for individual evacuation tours of a range of social communities and theatrical ready-mades. www.evakuieren.de

In 2017 Takayama, once again working in close co-operation with the Mousonturm to develop and produce a work over a long period, was able to realise his vision of a ‘McDonald’s Radio University’: people who had come to Germany as refugees shortly beforehand acted as “professors”, presenting a comprehensive programme of lectures lasting several weeks based on their highly diverse educational backgrounds, working and life experiences.  www.mru.global

Then in 2019 in the ‘WAGNER PROJECT – Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg’ Takayama brought one of Richard Wagner’s most famous operas to the Mousonturm stage: ‘Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg’. Based on the fictional narrative of Wagner’s opera and its historical references – a competition between singers during the time of the Reformation – Takayama founded a School of Hip-Hop.

Akira Takayama has been Associate Artist at the Mousonturm since 2014.

Biography
Sandra Noeth

Sandra Noeth, professor at HZT – Inter-University Centre for Dance Berlin, has been active internationally as a curator and dramaturge, specializing in ethical and political perspectives toward body-practice and theory. Noeth acted as the Head of Dramaturgy and Research at Tanzquartier Wien (2009–2014). Recent publications include “Resilient Bodies, Residual Effects: Artistic Articulations of Borders and Collectivity from Lebanon and Palestine” (2019, transcript) and “Bodies of Evidence: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Politics of Movement” (2018, with G. Ertem, Passagen). As an educator, she was a Senior Lecturer at SKH-Stockholm University of the Arts (2012-2020) and a Resident Professor at Ashkal Alwan, Beirut (2015-16). See https://www.udk-berlin.de/personen/detailansicht/person/show/sandra-noeth/

Biography
Anna Wagner

Anna Wagner is dramaturg and artistic co-director at the theatre Künstlerhaus Mousonturm in Frankfurt am Main. After studying theater studies Anna worked as assistant curator for dance at the theater Hebbel am Ufer/HAU in Berlin and was head of the dance department at Theater Freiburg. At Künstlerhaus Mousonturm she works regularly as production dramaturge with artists such as Eisa Jocson, Paula Rosolen and Jetse Batelaan. she is also co-founder of “Tanzfestival Rhein-Main” and has curated or co-curated various international programs like “Indonesia LAB” (2015) and “This Is Not Lebanon” (2021). Interested to expand the notion of performing arts, she has initiated various special projects like Oper Offenbach (2018) and The Greatest Show on Earth – A Performance-Circus for the 21st Century (2016).