Künstlerhaus Mousonturm

By forming something, one has to learn to form oneself, and so we have a reciprocal and inseparable relationship between forming and being formed. Tilman O’Donnell, Rehearsal Notes

The Manufactured Series is conceived as a series of ten duets between a human and a nonhuman body. Each duet unfolds this encounter between the two and their consecutive intertwinement by means of movement. The nonhuman bodies within the work are mainly handcrafted. That is, The Manufactured Series focuses on things that have a relation with the human hand in their process of coming to be. In the second duet in the series, Tilman O’Donnell is collaborating with an Eschenbach porcelain cup produced in Germany in the mid 20th century. The cup, as a container, can be said to mirror the container that is the human body. However, it has to be transported rather delicately – the fragility of its material having been used historically to signify social refinement and sophistication. This is a dance of reciprocal moulding and being moulded, pouring and being poured, during which, possibly, slowly, form appears and re-appears.