TERMINAL INFINITY
Alexander Schubert & Colette Sadler
in collaboration with Dance On Ensemble
The audience encounters the premises of an institute called Terminal Infinity situated in the near future. It combines characteristics of a temple-like structure and a scientific lab. This institute offers a service of body donation, in which humans can offer their body after death to be used in a digitised embodiment procedure. Donating the body to another entity is the perfect and complete sacrifice. The body is not a storage unit – but a processor device.
Staged as a techno-spiritual pilgrimage, musicians, dancers and audience share a space of contemplation and transformation. The chapters of the staged performance go through symbolic steps of birth, being in the world, extended embodiment and death. It creates a fast-forward replica of what it means to be thrown into the world as an organic embodied lifeform – going from learning to use a body, through engaging into the existential and excessive nature of it and finally parting together with it from life.
Part experiment, part lament, part ritual, Terminal Infinity has been commissioned by Berliner Philharmoniker its 2025 biennale Paradise Lost – The Threat of Nature
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Colette Sadler is a Scottish dancer, choreographer and multi-disciplinary artist. Her work operates at the intersection of dance, sculpture and digital art. Her interdisciplinary performances often explore the relationship between the human and the non-human, and the relationship between real and virtual spaces. In her performances, she stages bodies and identities in moments of transformation in which transitions between real and virtual realms are created by means of fiction. Since 2016 she has been developing "Present Futures”, a cycle of curatorial events exploring themes of speculative futures and post-humanism in collaboration with The Centre of Contemporay Art Glasgow UK. For more information: visit Colette Sadler website.
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Alexander Schubert first completed a degree in computer science with a focus on cognition and neural networks before devoting himself entirely to art. For the piece "Instrumental Convergence" (2019), on which this work is based, the basic deep learning algorithms were implemented. Within the piece, musicians interacted with their avatars. The focus here was on the choreographic and musical aspect. In his work ANIMA™, the performative and narrative elements were even more pronounced. In his work, Schubert combines contemporary-classical elements with non-academic electronic stylistic devices. Media content and technical research are an essential feature of this approach at the interface between acoustic and electronic music. Live electronic compositions are just as much a part of his work as the design of software setups, room installations, performance pieces and sensor extensions of instruments. A particular focus is on the physicality of the performers. Their relationship to new media is at the center of many works and is staged through the use of light, video and VR. The focus of his work is becoming increasingly holistic, combining music, theater, performance and installation. In his current works, he deals with virtuality, identity, transhumanism and artificial intelligence. In terms of content, the potential, implications and risks of digital technologies are artistically explored and made tangible in experimental settings.
Recent works include: ANIMA™ (AI-Simulation Performance Piece), Asterism (Immersive AI Oracle Simulation), Convergence (For String Ensemble and AI System) , Genesis (Online Virtual Computer Game), Serious Smile (For sensor-equipped ensemble and live-electronics) and Black Mirror (one-hour participatory concert installation)
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Artistic direction, concept, composition and sound direction: Alexander Schubert
Concept and choreography: Colette Sadler
Cast:
Members of the Berliner Philharmoniker and scholars of the Karajan Academy;
Leah Marojević, Gyung Moo Kim;
Dance On Ensemble (Ty Boomershine, Gesine Moog, Tim Persent, Lia Witjes Poole);
JugendtanzcompanySasha Waltz & GuestsA production of the Berliner Philharmoniker in collaboration with DANCE ON / Bureau Ritter, Jugendtanzcompany von Sasha Waltz & Guests and the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg. With the friendly support of Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung.
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For more information, check availability, please contact eckhard@eckhardthiemann.com.
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