Opening: Thu, 13.03.2025, 7pm, Performance with Deva Schubert and Camilla Schielin from 7.30pm on, afterwards: Live-set by DJ Affordable
Duration: Fri, 14.03. – Sat, 26.04.2025
Performances on:
- Thu, 13. 03.2025, 7:30pm
- Thu, 10.04.2025, 7:30pm
- Sat, 26.04.2025, 4pm
Artist: Deva Schubert
No registration is required for the performances. You can take part in these events free of charge and without prior registration.
Credits: Deva Schubert (concept and choreography), Camilla Schielin (performance), Lukas Kötz (spatial design), Davide Luciani (sound artist), Jette Büchsenschütz (dramaturgy), Lotta Beckers (Outside Eye and text contributions sound installation), Frederike Sperling (curator), Clara Hoehre (costume), Dylan Kerr, Chihiro Araki, Siegmar Zacharias (sound recordings)
Sweat drips out of every pore, tears swell up in the eyes, bleeding sets in. Without really being able to control it, fluids seep out of our body every day. Hardly anyone realizes that with each secretion, the body transfers information from its inside to the outside world, sending data through the thin membrane that separates the supposedly private from the public. Glandular releases signal we are inflamed or hyperacidic, insecure or anxious. In this sense, thus, secretion always reveals a secret.
Silent Spills I is a “leaking” body in the broadest sense. In this live exhibition, choreographer and performance artist Deva Schubert draws our attention to the communicative and social phenomenon of gossip. A phenomenon that relies on permeable spots in the social fabric, where clandestine information seeps through and is passed on.
“Silent Spills I asks who is allowed to speak, who is to be believed, and how knowledge circulates. Gossip is staged as a fleeting, polyphonic form of communication. The question here is how gossip can democratize information and counter-narratives and help to reassert everyday communication as a social force, especially for marginalized groups,” says the artist.
Gossip manifests as choreography in three performances and as installation in a multi-channel sound collage at the heart of the show. Through whispers and choral singing Schubert continues her long-standing exploration of the voice and engages with the question of “what remains when [the] body does not perform.”
With the image of the leaking body and her appropriation of gossip as an alternative form of communication, Schubert creates an artistic vision of publicness. While social media persistently sanitize social exchange, Silent Spills I celebrates the porous and the messy.
In an organized overflow following the exhibition at Kunstraum Niederoesterreich, Silent Spills I will “seep over” as an extended version (Silent Spills II) to the donaufestival in Krems.
Silent Spills is a coproduction by Kunstraum Niederoesterreich and donaufestival.
Deva Schubert is a choreographer and dancer based in Berlin. In her artistic practice, she concentrates on experimentation with the voice. She studied dance in Salzburg, Kassel, Copenhagen and at the HZT Berlin as well as visual arts at the Kunsthochschule Kassel. Her works explore the crossroads of dance, installation, and digital media, often highlighting the topics of intimacy, collectivity, and the synergies between transdisciplinary practices. They have been presented in renowned institutions such as Haus der Kunst Munich, Kunsthalle Zurich, Gessnerallee Zurich, Uppsala Art Museum, Radialsystem and the Sophiensæle in Berlin as well as at the Transart Festival in Bolzano. Her piece Glitch Choir was awarded the ImPulsTanz – Young Choreographers’ Award in 2024.