Projects and collaborations I am interested in aim to contextualize the body, to ask questions about normative knowledge in body-minds, as well as about societal structures, and to try alternative working conditions. Together with my collaborators we aim to create a space defined by solidarity and caring for each other.
bodies in motion, bodies in relation, moving sweating bodies, bodies that matter, urging bodies, bodies touching each other
I am enthusiastic about improvisation in performances. How are our physical, emotional, spiritual, ancestral bodies in relation to each other? What is the queer art of failure? I am keen to spot transformative, magical power of vulnerability on stage.
bodies in motion, bodies in relation, moving sweating bodies, bodies that matter, urging bodies, bodies touching each other
I am enthusiastic about improvisation in performances. How are our physical, emotional, spiritual, ancestral bodies in relation to each other? What is the queer art of failure? I am keen to spot transformative, magical power of vulnerability on stage.
GRABEN
Der Pavillon auf der Freundschaftsinsel wird zum Gewächshaus.
Am Anfang stand die Idee, gemeinsam mit den Tänzerinnen nach verborgenen Geschichten zu graben. Doch die Blumenerde musste getragen und geschleppt werden. Sie wurde geworfen, aufgeschnitten und mit Löchern versehen. Die Auseinandersetzung, wie wir uns und unsere Umgebung erleben, wurde ein zentraler Bestandteil unseres Gewächshauses. Am Ende sind Fragen der gegenseitigen Fürsorge aufgekommen und wir haben Möglichkeiten entdeckt, wie wir uns in Beziehung zueinander erfahren können. Welche Spuren werden wir hinterlassen?
Konzept & Choreografie: Diana Thielen
Tänzerinnen/Performerinnen: Chelsea Reichert, Kata Kovács
Sound: Kata Kovács
Szenografie: Xuetong Cecilia Feng
Dramaturgie: Alisa Tretau
pics: Martina Thalhofer
Potsdam, Mai, 2024
im Rahmen der Potsdamer Tanztage, in Kooperation mit Fabrik Potsdam und Hzt/Hfs Berlin
It's all about Education...Again
Which kind of knowledge, both power and socio-political, as well as very intimate and subjective, live in our bodies and how can we consciously perform them? In their current research, Diana will share their interest around gender in dance. They assert that our gendered, embodied knowledge does not exclusively limit us. But it also endows us with a very specific subjective yet shared knowledge. What is our relationship to space and the environment around us, what’s our relationship to other people in the space?
A performance-lecture within the frame of It’s All About Education… Again - A temporary university to practice the future is the second iteration of a temporary university of post-artistic practices at Studio ALTA in Prague: If education is supposed to prepare us for life, what kind of world do we want to be preparing for? Again, local and international artists, creative practitioners, and thinkers facilitated workshops, lectures, self-defense classes, dances, seminars, dinners, interspecies discussions, autonomous economies, gift givings, concerts, sleep, brainstorming and dreamstorming, readings, etc.
Pics: Anežka Medová
Prag, September, 2022
A performance-lecture within the frame of It’s All About Education… Again - A temporary university to practice the future is the second iteration of a temporary university of post-artistic practices at Studio ALTA in Prague: If education is supposed to prepare us for life, what kind of world do we want to be preparing for? Again, local and international artists, creative practitioners, and thinkers facilitated workshops, lectures, self-defense classes, dances, seminars, dinners, interspecies discussions, autonomous economies, gift givings, concerts, sleep, brainstorming and dreamstorming, readings, etc.
Pics: Anežka Medová
Prag, September, 2022
Breath & Matter- RUACH
48H NK Berlin 18.06. 19h - 20.06. 19h
RUACH - ist eine performative Reihe zu politischen Dimensionen von Atem, entwickelt bei Künstler_innenresidenzen auf der STARTBAHN in der Kirche am Herrfurthplatz - kuratiert von pio_near.
Atmung ist weder innen noch aussen, sie verbindet. Atmung wird oft im spirituellem Kontext für ein bewusstes Ankommen im hier und jetzt genutzt. Doch unsere Atmung ist auch politisch, denn nicht alle Menschen atmen dieselbe Luft. Wer hat genügend Luft zum atmen? Und hat dich dein Atem schon mal gerettet? Was raubt dir den Atem?
Neither inside nor outside, breathing brings the outside in and the inside out. A mindful breathing practice might help us to take a break, to stop and arrive. But since human bodies can be understood as matters of political practices , we also see the politics of breathing. Who has enough air to breathe? And has your breath saved you before?
Audio excerpt “Gasping for air” by Magdalena Górska in „Breathing matters“
Fotos: Rike Flämig
Berlin, June 2021
RUACH - ist eine performative Reihe zu politischen Dimensionen von Atem, entwickelt bei Künstler_innenresidenzen auf der STARTBAHN in der Kirche am Herrfurthplatz - kuratiert von pio_near.
Atmung ist weder innen noch aussen, sie verbindet. Atmung wird oft im spirituellem Kontext für ein bewusstes Ankommen im hier und jetzt genutzt. Doch unsere Atmung ist auch politisch, denn nicht alle Menschen atmen dieselbe Luft. Wer hat genügend Luft zum atmen? Und hat dich dein Atem schon mal gerettet? Was raubt dir den Atem?
Neither inside nor outside, breathing brings the outside in and the inside out. A mindful breathing practice might help us to take a break, to stop and arrive. But since human bodies can be understood as matters of political practices , we also see the politics of breathing. Who has enough air to breathe? And has your breath saved you before?
Audio excerpt “Gasping for air” by Magdalena Górska in „Breathing matters“
Fotos: Rike Flämig
Berlin, June 2021
Pink Flamingo- Matter #5
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Pink Flamingo is the 5th of 6th Solos of the Series Matter. It is an invitation to witness my joy to move within the unkown; to read and talk about politics and bodies; to eat watermelon and to follow questions as: How is my body today? What new stories would I like to tell about my body, identities and experiences? What informs the improvisation? How many is my body today? What do I sense today? Whom do I sense today? Pink Flamingo is… a watermelon. pink. warm and cozy. sound. breath. in between. being. in becoming. round. soft. wet. stable. a wave. a contraction. the unkown. a body. more than one. a dance. pics/video: Malu Blume; Florence Freitag video link: https://vimeo.com/495811818 Berlin, July/August 2020 |
Meta or talk and move- Matter #4
Inspired by the concept of "walk + talk" by Philipp Gehmacher, but with the invitation to flip the idea and appropriate it for my own understanding and desire to embody the thinking, the solo-improv-work meta or talk and move is part of the ongoing series Matter.
I have the sensual perception of my body surrounded in liquid, unstable, juicy, lively environment. Like diving into a huge pond of melted vanilla icecream. I am digging into something that is the surrounding of my physical entity, that is so not an entity or unit. I am keen to establish an understanding of that unknown space. The unknown space that is between the body and mind, past and future, human and more-than-human world, sound and silence. Does this specific relation offers an alternative, unique, probably femininist archive, a body of knowledge?
pics by Florence Freitag, Birte Opitz and Diana Thielen, video-link: https://vimeo.com/428743165
Berlin, November 2019
I have the sensual perception of my body surrounded in liquid, unstable, juicy, lively environment. Like diving into a huge pond of melted vanilla icecream. I am digging into something that is the surrounding of my physical entity, that is so not an entity or unit. I am keen to establish an understanding of that unknown space. The unknown space that is between the body and mind, past and future, human and more-than-human world, sound and silence. Does this specific relation offers an alternative, unique, probably femininist archive, a body of knowledge?
pics by Florence Freitag, Birte Opitz and Diana Thielen, video-link: https://vimeo.com/428743165
Berlin, November 2019
I take a deep breath- Matter #3
I take a deep breath was part of The Urge to... performance evening in August 2019 in Berlin. As this is the 3rd of 6 solos, I allowed myself to present my bodymind with a simple, genuine score. I invited the audience to look at me, to look at my body, while I revisit and remember memories of my younger self. Listening to a song, I witnessed repressed memories, both beautiful and painful, observing my physical reactions. Can I listen to my emotional, spiritual and physical reactions and am I able to express the chaotic stored sensations? What does my body remember, 20 years after I first encountered that song?
The solo series Matter emerged out of a desperately wish to be with you and my body. To accept all failure and disappointment and to literally reclaim the power, beauty, anger, lust, frustration and joy that is all in within me, within my bodily self.
Pics /Videos by Miriam Jakob, video link: https://vimeo.com/428392924 (better quality)
Berlin, August 2019
The solo series Matter emerged out of a desperately wish to be with you and my body. To accept all failure and disappointment and to literally reclaim the power, beauty, anger, lust, frustration and joy that is all in within me, within my bodily self.
Pics /Videos by Miriam Jakob, video link: https://vimeo.com/428392924 (better quality)
Berlin, August 2019
Radical Transparency- Matter #2
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Radical Transparency- Dissolving. Failing through. Nothingness. A solo of improvisation, asking the audience to support and witness, to read to and to take care for me. „The primitive agonies. Falling for ever. All kinds of disintegration. Things that disunite the psyche and the body. But is there really such a thing as nothing, as nothingness? I don’t know. I know we’re still here, who knows for how long, ablaze with our care, its ongoing song.“ Text by Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts Berlin, June 2019 |
Selbstgespräch- Matter #1
Matter is a series of six short solos
Selbstgespräch_is an ongoing and always failing, courageous and never-ending attempt to reconcile me with my body.
My body. My body and me. Me, my body and the floor. The floor, me, my body and the light. The light, the floor, me, my body and my ovaries. My ovaries, the light, the floor, me, my body and the others. The others, my ovaries, the light, the floor, me, my body and my needs. My needs, the others, my ovaries, the light, the floor, me, my body and the cold. The cold, my needs, the others, my ovaries, the light, the floor, me, my body and my touch toward. My touch toward, the cold, my needs, the others, my ovaries, the light, the floor, me and my body. I am many. My body is many cells. Which cells are taking action? My Body is many and a bit fractured.
Selbstgespräch took part of the ongoing series „The Urge to…“, curated by Florence Freitag and Diana Thielen at Altes Finanzamt, Berlin. “The Urge to…” wants to be a space to be and build communal support, a process that is never stable, but always moving and that unfolds with us trying things out and being in troubled, turbid times together.
pics by Carlotta Zagelli
Berlin, Mai 2019
Selbstgespräch_is an ongoing and always failing, courageous and never-ending attempt to reconcile me with my body.
My body. My body and me. Me, my body and the floor. The floor, me, my body and the light. The light, the floor, me, my body and my ovaries. My ovaries, the light, the floor, me, my body and the others. The others, my ovaries, the light, the floor, me, my body and my needs. My needs, the others, my ovaries, the light, the floor, me, my body and the cold. The cold, my needs, the others, my ovaries, the light, the floor, me, my body and my touch toward. My touch toward, the cold, my needs, the others, my ovaries, the light, the floor, me and my body. I am many. My body is many cells. Which cells are taking action? My Body is many and a bit fractured.
Selbstgespräch took part of the ongoing series „The Urge to…“, curated by Florence Freitag and Diana Thielen at Altes Finanzamt, Berlin. “The Urge to…” wants to be a space to be and build communal support, a process that is never stable, but always moving and that unfolds with us trying things out and being in troubled, turbid times together.
pics by Carlotta Zagelli
Berlin, Mai 2019
Performing Love Festival, Maybe I lay on your belly forver
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work by Diana Thielen and Kaisa Kukkonen performed at Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma Helsinki, Finland How can art create a culture of love? How to understand and celebrate love as a communal force? Love is more than just sex and romance; it is a powerful common resource, the potential of which we as human society have not yet properly realized. Together with Kiasma, Love Foundation Helsinki organises a two-day charity art festival Performing Love. Through the mediums of contemporary art, discussions, workshops, performance, and music, our aim is to facilitate positive human interaction and to build a more beautiful urban culture. Performing Love consists of diverse art-related encounters, which let the audience delve both rationally and emotionally into the themes of love and caring for others. Concept: Diana Thielen & Kaisa Kukkonen + We Are Sisters Collective. Dancers: Natalia Castrillón, Kaisa Kukkonen, Sebastian Lopéz-Lehto, Linda Priha, Iiris Raipala, Nikolai Karentzki, Terhi Rasilo, Iina Taijonlahti, pics by Paula Korte Helsinki, Finland 2019 |
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Maybe I lay on your belly forever in collaboration with Kaisa Kukkonen
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This work is about feminism, contact improvisation, touch, aggression, tenderness and care. We develop physical tools for finding ones agency on stage and at workshops.
Let’s serve own needs, not serving the needs of the other.
Let’s follow only own curiosity to fulfill own excitement and/or pleasure.
Let’s aggress own decisions, not avoiding conflict, but staying within the trouble.
Violence as transformation.
How do we relate to each other? We reflect our behavior on stage and in everyday life through scores, questions and feminist approach. How do we embody our gender and is it possible to queer it through physical interaction?
We are working with texts by Hannah Arendt, Donna Haraway, Erin Manning, Sarah Ahmed and Iris Marion Young and aim to queer the audience vision of two female-bodied persons in contact on stage.
The performances have been 15-20 minutes long pieces where we move in space. The latest one (video) was in a residency with Shake it Collaborations and Tove Sahlin at Skeppsholmstudion in Stockholm in March 2019. We worked with a musician Josefin Runsteen.
video: Tully Dool, video link: https://vimeo.com/428399755 (better quality)
Berlin Germany/Stockholm and Skog, Sweden 2018/ 2019
Let’s serve own needs, not serving the needs of the other.
Let’s follow only own curiosity to fulfill own excitement and/or pleasure.
Let’s aggress own decisions, not avoiding conflict, but staying within the trouble.
Violence as transformation.
How do we relate to each other? We reflect our behavior on stage and in everyday life through scores, questions and feminist approach. How do we embody our gender and is it possible to queer it through physical interaction?
We are working with texts by Hannah Arendt, Donna Haraway, Erin Manning, Sarah Ahmed and Iris Marion Young and aim to queer the audience vision of two female-bodied persons in contact on stage.
The performances have been 15-20 minutes long pieces where we move in space. The latest one (video) was in a residency with Shake it Collaborations and Tove Sahlin at Skeppsholmstudion in Stockholm in March 2019. We worked with a musician Josefin Runsteen.
video: Tully Dool, video link: https://vimeo.com/428399755 (better quality)
Berlin Germany/Stockholm and Skog, Sweden 2018/ 2019
PerspEGGtives in collaboration with Sarra Bouars
I feed myself with eggs. I feed myself with fertility and strength and productivity and richness, I stuff myself with proteins and egg yolks to absorb more vitality. Until I’ve got an idea what to do with them. The Egg is round, it's a mythological symbol, it's an ancient holder of charged value. It's fragile, fertile, has a nourishing core. It's shell is permeable and it's holding the potential of becoming a living being. It's on the edge between object and subject.
Eggs split identities, value systems, beliefs in health. They stand for boundaries, on which side of the Wall are we talking, watching, standing, positioning ourselves. Breeding eggs, Bleeding eggs out every month. Reproductive systems-organs, womb, chicken coops that are like halls of pain and sorrow.
Being an intersectional feminist and eating eggs clashes my own belief system, I'm contradicting myself, making myself guilty, swallowing the ignorance and giving birth to it. Destruction, waste and disrespect, disconnectedness made visible, manifested and embodied with this potential life within my body, in my hand. Since I realized that I have in fact eggs in my body as well, that these eggs expand over my life and that its accelerates in my thirties until the fertility, productivity is over...I call myself an egg-machine. But who to feed with these eggs? What to produce with these eggs?
Still, I'm eating you, I'm longing and desiring you, your fertility, your yolk...
The work by Sarra and Diana with the dramaturgic support by Kristianne Salcines is a continuation of past encounters, which broach the issue of shared as well as contradicted experiences around femininity, gender-identifications, social requirements and corporeality.
pics by Uta Neumann, video-link: https://vimeo.com/428418272
2017
Bat Yam, Israel /48h Neukölln, Berlin, Germany /Choufthounna- Intern. Feminist Art Festival, Tunis, Tunesia
Eggs split identities, value systems, beliefs in health. They stand for boundaries, on which side of the Wall are we talking, watching, standing, positioning ourselves. Breeding eggs, Bleeding eggs out every month. Reproductive systems-organs, womb, chicken coops that are like halls of pain and sorrow.
Being an intersectional feminist and eating eggs clashes my own belief system, I'm contradicting myself, making myself guilty, swallowing the ignorance and giving birth to it. Destruction, waste and disrespect, disconnectedness made visible, manifested and embodied with this potential life within my body, in my hand. Since I realized that I have in fact eggs in my body as well, that these eggs expand over my life and that its accelerates in my thirties until the fertility, productivity is over...I call myself an egg-machine. But who to feed with these eggs? What to produce with these eggs?
Still, I'm eating you, I'm longing and desiring you, your fertility, your yolk...
The work by Sarra and Diana with the dramaturgic support by Kristianne Salcines is a continuation of past encounters, which broach the issue of shared as well as contradicted experiences around femininity, gender-identifications, social requirements and corporeality.
pics by Uta Neumann, video-link: https://vimeo.com/428418272
2017
Bat Yam, Israel /48h Neukölln, Berlin, Germany /Choufthounna- Intern. Feminist Art Festival, Tunis, Tunesia
FOllikeljump in collaboration with Alisa Tretau
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How do I get pregnant? Do I even want to? And what if it doesn’t work just like that, “naturally”? The internet has innumerable answers to these questions, some simple and some quite painful. THIELEN_TRETAU approach the question in a very personal way: One of them marries her girlfriend because of German adoption law and struggles with issues of compatibility – between income and artificial insemination, career and pregnancy. The other really wants to get pregnant normally and naturally, but instead produces only miscarriages, blocked fallopian tubes and self-doubts... After nine months of shared research, many cycles of exercises and stubborn deconstruction of the boundaries of modesty, Follicle Jump is born! Follicle Jump is one of the numerous spawn of the pregnancy project LABOUR_LAB. It self-defines as a pregnancy preparation dis-course. In short training and reflection units, THIELEN_TRETAU treat of their experiences as women with lots of expectations, of themselves and of their bodies – which they are, together, trying to get rid of… THIELEN_TRETAU is a collaborative project of the dancer & performer Diana Thielen and the director & performer Alisa Tretau. They are united in their wish for emancipatory, queer feminist debates on hot topics to do with bodies, femininity and choice. pics by Uta Neumann Berlin 2017 |
Labour_Lab in collaboration with Alisa Tretau
Being a woman and getting pregnant traditionally belong together. Every woman should want children. Once you’re into your thirties you’re expected to make up your mind, and fast, because – the biological clock is ticking! Experiences and realities that do not accord with mainstream ideas of romantic love and natural instincts – queer or otherwise “different” people’s desire to have children, women who are perfectly happy without children, in-vitro babies – are banished to the shadows. Why is femininity conceived as dependent on the capacity to bear a child? Who may, and who should, get pregnant, how and with whom? How much choice is contained in this ostensibly natural process, and how can we act autonomously here?
LABOUR_LAB wants to open a queer feminist space where we can try to subvert normative narratives around pregnancy, be they linked to heterosexuality, gender binarism or whiteness/race. To this end, THIELEN_TRETAU have invited various people into a classical Berlin day care centre, a venue normally frequented almost exclusively by parents, children and pedagogues, to play / perform their questions, wishes and experiences. What emerges is an immersive, interactive laboratory, combining audiovisual and performative work, writing and photography. We incubate, snuggle and do crafts, offer pregnancy preparation discourses, dance with lost ovaries and stop the biological clock.
Performances/Installations with: Sarah Bouars, Giegold & Weiß, Johanna Montanari, Carrie McIlwain, Makisig Akin, Diana Thielen, Alisa Tretau, Esther Vorwerk and Youterus - design for a future pregnancy
pics by Uta Neumann
Berlin 2017
LABOUR_LAB wants to open a queer feminist space where we can try to subvert normative narratives around pregnancy, be they linked to heterosexuality, gender binarism or whiteness/race. To this end, THIELEN_TRETAU have invited various people into a classical Berlin day care centre, a venue normally frequented almost exclusively by parents, children and pedagogues, to play / perform their questions, wishes and experiences. What emerges is an immersive, interactive laboratory, combining audiovisual and performative work, writing and photography. We incubate, snuggle and do crafts, offer pregnancy preparation discourses, dance with lost ovaries and stop the biological clock.
Performances/Installations with: Sarah Bouars, Giegold & Weiß, Johanna Montanari, Carrie McIlwain, Makisig Akin, Diana Thielen, Alisa Tretau, Esther Vorwerk and Youterus - design for a future pregnancy
pics by Uta Neumann
Berlin 2017
Gebilde in collaboration with Sandra Hanschitz
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Gebilde ist eine bewegende Rauminstallation aus zeitgenössischem Tanz und Medienkunst. Ein interaktives Konzept, welches aus zwei Tänzerinnen, einem Laser und einem Programmierer besteht. An den Tänzerinnen befestigte Reflektoren bilden Ankerpunkte für den Laser, wodurch räumliche Gebilde – Wände, Kegel, etc. – aus Licht sichtbar werden. Tanz: Sandra Hanschitz und Diana Thielen, Programmierung: Felix Bonowski Berlin, 2012 |