Karin Pauer AVA

In her performance AVA, choreographer Karin Pauer intensifies her pursuit of the complicated realities of the Anthropocene by making them more tangible through embodied collective experiences. In collaboration with the visual artist Eva Engelberg, the musician Rozi Mákó and the lighting designer Sveta Schwin, Pauer invites the audience into a space in which the lines between aquatic and terrestric life and between air and water blur and dissolve.

AVA traces connections between the performer’s body and the body of water that is the ocean, exploring narratives of how hyperacidity and pollution change them both equally. The piece is informed by a personal experience impeding the artist’s access to her own voice and challenging her to seek reconnection with her inner power and voice. How can we learn to listen to the voice of the sea?

Through a flowing web of relationships between human and ocean, the performance attunes us to our aqueous origins and our ancestors’ memories and reminds us that our bodies – that consist mostly of water – are deeply entangled with the oceans of the world. AVA is not just an observation; it dives right into the rhythms of the ocean and calls upon us to transform our relationship with the global waters that form our mutual future.

‘With experiencing comes caring and with caring there’s hope.’ Sylvia Earle

AVA is part of the practices for potential futures work cycle.