AoMO would like to introduce the 2018-2020 Heather Hopfl Artist in Residence: Katrin Kolo

I was trained as a dancer and choreographer from the age of five, received a Master in Economics and worked in management consulting. Realizing my work in choreography and consultancy had quite some similarities, I started to investigate art and organisation related research and projects, which led to my Master thesis in Transdisciplinarity in the Arts “Corporate Choreography”  as artistic research on contemporary forms of collaboration. Apart from my artistic and consulting occupations, I have been co-director of Tanzhaus Zürich and program and production manager of Zurich Festival.

I consider the functioning of organisations and society along choreographic structures, procedures and rules. My primary definitions of choreography are choreography as the design of the perception of movement in time and space and choreography as decision making. Applied on a society perspective I propose that decisions on individual and community levels are based on the perception of the movements in a certain time and environment. With my work I intend to widen the horizon for such choreographic perceptions, in order to give the individuals and collectives a wider range of possible decisions and to make use of a collective intelligence which is built on trust between individuals.

Examples of recent, ongoing and upcoming artistic projects: “The Many We Are”, Solo-Performance about women’s roles in professional, societal and private life, Corner College Zurich, Nov 2015“La Récréation de l’Opéra”, performance researching artistically dependencies of opera and society, Opernhaus Zürich and others, ongoing since Feb 2016 “Thinking as and with a collective body”, choreographic workshop as part of the exhibition 100 ways of thinking at Kunsthalle  Zürich, Sep 2018

As Heather Höpfl Artist in Residence 2018-2020 I plan to focus on gender topics in our research field and academic environment. During the Brighton 2018 conference a “Gender Collection” and “Höpfl-Performance” shall offer visibility and direct experiences of existing thoughts, research and discussion in this field. Whereas “The Gender Move –  A Collective Performance” is planned as the final piece at the conference in 2020. It will be developed from the “Höpfl-Performance”, the “gender collection” and experiences as well as material added in the time between conferences.

Emmanuel Guy (Artist in Residence 2016-2018) will also be present throughout the conference. He will bring with him not one but two chairs made as part of his AoMO residency!