Tape Riot Measures Street Corners of Chongqing

Swiss dance group Asphalt Piloten will turn the Creative District of Chongqing into a moving theater from Dec.16 to 17. Their project Tape Riot, which is part of the “Swiss Window in Asia” performance art series, intermingles visual art, dance, and sound design. It will take place among the familiar public sculptures of the neighborhood. In the past five years, this award-winning company has toured this project to 10 European cities.

TAPE RIOT (2012)

Tape Riot is built on the reality of urban space and the daily flow of those who inhabit it. Initially it merely causes the onlookers’ gaze to shift slightly, prompting silent curiosity: Is this normal? Is this real? Two dancers disrupt the pace of passersby pushing the degree of dissociation still further. Lines are drawn splitting the space … Are they defining a frame of reference or opening up perspectives to the beyond? Sounds intermingle and the road signs blend in; the traffic flow has switched direction. This dynamism triggers the strange sensation of having seen the urban space quite differently and with a smile… Did it change our way of looking at things? Or just our point of view?

Asphalt Piloten

Every since Anna Anderegg’s choreographic work has been stimulated by space. This fact has brought her artistic investigation quickly outside conventional theater spaces and black boxes. She imagines architects and city planners as choreographers of our daily trails through the city and questions how much we are consciously or unconsciously influenced by our urban environment. How much does it influence our choices and behavior as a citizen?

In 2010 Anna Anderegg founded ASPHALT PILOTEN, an open artistic cell designed as an inventive space where visual art, dance, sound design and other medias inspire one another. A place to experiment with structural forms, explore differences and prompt encounters. The pieces persist in changing perceptions to transform the status quo, shifting the outlook on urban everyday life. Public space becomes the playground, to live out and share urban utopias. Creating room for hyper sensibility, raising awareness and presence in the city space. Anna Anderegg likes to believe that the public space is an opportunity for encounters and art can be one element for helping these encounters happen.

ANNA ANDEREGG was born and raised in Switzerland. After several detours one day she decided to dedicate her life to dance. She trained in Montpellier, Berlin and New York. In 2011 the legendary director Klaus Lemke stuck her in front of the camera in a starring role in the film ‘Berlin für Helden’. In her own work, she pursues the dialogue between the human body and the urban environment. With her company ASPHALT PILOTEN she won both the June Johnson dance prize from the Swiss cultural ministry and the Kultur – & Kreativpiloten Deutschland award in 2013. In 2016 she wins a 6-month research residency from the Canton of Berne to work in New York. Her work has been shown in many European cities, Russia, Tunisia and Mexico. In 2017 she works as a guest teacher at the FHNW (University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland).

Performers

Hervé Thiot – tape-art
Marco Barotti – urban compositions
Laura Keil – dance
Ichi Go – dance