Collaborators
Florent Bérenger is both a musician and online developer. He collaborates with artists including Pierre Giner, with whom he created TalkSaver, a prototype for speech capture and real-time text transcription, for the 2005 Venice Biennale. As drummer for the group Playdoh, he has worked with Pierre Giner as well as video artist Marie Daubert on performances that immerse spectators on stage next to the musicians using video installations. From 2008 to 2011, he shared his explorations with the interactive agency Visual-Link Paris, where he was production director. He continues to work as a freelance developer and to collaborate on If/Then Installed with The Bakery.
Alexandra Bertaut was born in 1973 in Brittany, France. She lives and works in Paris and elsewhere as a costume designer. To dress to be (or not to be…), the body is the subject and not just a pretext. She works with the following essentials in mind: Identity, individuality, multiplicity, character roles, sociocultural bodies, inward/outward limits. After studying applied arts and fashion, she has collaborated on a host of projects and experiments with, among others, Carlotta Sagna and Caterina Sagna, Edmond Russo and Shlomi Tuizer, Herman Diephuis, Maud le Pladec, Fabrice Lambert, Richard Siegal, Benoît Lachambre and Su-Feh Lee.
Frédéric Bévilacqua Leader of the Real Time Musical Interactions team at Ircam, the Paris-based Institute for Music/Acoustic Research and Coordination, Frédéric Bevilacqua has both a scientific and musical background. With a Masters in Physics (1991) and a PhD in Biomedical Optics at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (1998), he also studied music at Berklee College of Music in Boston (1992-93) where he contributed to numerous artistic projects fusing music, theater and new media. From 1999 to 2004, he pursued research at Beckman Laser Institute of the University of California Irvine. Since 2003, he has led research on gestural capture and analysis at Ircam and is part of a research team working on new paradigms for technology and music performance, as well as the interaction between gesture and sounds/video processes.
Lorenzo Bianchi (Milan, 1973) is a composer. He graduated in architecture (Italy) and composition (France) and after living in Spain, he moved to Paris where he now lives and works. He has composed music for albums, installations, theater, images and performances, including many contemporary dance shows of the dance company MK, (Rome) commissioned by: Biennale di Venezia, Festival Sant’Arcangelo, Roma Europa…) and on tour worldwide (Europe, Japan, Indonesia, Usa). Bianchi has had many in-depth professional musical experiences and since 2004 has been a lecturer in multimedia composition at Franche-Comté University in France, in the Multimedia Department. He is also a professor in the conservatory of Montbeliard, France. His interests range from instrumental composition with real-time electronics (mixed music/Max-Msp-jitter), to audio and video installations, to soundtracks and compositions for theater and dance, stemming from a formally strict process of experimentation using electronic implemented improvisation. All this is created as a means of creation of new electro-acoustic sounds.
Philip Bussmann is a video artist and set designer. A native of Germany, he has been designing stage video for international dance, theater, and opera productions since 1995. Mr. Bussmann began his career in New York City at The Wooster Group, where he designed the video for House/Lights and To You, the Birdie. At Staatsoper Stuttgart he created video for Die Zauberflöte, directed by Peter Konwitschny, and Tristan und Isolde, directed by Luk Perceval. His ongoing collaborations with William Forsythe include Kammer/Kammer, Decreation and You Made Me a Monster, among others. He designed the video for Lost Highway at English National Opera in London and the video, set and lights for Gotham Chamber Opera’s production of Il Mondo della Luna at the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, both directed by Diane Paulus. Recently he designed the video for Il Postino at Los Angeles Opera, directed by Ron Daniels, and the set for Falling Man, directed by Sandra Strunz at Thalia Theater Hamburg.
Barbara Formis has a PhD in Philosophy and is Assistant Professor at the Department of Arts at the Sorbonne University in Paris (Paris I). She published Esthétique de la vie ordinaire (Aesthetics of Ordinary Life) at Puf in 2010 and two collective books: Penser en corps (Thinking through the body) at l’Harmattan in 2009 and Gestes à l’oeuvre (Gestures at work) at de l’Incidence in 2008. She teaches Aesthetics and General Philosophy, her main focus is: performance, walking art, body art, fluxus, post-modern dance, action painting and happenings. Her philosophical approach is predominantly phenomenological (Merleau-Ponty) but she also refers to French philosophies of difference and event (Deleuze, Derrida, Badiou) and to investigations of language (Wittgenstein and Austin). She taught for two years at the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris and was a research fellow at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht. She has been teaching in arts schools like Cergy Pontoise and Parsons Schools, and at the American University of Paris. She trained as a professional dancer in Italy at the company Teatrodanza in Cremona. In 1997 she obtained a Professional Diploma at the I.S.T.D (Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing) in London.
Gilles Gentner began his training by working in French cultural centers as a sound and light technician. In 1991, he met Olivier Py who made him assistant to his light designer, Patrice Trottier. In 1994, he began a longstanding collaboration with Laurent Gutmann, creating all of the light design for Gutmann’s work since that time. Gentner’s work spans theater (Catherine Marnas, Arnaud Churin, Etienne Pommeret, Jean-Baptiste Sastre, Anne Caillère, Louido De Lenqueseing, Gloria Paris), dance (Jérome Bel, Boris Charmatz, Olga De Soto, Sylvain Prunenec, Tomeo Verges, Cuqui Jerez, Claudia Triozzi, Richard Siegal, Julie Nioche), fashion (Cartier, installations with Laurent P. Berger and Tomeo Verges), opera (Guiseppe Frigeni, Emmanuel Rousseau) and music (Xavier Boussiron).
Hillary Goidell has lived and worked in Paris since 1990 after receiving a degree in Anthropology from Amherst College. In 1992, while completing her Master’s at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, she began working with the pioneering multimedia company Voyager and their Paris production team. She taught interactive media at the Université de Paris-8 before joining Virtools, publishers of software for creating interactive, real-time 3D applications. In 2006, with Richard Siegal and Florent Bérenger, she designed a tool for collaborative choreography, If/Then Open Source, and has since collaborated on If/Then Installed. Her artistic work ranges from dance/performance photography to site-specific photography installations.
Jochen Göpfert collaborated on the light design for the performance of ©oPirates at Pact in Essen, Germany.
Amaury Groc studied classical music composition at the University of Paris Viii and has been a sound engineer and composer since 1995. He is leads the design department at Ableton in Berlin, Germany, crafting his tool for music and sound creation. He has worked director Rene Miggliaccio and his Blackmoon Theatre Company for the last 16 years, with productions ranging from an adaptation of Murnau’s Nosferatu to Kafka’s Metamorphosis. Amaury collaborated with The Bakery from 2006 to 2009, bringing live music, sound effects, video and other media to Siegal’s productions.
Jean-Philippe Lambert’s background spans science and music, as well as performance technique with Benjamin Champy in the theater section of Insa in Lyons, France. He also helped found a Master’s Degree in Technical Direction in collaboration with Ensatt. Since 2001, he has done research at Ircam for various projects including Phase and Voxstruments for the Sound Analysis and Synthesis Team, and the Real-Time Musical Interactions Team. He has created lighting, music and software for performance, films and installations (Pulx, Richard Siegal, collectif des Esprits Solubles, Michel Véricel, Roland Cahen). He has contributed to numerous artistic events internationally as Technical Director.
Hubert Machnik is a composer and guitarist who has played in various ensembles and orchestras, mainly Neue Musik. Member of the Ensemble Modern from 1981-89, Machnik composes piano and chamber music, music for theater, dance, film and audiovisual installations, computer music, electronic music and “radio pieces”. He has performed concerts worldwide, including performances in Tokyo, New York, Montreal, Toronto, Sao Paulo and many European cities. He has recently held a professorship at the Giessen University (Computer Music/Multimedia Applications), a partnership with Heiner Goebbels (Geneva/Lausanne/London), The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (Education Dept., Berlin/New York), Blindman Saxophone Quartet (Brussels), Deufert/Plischke (Vienna/Graz/Antwerp/Brussels), Anouk van Dijk Dance Company (Amsterdam/Rotterdam/The Hague), Richard Siegal (Berlin/Essen/Weimar), Arto Lindsay (Rio de Janeiro) and The William Forsythe Company (Frankfurt/Stuttgart/Munich/New York/Columbus/Basel).
Virginie Mira has been working as an architect since 2000. In parallel, she has been involved in “”sceno-choreographic”” research for performance pieces that integrate movements as an essential part of the overall spatial project. Her focus is on creating spaces in which the set and spatial design are considered to be a dynamic component, in an active relationship with the performers’ constantly changing bodies. Her collaborations have notably been with choreographers Julie Nioche and Richard Siegal, as well as stage director Julien Fisera.
Norbert Pape lives and works in Frankfurt, Germany as a freelance dancer, choreographer and co-initiator and creator of the network of independent dancers and choreographers ID_Frankfurt/Independent Dance. The potential of touch for dancing and its function in communication has been the focus of his last production Mittendrinnen, presented 2009 at Mousonturm, as well as of his close collaboration with Dieter Heitkamp throughout the past years. Since 2007, he has worked on the development of online tools for enhancing exchange, research and information flow within the contact improvisation community.
Christine Peters From 1992-1998, Christine Peters was Project Director and from 1998-2003 Artistic Director at Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt, Germany. Her main focus is the interdisciplinary research and production of theory and practice in contemporary art. Since 2004 she has worked as a freelance curator, author and dramaturge, working among others with Theater der Welt, Stuttgart, Germany (2005), Festival Steirischer Herbst, Graz, Austria (2006) where she co-curated the group exhibition “Protections” at Kunsthaus, and Richard Siegal/The Bakery since 2006. In 2008-2009 she was artistic consultant for Tanzplan Deutschland’s initiative “Dance/Curating between Theory and Practice” (Berlin, Leipzig, Hamburg). Since 2005 she has taught at various universities and academies with seminars on “curating in the interdisciplinary context.” In 2010, she curated the preview lecture, essay and performance series “Schöne Aussicht” for Festival Theater der Welt in Essen and Mülheim, Germany and co-curated the group exhibition Play Admont at the Museum for Contemporary Art in Admont, Austria. She was also Artistic Director of the temporary art space at the Deutsche Bank Towers, 2010-2011. Christine Peters lives in Frankfurt, Germany.
Pipon The French international lighting artist Pipon was born in 1957 in Morocco. After initial training in Lyon, he travelled extensively throughout Canada, the Usa and Mexico. He has made Munich hs home base since 1978, working for Theatre Festivals from 1979-1984, as well as the Theatre of the World Festival in Stuttgart and Frankfurt. His work has ben shown internationally in New York, Montreal, France, Tunisia and Spain.
Chantal Pontbriand, until recently Head of Exhibition Research and Development at Tate Modern, is living in London and working as an art consultant, critic and curator. She founded Parachute contemporary art magazine in 1975. Her work is based on the exploration of questions of globalisation and artistic heterogeneity. She has curated numerous international contemporary art events: exhibitions, international festivals and international conferences, mainly in photography, video, performance, dance and multimedia installation. From 1982 to 2003, she was president and director of the Find (Festival International de Nouvelle Danse), in Montreal. She recently curated the exhibition HF| RG [Harun Farocki | Rodney Graham] at the Jeu de Paume in Paris in 2009, Higher Powers Command (after Sigmar Polke, 1968), for the Lhoist Collection in Belgium, and The Yvonne Rainer Project, at the Bfi Gallery in London, both in 2010. Currently, she is curator of the Paris Photo Live Platform titled Mutations, and editor of the Platform Book, Mutations, Perspectives in Photography (Steidel, 2011).
Selected publications: Performance, Text(e)s & Documents (ed., Parachute, 1980), Geneviève Cadieux. Canada Xlvi Biennale di Venezia (commissioner,1990), Fragments critiques (Jacqueline Chambon, 1998), Communauté et Gestes (Parachute, 2000), Dance : Distinct Language and Cross-cultural Influences (ed., Parachute, 2001) Art et Psychanalyse : Sur ma manière de travailler (co-ed. with Hervé Bouchereau, Parachute, 2002), Parachute, Essais choisis 1975-2000 (ed., La Lettre volée, 2004). Among her upcoming books : Parachute : The First Twenty-Five Years, Jrp/Ringier, and an anthology of her essays from 2001 to 2010 on the Common and the Contemporary.
François Roche originally trained and worked as a mathematician, later graduating from the school of architecture of Versailles in 1987. He founded R&Sie(n) architecture studio in 1989 along with fellow French architects Stephanie Lavaux and Jean Navarro. Roche continues to lead the Paris based studio which has built a name for itself through its investigative approach to architecture. They are currently focusing on developing technological experiments, from which they can create architectural ‘scenarios’. These experiments are designed as forms of cartographic distortion or territorial mutations, transforming nature into a dynamic element of the design. This organic approach is concerned with linking the context with the building and human relations. R&Sie(n) has exhibited their work at institutions around the world, including the Tate Modern (London), Columbia University (New York), Pompidou Center (Paris), Paris Modern Art Museum and Mit Medialab. R&Sie(n) also exhibited for France at the 1990, 1996 and 2000 Venice Architectural Biennale and were also featured in the 2000, 2004 international selection. François Roche has been a guest lecturer and professor at a number of prestigious universities and is currently teaching at the advanced research studio at Columbia University.
Paula Sanchez’s dance career marked Netherlands Dance Theater for 16 years. In her tenure, she created roles with Jiri Kylian (Whereabouts Unknown, One of a Kind, Bella Figura, Arcimboldo, Claude Pascal, Last Touch, Toss of a Dice), Ohad Naharin, (Diapasson, Kammos), Saburo Teshegawara, Hans van Manen (Polish Pieces), Paul Lightfoot (Step Lightly, Shangri-la, Arcimboldo), Regina Van Berkel and André Gingras. She also performed repertory by Forsythe, Ek and Duato. Born in Madrid in 1972, Sanchez studied with Carmina Ocaña, Escuela Nacional de Danza/Mardrid, and Carmen Roche. She appeared in short films and on television with director Gracia Querejata.
Her credits as a choreographer include From Hungary With Love (2000), Amber Wings (2004), Lilac Wine (2005), Waves (2006). Since leaving Ndt, Sanchez participated in the Dogtroep production, Locket 25, and collaborated in the creation of the 2008 premiere of Kylian-Schumaker-Kupferberg’s, Last Touch First. She danced in the 2007 premiere of Richard Siegal’s If/Then Septet, and later assisted him choreographing at The New York City Ballet and for the film, Una Hora Mas En Canarias. Sanchez is on faculty of American Dance Festival where she teaches improvisation.
Antoine Seigneur-Guerrini, who did lighting design for The Bakery’s Civic Mimic, has been a General Manager and Lighting Director for the Festival d’Avignon each summer for the past 20 years. He also works with several theater, dance and contemporary music companies in France and elsewhere as technical director, light director and stage manager. Together with Richard Siegal, Phlip Bussmann and Norbert Pape, he was awarded in 2008 a New York Dance and Performance Award, in the category Visual Design for As If Stranger.
Dieta Sixt has had a longstanding career with the Goethe-Institut, with directorships in Montreal, Washington, San Francisco, New York as well as in Europe. Her academic background includes a doctorate in cultural policy from the University of Hamburg, an MA in German Language and Literature and an MA in linguistics. Her expertise in arts management covers numerous international projects and publications in the areas of dance, theater, media arts, film and cultural studies. She currently divides her time between activities as a freelance cultural curator and Executive Director of The Bakery. She is an accredited foreign correspondent of the Foreign Press Association New York.
Dennis Zyche lives in Munich and Berlin and works as a video, film and installation artist. He attended Munich’s Ludwig-Maximilans-Universität for theater studies, and has worked for various artists and institutions like Florian Böhm, Fake(to)Pretend, Access to Dance, Dance-Festival munich or tanznetz.tv. He collaborated on ©oPirates for video and animation.