the site-specific works by claudia bosse create transgressive spaces and transitions between installation, choreography, theater, individual and collective speech acts, social rituals as well as different forms of assembly.
the elaboration in transdisciplinary teams and multilingual ensembles of artists, dancers, actors, performers and amateurs with bodies of different generations characterize the works and penetrate in a special way the performative space in which the audience is involved in the shared space. they can move freely through it and become part of the various situations, which are concentrated centrally in the space or also occur synchronously and decentrally. at the same time, the works create social sculptures as temporary communities of a physical confrontation with questions of our present.
theatercombinat is funded by the city of vienna culture within the framework of concept funding 2022-2025.
die perser, claudia bosse / theatercombinat, theaterformen braunschweig,
june 2008, photo: christian bort the (urban) spaces and architectures are chosen specifically for the project. these spaces become co-authors with their respective dimension, structure, texture and history. the found spaces are worked on as theatrical spaces for the performances with actors, choirs, objects, material and sound.
research trips and international projects create new collaborations and knowledge about other aesthetics, cultural techniques and self-understandings, as well as about concrete political conflict situations and their forms of performance. these insights flow into the artistic works and change them. transnational partnerships open up experiences about other performative techniques, ways of playing, aesthetics and modes of and collaboration with artists and experts.
anatomie sade/wittgenstein – eine choreographische theaterarbeit in 3 architekturen,
claudia bosse / theatercombinat, vienna 2002
theatercombinat regards itself as an autonomous production organism that can dock onto different structures and institutions, but is capable of independently carrying out and publishing self-determined projects. the aim is to create one's own publics, to use, question and change knowledge and structure, spaces and institutions for project work.
theater as thinking with bodies in spaces.
the performative manifestations are preceded by condensed research that tests the relationships between bodies and spaces in ever-changing constellations and over a period of several years. in all investigations, theater is understood as the opening of spaces of thought and possibility, whose emergence is driven by a search for performative sculptures of sound and choreography and manifests itself in expansive installations with sensitive conditions of perception (anatomie sade wittgenstein, 2001/03; firma raumforschung, 2004/05, tragödienproduzenten, 2006/09). the always applicable working approach of the performative research is a theater of choreographic constellations in dealing with language and ideologies from 2500 years of political-aesthetic history, which, via theater historiography, architecture, bodies and ancient as well as contemporary texts, always also questions the political in contemporary theater and its social function(s).
the last IDEAL PARADISE, claudia bosse / theatercombinat,
jakarta, indonesia 2020, photo: sancoyo purnomo
acoustic architectures and sound compositions weave themselves into the respective choreography and text and material basis. concrete traces and functions of the spaces are understood as readymades, installatively occupied or expanded and redefined. existing realities overlap through large-scale installative and performative means.
recurring is the use of choir and the choral elaboration of movements, theater texts, scores and actions. choir as negotiation of a hybrid whole body, as collective action, as organization of many, as social body, across generations and in different forms: as speaking chorus or singing chorus, as movement chorus that collectively creates and changes constellations in space with the audience or in situ chorus that meets by simple agreement, performs an action together, speaks, reads or moves.
a first step to IDEAL PARADISE, claudia bosse / theatercombinat, donaufestival krems,
june 2015, photo: claudia bosse
the work with the own audio/media archive of working materials, interview collections, autofictions of the performers and sound documents on political thoughts and questions from different geo-political contexts, develops organically with the projects (some democratic fictions, 2011/15) and lets political hybrids emerge, which are composed of different kinds of texts - compiled, extended, interwoven, disassembled. text types that clash, overlap and mutually inform each other appeal to the attitude of the viewer and elude the contextualized labeling of authorial authorship (vampires of the 21st century or what is to be done?, 2011).
168 stunden (a tribute to everyday life and franz erhard walther), claudia bosse /
theatercombinat, tanzquartier vienna 2018, photo: eva würdinger
theater as a forward thinking with bodies in spaces.
claudia bosse's theaters are theatrical work cyclesthat overlap, cross over, condition, and continue each other like palimpsets. they are always about finding cultural organizations as artistic, resistant, and interrelated structures - about new artistic ecologies, as life cells of our society (ORGAN/ISMUS – poetics of relations, 2022/25)./span>
studied theatre directing at the hochschule für schauspielkunst ernst busch berlin. she is a director, choreographer, artist and directs theatercombinat, a transdisciplinary company she co-founded in berlin in 1997 and is based in vienna. her works negotiate forms of violence, history and concrete utopias. she understands her space-filling choreographies as the art of a temporary community, in which she interweaves myths, rituals, texts and documents with bodies, language, objects and choirs to create space-specific pieces. inside and outside europe, in museums, architectures and urban spaces, she practices this (often choral) thinking with bodies in spaces shared with the audience. her practice includes installations, performances and interventions in public spaces, as well as lectures, workshops, and guest professorships and lectureships at various academies and universities.
in 2009 she received the nestroypreis for bambiland08 and was invited to the german dance platform in 2018 with the last IDEAL PARADISE.
since 2011 she has also been creating objects and installation works in engagement with archives and museum collections, such as leopold museum vienna, museum of contemporary art zagreb, weltmuseum vienna, stadtarchiv düsseldorf or museu da imigracao in são paulo among others.
grü500 - les perses –
théâtre du grütli, hg. imanol atorragasti, claudia bosse, sophie klimis und michèle pralong, genf 2006.
anatomie sade/wittgenstein –
eine choreographische theaterarbeit in 3 architekturen; triton verlag, hg. claudia bosse, markus keim, andreas pronegg, christine standfest und doris uhlich, wien 2002.
