before yellow | 2005

Person A starts to work. Person B joins the process one week later = enough material to sort out.

Before Yellow was a way for two people to get to know each other's working methods - through conversations and interviews, with the help of exercises in the studio, readings and finally the mapping of their collaboration. The aim was to approach the topics underlying ‘yellow’ - a stage piece in-progress exploring pop-events, image-industry and body-culture, while keeping a critical distance to the ideas which naturally arise in a young working process.

On the one hand, a research-time intended to clarify several questions regarding 'yellow', to be elaborated in direct continuation by Ula Sickle and Peter Lenaerts ['aisikl]. On the other hand, a time of exchange in order to filter out working-impulses and emerging subjects for a first upcoming work by Ula Sickle and Heike Langsdorf.

The presentation of before/yellow took the form of a 'live-mapping': An index box was emptied out and its content spread out on the studio floor of Netwerk, Aalst in order to communicate the working-process and its relevant stations to a public wandering amongst the printed, photographed and filmed material. A project-sketch called 'projectors/duet', a performance proposition for two dancers and two video projectors was also performed live.

In November 2005 the index box prepared for the public showing was invited to be exposed as part of Mapstation, a project and installation by Bettina Wind and Alexander Schellow that took place during the Plateaux Festival of the Mousonturm in Frankfurt.

Before/yellow proved to be an excellent approach for a first-time collaboration: As there was no pressure to immediately produce a finished product, the work could follow many different tracks at once and result in very different outcomes. A question and answer method became an important tool in helping to clarify the work and in order get to know each others interests and working methods.

Following before/yellow, Ula and Heike continued to work together: Capture (2006), was a one week working period that took place in Berlin the following year and which led to the formulation of the project Viewmaster, an installation and performance that premiered in October 2007.

(see capture and viewmaster)

Tour

21-02-2006 Netwerk, Aalst


concept :
Heike Langsdorf, Ula Sickle
support :
frogs OS, Kunst/Werk, Netwerk / center for contemporary art
participants :
Peter Lenaerts, Tawny Andersen
thanks to :
Nadine, Bettina Wind, Alexandra Fereirra, Alexander Schellow