ANGELA
SCHUBOT
GRADINGER/SCHUBOT
YEW:outside
In January 2018 “YEW” premiered at HAU, an experimental evening of intense encounters with a plant nature. As part of their new cycle of work “The Nature of Us,” Angela Schubot and Jared Gradinger are adapting the indoor piece to an outdoor setting. This experience will inspire both artists to enter their first group work with human and non-human collaborators.
With and by Jared Gradinger and Angela Schubot
And by: Beech, Clover, Echivarea, Fern, Gradinger, Oak, Moss, Mugwort, Schubot, Stinging Nettle, Yew
Sound Gardener und Co-Design: Stefan Rusconi
Costume: Claudia Hill
Artistic collaboration: Sigal Zouk
Press & Production: björn & björn
Costume assistance: Marcus Barros Cardoso
Performances photos: Silvio Zeder
Production: Jared Gradinger and Angela Schubot in Collaboration with Nature.
Co-production: HAU Hebbel am Ufer.
Funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds.
In cooperation with Grün Berlin GmbH, Botanischer Volkspark Pankow.
Premiere June 2018
„we did not occupy the space. we participated. we supported it. we allowed for a real reciprocity not just with the plants and the land but with the audience. the invitation was everywhere. we initiated. and got initiated. the initiation of the summer. we discovered. we did not answer things. we felt and we listened and then found other questions. in a way the body lived in a feeling field. living an answer to a question that wasn´t put yet. we wanted to co-create with the plants. and it was not about how it is possible but where it is possible.“
Angela Schubot and Jared Gradinger
„I don’t know anymore, if I am in a forest or in a room – says Florence while passing green chambers of chirping plants along a still creek. Later we are smoking artemisia, laying on the ground of an inverse glade, looking into the sky which, through whipping leaves, seems to have a heartbeat, then looking back to the ground, watching bodies getting so dirty and dirt becoming a body. Being in this kind of enhanced nature and celebrating what it has to say even if it doesn’t speak has something touching as only atmospheres touch. We know the dangers of essentialism, but I was not afraid, says Jeremy at the bus stop. Adding something about humor.“
Viereinhalb Sätze #183, 27. June 2018
„... And they all just sang! With different voices weaving the world, continuously! And they danced, and my heart felt at peace, finally rested. Such a powerful response to the necessity of reconnecting with nature. Thank you Jared and Angela, Claudia and all the people who made this show possible. Yew!“
Anna Nowicka, June 2018
„Ok, if your in Berlin right now I highly recommend to see Jared Gradinger and Angela Schubot's gorgeous collaboration called YEW:outside. The event emerges in the most epic summer park scapes of the Botanical Gardens in Pankow and what comes to pass is a formal effortless and unapologetic masterpiece. A hybrid technology of nature and culture. Stefan Rusconi’s sound score shifts space and creates color. The whole thing is a massive collaboration with the Botani-cal Garden. It just so happened that last night the weather was absolutely extraordinary, I was in-toxicated by the smell of the grass as the sun set through the trees. Its not easy to break essen-tialism when your in such a beautiful place, its not easy to make something that holds up to the majestic radiance of a 200 year old oak tree and its friends. Angela and Jared have put so much work into a dance that is in absolute reverence of a very deep mystery but it is also so formally resonant that it is in no way woo woo. A dance of constant surrender collapse, mourning, unfolding, invagination that becomes a site of lived resistance in its vulnerability, they create the clearest conduits possible in that moment and in that setting. I had no idea how much I needed to go to see this piece. A full on homage to now as the sun sets and sets and sets and sets and I was so fuck-ing alive! GO!!“
Jeremy Wade, June 2018
„what a very special and beautiful evening!, thank you so much for inviting us to this incredible park, for guiding us through and ever deeper into the connections you found. For me it was really a journey from watching to diving into it and being surrounded and carried by your movement, the plants, the ground, the sky and its amazing light, the wind, the smells, the various sounds; in this circle under the trees where we smoked I had strong moments of feeling rhythms pulsating through all of this, very concrete – the trunk I was close to suddenly had a rhythm and its roots were transmitting and resonating it to the ground while at the same time the leaves high up and the wind going through them was a different one and your movement the third etc, and it was a polyrythmical coming together, a concert I could see, smell, hear and feel vibrating in my body. That was very intense and amazing. And I had a nearly uncanny feeling how strangely close and similar it is what we seem to be looking for. Some of the sounds you make strongly reminded me of the work in the mountains I did last year, these deep Os that echo and resonate in the trees, the roots, the ground, the air in the little forest really at one moment brought in the places where we did them and it was a very weird cross-fading of voices, places and times (maybe once we watch the videos we made there moving and sounding.“
Sandra Man, June 2018