Rotterdam Presenta (Dusseldorf)

Photo: Jan Rohwedder / Rotterdam Presenta
Photo: Jan Rohwedder / Rotterdam Presenta

Biography:

Rotterdam Presenta consists of theatre makers and other artists. The core team, based in Düsseldorf and Brussels, understands itself as a platform to facilitate a cross-disciplinary theatre discourse. Their projects are regularly created at the FFT and find their place within international festivals. In “accident exercises” they collaborate among others with the performers Nicolas Niot and Katarzyna Kania, the performance group Contact Gonzo and the lighting designer Ryoya Fudetani.

Freischwimmen project:

Every accident starts with a loss of control. And then comes the impact, a moment of radical, irreversible change that is over before we look at it. The performance platform Rotterdam Presenta is setting up a laboratory for accident exercises in the archives of an insurance company. They practice the faux pas, the moment of the collision. What do we see when we stop time at the moment of collision? Our mistakes, the unsovereign action, the moment when we look terrible and when it’s too late for a new plan.

Funded by Ministerium für Kultur und Wissenschaft des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen, NRW Landesbüro Freie Darstellende Künste, Fonds DaKu, Kunststiftung NRW, Kulturamt der Landeshauptstadt Düsseldorf, Stiftung van Meeteren.

Statement:

Rotterdam Presenta was part of FREISCHWIMMEN at a time when we as a group were trying out new forms of collaboration, openness, and networking. We were neither creators acting independently, nor a collective that was fundamentally democratic in structure, rather this was a shifting interdisciplinary artistic community founded around some central questions, but also specific ideas around responsibility, and the relationships between artists and institutions, and artistic practice and urban environment. These questions were further developed into specific theses, which could then evolve into strategies for collaboration and solidarity, and go on to shape both the group’s aesthetics and working methods.

Weblinks:

Performances:

Invitations and residencies:

Invitations

2018 ECLAT Festival, Stuttgart
2018 Museum Kunstpalast/DIE GROSSE, Düsseldorf
2018 Scènes d’Europe Festival, Reims
2020 FAVORITEN Festival, Dortmund
2021 Theater Summer, Stuttgart
10 days of free swimming
Atelier pact Zollverein, Essen
Experimental Intermedia, New York
FFT, Düsseldorf
Cultural region, Stuttgart

Residencies

2019 Gessnerallee Zurich
Kunstencentrum BUDA Kortrijk,
Mousonturm Frankfurt,
schwankhalle Bremen
Theater Rampe Stuttgart
Théâtre de la Balsamine Brussels
WELD and Dansens Hus Stockholm

Prizes and awards:

Prize for the Performing Arts of the City of Düsseldorf.

Freischwimmen is currently supported by the network funding of the Fonds Darstellende Künste.

Freischwimmen was funded in 2020-23 by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media via the "Promoting Connections" program of the Bundesverband Freie Darstellende Künste e.V.

Freischwimmen was also supported by Pro Helvetia, the Swiss Arts Council.