Angry, loud, defiant Karin Pauer dives deep down into dark waters. With her new group piece LOW, the choreographer intensifies her occupation with the entangled fates of human bodies and marine eco-systems in a world defined by its impending collapse. Building upon the solo piece AVA, which premiered in December 2024 at brut Wien, in which a lost voice was looking for connection, LOW unfolds in a landscape ravaged by exploitation, repression and decay. Three performers inhabit an installation in which the vestiges of industrial violence stick to surfaces and memories. This underwater wasteland is at the same time archive and oracle, a scar on earth insisting on being seen. To dive deep down in this case is a means not of escape but of encounter. LOW defies the logic of rulership and the amnesia of late capitalism. Karin Pauer does not aestheticise crisis, she moves right through it while tracing the brutal effects that deep-sea mining, seismic drilling and acoustic warfare have on ocean life. Within this debris, the performers – contentious, vulnerable and uncompromising – create a ritual of embodied protest. Rather than offering false comfort, LOW stays close to what is painful. For Karin Pauer, vulnerability is not a sign of defeat, but a place of radical resistance.
Artistic direction & choreography Karin Pauer Creation & performance Hugo Le Brigand, Ixchel Mendoza Hernández, Karin Pauer Live sound Rozi Mákó Space Eva Engelbert Lighting design Sveta Schwin Production management mollusca productions Conversation partners Aldo Giannotti, Anna Mendelssohn Administration Takelage
A co-production by Kunstverein ARGO/Karin Pauer and brut Wien.
Funded by the City of Vienna’s Department of Cultural Affairs (MA7) and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport (BMWKMS).
© Hanna Fasching
