Habitat @ Home

Doris Uhlich is inviting everyone to a virtual physical network in the shape of a workshop and dancefloor. Here she shares her interest in working with naked bodies, and brings habitats to life within her own four walls. The workshop is divided into two phases: dancing with clothes, and then without them (here the computer cameras are turned away and covered). The ‘habitat’ format challenges common conceptions of body, dance and nakedness. In Habitat @ Home, those who share an interest in dance meet with each other online. Though it’s true that the resulting internet dance ensemble cannot touch each other’s sweaty skin, despite everything the workshop creates a utopian habitat, a separate virtual space of diversity in which naked bodies swing to techno beats and immerse themselves in an archaeological exploration of bodily energy.

At the end of the workshop, Doris Uhlich asks the participants to make a brief close-up video of their vibrating bodies (with a smartphone camera, for example) that will be sent to the Münchner Kammerspiele. A visual archive of lively energy will emerge that the Münchner Kammerspiele will then make public.

With her work, Doris Uhlich challenges popular formats and body images: She shows the potential of nakedness beyond ideology and provocation, examines the relationship between human and machine, and grapples with the future of the body in an era in which it is always being ‘perfected’ through surgery and genetic engineering. With her piece ‘Every Body Electric’, she tours the world (appearing at the Venice Dance Biennale, São Paulo’s Sesc Dance Biennale, and many other festivals).

The workshop is in English.

Prior knowledge is not required. Anyone can participate

The Habitat @ Home digital workshop with Doris Uhlich has connected dancing, naked bodies via screens. More than 80 people have danced in their homes to DJ sets by Boris Kopeinig and raised the roof between their own four walls. The video artist Su Steinmassl made this clip from the participants’ self-filmed videos. Have fun!

‘The Internet is an elastic connecting platform, and the virtual Zoom window opens up the prospect of a communal dance floor. Ping!’ (Doris Uhlich)