IBSCH, Anja

#still
Installation October 3-5, 1 = 5 pm
401 Richmond Street West, 401 Commons meeting room
Performance October 11 7 pm
630 Queen Street East

As a performance artist, uncertainty is a desired state. In order to achieve an open practice, an almost crisis-like process needs to be passed and therefore endured. In my performances I try to visualize this and to address the audience’s fear and my own fear. There are no truths, no limits and no stability. The event is unthinkable without witness. A silent, implicit knowledge (tacit knowledge) is a precondition for empractic action (prerational, pre-theoretical, intuitive). I call it “thinking with the cells.”

Anja Ibsch, born 1968 in Rheine, Germany, lives in Berlin. She has been actively working as an artist and curator in the areas of performance and installation since 1993. Her works explore personal, cultural, and social aspects of human presence while researching the endurance and tolerance levels of her body. Frequently inspired by myths of sainthood and sacrifice, her work emphasizes and extends connections between her body and the earth. Ibsch characteristically tests her bodily limits, creating images that combine conceptual concerns with tasks of endurance or physical strength. The works engage the performer in a changing perception of her relationship to the world around her. Ibsch creates her work in response to the circumstances that present themselves, adapting to local environments and situations.