22 – 26 March, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m., at FREIRAUM Düsseldorf

The interdisciplinary workspace for the arts and sciences FREIRAUM and Cheers for Fears as a network of young artists are equally interested in questions of artistic collaboration. As a friendly take over, Cheers for Fears is organising a laboratory in the FREIRAUM format „Critical Distance“ from March 22nd to 26th. Artists from all disciplines are invited for an intensive week to explore FREIRAUM, urban space and digital space as fields for interdisciplinary collaboration. Divided into three groups, we will examine forms of creation that combine physical and digital presence.

Which space and time do you need for interdisciplinary work? For many, artistic work under the conditions of physical distancing means to shift work practice to digital or urban space. In the new situation, collaborations between scenic artists, composers, animation artists, programmers, video artists and others appear in a different light. In newly developed work spaces, completely different artistic formats emerge. In the laboratory we will examine our collaboration in terms of liveness: How can you work (online) and share the resulting material at the same time? We also question the digital and analog spaces: To what extent do they form the interdisciplinary work and the emerging art as a pre-set or matrix?

What potential does it have to transfer one’s abilities into a new medium? What does a mutual contamination of analog and digital spaces feel like, what is the in-between? What new awareness and understanding for one another can artists gain through such an interdisciplinary testing of work spaces? We exchange ideas about our specific working methods, try out new tools, question terms, start artistic experiments and hear inputs from choreographer Ben J. Riepe as well as choreographer Silvia Ehnis, among others.

The three groups will work in parallel and in exchange with each other and alternate in FREIRAUM Düsseldorf, in the surrounding urban space and in the digital space.

Registration by March 15 at contact@cheersforfears.de.