Gloria Höckner

THIS MAGIC IS IN SPITE OF ME

SENTIMENTAL BITS

Four performers and a humanoid sex robot follow traces of their data into the inscrutable black box of an artificial intelligence that analyses their emotions. They use their bodies as troublemakers to disturb surveillance technologies and provoke glitches – errors in the system. They become entangled in playing with the transformation of their physical and digital bodies and in doing so subvert the categories of the artificial intelligence. Alternative bodies, images and narratives emerge between technological projections and the audience's gaze.

^{artistic direction, co-choreography, concept: Gloria Höckner | performance, co-choreography, text: Katja-Maria/Kay Taavitsainen, Lois Bartel, Rebecca Pokua Korang, Tanja Erhart, Gloria Höckner | dramaturgy: Isabel Gatzke | music: Victoria Keddie | costume, masks: Ilona Klein | stagedesign: Einsiedel & Jung | light design, technical direction: Ricarda Schnoor | programming: Paul Geisler, Fabian Nitschkowski | 3D-models: Vanessa A. Opoku | production, communication: Stückliesel | | assistance: Ruxin Liu | video-operator: Mathias Hollaender & Alexander Nham | audio description: Xenia Taniko, Nic Meyer & Gerald Pirner | editing audio description: Frank Amann | video documentation: Martin Prinoth | video teaser: Friederike Höppner | scene photographs: Jonas Fischer | graphic: Lisa-Marie Fechteler}

Trailer | Sentimental Bits from Hark Empen on Vimeo.

Gloria Höckner

(they/them) deals with the relationship of the body to technology and power-structures. They explores the principle of hacking and the potential of glitch - disturbances in the system. Gloria's pieces have been performed at festivals such as Performing Arts Festival Berlin, Balance Club / Culture Festival Leipzig, and Out Now! Bremen. After studying Theatre, Film and Media and Performance Studies, Gloria was invited to residencies at Seoul Dance Center, K3 (Limited Edition) and Nave in Santiago de Chile.

As part of a transdisciplinary research process during the residency at K3, which links digital and analogue practices, Gloria appropriates surveillance technologies and systems that use ‘artificial intelligence’ to ‘recognise’ human emotions in order to develop alternative bodies, images and narratives. Their research touches upon questions of self-determination about one‘s own body and the data that is produced by it.

^{(Status: 2018)}

www.gloriahoeckner.net