In the Making #14: Resonance in the Inanimate

ITM #14 – January 22nd, 19:00

Resonance in the Inanimate

On the boundaries between the algorithm and human expression

With Pavlos Kountouriotis and Mariella Greil

In this inaugural session of the 2026 In the Making series, performance artist, choreographer and deputy director of the Royal Academy of Art The Hague Pavlos Kountouriotis will give a presentation on his performance-as-research work Two Bobs and a Steve. In this work, he will explore resonance within the inanimate, probing the boundaries between the algorithm and human expression. The work involves two men engaged in a tightly structured, mathematically-defined score that spirals into absurdity: two men, two saws, one score, one falls—an exploration of homosociality and the inevitable collapse when the human body becomes an inherent cog in an algorithmic machine and driven by their inability to let go. This research focuses on the immanent dramaturgies that emerge within the rigid mathematical system of Steve Reich’s musical structures, searching for the human within the inanimate.

As a response to Pavlos’ presentation, senior artist at the Applied Performance Laboratory at the Vienna University of Applied Arts Mariella Greil will elaborate on her perspective of Embodied Research as a Cosmopoietic Œkology. She will elaborate on the interconnections between choreography and materiality, ethics and œcology, and give an overview on her embodied research through the projects Choreo-graphic Figures, Bare Bodies and Choreo-ethical Assemblages. A particular emphasis will be given drawn onto processes of emergence, relation, and transformation that move beyond the static or representational and instead linger in the terrain of becoming.

After these two presentations a panel discussion will take place with members of the staff from the University of the Arts The Hague and the public.

Bio

Mariella Greil, PhD, works in the field of artistic research with a focus on contemporary performance, particularly its ramifications into choreography and ethics. She is a senior artist at the Applied Performance Laboratory at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, where she is currently researching Choreo-ethical Assemblages - Narrations of Bare Bodies (Elise Richter PEEK/FWF-DOI 10.55776/V733) and Shaken Grounds (PEEK/FWF-10.55776/AR780). Her work explores a politicised practice that aims at trans-subjective, communicative processes in performative encounters and uses an expanded concept of choreography and somatic practices as compositional tools. Together with Vera Sander, she edited the book (per)forming feedback (2016), and together with Emma Cocker and Nikolaus Gansterer, she co-edited Choreo-graphic Figures: Deviations from the Line (2017), and most recently, the monograph Being in Contact - Encountering a Bare Body (2021) and the anthology Bare Bodies – Thresholding Life was published by de Gruyter. http://www.mariellagreil.net/