Garden State
enacted thought / biotop / installation
2014
To dreamers, freedom seekers and community lovers,
An oasis, an utopian island, a temporary autonomous zone, the perfect place to be…
For the 25th anniversary of Künstlerhaus Mousonturm in Frankfurt, the theater’s resident company MAMAZA (Ioannis Mandafounis, Fabrica Mazliah, May Zarhy) re-created the theater as an ephemeral communal garden. A newly thought space offered to the people of Frankfurt giving the liberty to cohabit, share and dream together. Inspired by the story of Libertalia, a possibly fictional anarchist colony founded in the late 17th century in
Madagascar in which pirates freed slave ships and lived communally in an exotic peaceful environment. This garden consisted of a large collection of private plants collected door to door, by the artists, from Frankfurt’s inhabitants and re-composed as a mobile island on the
stage of the theater.
Elaborated in collaboration with the Städelschule’s Architecture class SAC, Garden State was a landscape / time-scape where the people were invited to have all kinds of interactions and activities: concerts, naps, lectures, sun salutations, full moon bathing, open mic
performances and a nighty-night calming down lullaby to end the day.
Garden State brought together the natural and the artificial, the outside and the inside, and put the experience of the visitor in the center of attention. The garden became the framework of a social choreography where the local inhabitants came and went according
to their own will. They took part in the events that emerge throughout the day, and could transform and re-compose the space, either by simply spending time there and taking space or by literally moving the mobile plants around. Thus, the audience became an essential
part of the space and its creation.
Concept: Ioannis Mandafounis, Fabrice Mazliah, May Zarhy
Realization: in collaboration with Harry Schulz and the SAC Architecture Class of the
Städelschule, Professor Dr. Johann Bettum
Light design, technical direction: Harry Schulz
Sound design: Johannes Helberger (kling klang klong)
Assistance: Gianna Varbanova
Body mattresses: Heleno Bernardi
SAC Architecture Class of the Städelschule: Damjan Jovanovic, Sujata Chitlangia, Ronak
Namdari, Helga Boldt, Sadaf Ahadi, Petr Khraptovich
Production: MAMAZA, Cie Projet 11
Support:
Künstlerhaus Mousonturm
Doppelpass Fund of the Federal Cultural Foundation
NATIONALES PERFORMANCE NETZ (NPN) International Guest Performance Fund for Dance,
which is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media on the
basis of a decision by the German Bundestag.
Presentations:
9 - 12.1.2014 | Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt Germany
27.3 - 6.4.2014 | Changing Places Festival, Buenos Aires Argentina
16- 23.11.2014 | 14th International Architecture Exhibition, Venice Italy
* as of 2016 the project runs as a sole project of Fabrice Mazliah
5 - 10.7.2016 | Lausanne, Switzerland
5 - 9.10.2016 | Steirischer Herbst, Graz Austria
17 – 20.11.2016 | PACT Zollverein, Essen Germany
