Antonia Baehr's performance Abecedarium Bestiarium (Photo: part of promotional material)
Abecedarium Bestarium is a series of short solo performance pieces by German artist Antonia Baehr, which will be featured on 11 December at the Goethe Institute in Cairo.
Well known for working in collaboration, the artist asked her friends and family members to select an endangered animal from an ABC list of extinct animals. They each chose an animal that reflects them, or their relationship with the artist.
The piece is named for the alphabetic letters, which is the also chronological order in which she will present the animals by their names.
Baehr will be taking on different roles that reflect these animals and their stories. Her performance becomes a journey of questioning identities and an exploration of interspecies relations, as she explores differences or similarities between human and beast, man and woman, and dead and alive.
Baehr is a Berlin-based choreographer, performer, filmmaker and visual artist, whose work mixes movement and images to investigate the theatricality of everyday life.
Baehr studied film and media arts at the Hochschule der Künste, Berlin, with Valie Export (1996) and obtained a DAAD-grant and a Merit Scholarship for the School of The Art Institute of Chicago.
‘Abedecarium Bestiarium – Portraits of affinities in animal metaphors’ was first published as book in 2014, and then produced in collaboration with Sabine Ercklentz.
Programme:
Tuesday, 11 December, 6pm
Goethe Institut, 17 Hussein Wassef Street, Dokki, Cairo
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