自述：
ARTIST STATEMENT
I began my career as a stage and costume
designer in theatre, opera and dance,
working internationally from my London
base. After many achievements as a designer, I
decided to pursue my interests in art and
directing, working as a visual and
performance artist in 2001. Since then, I
have exhibited visual artwork and have written,
directed, designed and produced
multi-disciplined performances
My work incorporates the spoken and sung
word, movement, operatic elements, some
digital imagery and has involved working
with groups of actors, dancers, artists,
acrobats and musicians in established
theatre spaces. The future will see me to go
beyond the theatre’s framework of the
proscenium arch and thus investigating the
possibilities to combine site-specific
approach with opera and performance art.
In 2010 I worked on a contemporary operatic
event with an ensemble of seven
performers, which sparked the idea to take
this ensemble piece further – to discard of
the protagonists and create a work led by
the ensemble, the ‘chorus’ exclusively. The
idea led me to an in-depth research study
of the chorus and its relation to the
protagonist at Brunel University in order
to expand my knowledge and broaden my
skills to complement my work. Theoretically
I looked into the chorus’s genealogy and its
role in opera historically and
philosophically - while in practice I developed the idea to
‘the chorus as the protagonist in contemporary opera’ to combine
performance art with
opera.
The research has nurtured my artistic
practice in many ways, built an underlying basis
and has opened my mind to a vast amount of
material. The luxury of time for research,
reflection and investigation into new
thought processes has produced a public showing
of four experiments. It is the culmination
of these experiments, which opened to
innovative, alternative ways of my artistic
practice.
Activity plan/genesis to new work
‘now,soon,not yet’ during the residency period
It is my aim to develop a new form of
performance: to combine opera with performance
art/installation.
I envisage this work as being delivered by
dialogue, monologue, musical composition and
physical movement while visually it may
evolve from different media/installation. Thematically
informed by selected topics from our
present state ‘of and in the world’, it might also offer a
glimpse of an imminent future. Instead of a
narrative, the event will shape itself by the number of
subjects chosen; it will create its own
structure and form itself during an intense research and
development, and an explorative workshop
period.
The 21st century changes us and our way of
living, our sense of community, moral, values,
consciousness, down to every single detail
of the ordinary day. Science promises new ways of
living physically and mentally while scientific
thought reached its limits, technological advances
appear plentiful and skyrocket. Time itself
and the experience of time changes – virtual time, real
time. Questions like ‘How does it
affect/alter our sense of reality, communication, relationships?’
hover like clouds worldwide. In Western
society, the individual’s privacy became transparent; are
we as transparent collectively? How are
these developments perceived by eastern society?
The distillation of these current and
future phenomena: what kind of expression might it create,
and how does it make you feel? I want to
gain a deeper understanding of eastern thought and
cultural practices first hand by working
and living in the country. I am eager to broaden my
artistic goals by learning from the eastern
society, to exchange techniques, methodologies and
practices from Asian artists using my own
work experience.
Genesis: Over the period of one year I
filtered and filed articles concerned with issues of present
and future global impact on politics,
economy, science, philosophy, society, art and technology.
What began as an exercise to keep me
informed, gradually turned into a somewhat vague intent
– to create a random collage of these apparently pressing matters
worldwide. Like random
puzzle parts, the accumulation of these
topics would create a picture that speaks for itself when
assembled. While doing so, the sheer
impossibility of the task crystalized, the incapability to
digest such overload of information: The
vastness of information crashes through mental and
physical limits, eventually rendering
itself meaningless.
This experience gave the impetus and the
core question of the new long-term project I want to
develop: how are we/you living? And
further: How do we/you choose to live – how much do you
expose yourself to the influence of the
external? The subject of the chorus/protagonist, the
micro/macro, collectivism/individualism,
their point of attraction and the individual’s personal
(emotional) experience is at the heart of
my work.
Inspirations from Asian and European
artists: Kim Sooja, Sung Hwan Kim and Lee Yongbaek,
Miao Xiaochun, Tong Hongsheng, Wang
Qingsong to name a few. The composer John Cage’s
multimedia performance of ‘Europeras’ and
Hajnal Nemet’s mixed media installation ‘Crash’
collaboratively developed with composer and
singers to build an acoustic and visual experience.
Performance artist Tino Sehgal who insists
of the “live experience” and theatre director
Christoph Marthaler’s unique approach to
text, music, physicality and above all - time.
ACTIVITY PLAN: Intensive
research/development period culminating in a presentation.
1st stage: writing period - from a
compilation of topics establish libretto/text, visual and
sound/musical inspiration board, sketches,
digital imagery for practical exploration (opportunity
for presentation in form of talk/lecture
following feedback/discussion)
2nd stage – explorative workshop period
with text/libretto, the performer’s physical movements,
objects, audible and visual elements. Ideas
can be investigated with performers (possible
involvement of the local community).
3rd stage – evaluate, adapt, re-write,
re-assess, results of the process can be in form of an
internal or semi-public presentation.
4th stage – work-in–progress presentation
following feedback/discussion/debate.
ADDITIONAL MATERIALS
1. All past work including video clips from
performances at website:
www.roswithagerlitz.co.uk
Shortcuts to videos of performance: click
on ‘spaces,light,sound’, click the balls lighting
up yellow and green.
Art work: ‘Movement,shadow’
Drawings: ‘trails,traces’ show drawings
Poems: ‘words,phrases’ are poems
2. Recent work 2013 and detailed CV can be
seen at my website:
www.mistressoftime.com
3. An example performance text and a
lecture/research text attached to email.
