Adapted from the 2018 Alltagsbühne Badeanstalt

It’s bathing season, the Ortsbeschwimmung invites you onto the liquid parquet.

Anecdotes from the cultural history of bathing are taken up in order to recognise the calming visit to the swimming pool as a strategy of everyday coexistence and thus to cultivate the common. We reactivate a past, collective ritual of bathing. Instead of everyone in their own bathtub: immerse yourself in the large stage pool, listen to the language of the performers that your body will understand. How you should sit in the sauna will be shown to you by the performer who has been assigned to you, watch the aquatic activities and find your own personal variation.
Also take some time for the show performative sequences both in the pool and on land: synchronised swimming, water aerobics, speech choir, a sound backdrop as a live set and the film projection of historical pool recordings (1911 – 1972) from Vienna Stadt- und Landesarchivs being shown in the water cinema.

Written and directed by ELENA CARR, FRANZISKA SCHINDLER
Concept ELENA CARR
Soundscape ANNA SOPHIE ADELT
Stage & Costume Design ELENA CARR, FRANZISKA SCHINDLER
Synchronised swimmer ADÉL HORVATH
Off-voice MONIKA ZEISENBÖCK
Performer ANNA SOPHIE ADELT, ELENA CARR, ADÉL HORVATH, KILIAN KLAPPER, ELISABETH RASS, AGNIESZKA SALAMON, FRANZISKA SCHINDLER
Cinematography ANNA ROSA LEA DIETZE, SIMONA DE FABRITIIS, CLAUS SCHINDLER, THERESIA SCHINDLER
Editing SIMONA DE FABRITIIS

bathers

>> A perfect mix of disgust and vanity, deep glimpses into the soul of the lifeguard and a touch of stupidity. Fantastic. <<

>> Very, very lustful and accessible. The cinema on the water in particular really appealed to me and was relaxing in a funny way – not my expectation of performances. Also very impressive the appropriation of space and time and guidance of the guests. <<

>> Finally gliding on the water in a floaty tyre again. Very interesting was the cinema – the historical reflections on swimming and swimming pools inside the pool – great idea. <<

>> Such a wonderfully fluid kaleidoscope <<

>> Dem Becken gings gut im Becken <<

>> We come out of the water differently than we came in, completely different. Wonderful water games! <<

>> Wet hair, water nose shower, sports, booze, cinema, fun and wonder. Wonderful it was! With a grin on my face, I leave the venerable bathroom tipping my hat! <<

PRESS

>> […] schließlich bewegt sich das Publikum als Badegast durch die Schwimmanlage. Plantschen und Saunieren inklusive. Ebenso wie Filmschauen und Briefeschreiben – „Eine Ortsbeschwimmung“ ist alles gleichzeitig. Mit den ZuschauerInnen als mitschwimmende „Sehleute“. […] geht es bei „Eine Ortsbeschwimmung“ […] um das Bad als Ort der Zusammenkunft und mitunter des Voyeurismus, dessen Geschichte und kulturelle Bedeutung. Auf spielerische Weise lädt der siebenköpfige „Trupp“ aus SchauspielerInnen (und mehr) das Publikum ein, selbst aktiv zu werden. <<

Tiroler Tageszeitung 25.08.21, Barbara Unterthurner

>> Ein Hallenbad ist ein bemerkenswert egalitärer Raum, ein Raum der Begegnung im ursprünglichsten Sinn. Denn in Badebekleidung sind alle Menschen gleich nackt: Reiche wie Arme, Rechte wie Linke, Einheimische wie Fremde treffen aufeinander wie sonst nirgends. […] Die Künstlergruppe um Elena Carr und Franziska Schindler nutzt diesen Umstand für eine lustvolle Performance in Becken, Sauna und Imbiss, aus Bad wird Bühne. […] erzählen experimentell, humvorvoll und bezaubernd von Nähe und Distanz in Zeiten der Vereinzelung, von Kindheitserinnerungen und der Kultur des gemeinsamen Badens. <<

Oberländer Rundschau, 25.08.21

>> Unter Leitung der Bademeisterin heißt ein Trupp aus sechs PerformerInnen herzlich willkommen und führt durch den Abend. Es gibt außerdem Zeit, sich frei im Schwimmbad zu bewegen und das Bad in eigener Geschwindigkeit zu erkunden. Das Publikum darf sich also über bemerkenswerte Shownummern im Becken sowie am Trockenen freuen. “Das Publikum orientiert sich scheinbar selbstständig in der, das gesamte Schwimmbad umfassenden, Schau, außer es folgt den inszenierten Szenen”, so Carr und Schindler weiter. “Wasserkino, Wasseraerobik in den Becken, Hirnbeschwimmung am Trockenen, Sauna und Schwimmbadimbiss bilden den Kosmos, in den es einzutauchen gilt.” Die BetrachterInnen werden somit zu AkteuerInnen, die sich frei bewegen und den Kunstraum Badeanstalt erkunden. <<

meinbezirk 18.08.21, Katharina Ranalter

A swimming act | 2019
Künstlerhaus 1050, Vienna AT

The moment I was born, there was already not a drop of amniotic fluid left. In the theatre I had a hard time finding my role. In the end I was allowed to play the sea seal and crawl across the dusty stage. There I imagined the water at a 90 degree angle to the left, I thought the water overhead to the ceiling or I just pretended it was under me. Only gravity kept pulling. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and I woke up with a dry throat. My head ached from the day before. You were not there. No sound coming from the phone and I asked myself: Why don’t you call me? You do have my number.

Concept & Performance Elena Carr, Jonas Carr, Miriam Kruppa, Johannes Krenner, Franziska Schindler, Eva Sommer, Christina Widmann
Text Ingeborg Bachmann, Elena Carr, Jonas Carr
Coordination & Idea Elena Carr and Jonas Carr
Project cycle HABEN UND BRAUCHEN IN WIEN curated by Tim Voss

Bath house Sargfabrik Vienna | 2018

People like you frequent bathing establishments. They watch the colourful bathing life and enjoy it as if it were another institution of the entertainment industry. One evening in the cold, wet month of November, you are invited into a warm parallel world. Once you are inside the show bath becomes a bubble bath and reality blurs with artificial bathing romance.
Dressed in swimming costume you wander through a performance and water landscape and find yourself in a bubbling lake. Like all humans, you are looking for rest and relaxation, but imagine doing so in an environment that seems incredibly inhospitable. The shore of the salt lake is unkempt and marked by run-down industrial architecture. Chemicals flow into the water through huge pipes and form unappetising islands of foam.
On the everyday stage of the baths, your imaginary images meet the projection surface of the swimming pool. In the historically grown abundance of Viennese baths, the semi-public bathing house in the former coffin factory Maschner & Söhne in Vienna’s 14th district opens up to all for a spot of swimming. Steps lead down to a hidden place, in green-blue not far from the urban noise.
Your mobile phone is a pool. Hold it horizontally, the reflective surface is there to be dipped into.
The performance plays with moving alone in the midst of many through social places, some filled with water, and exposes the audience to the tension between a sense of security and the uncanny. In the show, which explores the entire bath, Elena Carr, with and through her performers, questions the necessity of single-cabin architecture and wellness offerings.

“First impression: Ok. I can manage. Should I approach the blue-haired masked woman? I don’t because I have no idea what to say. The mobile phones flying into the pool in a high arc: Is that true? Are you going that far? Is that my phone in there now? A brief pause: No, I’m sure you don’t go that far. But you have lured me out of my reserve. I do care about my phone, especially because of all the pictures I don’t want to lose. Obviously I need a phone as a visual aid. The next experience: I don’t find athlete’s foot disgusting, in fact I find very little disgusting at all, and there’s no head cinema going on. Nevertheless, I find the situation on the massage divan with swinging feet unpleasant. I don’t really know what to say and decide to flee forward. Afterwards I would have preferred to say less, especially because the camera is rolling. Attack on my privacy successful, but different from what I thought. Quite different in the sauna. Sweaty skin rubbing against sweaty skin in an oversized T-shirt: I don’t mind at all, I even find it pleasant. Erotic feelings do not arise, which I am quite happy about. I would have hated to expose myself to that. The webbed latex gloves remind me of bloodied hands – without a concrete image in my mind’s eye. In any case, I don’t feel like a fish in primordial soup. And then there’s the brutal curiosity: the story about the Berlin restaurant with the aquarium and the bathing mermaids is new to me, a nice story to tell. But I realise that I have something to gain from the nakedness of others, so the bathing establishment becomes a show aquarium for me, and I’m right in the middle of it. So that’s how it is.”

Florian, bather

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Concept & artistic direction Elena Carr
Direction and production assistance Franziska Schindler
PerformerAnna Sophie Adelt, Kitti Asztalos, Elena Carr, Christa Durun, Daniela Fessl, Aurelia van Kempen, Kilian Klapper, Johannes Krenner, Caroline Schindler, Franziska Schindler, Lea Wilsdorf
Choreography synchronised swimming Adél Horvath
Synchronised swimmers Elena Carr, Jonas Carr, Aurelia van Kempen, Johannes Krenner, Franziska Schindler
Costume & Stage design Elena Carr with Franziska Schindler, Lea Wilsdorf
Tailors Anna Sophie Adelt, Conny Laaber, Theresia Schindler
Off-Voice Franziska Schindler
Sound editingOskar Kozeluh
Video message Stefanie Sargnagel
Cinematography & Editing minthe Produktion
Photography Klemens Kohlweis, Daniel Rajcsanyi

Franka Vogel writes about the tireless work ethic of the human brain and the attempt to calm the mind with Far Eastern meditation practices. Elena Carr takes a look at the everyday stage of the bath house and wonders about the necessity of single-cabin architecture and wellness services.
How to cope with life away from the beach?
Why does the increasing rationalisation of the world of work take us to the swimming pool and what does the architecture of the Munich Olympic swimming hall have in common with a cubicle office?
At Munich Salon Irkutsk as well as in the Sub.TV Studio, the texts of the two art students met associatively, perhaps combining to form neuronal networks in the floating brains of the audience.

Das Gehirn schwimmt doch auch
Lecture Performance & Risography print series
Franka Vogel & Elena Carr
Salon Irkutsk München curated by TAMTAM 2017
Akademie der Bildenden Künste München curated by Sub.TV Studio 2017

Risography

Print series Das Gehirn schwimmt doch auch 2017