Founded in 2012 by Kristóf Szabó, F.A.C.E. Visual Performing Arts connects visual arts and performing arts.
Our practice can be described as a creation of acting images (“Bildakt”) – it is an intermedial research to connect embodiment theory and the theory on images. One of our main theses is: the entire body is percipient.
Kristóf Szabó – A short documentary by Joseph Vicaire (in German)
SHOWREAL (3. minutes) F.A.C.E. Ensemble WORKS
For us the body is a part of the world – what we describe consequently as environment instead of using the word surrounding. With the installations in the space (objects, video- and mapping-art, costume), the performer works with – he doesn´t find an empty space, entering the stage. The world is a historically grown self-transforming biological-physical entity (also it´s not-existance is there, is a being-there). Denying the world is a practi/cul-de-sac (a dead end street), establishing the performer isolated from the environment, we make it easy for the spectator – but this practice is a labor situation; we break with this technique of the XXth century and turn to the description of what we see not having a look at the test tubes in our labor, but at the world by having pulled away the curtains.
Photo by Mike Kleinen Stagemoments
LATEST PERFORMANCES (full lenght videos):
Documentation: K. Szabó VENEDIG + DER TOD (2022)
Documentation: Aischylos/Marinetti PROMETHEISCHE KULTUR (2020)
Documentation: K. Szabó BORDERS.BIRDS (2019)
Documentation: Lord Byron/K. Szabó KAIN meets LUZIFER (2019)
We are not only interested in the results. We also explore new ways of creation by reducing hierarchic structures. Doing so, we are involved in actions to explore the consequences of theories about bio-politics.
With our aesthetic-aisthetic experiment we overcome the legacy of the avantgarde, a conception from the XX. century to substitute monotheistic religions. For the avantgarde life means war, the avantgarde itself is the spearhead/the vanguard of an army, formed up to gain victory. In fact, for us artists of this traditon are popes, penitents, monks, ringers and believers cruising – and not simply explorers of a liberated mind making naively an expedition. Theories and positions accur suspectly to us, which preach abstinence of this or that possibility, variaty of a game, a color, a taste, an angle of the incoming light. Everything is possible. Everything exists. Everything lives and dies. Nothing can elude itself. Nothing is not involved. Nothing is the sum of anything. Nothing is the essence. Everything is in motion. Everything depends on everything, comes into being and decays interdependent.
F.A.C.E. is based on an intermedial tradition (so on baroque theatre) and recurs to a complex, multilayer definition of knowledge, which enables us to integrate, beside cognitive dimensions, also sensorical, affective, motoric and spiritual dimensions of knowledge on stage.
For Man of the XXIth century to live in a permanent war is no perspective; for him diversity, multeity and the interconnenctedness of multiverses building a multi-dimensional environment are a matter of course for upcoming ages.
Our aproach in choreography is to explore the (biological) potential body, impulses to open potentials and to develop them into a flow (to reach the deep level). Doing so, we are interested in a ritual process (by sometimes involving spectators) to get loosen the dominant social system or the domimant methods of ways of thinking and experiencing.
As the late-renaissance broke out of the middle ages and discovered what Man can be, the digital age of the XXIth century breaks out of the world of ideologies/dictatorships of the XXth century and discovers what world can be. This is the ground on wihch we put on stage the convergence of Man, perspectives in motion, living space and environment.
Our procedure is to re-read classical theatre material, myths and contemporary narrations from the point of view of the embodiment.
“If the world is in your head – where is your head?” (Kristóf Szabó)
Trailer BRAINS.AVATARS – Creation dies
Trailer Showreel F.A.C.E. Ensemble WORKS
The results is a physical performance choreografied and visually composed as a stream of essential and moving images to be red and interpreted by each spectator individually.
Art should make people get into a conversation with each other, who are not able to speak a common language.” (Kristóf Szabó)
Not what Man experiences, but the conclusions he draws, make the difference.” (Kristóf Szabó)
“Yesterday was tomorrow.” (Magó Szabó)
In these days the changes of the world lead us back to the roots of our conflicts. To think in categories like “good” “evil” “me” “you” “we” they” helps to stay alive (as we are a biological species) – but this way of thinking repruduces the structure of the conflicts. Those never melt, but take new forms of appearence. A paradox, which can not be described by words without oversimplification.
We are in arts to create images. We put the image on an analytic, scientific ground, to express the roots and also the leaves (the contemporary appearence) of our conflicts – for we think, that the conflicts are made by Man; they can be solved! We should continue to face them on a structural and complex level.
Our images should touch the ultimate ground – that is chaos: this is the territory we want to explore; They should sum up the complexity of the structure of human living and they should go to the hearth.
Art director-choreographer, Kristóf Szabó, works with freelancer artists of many different disciplines to put images on stage talking, dancing, performing.
Since 2009 we cooperate with Ivó Kovács CV, projection- and mapping artist working everywhre in the world.
Grown up in a post-modern cultural environment, Kristóf heads for an intermedial performing practice without any borders between the arts.
We want to be involved when our new world is about to arise. The conflicts of the XXI. century are very different from the conflicts in earlier days. Some values are (which one – that is to be explored) worth to be kept – the bipolar disposition of human thinking is a trap; we should get over it. How to go further exploring new ways of thinking and living in this century of robotics and artificial intelligence? How to save at the same time values of mankind?
In these days of fear we want to fight for human rights on a very basic level. For the right to bread, the right to eat/drink, the right to fuck, the right to think, the right to speak.
PRESS: …TESZT Festival presented a very important show for human rights, diversity, understanding… (Written by (Dieter Topp for Forum Europa about the piece K. Szabó: COMING OUT, first staging 2017.)
PRESS: …With his 10 performers Szabó develops a passionate appeal for Humanity. (…) And an alarm signal for fragile democracies. (Published in Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, written by BS about W. Hasenclever: ANTIGONE, directed by K. Szabó, first staging 2016.)
KRISTÓF SZABÓ: Why do we transform the suffering of man into beauty, instead of into a revolt?
Read more here: Kristóf Szabó CV
Read more here: Ivó Kovács CV
LATEST PERFORMANCES:
Documentation: K. Szabó BORDERS.BIRDS (2019)
Documentation: Lord Byron/K. Szabó KAIN meets LUZIFER (2019)
“Melancholie ist implodierende Bestürzung.” (Kristóf Szabó)
Melancholy is imploding panic.” (Kristóf Szabó)
“Es gibt genug Licht für die, die zu sehen verlangen, und genug Dunkelheit für die, welche eine gegenteilige Neigung haben.” (Blaise Pascal)
