Mirjam Sögner: RAYS

Mirjam Sögner’s new solo is dedicated to the electrified air that we breathe and that disperses our environment with latent nervousness, constantly accelerating the pulse of time. RAYS attempts to make physically tangible what eludes our senses: WiFi signals, the electromagnetic fields around our smartphones, the radiation emitted by computers and power supply units.

Alternating between shaman and cyborg, Mirjam Sögner lends her body to these immaterial frequencies that determine how we live together. Using no equipment but solely her own body, she aims at tracing the ever-present signals, receiving them, amplifying them and blurring the lines between the transmitter and the receiver. Depending on which channel she levels out at, her body resonates differently. The body becomes vibration, vibration becomes the body, and energy becomes solid. Can a body dissolve?

RAYS is a body’s answer to the fundamental question of the remaining significane of our physical existence in a reality increasingly shifting to digital realms. At the same time, RAYS is also a sweeping audio-visual experience and an homage to the apparent nothingness amidst solid matter.

The Austrian choreographer/performer Mirjam Sögner works in Vienna and Berlin. She studied dance, choreography and artistic research in Vienna and at ArtEZ Arnhem in the Netherlands. Her solo LARA was shown at brut as part of imagetanz 2016 and toured Europe successfully as part of Aerowaves. Her new work RAYS, which is part of imagetanz 2018, brings her back to Dschungel Wien, where she previously presented her pieces My Body in Me (2015) and Farbenreich (2016).