A choreography to an installation to a novel: the works of Vienna-based choreographer Anne Juren always promise a multi-faceted encounter of different art forms. In Happy End, based on the last major installation by visual artist Martin Kippenberger – The Happy End of Franz Kafka’s Amerika (1994) – she explores themes such as longing and failure and asks about the conditions of artistic creation today. With an ambivalent mixture of fascination and rejection, she confronts the artist biographies of Kippenberger and Kafka, which, like the journey of the protagonist in Kafka’s novel Amerika (1913), were marked by a constant alternation of belonging and rejection, and gives the eight chapters of Kafka’s text a physical presence. The result is a piece that moves between the familiar and uncharted territory and – despite the general mood of crisis – holds on to the belief, without irony, that the uncontrollable can ultimately be controlled.
Concept: Anne Juren
Performance: Laia Fabre, Deborah Hazler, Anne Juren, Rotraut Kern, Roland Rauschmeier, David Subal
Set design, Photo & Video: Roland Rauschmeier
Light desig & Technical Direction: Bruno Pocheron
Costume: Lise Lendais
Composition, Sound direction: Peter Böhm
Dramaturgy: Silke Bake, Annie Dorsen
Production: Pia Kirchler
Artistic management: Silke Bake
Production: WTKB
Co-Production: steirischer herbst (Graz), HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin), Tanzquartier Wien and tanzhaus nrw (Düsseldorf).
Supported by: NATIONALES PERFORMANCE NETZ (NPN), Municipal Department of Cultural Affairs Vienna