My drawings of the series Circles and Scores reflect the choreographies of the workshops in collaboration with chorists* of documenta 14. Invited by Sepake Angiama – Head of Education for Learning from Athens, documenta 14 – I designed and conducted six workshops in Kassel and Athens. I designed their choreographies – consisting of artistic-performative and theoretical elements – through drawings, visualizing temporal sequences, basic ideas and methods. The 25 drawings of the resulting series Circles and Scores show hatching, non-linearity, rhythm, forms, structure, change of perspective and style, surrealistic and deconstructive elements, different line weights and colors – supplemented by handwritten quotes, terms and names. After having completed the respective workshops, I developed new drawings in which I noted my perceptions and interpretations of the processes.

A kind of lyrical storyboard came into being. In this way I was not only able to develop the course of workshops, but also explore them at different levels afterwards. How close or distant did the group members relate to each other? How was the relationship between our bodies and the architectural space shaped? What kind of aesthetic forms did our movements create? How did sitting at a table change the atmosphere? What happened under the table? What happened in a circle without chairs? Which performative elements did the teams develop?

By drawing with different perspectives, I was able to explore our formations and movements. I realized that some of the exercises – like the one we performed standing in a circle, throwing a ball or putting the ball in the center – formed large letters from above: like thìta, a circle with a dot in the middle – a Greek letter. This led me, in a further step, to study historical contexts of the evolution of the alphabet. Western European letters of the alphabet are based on the alphabet developed by the Greeks. For them, the discovery and development of signs for sounds was crucial and they embodied the forms of the individual letters in performances by the choir.

The 25 drawings of series Circles and Scores were tools of planning, supported the implementation of elements of the workshops, enabled an exploration and research of artistic processes within the workshops, were a means of communication and opened up references to historical and theoretical contexts.

Circles and scores, 25-part series 2017. Paper, Pencil, Markup Pens. 24 x 31 cm (9,5 x 12,2 inch).

The workshops within the framework of the documenta 14 faculty were carried out in collaboration with Anton Kats.

*160 members of the choir – the chorists – performed walks with the visitors of documenta 14. The unfolding of the choir in the course of the documenta 14 was conceived with the faculty – a group of artists and art educators who brought different methods and approaches. Members of the faculty – apart from me – included Keiko Higashi, Gila Kolb, Konstanze Schütze, David Smeulders and Leanne Turvey. See: http://www.documenta14.de/en/public-education/ [Access: 31.03.2018]