This work was created in the context of Cullberg to Come, an initiative to spearhead a new generation of dancers, choreographers and public. It was a co-production with Smålands Musik & Teater.
“Word of Mouth is a staged investigation of aesthetic judgment as a philosophical category and as a concrete practice. The initial impetus for the project were two books by German philosopher andtheorist Christoph Menke: Force and The Power of Judgment. Menke maps out a fundamental concept of aesthetics in western thought and its requisite effect on history and art, and furthermore how we construct the notion of the subject via its existence and praxis.
It felt important to look into this as a performer and choreographer. Loosely borrowing as dramaturgical structure a triple negation set out by Johann Gottfried von Herder, the piece proposes a series of examples of what aesthetics is not. Each example, however, points simultaneously to its opposite (the negation of its negation) giving rise to a playful gap where the performers and public can question their individual and collective relationship to the processes that underlie the practice of aesthetic judgment itself. How, and maybe more importantly, where does aesthetic judgment reside?
Coffee is included.”
– Tilman