2013 arrived and we got asked to perform for the same client again, since the first round was that successful. So, we charged our batteries and went to Hannover. This time, we were even more free and could use the whole booth as our playground. And we did! Handing out pills to visitors, riding spinning bikes, gaining attention at the welcome desk, working as a survey bot equipped with a tablet loaded with questions, spreading vouchers or simply being a great subject for photographers and cameramen; there was a lot to do.

We always did our best to make people believe we are real robots. And oh boy, it worked! Many spectators had to touch us just to jump back with shock. And for some even the warm and soft skin was no reason to doubt our robot being. They checked our sensors, were waving crazily in front of our eyes, tried to test our routines and often asked the staff of the booth about our capabilities, how we are being controlled and so on. And some hostesses really got creative with their explanations.

In the evenings, we got our last energy reserves together and spent some quality leisure time at the trade fair parties here and there. One evening, we just passed by the IBM booth that invited people to walk on a treadmill in front of a 3D projection. And I walked, ignoring the treadmill of course. That short impro walk was then filmed, edited and sent to me via email. Here’s the result:

All in all, we had some great days at CeBIT 2013. Our Man Machines drew a lot of attention and left a big impression on spectators and the client. We already have been booked to perform at the Hannover Messe in April, again for the Federal Ministry. And a re-booking is pretty much the best compliment I can wish for.

Picture time!

Early in the morning, silence before the storm

Spin-O-Mat

Making people smile is a robot’s favorite mission

The competition is giving up early

Souvenir photo

Making girls happy is a robot’s second favorite mission

Soul moment: “Lots of love and get well soon, from dad and robot”

Making girls happy is a robot’s…

Beautiful surprise at our dressing room door

Recruiting for our future robot army

The Metroccolis Man Machines – an audience magnet

Trade fair romance, but she was a bit shy

All eyes and cams on the robot, perfect time to steal that pencil

Metroccolis – Man Machine

Fanny Fischer – former Olympic canoeing champion and part-time robond girl

The Hannover trade fair site – made for robots

People realizing that we weren’t real robots caused some priceless reactions

I gave away a free ticket to a girl via Facebook, she couldn’t make it, but sent her brother to enjoy the trade fair and deliver that beautiful hand-made Armenian puppet as a present. Thanks again!

Survey-Bot

Lights low, volume high – party time!

Giving kisses, getting kisses

RULES

ONE GEAR
(if you have a bike with more gears – choose one)
COME AS CHARACTER
(no costume – no participation)
BRING FOOD AND DRINKS
IT’S FOR FRIENDS – NOT FOR EVERYBODY
NO DISCUSSION ABOUT THE RULES

Please subscribe for the race till Friday 7th with your real & character name under smirk@smirkmasks.com or rocco@berlin.de! No subscribtion needed, if you just wanna watch, enjoy the bbq and have fun with some bike freaks.

See you there for some freakin’ fun!

Konnichiwa! I’m writing these words in the middle of Shibuya, Tokyo – one of the craziest places on earth. And that’s the reason why I can’t write too much right now. I still have to see, hear, breath and experience what’s happening around me. Constantly. It’s massive! Hard to describe. Going to Tokyo was my biggest dream in life. And last year, a friend called me and asked, if I’m interested to help making a science fiction movie in this city. I was speechless. Then, the tragic Fukushima incident stopped all plans for one year. But here I am, in the middle of Shibuya, Tokyo – producing an impassioned indie film with a bunch of damn cool people. And believe me, I would love to continue writing for hours now. About the city, about our film called FONOTUNE, about me already doing mime performances here, about speed, differences, food, customs, prog-rock, about meeting old friends & about new ones. But there simply is no time right now. Time is running twice as fast over here. So, I’m sure I will come back with some adventurous stories. Until then, just follow me on Facebook and enjoy these pics I took. Arigato!

… I’m just still occupied fighting evil unicorns. I’LL BE BACK SOON (after saving mankind) !!

Mark Jenkins is an American artist based in Washington, DC. Since 2003, he has been creating lifelike installations using a unique, cheap and pretty ingenious technique to assemble realistic clones of himself that he then sets up in different places in all over the world, often in a very provocative, sometimes even disturbing way. All he needs is some plastic wrap and some box sealing tape. There is also a special website that’s showing you how it’s done. The result is nothing short of brilliant. Just scroll down and have a look at some of his best works. And after arriving at the bottom of this post, after sharing, liking and leaving a comment, make sure to head over to Mark’s homepage to see many more of his fantastic installations. He even set up a fake living statue at THE European street-walkers’ patch for acts like these – Las Ramblas in Barcelona – and he obviously made quite some money (click the title image for a video). Now, enjoy the pictures. And to all my real living statue friends out there: Think about it.

Just click the last image for another short video on people’s reactions. What would you do seeing a guy with his head stuck in a wall? Thanks for reading. Stay in touch.

Étienne Decroux (1898-1991) – one of the most important people in the history of contemporary theater, “father” of the modern mime/pantomime and teacher of famous mime artists like Jean-Louis Barrault and Marcel Marceau – spent nearly all his life creating and developing a subgroup of physical theater that he called mime corporel dramatique; the dramatic corporeal mime. With this article, I don’t want to explain that art form in detail (Google can help you here), I rather want to give you my personal insights on it, what I think is interesting or important.

I came in touch with corporeal mime during my time at Die Etage, a theater school in Berlin. The lessons with the fantastic teacher Oliver Pollak left a deep impression. I totally fell in love. It was like holding the manual to your body in your hands. Practicing corporeal mime was enlightening and extremely energizing. Watching it was breathtakingly beautiful. To me, corporeal mime should be the basic training for EVERY performing artist. For example, in order to express sadness an actor tends to use his voice and face. With corporeal mime all you need is a little shift within your body to attain the same (often much stronger) effect. It’s really stunning.

While classical mime is a universal and clear language for recreating the outer world with its objects and characters, corporeal mime is – mark these words – the language of your soul. As a mime artist you can give your audience a non-existent flower, mastering both languages you can give the flower in a much more interesting and beautiful way while revealing your inner feelings within that simple move. With corporeal mime the smallest actions can become absolutely mesmerizing. Decroux even went as far as to cover the face of the actor and thus created the statuaire mobile – a moving (in multiple senses) statue inspired by the sculptural works of Rodin.

Corporeal mime is a language with a clear grammar; easy to learn, hard to master. You can compare it to chess – a few rules, endless possibilities. Its form is complemented by rhythm (pause, hesitation, resistance and surprise), shift of balance and weight and – most important – presence; another fact of corporeal mime that I really love. It teaches you to completely BE on stage, to conquer the attention, every last drop of it, to be 100% aware of yourself. From there, every tiny action has the power to move a mountain, to cut steel like a laser. There is a huge difference between being on stage and being on stage thanks to Étienne Decroux. And the audience will recognize it immediately.

To slowly come to an end: I love corporeal mime. And if you are slightly interested in any kind of physical theater, dance or theater in general, I suggest you to take at least one course in your life. There are also schools out there (Google is helping again) focussing solely on corporeal mime. And if you are living in Berlin right now and have some basic experiences in physical theater, note this: Together with Oliver Pollak (I have to repeat myself: a fantastic teacher) and my mime colleague Stefan Wabner I have been organizing a regular corporeal mime class at the mime centrum every Tuesday at 8 PM. For more information just drop me a line. It’s great to practice in a group keeping Decroux’s brainchild alive and even developing it further.

~ left video: a typical corporeal mime class | right video: Katja Tannert an me in a corporeal mime performance ~

To slowly come to an end, part two: I am working on my very own corporeal mime act right now and I’m already very excited to present a personal take on this wonderful art form. Watch out for SEELE, coming in 2012. In the meantime: If you like this article, don’t hesitate to share it, to leave a comment, to go to the theater more often (movie theaters don’t count) and to hug the next mime artist you meet. It could be me giving you an invisible flower. Thanks for reading.

PS: As with all instruments, playing it doesn’t mean the music sounds good right away. While searching for videos to embed here, I realized that there are a lot of corporeal mime performances I absolutely don’t like, mostly because I find them to be too abstract, too self-centered, completely ignoring the audience and the rules of a good dramatic composition. One reason more to give it a try myself and prove the opposite. So, stay tuned.

When creating my promotional material, I like to try out new things like the recently produced customizable sticker. People’s reactions on stuff they haven’t seen before is remarkable and they will remember you and your work a lot better, if you can impress with original ideas. The pic above is showing the design of one of my two latest marketing items: the metroccolis Friend Card. I want to use it as a business card. Everything is on there: a picture of my act, the web address (nowadays, people will ALWAYS check your website first before calling you or sending you an email) and some info text. What makes this card special is a) that it’s made out of plastic – like a credit card – so you really won’t throw it away that easily. And b) it get’s quite some personality in speaking directly to the owner who is becoming a member of a nonexistent club. Right now, it’s in production and I can’t wait to receive and hand out the real thing.

During walkabout performances, it’s really easy to spread flyers since we are in direct touch with the spectators. And until now, we always handed out general flyers or postcards we still got in stock. But some days ago, I fell in love with the idea to give our audiences something special, a tiny card that says THANK YOU, since we are seriously thankful for every person that is enjoying our work. Et voilà, the flyer you see above was born. As a special reward for curious people, a QR Code on the back leads to a secret website called Hidden Place where I want to put periodically changing goodies for download like wallpapers, photos, vouchers for shirts etc. And in addition, this card is also a sticker. Again, I can’t wait to give this thingy away while doing the robot bow of respect.

Today and thanks to the world wide wonderland, it’s pretty cheap and easy to create your own personal advertisement. So let your imagination run wild and surprise the people around you. Worst case: they will remember. Likely case: they will remember with a smile. Nothing to lose here. Go-Go-Gadgetvertisement!

Now, forget what I wrote above. Because a little while ago, David struck again and created my new favorite animated short. THE EXTERNAL WORLD is just another masterpiece packed with brilliant, crazy and hilarious ideas. Pure madness, pure genius. And I love it as much as its predecessor and find myself watching it over and over again. It’s that brilliant. But see for yourselves. Hit play for 17 minutes that will overwhelm you:

I can’t wait to see what’s coming next out of David’s twisted brain. He absolutely shows that there is still a vast unknown terrain to explore around the well-trodden paths we love to run along every day. And if you have a favorite piece of animation, please let me and my readers know in the comments. Or an invisible mime hand will slap the back of your head.

I just finished the novel Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami. After reading the last sentence, I closed the book (a real one) and sat there – absolutely speechless. I love these moments; sometimes seconds, sometimes minutes or even hours. Brilliant artistic work can make that happen. And all my life, I’m searching for these moments. It’s hard to describe, but extremely wonderful to experience. It’s kind of the first raw and intuitive reaction of your inner self after a new terrific exploration. Cheap entertainment is easy, getting truly touched needs something special. That’s the difference of art and great art for me. Be it a song, a photograph, a movie, a theater performance – if it makes me speechless, it’s a winner and won’t leave my memory ever again. The aproach can be completely different. Sometimes it’s the emotion overwhelming you, sometimes it’s messing with your brain showing you ideas you’ve never thought of. I think, it’s about going further, about art being brave, not in a sense of being abstract just for the strangeness sake (that often fails anyway), rather than unfolding a deep connection of artist and his/her work. If somebody puts all his/her unique skills, ripe thoughts, deep feelings and personal dedication into a project, you are able to experience it. And in the best case, it leaves you in awe breathing the enchantment that just struck you. Again, I love these moments, it’s like a drug that makes you try to constantly find better songs, better movies, better books. And the good news, they are out there waiting for you to get discovered.

Of course, it’s always a matter of taste. And the stuff I love could be something you totally hate. But I also believe that some of these masterpieces out there reach beyond the borders of taste and have got the power to inspire everyone equally.

For me as a performing artist this topic is even a double sided win-win medal. Directly after a show, there is sometimes a short silent gap between the end of my performance and the applause. For a tiny moment, the audience is spreechless. Emotion is continuing to have an effect, coming back to reality takes a little while. This moment is pure magic and means as much to me as the cheers afterwards, which then – in reverse – make me speechless. Or to loosely quote The Lion King: It’s the circle of love. And believe me, that’s quite some motivation to create even more beautiful works.

Since good stuff needs to be shared, please tell me your favorite artistic creations? What made you speechless, touched you deeply, stole your breath and fucked your brain? Here is an example that gets me every single time I listen to it: James Blake’s The Wilhelm Scream (brilliant name for all in the know). Quite reduced, yet extremely personal, extremely sad & extremely beautiful. Enjoy.

After reading this post, watching the video and leaving a comment (which wouldn’t make me speechless but very happy), please get yourself a copy of Murakami’s book I mentioned at the beginning. Taste aside, it’s incredible. Trust me.