Eitan Ritz

Statement

Eitan Ritz is an artist, dancer and composer interested in bodies as sites of congealment and memory. Repetition of the circadian foments a certain movement, sound and feeling through rhythms. Bird songs resonate while you walk through the streets, the voice of a loved one is your holding pattern.

Ritz attempts to understand these process’ through an investigation into granular moments in movement and sound from his every day. This is a heuristic to rearticulate and recast his personal experience and investigate feelings and beliefs that surround us as we live and play in the world. After spending a year studying the dance compositions of Noa Eshkol through the Eshkol-Wachmann Movement Notation at her home in Israel, Ritz gained an introspection into the experience of the moving body. This attenuated his observations to the micro gestures and sounds that are layered within the body, which he draws on throughout his work.

In addition, having recently completed his Master’s in Applied Linguistics has allowed him to recontextualise dance and sound through the lens of language. This has opened up exploration into the signifiers laden within the body and voice as we communicate and present ourselves.

GlogauAIR Project

This project will be a continuing deambulation of Berlin through the specific site of GlogauAir as I inhabit and move through the city. This will allow me to recast the cities histories through my own personal experience, as I bring my body memory through the sites of exploration. The GlogauAir building is connected to the many layers of Berlin and people who live there. This will allow me to play with the multiple undulating textures and sounds of its surroundings.

The building’s past from its modernist inception in the late 19th century, the effect of the world wars, and its location in Kreuzberg with its history of repurposing the abandoned are all a particular part of the history of Berlin which have peculiars about how people relate to space. This residency will aim to draw on and rearticulate these aspects to emphasis the lives and memories that have emerged from this history.

Starting from a process of gathering, I will record the surroundings through sounds, videos and writing to unveil the activity and spaces of the city. This will allow for tracing and rearticulation of these experiences through developing specific dances and movements as I constantly emerge throughout my stay, always echoing the place around. I will then recycle these sound collages, movements and other detritus to build bodies of work, which will emphasis moments that are unique to my experience from the residency. Through the different mediums of video, sound and movement – the works will uncover granular moments drawing on the resonance and dissonance of myself and the residency itself.

I will therefore be aiming to explore ‘spaces of translation’, between people and the places I explore, between movement and sound, language and the body, all to find startling ways to uncover an unconscious from Berlin. What motivates me is the unanticipated discoveries, slippages, and disharmonies when these bodies, histories and mediums are brought together; something that evokes an experience of urban life in Berlin today.

CV Summary

EDUCATION

• Master of Applied Linguistics, University of Melbourne, 2018.
• Bachelor of Fine Arts (Visual Arts), Victorian College of the Arts, 2014.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS, WORKSHOPS, RESIDENCIES

• 2 Small Rooms, George Paton Gallery, Melbourne, 2018.
• Small Rooms, Testing Grounds, Melbourne, 2018.
• (t)here, c3 Gallery, Melbourne, 2017.
• Title is Important, curated by Laura Couttie, Blindside, Melbourne, 2016.
• Rooms with a View, The Substation, Melbourne, 2016.
• Residency at the Noa Eshkol Foundation for Movement Notation, Holon, Israel, 2016.
• O, Melbourne City Square, Melbourne, 2015.
• Animal Movement Studies, Workshop with Simone Forti, Centre National de la Danse, Paris, France, 2015.
• Process Becomes Movement, Seventh Gallery, Melbourne, 2014.
• Graduate Exhibition, Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, 2014.
• Trisha Brown’s Early Works, Workshop, VCA Dance Studio, Melbourne, 2014.
• A Line Made by Leaving, Workshop with Aleks Danko, E.B Myer Studio, Melbourne, 2014.
• Rising: the Victoria Harbour Young Artists Initiative, Public Art Commission, Docklands, Melbourne, 2013.
• Proud, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Melbourne, 2013.

Gallery