Lines Fiction: Performance Art has continually redefined itself since its emergence in the 1960s. What, in your view, characterizes a performance?

Katja Pudor: In my opinion, an artistic process becomes a performance through the immediate presence of the artist and the presence of an audience.

Stella Geppert: For me, it’s about bringing awareness to a specific moment. In my performances, spaces of porosity, fragility, immersion, and surrender to overcome the ego are often created – through organic transmissions like rhythmic breathing, the plasticity of smell, yawning, laughing, and crying.

Nicole Wendel: Performance is always a living thing, and arises within a specific field of view, based on a score I’ve previously developed, and to which I dedicate myself.

Lines Fiction: So, does a performance require a present audience?

Nicole Wendel: Not necessarily. However, a performance always establishes a connection to seeing or perceiving. Where do I observe myself in my actions, where am I a witness and simultaneously a performer?

Katja Pudor: In my view, a performative work is conceptually designed for the audience to passively or actively participate in.

Nicole Wendel: The setting is the foundation of every performance, and it can be executed without an audience. Both the process and the result are still performative.

Stella Geppert: I believe that without reception, there is no transmission. The body is always present. I am a guest, and they are guests, and together, as guests, we share the space.

Lines Fiction: Let’s say there’s no audience present; what distinguishes a performance from another drawing process?

Nicole Wendel: I would primarily see the type of concentration as a significant difference here. When I draw in front of an audience and with the audience, every intermediate step and emotion becomes part of the performance, and even the movement of a sheet of paper while turning it gains specific attention.

Stella Geppert: Without an audience, the drawing becomes a kind of “archaeologist of presence,” where energetic states of the body and spatial connections with the material and support material are negotiated. Gestures and touches become visible as traces through the imprinting process.

Katja Pudor: If there is no audience, a film recording can be made, and the performance then happens either for documentation or as an artistic work in the medium of film.

Lines Fiction: So, what is essential in your performance with drawing?

Katja Pudor: The performance format allows me to reveal the visual processes in their temporal and spatial dimensions in a very direct way. I work with a setup that allows me to continuously open up the drawing and keep the compositional approach flexible.
In 2020/21, during the lockdown, I translated the piano sonatas of Ludwig van Beethoven into drawings. Since then, music/sound has been a fixed part of my performative work.

Stella Geppert: I work with body prostheses and body constructions and explore how we can communicate without using language. My drawings are tactile touches that arise unconsciously to casually, for example, while talking, reading, sleeping, and they become repositories of energetic states.

Nicole Wendel: For me, holistic sensory perception is essential. So, I listen not only with my ears but with my entire body, mind, and soul. Listening creates content and form. Sound plays out in the space of my body and in the shared space we inhabit. Therefore, I consider both my performative and drawing works as real-time compositions.

Lines Fiction: What is intriguing for you in the act of drawing in front of an audience?

Katja Pudor: The immediacy of a performance is what’s fascinating and also exciting. Every one of my actions is visible to the audience, and my concentration is immense.

Stella Geppert: What’s fascinating for me is when it’s not a recognizable drawing process in the traditional sense, but the performances deal with deeply human needs for communication, both verbal and non-verbal, and trigger healing to empathetic moments.

Nicole Wendel: It’s primarily about creating from the present perception. Generating traces, which I also understand as drawing or rubbing graphite in this case, is the most direct connection to what just happened. They become readable references for me, narrating vivacity, connection, communication, and life itself.

Lines Fiction: What does your approach to time and the drawing process mean to you?

Nicole Wendel: Time and duration are crucial aspects of composition or dramaturgy. My performances typically last 40 minutes. This has proven effective for the performer’s concentration and the audience.

Katja Pudor: I’ve tried to find formats that don’t concern themselves with performance – compatible time frames and have conceived multipart performances.

Stella Geppert: The duration in my performances is primarily determined by the processes inherent in the body. Breathing plays a significant role here, but also the sense of balance, the temporality of resonance in the body and space, as well as the biological rhythms of the organs. In my performances, a slowly evolving communicative spatiality, built through empathy, is very important to me. Thus, my performances can last from 18 minutes to 6 hours.

Nicole Wendel: I’m also thinking a lot about longer-lasting performances because the emergence of a specific momentum follows a continuum, which, in turn, requires time. Sometimes it’s beneficial to follow this continuum for a longer time to delve deeper or to use waiting as the basis for the emergence of new and unknown elements.

Lines Fiction: How did you come to your respective approaches?

Nicole Wendel: Gestural and spontaneous drawing has always been a practice for me, something I learned even before my art studies through my then Bauhaus-inspired drawing teacher. He combined somatic exercises like breath and listening exercises with drawing. This approach allowed for an intense connection between my body and the act of drawing.

Stella Geppert: I came to sculpture through dance, which I experienced in a fundamental way in Paris through Saburo Teshigawara. As a performative sculptor, I develop specific methods as with any form development. How a drawing form emerges is part of the conceptual work. With each performance, I develop a specific sculptural and dance method.

Katja Pudor: Performance emerged for me alongside installation. I was repeatedly invited to exhibit installations, which were always based on my archive. However, there was often no budget to transport the paper works. So, I adapted my work to the conditions. I had paper delivered to the exhibition space and developed the work on-site.

Nicole Wendel: My current performances are heavily influenced by years of experience in improvisational dance in contemporary dance. Today, every form of drawing arises from an immediately perceived impulse and the awareness of movement duration.

Lines Fiction: Ultimately, what is the key result of your artistic process – the live performance, the drawing, or the film recording?

Katja Pudor: The performance and the drawing are equal formats of work. The drawing is the starting point for a performative approach. But in the past year, my working practice has changed: the drawing created over several days or weeks is finally installed in the exhibition space. Then, it becomes an independent drawing. Only the prior performance is referred to in the work description.

Nicole Wendel: I have drawings and film recordings that originated from performances. These drawings can be experienced and read as standalone works even without the performance. It’s important to me that they are positioned as an installation at a new location in a further process. This can also be understood as another step in the composition, extending beyond the original performance and adapting to new circumstances.

Stella Geppert: For me, it depends entirely on the artistic concept of the performance.

Lines Fiction: So, is the resulting drawing a standalone outcome, or is it only to be seen in connection with the experienced performance or the film recording?

Nicole Wendel: As mentioned earlier, the drawing has an independent artistic character for me. The quality of a drawing often arises from capturing, recording, and transcribing a movement. A drawing that conveys this is alive to me. And this certainly includes the drawings created during a performance.

Stella Geppert: The drawing is independent and simultaneously a documentation of the action itself.

Katja Pudor: The resulting drawing, or parts of it, can become independent works after the performance. The drawing remains on the floor or as an object in the exhibition space, or it is directly installed on the wall in the exhibition space after the performance. I use the film recording of my performance to document my work.

Stella Geppert: The video works I create are mostly designed as independent installations.

Lines Fiction: You work with partners or dancers. How much do they contribute to the creation and success of the performance, and what role do they play in the outcome?

Stella Geppert: In 2020, I had the great fortune to work in a collective of choreographers, and now dancers find me, or more beautifully put, “we find each other.” I share my ideas, the existential need for expression that I always think of collectively. The body constructions I conceive are the origin and provide the framework for movement potential. My task is to adapt specific actions and movements to the dynamics of the collective. If I’ve prepared the choreographic work well, it comes into being by itself.

Katja Pudor: I plan some projects as solo performances, while others involve dancers, musicians, composers, or even performers from the visual arts. When I find an artist interesting for a collaborative project, I reach out to them, and then we have a conversation. That opens up a workspace where something can develop collectively. We are equal in the process of the performance.
However, in my collaborative practice, alongside many enriching experiences, there have also been disturbing incidents that made me think of failure and led me to only conceive solo performances from then on.

Nicole Wendel: In all the performances I’ve done, which were mostly not solo, the work wouldn’t exist without the partner. Collaboration is essential in shaping the work. The connection, the relationship with each other, significantly shapes the performances and their atmosphere. I have had a very trusting relationship with all my collaborators, and this trust is palpable in the performance.