A zine and exercise book about the applied art of questioning, by the writer Cordula Daus and the choreographer Charlotta Ruth.
This is the age of the answering machine. Of infinite input fields, of prompts and problem solving, of algorithmic feeding frenzy. But wait. Who/what is behind this text? Have you been reading these lines for real? Are you here?
Since 2019 the writer Cordula Daus and the choreographer Charlotta Ruth have explored and trained what might be the last genuinely human quality: how to question, how to make oneself response-able. Together they have created environments, performances, writing exercises and live situations where ideas become material to be touched and processed between people.
Questionology – Are you here? is a zine and exercise book for all those who'd like to know more about the applied art of questioning. Unfolding across three conversations, the zine recombines tricks and moves from midwives, Socratic maieutics, witchcraft and malfunctioning technology. In the opening text an anonymous author-mechanism lures the reader into a series of questions trying to grasp what reading is. Secondly, Daus & Ruth meet the sound artist and editor Brandon LaBelle to reactivate elements of the participatory work Questionology – Program for Applied Questioning (co-produced by brut Vienna, 2021). Equipped with new vegetable names and a towel, the three try out different selves and stances including one of the most complicated ones: listening. Thirdly, the artist Erik Valentin Berg joins the conversation to examine the field of artistic research. Together they defend each others' titles, fight over 'useless art' and get caught in a failed thesis scandal. Hope to meet you there!
Cordula Daus works across performance, literary fiction and a general study of feelings. Her practice investigates how meaning is made; how to disturb default systems of languaging and thinking the world. Daus' artist books and lecture performances have been presented locally and internationally e.g. at Conceptual Poetics Day/Akademie der Künste Berlin, Research Pavilion #3 Venice, Wiener Festwochen, among others. She is leading the artistic research Outer Woman at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.
Charlotta Ruth plays with time and perception inside choreography and ludic systems. In her practice she investigates asynchronous communication, participatory sense-making and liveness in online to offline situations. Her work has been co-produced by, for instance, MDT and Dansens Hus in Stockholm, Tanzquartier, brut, WUK, Brunnenpassage and City Games Vienna. Since 2017 Ruth is associated with the University of Applied Arts Vienna, where she concluded her PhD in Arts (2022), co-leads the research project Archives in Practice and works as a Senior Artist at the Angewandte Performance Laboratory.