BONES by Fabrice Mazliah

BONES is a transdisciplinary and immersive performance project by Claude Jansen and Fabrice Mazliah, based on several research phases over the past years.

Bones weaves together precolonial spiritual practices, and speculative technologies. Rooted in years of inquiry into a looted Namibian drum and the 8,000-year-old remains of a female healer in Germany, Claude Jansens work challenges Eurocentric narratives and reclaims the spiritual and political agency of ancestral objects and bodies. 
It explores the idea of "media" as both spiritual and digital, seeking to re-enchant the ways we connect with visible and invisible forces be they ancestors, totems, bones, or data. 
An augmented reality layer unfolds several liminal spaces of entangled agencies and fluid identities, inviting audiences to experience and imagine a decolonized, non-binary, and relational world—one where transformation, tenderness and complexity replaces separation and hierarchy. 
The sound composition developed by Fabrice Mazliah during his residency as part of the INHABIT artist-in-residence program at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics and further developed with Johannes Helberger for this performance engages and synchronizes the heartbeats of the performers with the rhythms of drums, bones, birds, and trees. During the residency dedicated to research and collaboration between the artistic and scientific fields, Fabrice focused on sonifying internal rhythms such as the heartbeat, exploring how these physiological rhythms influence self-perception and modulate movement. 
The result is a sonic landscape where the ancient and the modern, the spiritual and the technical, converge. 

Friday, November 14 | 6:30 PM
Saturday, November 15 | 7:30 PM, Meet the Artist afterwards
Sunday, November 16 | 6:00 PM

Ticket link: https://www.tanzfestivalrheinmain.de/en/calendar/2025/bones/

Credits

Concept and Artistic Direction: Claude Jansen & Fabrice Mazliah

Co-Creation: Tuli Mekondjo (Performance), I-Fang Lin (Performance)

AR/VR Concept and Programming: Norbert Pape

Sound Concept and Performance: Johannes Helberger

Production: Leonie Niss

Curator, INHABIT Artist-in-Residence: Eike Walkenhorst

Curator, Dancing Instruments: Claude Jansen