About the Artist

Lindy Annis was born in Newton, Massachusettes U.S.A. in 1960. She earned a Bachelors of Art from New York University after studying acting and drama at its Experimental Theater Wing. She is an artist who has worked in the forms of performance and theater, dance and visual art. She has written plays for young people, has acted as dramaturge for dance and performance productions as well as giving seminars to students at various universities.

Performance
Beginning in 1985 with her arrival in West Berlin, she created a string of diverse Short-Performances; choreographic and textural works based on minimal means – space, language and finance. These performances were seen during evenings arranged in a variety of venues of the walled city. Bars, galleries, apartments, theaters, ruins. The language was a laconic and simple English, reduced to essentials and understandable to the foreign audience. Her works were mostly solos, but in later years her collaboration with sound composers grew – Bob Rutman, Hans Peter Kuhn, Frieder Butzmann, Nicholas Bussmann as well as an extended dramaturgical exchange  with Antonia Baehr.
Longer works for theater spaces followed, including literary and biographical subjects.

In 1990 – 1992 Annis created her Paternoster Trilogy. These three large, site-specific performance works used a specific vintage form of elevator which she found in the city. The chains of circulating open cabins transported Annis and her guest performers, composers, dancers, etc. past the viewers, who were seated on the consecutive floors of the three buildings – each year a new location. Artists and acteurs were invited to participate in these works, the third expanded to a crew of over a hundred.

The Body Archive is a long-term project that Annis began in 2001. The terror attacks on New York’s World Trade Center coincided with her time as Artist-in Residence at the Podewil in Berlin. Her extended series is an investigation of emotional body gestures – their iconology in the western culture and the emotional memories the body holds as an archive for both contemporary and archaic emotion. This series has continued through performative chapters in its investigations throughout the ensuing years of invasions and attacks, fears, threats and chains of revenge and rage.

Visual Art
The Mirror of Simple Souls (2017) is both the youngest chapter of the Body Archive and her first sculptural installation. Hundreds of miniature human figures made of paper and thread come together in a large-format ensemble. This large hanging work cuts across the room in a floor-to-ceiling wall of gently moving forms. Both graceful and exposed, their individual rotation is set in motion by a light breath of wind or the passing-by of a gallery visitor.

Since then, Lindy Annis has expanded her practice to include other sculptural formats, generating a palate of objects concerning  both human and natural figures as expressive bodies. The works are in paper, porcelain and bronze or as drawings, photographs, films and installations.

Practice
Lindy Annis uses the practice of investigation and research as an artistic resource. Influenced by art historians such as Aby Warburg, she collects images of the body and pose -from the archaic through antique, in art and current media as well as life on the street. She uses her own body as both observation subject and hypothesis guinea pig.

–

2022
Pages in Movement
Solo exhibition
Kunstraum Fuge,
Janusz-Korczak-Stadtbibliothek, Berlin
Artivism, The Dream
group exhibition
Centro Espositivo San Vidal, Venice, Italy
& Fortezza Orsini, Sorano, Italy

2021
Das Nibelungen Projekt
dance performance
Residenz-München

2020
Altered States
group exhibition
Milchhof Pavillon, Berlin
Natur – Mensch
group exhibition
Sankt Andreasberg /Harz

2019
Parade (s)
installation
Pavillon at Milchhof, Berlin
The Swarm (s)
exhibition of paper sculptures & pictures
Bernet Bertram Galerie, Berlin
Art Prize:
„Kunst, Psyche und Gesundheit“ / „Psyche, Art and Health“
of the Forschungs- und Behandlungszentrum fur psychische Gesundheit (FBZ)
Bochum Germany and the Foundation Kleine Kunstdialog West/Ost
Simple Souls (s)
Kunstverein, Erlangen
Elefanten in Erlangen
Tableau Vivant Dance-Performance
Markgrafentheater, Erlangen

2018
Paper Works (s)
Künstlerhaus Rhenania, Cologne, Germany
Paper Positions Art Fair
Berlin, with the Bernet-Bertram Galerie, Berlin
Paternoster 2
Video, Maria + Vadim Zakharov, Berlin

2017
Simple Souls (s)
a solo art exhibition of paper sculptures
Bernet Bertram Galerie, Berlin
Frankenstein
Labor Sonor in KuLe, Berlin

2016
Soundsoviel Zeugs
von Lindy Annis & Frieder Butzmann
Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin
Im Begleitprogramm zur Ausstellung Dieter Roth und die Musik
The Fall of the House of Usher
with Lucile Desamory & Nicholas Bussmann
Ausland Performance Space, Berlin

2015
Tableau IV  (Persephone)
Milchhof Artists Studios

2014
Tableau III – ROOM 30
Milchhof Artists Studios

Tableau II – AQUAFEMME ALMIGHTY
Galerie M, Marzahn

“Routines” – Choreography for a Performance by Barbara Steppe
Neuer Berliner Kunstverein

2013
POSE (work in progress)
Beurschouwburg, Brussels

2012
The Pathos Collection – Six Dialogues on Image – Movement – Emotion
with Bettina Brandl-Risi, Berlin

Tableau I: Diana at Casserta
Akkumulator Nacht „Fem“, Schaubühne Lindenfels, Leipzig

2011
The Body Archive Video Installation
Milchhof, Berlin

The Body Archive:

House of Memories with Frieder Butzmann and Antonia Baehr
the feminine figures, the encyclopedia of tragic attitude, part II
with Josephine Evrard
Sophiensaele, Berlin

2010
Walden 22
A short-performance for the finissage of the exhibition „Ultrahocherhitzt“
Milchhof, Berlin

2009
Curator/Mentor
DasArts Masters of Theater program
Amsterdam, Netherlands

Walden (Short-Performance)
after Henry Thoreau, Milchhof Berlin

Curator of “Ultrahocherhitzt”
An exhibition series, Milchhof Berlin (Sept. 2009 – April 2010)

Board member, Milchhof Artist’s Collective, Berlin

2008
Warburgs Memo
Music: Nicholas Bussmann, Draturgy: Antonia Baehr,
Hebbel-am-Ufer, Berlin

Dramaturgy for  „Laugh“
by Antonia Baehr – Les Laboratoire d’Aubervilliers, France

2007
MY ULYSSES
music: Frieder Bussmann, dramaturgy: Antonia Baehr
Sophien Saele, Berlin

Nom D’une Pipe  a duet with Antonia Baehr –
Les Subsistances, Lyon

2006
ARCADIA   (formerly “Birthday”) an interactive video installation
Tanznacht / Akademie der Künste, Berlin

2005
SEX (formerly „Play“) a collaboration with composer Nicholas Bussmann
HAU 2, Berlin

2004
An American Tragedy
HAU 1, Berlin

Lady Hamilton’s Attitudes
HAU 3, Berlin

2003
Big Eden (spoken word) –
Big Eden, Berlin

2002
Lady Hamilton’s Attitudes, stage 1
Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin

SHORTS, 5 Melancholische bis Tragische Stücke – Podewil Berlin:
– Encyclopedia of Tragic Attitudes (with Xavier Le Roy)
– Death of a Salesman
– Lazy Legs
– Auerbachs Keller
– The Cherry Orchard

2000
BLOW UP FAUST 2000: the Jungle, CNN and Tele-Tubbie versions (with Frieder Butzmann, Rudie Ewals, Katrin Schoof) – Podewil Berlin

1998
Frequent Flyer (music: Dr. Motte) – Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
Salomé 7 (with Butzmann, Ewals, Schoof) – Podewil Berlin“
The Cherry Orchard – Theater of the former Russian Headquarters of the GDR

1996
My Life as a Circus – Theater am Halleschen Ufer Berlin
HAMLET.TXT – Stükke Theater Berlin

1995
A Missing Person & Some Objèts Trouvés (with Marie Goyette)
Hebbel Theater Berlin

1994
30 Reasons why I’m not a child anymore – Akademie der Künste, Berlin

1992
Three Sisters – Institute of Contemporary Art Moscow
All About me – English in 6 Steps – Künstlerhaus Wien

The Paternoster Triology

1992
America: Columbus in the Elevator – Schöneberg City Hall, Berlin

1991
Dante in the Elevator – Senat für Bau- und Wohnungswesen Berlin

1990
Alice in the Elevator – The Headquarters of the Socialist Party, East Berlin

Scholarships, etc.

2022
Artistic Grant from The National Performance Netz / Stepping Out
for the Film: “Killing Again”

2021
Artistic Grant: Initial Special Research Grant
Akademie der Künste, Berlin

2019 First Prize: Art Award,
FBZ – Research and Therapy Center, University Bochum

2003
Artist in Residence, Fabrik Potsdam
„The Iconography of Body Gestures“

2003
Award for „experimental work in the theater“ for SHORTS Thespis festival, Kiel

1998
Artist in Residence Podewil, Berlin

1996
Work scholarship, from the City of Berlin, Künstlerinnenprogramm

1993 + 1994
„Bjelka“ Symposien, Petrovski Blvd, Moskau

1992
„Salon“, Work stipend from the City of Berlin for Moscow

Plays for young people

2018
Just Thirteen, a theater play for young people in english (Text)
Platypus theater, Berlin

2017
„FOX“ a theater play for young people in english (Text)
Platypus theater, Berlin

2007
Mosquito Park“  a play for young people
Cornelsen Verlag, Berlin

1996
„On the Run“ with Platypus Theater, Berlin

1994
„Play To Win“ with Platypus Theater, Berlin

1993
„Kisses and Cokes, Teenagers in Trouble“ with Platypus Theater, Berlin published by Cornelsen Publishing House