Annalena Fröhlich «ENjoy deconstruction Baby!»
Fröhlich's artistic practice moves across a broad spectrum of media, ranging from sound and sound design, performance, choreography, a virtual playground to video art. a multi media Gesamtkunstwerk between everyday life and glitch.
Inspired and driven by contemporary discourses, Fröhlich aims to radically deconstruct certainties, binaries, beats and images. In particular, the image of the female body in the age of social media, censorship, and pornification and its deconstruction drives much of her late work. Fröhlich is a self-taught artist and her style is unorthodox, eclectic and radical.
By appropriating, remixing, juxtaposing and altering existing images and videos such as reels, gifs and YouTube videos, as well as pre-existing sounds and beats, Fröhlich creates a her own new sound visual political reality and statement. Through daily confrontation with the injustices of today, her work has become increasingly political and uncompromising. Her work questions everything, and even her working technique is a subversive act that challenges and questions authorship and ownership.
Her long term collaboration as video artist and sound designer with the theatre director Claudia Bussard enable
Fröhlich to work in big theatre institutions in the German speaking countries in Europe. Next to that she created an alter Ego, JAMES with who she experiments on an avantguard live Set, blurring boundaries between DJ set, concert and audiovisual performance. JAMES combines all of her artistic practises into a highly energetic political performative statement about female anger, image and deconstruction of it all together. JAMES is part of the collective SHAKTI STREAM founded by the transmedia artist DANCE DIVINE, which works to create and maintain existential spaces for non-normativity and querness. Especially in the nightlife and clubs.
With Fhunyue Gao she initiated ROBIN ROBIN, a virtual and analog platform on which they experiment excessively and unconventionally with sound, scenic installations, choreography, themes and forms. www.robinrobin.ch Together they are on an intense research about how to be a not only a user of the contemporary medias but becoming a creater again.
Fröhlich was the cofounder and longtime co-artistic director of the dance theater collective deRothfils with whom she toured internationally and realized dance performances and films. Her film directorial debut they keep disappearing was invited to the Cinedans Dance on Screen Festival Amsterdam.
Her music clip Transatlantic Flight for Odd Beholder is nominated for the BMVMA 2022 - Bewegungsmelder Video Music Award.
Collaborations: DANCE DIVINE, Co-director of the artistic plattform robinrobin.ch with Fhunyue Gao Peeping Tom, Elisabeth Weiss, Andy Besuch, arp: (Julia Reist),Marie Gyselbrecht, Mohamed Toukabri, Jorge Guevara, Gao/Kacirek, Nina Stadler deRothfils, Romy Springsguth, Odd Beholder, Robin Adams,Yara Bou Nassar, Paed Conca, Moritz Alfons, Giulin Stäubli, Matthias Günter, Yannick Mosimann, Anne Welenc, Annina Machaz.
Shown at: Dachstock Reitschule, Sägezahn Festival Vienna, Münchener Volkstheater, Volkstheater Wien; Deutsches Theater Berlin, Ballhaus Ost,Decoratelier, Cafe Centraal, Kiosk Radio Bruxelles; staatstheater darmstadt, sägazahn wien, schauspielhaus graz, Dampfzentrale, Bern;Nederlands Dance Theatre NDT; Theater Basel; Roxy Theater Basel; Ballhaus Ost, Berlin; Station, Beirut; Espace Libre, Biel, Cinedans Dance onScreen Amsterdam.
press voices about Annalena Fröhlich
"A truly remarkable detail of the production lies in Annalena Fröhlich's video work.
... The constellative combination of theatre, words, music and filmic montage reveal an antagonism at the heart of both pieces: the scenic Alpine idyll, waved through by merry skiers, oscillates ever more strongly between a mythically overformed world of life and an economically controlled systemic world.
In terms of film poetry and montage, this effect is created by superimposing planetary-looking objects.
The perspective of time is successfully undermined and a cosmic space is created that connects past and future.
Thus the evening, especially through its intermedial superimposition of drama and film, leaves us with an image of perpetually repeating catastrophe."
in den Alpen / apres les alpes Volkstheater wien / Neue Wiener Theaterkritik feb. 2023
«Ein wirklich bemerkenswertes Detail der Inszenierung liegt in Annalena Fröhlichs Videoarbeit. ... Die konstellative Verbindung von Theater, Wort, Musik und filmischer Montage machen im Herzen beider Stücke einen Antagonismus offenbar: Das landschaftlich Alpenidyll, durchwedelt von vergnügten Skifahrer*innen,
oszilliert immer stärker zwischen mythisch überformter Lebens- und ökonomisch gesteuerter Systemwelt.
Filmpoetisch und montagetechnisch wird dieser Effekt durch die Überlagerung von planetarisch
anmutenden Objekten erzeugt. Die Zeitperspektive wird gelingend ausgehebelt und ein kosmischer Raum geschaffen, der Vergangenheit und Zukunft miteinander verbindet.
So hinterlässt der Abend, besonders durch seine intermediale Überlagerung von Schauspiel und Film, ein Bild der sich immerwährend wiederholenden Katastrophe. ...» zu in den Alpen / apres les alpes Volkstheater wien / Neue Wiener Theaterkritik feb. 2023
Transatlantic flight video clip odd beholder
«In the video, which was directed by Annalena Fröhlich, who also happens to play the main character, we see a chain-smoking stewardess dancing something of a jagged, spasmodic flamenco. It’s a powerful and hypnotic performance that simultaneously evokes famed directors Almodovar and Lynch.» the big takeover©
«In der Lücke liegt die Möglichkeit zur existenz.»
Preview to SONDER at der Bund
«Alles brüllt nach Spass. Und dahinter verblöden wir.»
Preview to PARK at der Bund
Annalena Fröhlich first studied piano and voice at Jazz school in Lucerne. She left jazz school after just one year to pursue an autodidactic education. In the following years, she developed her multidisciplinary artistic practice and explored it further in residencies in Brussels, Beirut, New York and Buenos Aires. In 2014, she obtained a Master in Theater with a specialisation in Scenic Arts Practice at HKB, Berne. Together with dancer and choreographer Nina Stadler, she is the co-founder and artistic director of the ensemble deRothfils, with whom she has been celebrating national and international success since 2010. Since the last production «PARK» Annalena Fröhlich took over the sole direction of deRothfils.
Annalena Fröhlich received a scholarship for composition by the Société Suisse des Auteurs SSA 2013 and an atelier scholarship in New York by the canton of Berne 2013.
Residencies and collaborations in Brussel BE, Beirut LE, Moscow RU, New York USA, Germany and Buenos Aires AR. 2013-2015 Annalena Fröhlich was Associated Artist of Dampfzentrale Bern with deRothfils.