Fair: Art Berlin, Berlin

Since 2017, Tanja Nis-Hansen and Niclas Riepshoff have worked together under their collaborative formation CONNY. Through an additive and collaborative process, they create short amateurish theater plays within installative setups, consisting of self-made costumes, music and text as well as paintings and sculptural props. These installations host whimsical dialogues of facialized non-human or part-human characters, whose stories unfold in multilayered narratives.

The work on display has earlier accommodated the play ‘Changing Batteries (Part II): A conversation between two eyeballs’, that also embody a remote control and a visitor from the countryside, trying to figure out, why their TV stopped working. So far it has been presented at the nominee-show for a Hamburg art prize, and at Münchner Kammerspiele in 2018.

With the relocation of the work to an artfair, and by choosing to separate the material setup from the performance, the work oscillates between prop and independent artwork, potential activation and a refusal to act.