JENNIFER FOR A DAY (GER) 2023-2024

(previously known as C A L L S)

We are Caroline, Amelie, Lisa, Laura, and Steph, a loose crew of performers, dancers, artists, strippers, musicians, stage and costume designers, media artists, and researchers. We don’t all embody all of these categories, but we all sail through several of them. As individuals we are seasoned practitioners with our own practices but together we form a formidable crew that is as interested in chartering the unknown as we are in keeping the ship clean, i.e. holding space for each other and following the spiral all the way down. The enmeshment and collaboration between us is complex and sticky, and this group is not so much of a fixed collective as a container for chaotic growth. We are interested in alternative narratives as antidotes to neoliberal hegemony, gender as a vehicle against the state, representations of femme anger, decolonising the gaze, and the poetics of the cosmos found in the synecdoche of the human body.

Parcitipating artists

Taken residency at

Who are JENNIFER FOR A DAY?

The artists formerly known as CALLS are Caroline, Amelie, Lisa, Laura, and Steph, a loose crew of performers, dancers, artists, strip-performers, musicians, stage and costume designers, and researchers. We don’t all embody all of these categories, but we all move through several of them.  We are interested in alternative narratives as antidotes to neoliberal hegemony, gender as a vehicle against the state, femme rage, and the poetics of the cosmos found in the synecdoche of the human body. 

CALLS was a placeholder as we found ourselves as a collective, waiting for the calling of our true name. The first residencies were formative in forging our identity, aesthetic and methodics as an amorphous conglomerate body.  As we have and continue to expand our limbs and find new legs, we’ve found it useful to move from shell to empty shell, hollowing our our new weird bodies in service of mechanised utopias and teenage daydreams.  We are…

jennifer for a day 

Photo Credit: Peter R Fiebig

What is your goal with the “Moving Identities” project?

be hot and end the world 

jennifer for a day is spawning new modes of research as well as strategies for collectivised making and holding space to create and learn.  We want to examine how we could make a sustainable working process that allows us to continue our research while still being able to meet our basic needs which include everything from being able to go to therapy, to paying rent. The luxury of the time and space provided isn’t something we’ve always had access to, so we want to take advantage of it in order to go deep into whatever offers itself to us. Our goal is to use the momentum and the joy that we’ve found through our research in order to fully realise this as a production. As the research continues, jennifer for a day is excited about different possibilities for producing and sharing work: we believe that we are making something that could feel as home on a stage as it could as a durational performance in a gallery, and also have performative off-shoots, video aspects, and web performances. But at its core, the work remains consistent as we commit to meeting each other, allowing things to develop from their own impulses, and making collective decisions.  

Photo Credit: Peter R Fiebig

What methods do you use to achieve this goal?

First and foremost, jennifer for a day is finding itself as a collective, being attentive to the needs and desires of each member and trying to navigate how that translates into a group research. In order to do this, we use open improvisations, group readings, material and object research, and writing. We’ve kind of adopted a throw everything in the pot approach in order to see what might be good to cook. In addition, jennifer for a day is trying to be permeable to the outside: theory, workshops, engaging with other artists, film, and opening our process to others for feedback and discussion. We are also hoping to build connections with individuals and institutions who can support the continuous evolution of jennifer for a day as we plan to realise this and future works as full productions that can be shared with many publics.

Photo Credit: Peter R Fiebig

How does your current project relate to your previous works, and what motivates you in this process?

As jennifer for a day, we all bring our current threads of research from our independent projects and try to find ways in which they intersect and diverge. In the first residency, we started by looking at femininity as materialism, and we plan on continuing to use this as a point of departure.  We’re motivated by our mutual respect for each other, a desire to use each member’s creativity and critique as a catalyst, and by many weird, wild and beautiful things that calls to us. Together we have fully realised two major projects: Sailor on Aisle, a stage work for Festspielhaus Hellerau, and Sonderangebot, an adaptation of that work for public and semi-public spaces. But our connections are much more interwoven than that. Caroline, Amelie and Lisa have been working and performing together since 2018, creating dance pieces, performance and media installations. Laura and Caroline met and worked together in 2017 at the American Dance Festival in North Carolina. Amelie and Lisa realised their own immersive performance installation ‘Welcome to Daisyland’ last September at Objekt Klein A Dresden and are roommates who often are commissioned together. Steph and Caroline have danced and worked together in their own work but also for other choreographers and were recently featured in a bad photograph as advertisement for a festival in West Germany without their knowledge or consent. In this process for the first time, we’ve placed ourselves on a flat hierarchy with equal creative agency.  jennifer for a day is positively surprised by how well our ideas and inspirations overlap and challenge on another’s and in general how easy it has been to make work together.  

jennifer for a day

Photo Credit: Peter R Fiebig

Interview with Jennifer for a day at Davvi.

Watch interview here

Video credit: Rino Engdal

<p><span class="gmail-s1"><b><span lang="EN-US">Who are</span></b></span><span class="gmail-s2"><b><span lang="EN-US"> JENNIFER FOR A DAY</span></b></span><span class="gmail-s1"><b><span lang="EN-US">?</span></b></span><span lang="EN-US"></span></p>
<p><span class="gmail-s1"><span lang="EN-US">The artists formerly known as CALLS are Caroline, Amelie, Lisa, Laura, and Steph, a loose crew of performers, dancers, artists, strip-performers, musicians, stage and costume designers, and researchers. We don’t all embody all of these categories, but we all move through several of them.</span></span><span class="gmail-apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US">  </span></span><span class="gmail-s1"><span lang="EN-US">We are interested in alternative narratives as antidotes to neoliberal hegemony, gender as a vehicle against the state, femme rage, and the poetics of the cosmos found in the synecdoche of the human body.</span></span><span class="gmail-apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US"></span></p>
<p><span class="gmail-s1"><span lang="EN-US">CALLS was a placeholder as we found ourselves as a collective, waiting for the calling of our true name.</span></span><span class="gmail-apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></span><span class="gmail-s1"><span lang="EN-US">The first residencies were formative in forging our identity, aesthetic and methodics as an amorphous conglomerate body.</span></span><span class="gmail-apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US">  </span></span><span class="gmail-s1"><span lang="EN-US">As we have and continue to expand our limbs and find new legs, we’ve found it useful to move from shell to empty shell, hollowing our our new weird bodies in service of mechanised utopias and teenage daydreams.</span></span><span class="gmail-apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US">  </span></span><span class="gmail-s1"><span lang="EN-US">We are…</span></span><span lang="EN-US"></span></p>
<p><span class="gmail-s1"><span lang="EN-US"><i>jennifer for a day</i></span></span><span class="gmail-apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></span></p>
<p>Photo Credit: Peter R Fiebig</p>
<p><span class="gmail-s1"><b><span lang="EN-US">What is your goal with the “Moving Identities” project?</span></b></span><span lang="EN-US"></span></p>
<p><span class="gmail-s1"><span lang="EN-US">be hot and end the world</span></span><span class="gmail-apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US"></span></p>
<p><span class="gmail-s1"><i><span lang="EN-US">jennifer for a day</span></i></span><span class="gmail-s1"><span lang="EN-US"> is spawning new modes of research as well as strategies for collectivised making and holding space to create and learn.</span></span><span class="gmail-apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US">  </span></span><span class="gmail-s1"><span lang="EN-US">We want to examine how we could make a sustainable working process that allows us to continue our research while still being able to meet our basic needs which include everything from being able to go to therapy, to paying rent.</span></span><span class="gmail-apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></span><span class="gmail-s1"><span lang="EN-US">The luxury of the time and space provided isn’t something we&#8217;ve always had access to, so we want to take advantage of it in order to go deep into whatever offers itself to us.</span></span><span class="gmail-apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></span><span class="gmail-s1"><span lang="EN-US">Our goal is to use the momentum and the joy that we’ve found through our research in order to fully realise this as a production.</span></span><span class="gmail-apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></span><span class="gmail-s1"><span lang="EN-US">As the research continues, <i>jennifer for a day </i>is excited about different possibilities for producing and sharing work:</span></span><span class="gmail-apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></span><span class="gmail-s1"><span lang="EN-US">we believe that we are making something that could feel as home on a stage as it could as a durational performance in a gallery, and also have performative off-shoots, video aspects, and web performances.</span></span><span class="gmail-apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></span><span class="gmail-s1"><span lang="EN-US">But at its core, the work remains consistent as we commit to meeting each other, allowing things to develop from their own impulses, and making collective decisions. </span></span><span class="gmail-apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></span></p>
<p>Photo Credit: Peter R Fiebig</p>
<p><span class="gmail-s1"><b><span lang="EN-US">What methods do you use to achieve this goal?</span></b></span><span lang="EN-US"></span></p>
<p><span class="gmail-s1"><span lang="EN-US">First and foremost, <i>jennifer for a day </i>is finding itself as a collective, being attentive to the needs and desires of each member and trying to navigate how that translates into a group research.</span></span><span class="gmail-apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></span><span class="gmail-s1"><span lang="EN-US">In order to do this, we use open improvisations, group readings, material and object research, and writing.</span></span><span class="gmail-apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></span><span class="gmail-s1"><span lang="EN-US">We’ve kind of adopted a throw everything in the pot approach in order to see what might be good to cook. In addition, <i>jennifer for a day </i>is trying to be permeable to the outside:</span></span><span class="gmail-apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></span><span class="gmail-s1"><span lang="EN-US">theory, workshops, engaging with other artists, film, and opening our process to others for feedback and discussion.</span></span><span class="gmail-apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></span><span class="gmail-s1"><span lang="EN-US">We are also hoping to build connections with individuals and institutions who can support the continuous evolution of <i>jennifer for a day</i> as we plan to realise this and future works as full productions that can be shared with many publics.</span></span></p>
<p>Photo Credit: Peter R Fiebig</p>
<p><span class="gmail-s1"><b><span lang="EN-US">How does your current project relate to your previous works, and what motivates you in this process?</span></b></span><span lang="EN-US"></span></p>
<p><span class="gmail-s1"><span lang="EN-US">As <i>jennifer for a day, </i>we all bring our current threads of research from our independent projects and try to find ways in which they intersect and diverge.</span></span><span class="gmail-apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></span><span class="gmail-s1"><span lang="EN-US">In the first residency, we started by looking at femininity as materialism, and we plan on continuing to use this as a point of departure.</span></span><span class="gmail-apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US">  </span></span><span class="gmail-s1"><span lang="EN-US">We’re motivated by our mutual respect for each other, a desire to use each member’s creativity and critique as a catalyst, and by many weird, wild and beautiful things that calls to us.</span></span><span class="gmail-apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></span><span class="gmail-s1"><span lang="EN-US">Together we have fully realised two major projects: Sailor on Aisle, a stage work for Festspielhaus Hellerau, and Sonderangebot, an adaptation of that work for public and semi-public spaces. But our connections are much more interwoven than that. Caroline, Amelie and Lisa have been working and performing together since 2018, creating dance pieces, performance and media installations. Laura and Caroline met and worked together in 2017 at the American Dance Festival in North Carolina. Amelie and Lisa realised their own immersive performance installation ‘Welcome to Daisyland’ last September at Objekt Klein A Dresden and are roommates who often are commissioned together. Steph and Caroline have danced and worked together in their own work but also for other choreographers and were recently featured in a bad photograph as advertisement for a festival in West Germany without their knowledge or consent.</span></span><span class="gmail-apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></span><span class="gmail-s1"><span lang="EN-US">In this process for the first time, we’ve placed ourselves on a flat hierarchy with equal creative agency.</span></span><span class="gmail-apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US">  </span></span><span class="gmail-s1"><i><span lang="EN-US">jennifer for a day </span></i></span><span class="gmail-s1"><span lang="EN-US">is positively surprised by how well our ideas and inspirations overlap and challenge on another’s and in general how easy it has been to make work together. </span></span><span class="gmail-apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US"></span></p>
<p><span class="gmail-s1"><span lang="EN-US">&#8211;<i>jennifer for a day</i></span></span></p>
<p>Photo Credit: Peter R Fiebig</p>
<p>Interview with Jennifer for a day at Davvi.</p>
<p>Watch interview <a href="https://youtu.be/d3EGMjqU5ww" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a></p>
<p>Video credit: Rino Engdal</p>

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