CUTTY SHELLS
katharina simons
With my work of art, I want to give expression to inner spaces and worlds that find no place in everyday life. Therefore I want to bring the hidden self, secret desires, repressed nightmares and the longing for the fall into the bottomless pit into vibration.
Creations of new connections to oneself, to others and everything in between.
- The Intention of my Work
CUTTY SHELLS is the art lable under which the artist and director Katharina Simons publishes her work since 2019. In the field of tension between reality - virtuality and the material - immaterial, Katharina Simons wants to bring forth new perceptual phenomena with CUTTY SHELLS.
The works always choose an interdisciplinary and scientific approach and interweave theory with aesthetic practice. They follow the vision of developing interdisciplinary hybrid spaces between performing arts and virtual space, using performative practice to create authenticity in the intermedial in-between space and thus bring forth new phenomena of perception. CUTTY SHELLS works are like an umbrella under which different multimedia artistic disciplines are combined and artists from different places are brought together.
The focus of her artistic work is the examination of concepts of reality, their aspects of perception and forms of alienation. To this end, Katharina Simons focuses primarily on visual aspects of an aesthetic that is always oriented towards pop culture phenomena and characterised by hyperbolic embodiments and sculptural representations. The intimate atmospheres created in alien worlds bring new longings and truths to the surface. In the field of tension between fiction and reality, humour and provocation, surreal and gaudy productions are created that burn into the retina like a beacon.
What I really like about Katharina Simons' work is the fearlessness (please understand this in an entirely positive way) with which very popular formats, especially from the field of gaming, a pop-oriented aesthetic and rather difficult and presuppositional themes are combined.
- Prof. Dr. Stefanie Diekmann on "CALL OF MORAL DUTY"
(free translated from german)
Katharina Simons (she/her) is a freelance director for multimedia performance art. Katharina Simons studied theatre and media studies with a minor in philosophy at the Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen-Nuremberg. As Simons initially found her dual interest in both theatre and media studies to be an enormous artistic dichotomy, she switched to the Foundation University in Hildesheim for a Master's degree. In the degree programme "Staging the Arts and the Media" she found her focus: the intermedial in-between space - performative practice under intermedial conditions. For her projects she works collaboratively with people from different fields, with whom she forms temporary ensembles.
In addition, she accompanies innovative dance and performance projects in the independent art-scene as a dramaturge. She also teaches her artistic focus in a lectureship at the FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg at the Institute for Theatre and Media Studies.