Tagtool

May 2009 was a busy month. Among many performances, one thing stood out: the use of the Tagtool with dancers and circus artists. These sessions were experiments, fragments of a bigger picture that is still taking shape. Here are some happy accidents on video.

In March 2009, contemporary art space Choque Cultural of São Paulo, Brazil, ran an exhibition which showed works by four crews out of the Buenos Aires Street Art scene – as good an excuse as any for a large scale Tagtool session.

A video in four parts, in German, of a performance of “Bienenkino” by Tetete on May 29th 2009 at Stadtgarten Cologne. The audience was made up of kids from various schools. They were a little unsure what to make of it all to begin with – but by the end the guys had clearly won them over.

The Hilti Ensemble was invited to Slovakia to take part in the Use the City festival, an initiative leading up to Košice’s reign as European Capital of Culture in 2013. Here’s a video of their improvisational performance at Urbanova tower.

Two weeks ago, we noticed a few Youtube videos from Tagtool sessions in Brazil with some nice scenes, like this city street. But we were especially intrigued by the fact that the Tagtool was changing color, glowing in the hue of the brush. Read on to find out about the mysterious chameleon Tagtool and the philosophy behind it.

Here’s our account of Tagtool Think Tank 09, featuring videos of the talks. Looking back at the event, we couldn’t have imagined a better outcome. We had a weekend of very focused and fruitful discussions, invaluable advice from people we respect for what they do, and a lot of ideas. A real Think Tank in the aquarium-of-ideas sense.

Two videos are from a performance of Weisse Waende & Wassergasse at the Kunstwerkstatt Tulln, Austria, on the 10th of October 2008. (Click post title to see both videos!)

A video for the Viennese combo Pendler, featuring a double Tagtool session by Elffriede and Maki.

A video of an early performance of “Hilti’s Oddyssey of Oddities” – an improvised live science fiction series.