“Traces of Negotiation“ was created as part of Sarah Maria Serve’s master’s thesis entitled „Body Knowledge Would Be Power“ at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart, which was awarded 2025 with the Academy Prize of the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart in Architecture.
In the performance, four bodies respond to Wolfgang Flad's space — engaging with material, surface, and structure. Wearing oversized glass body extensions shifts the relationship between body and environment, between control and vulnerability. Through the development of analytical, resting, and dynamic poses, questions of identity, power, and visibility are physically negotiated. Movement becomes a trace; the body, a resonant space. Between fragility and resistance, a moment of confrontation emerges - a space of negotiation in the rhythm of protest and trust.
In the performance, four bodies respond to Wolfgang Flad's space — engaging with material, surface, and structure. Wearing oversized glass body extensions shifts the relationship between body and environment, between control and vulnerability. Through the development of analytical, resting, and dynamic poses, questions of identity, power, and visibility are physically negotiated. Movement becomes a trace; the body, a resonant space. Between fragility and resistance, a moment of confrontation emerges - a space of negotiation in the rhythm of protest and trust.
4 red mats, 4 claws, 1 body. Pose. In the performance ‘TRAIN ME!’, Sarah Maria Serve offers an insight into her training session with the four claws.
Through a performative exploration of intimacy and control, vulnerability and resistance, the artist develops new poses that allow the body to be experienced as a tool for transformation.
The installation and performance were developed specifically for Halle 93 and the Radical Manifesting event organised by Eleni Simanidou and Tschaggi. It is based on a game and the aim of achieving a sense of freedom despite the pressure to perform and the expectations associated with a ‘performance’. Swollen hands and feet, both bare. What brings you joy? Where does the transition between a space for play and a space of surveillance begin? How does a body organise itself collectively within the tension between visibility, rhythm and architecture? Based on running as the central act of action, a logic builds up that emerges in the resonant space between body and architecture, until … it is broken.