Sarah Maria Serve

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Look around you, - What do you see? What materiality does the floor have? What materiality does the ceiling have? What materiality do the walls have, that surround you? Can you see anything made from glass or steel? Can you reach it? Can you feel it? HEAR IT? Take a look at your fingernails. What kind of materiality do they have?

01 Performance: Traces of Negotiation, Space: Galerie Elisabeth & Reinhard Hauff, Performer: Caro Vogt playing the claw Nov 21. 2025

01 Performance: Traces of Negotiation, Space: Galerie Elisabeth & Reinhard Hauff, Artist and Choreographer: Sarah Maria Serve scanning the wall Nov 21. 2025

01 Performance: Traces of Negotiation, Space: Galerie Elisabeth & Reinhard Hauff, Performer: Andrea Irion finding protection in exhaustion Nov 21. 2025

In the performance, four bodies respond to Wolfgang Flad's installation 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. Within lies the transformation into a space of appropriation, shaped by the rhythm of protest and by rhythm of trust.

With the permission of Wolfgang Flad and the gallery the collective could give in to its scratching, peeling the “dust” off the wall to open a room of reflection.

Filmed by Jan Hottmann
Edited by Sarah Maria Serve

01 Performance: Traces of Negotiation, Space: Galerie Elisabeth & Reinhard Hauff, Performer: Ida Wragge between fear and confidence Nov 21. 2025

02 Performance: Train Me!, Space: Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart Nov 21. 2025

02 Performance: Train Me!, Space: Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart Nov 21. 2025

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.

Filmed by Jan Hottmann
Edited by Sarah Maria Serve

03 Performance: Shelter, stripped, Space: Halle 93, Performer: Mathilde Le Monnier activating the verticality May 29. 2026

03 Performance: Shelter, stripped, Space: Halle 93, Performer: Mila Kostovic emphazising the rhythm May 29. 2026

03 Performance: Shelter, stripped, Space: Halle 93, Artist and Choreographer: Sarah Maria Serve
leaving traces May 29. 2026

03 Performance: Shelter, stripped, Space: Halle 93, Ida Zimmermann, Mila Kostovic, Mathilde Le Monnier and Sarah Maria Serve playing the game May 29. 2026

The installation and performance were developed specifically for Halle 93 and the event “Radical Manifesting” organised by Eleni Simanidou and Tschaggi. The performance is based on the logic of running as a game and the aim of achieving a sense of freedom despite the pressure to perform and the expectations associated with a ‘performance’. The installation spatially separates the performers from the audience, allowing the audience only one possible perspective on the action. At the same time, it creates a safer space for the collective, “a room of their own”, while also placing them in a situation of exposure. Swollen hands and feet, both bare. With running as the central action, a logic unfolds in the resonant space between body and architecture, until … it is broken.

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?

Filmed by Jan Hottmann
Edited by Sarah Maria Serve

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