PROCESSING … Emilia Bongilaj & Phillip Staffa
17 to 20 February 2025
Stage designer Emilia Bongilaj (Malmö, SE) and artist Phillip Staffa (Berlin, DE) merge their artistic backgrounds to create a transformative space touching on the subjects of empty routines and the balancing of ambition and overworking.
Using responsive sensor technology, the work’s focus is to address the act of being present as an individual in an intra-related world. The viewers encounter, through their participation, changes in mechanical movements in objects, images, lighting, sound moving through the space. Some are autonomous, some viewer-triggered, some environmental processes - space and viewer become interweaved, coexisting.
PROCESSING … is conceived as an ongoing research to manifest in different forms and formats. Through their different areas and backgrounds the two artists are interested in the question “can a space and objects become independent actors, partners and initiators in relation to a viewer?”.
Emilia Bongilaj is an artist and stage designer who is interested in the relationship with the viewer, both as a physical relationship & its time aspect. She studied Conceptual Performing Arts at the Theater Academy in Malmö from 2014-2016 and Stage Design at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg from 2019-2023. She is part of the management team of the Stockholm theater group Donna Donna. Emilia's work has been shown at the Thalia Theater, Parkaue Junges Staatstheater Berlin and Kampnagel, among others.
Visit Emilia Bongilaj's artist page - emiliabongilaj.com
Phillip Staffa‘s work combines visual art, sound and sculpture. Dealing with gradual processes, time-based, repetitive practices and the use of controlled chance as a creative element he is striving to make the perception of time, space and sound tangible. His work includes sound installations, environments and objects. With exhibitions at PACT Atelier, Galerie Bernau or Adlerhalle Berlin he aims to explore and question the materialities and contemporary totems of modern-day society.