Maria Brænder [she/they] is a cross-disciplinary artist based in Copenhagen. Currently, she is undertaking a practice-based PhD at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS) / St. Andrews University; exploring and manifesting the ideas of radical environmental philosophy through ritualistic performance (and/or installation) experiences for audiences.
Brænder’s PhD project seeks to challenge dichotomies of human/nature and self/world: to think (and attend to) that which is beyond the human. Her practice-as-research methodology has a particular focus on sonic/performance/live art investigations and out-puts through an experimental, trans-disciplinary and collaborative approach.
At the moment, Brænder is working on Speaking in Wings - a large scale research-based work on butterflies, developed in collaboration with composer Alistair MacDonald and movement performer Claus Otto. Most recently performed in Copenhagen Zoo’s tropical butterfly house after six months research residency in the zoo.
She is further producing/composing a hybrid podcast about artist Lea Porsager’s land art work KLIT, in collaboration with Nanna Hauge Kristensen. The work is commissioned by New Carlsberg Foundation.
Another ongoing project is Spectral Chasings - about zooplankton with scientists from the Scottish Association of Marine Science. A significant strand of this project is a performance installation, with composer John Lemke and sound designer Sofia Ivarson, which premiered in 2023, in Brønshøj Water Tower.
In 2020-23, she was a artist researcher at the Medical Museion, in Copenhagen. The Medical Museion is a university museum where museology meets interdisciplinary research. Here she was one of the core members of The Living Room - a project that makes the invisible practices of preservation visible (and audible!) by engaging with metabolic processes across the organic/inorganic divide. This way The Living Room works across conservation science, artistic practice and humanities research to develop other ways of working with objects at the museum.
Some of Brænder’s collaborators :
Alistair MacDonald, Anna Katrin Egilstrød, Anthony Cowie, Brønshøj Vandtårn, Centre of Contemporary Arts, in Glasgow, Claus Otto, Charlotte Bodil Hermansen, Cryptic Art House, Eduardo Abrantes, Hello!Earth, Hotel Pro Forma, Ines Bento Coelho, Jenny Gräf, Josh Armstrong, Julie Sparsø Damkjær, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology, Laura Bissell, Laura Thompson, Lea Porsager, Lost in Sounds, Martin Grünfeld, Medical Museion, Nanna Hauge Kristensen, Nic Green, Ny Carlsbergfondet, Rachel O’Neill, Radix Theatre, rouge-ah, Sara Valle Rocha, Scottish Association of Marine Science, Sofia Ivarsson, Sounding Bodies, Stephen McEvoy, Stine Ruine, Thulani Rachia and ZOO Copenhagen.
Education
2019 - ongoing PhD, with supervisors Professor Alistair MacDonald and Dr. Laura Bissell,
at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, UK
2013 - 2017 BA Honours of the first class, Contemporary Performance Practice, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, UK
Awards/grants (selection)
RCS Research Grant, 2021 -2025
Danish Composers’ Society (KODA) Working Grant, 2023
Scottish Funding Council Scholarship, 2020
Cryptic Nights + residency, 2018
Developing Artistic Entrepreneurship/Edinburgh International Festival, 2017
The Millar Award, 2017 (Shortlist)
Three-year grant from the Scotland Trust, 2014 - 2017
Pls. get in touch for a full CV
