Working in the cross-currents of performance/sound/installation and bio art, the work of artist Maria Brænder [she/they] explores and manifests the ideas of quirky radical environmental philosophy. For over a decade, she has worked with various animals, insects, fungi, bacteria, zoo plankton and other matters to engage deeply with more-than-human agency through live art and/or installation experiences for audiences.
Currently, she is (based between Denmark and Scotland) working on Moth Mutterings — about moths and light pollution, in collaboration with musician/researcher Alex South, lighting designer Sofia Ivarsson (et. al.), and with the department of Ecoscience, at Aarhus University.
Brænder’s work 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/performative/ritualistic investigations and out-puts through an experimental, trans-disciplinary and collaborative approach.
At the moment, Brænder is in the final stages of a practice-based PhD at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS) and at St. Andrews University; looking into how art making can integrate the complexities of embodied eco-ethics and interconnected cross-species experiences.
Another ongoing project is Speaking in Wings - a 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.
Recently she has produced/composed 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.
Between 2020 - 2023, she developed/directed Spectral Chasings - about zooplankton with scientists from the Scottish Association of Marine Science. A significant strand of this project is a large scale performance installation, with composer John Lemke and sound designer Sofia Ivarson, which premiered in 2023, in Brønshøj Water Tower.
In 2020 - 2023, 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. The work culminated in experimental exhibition formats (video/sound/performance installations) in-house at the museum and with performances as part of the bigger format The World is in You, at Kunsthal Charlottenborg.
Some of Brænder’s collaborators :
Alex South, 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 - (2027) PhD, with supervisors Dr. Laura Bissell, Professor Alistair MacDonald, Dr. Emily Dolittle and Dr. Anne Julie Arnfred ,
at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, UK
2013 - 2017 Awarded honours of the first class, Contemporary Performance Practice, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, UK
Awards/grants (selection)
RCS Research Grant, 2021 -2026
Danish Composers’ Society (KODA) Working Grant, 2023
Scottish Funding Council Scholarship, 2020
Cryptic Nights + residency, 2018
Developing Artistic Entrepreneurship/Edinburgh International Festival, 2017
Three-year grant from the Scotland Trust, 2014 - 2017
Pls. get in touch for a full CV