“Mapping the Unknown. On Constellations, Collective Practice and Imagining Futures” Interview

Your piece is titled Constellation #4 – Shows for Futures. What lies behind the idea of a “Constellation” – and what makes this way of working unique for you?

The term “constellation” signals a refusal to center the individual. In Animalarium´s Constellations we are interested in exploring interdependence beyond the human: in the ways bodies, stories, and ecosystems are entangled.

We’re not building a fixed composition. Instead, we set up conditions for encounters. Our constellations bring together different elements—questions, experiences, places and its people—in a space where something unexpected can emerge. These “topics”— such as symptoms, societal movements, collective dreams, players from the past, present and future —meet one another through the performers’ bodies, voices, and choices in real time.

Each Constellation we create—whether it is in Vienna, a central European capital, Sápmi with its indigenous community and Arctic surroundings, or the post-industrial community around Ställberg mine—responds to its environment. We work with local habitats, local performers, local topics, and local histories, making each constellation a site-responsive event.

With “Choreo-Constellating” you’ve developed your own practice. Can you explain what this means – and how it expands your understanding of dance?

Choreo-Constellating is both a choreographic method and a ritual of shared attention. It is our term for a hybrid, evolving practice that brings together systems theories, constellation work, dance improvisation and spoken language. It becomes a site for collective relational inquiry. 

There’s no script, no predetermined meaning. Improvisation is central, not as spontaneous display— but as a form of deep listening and unstoppable emergence. There’s a particular pleasure for us in this approach: it activates the body as a site of perception and action, and—in Animalarium´s Constellations—brings it into dialogue with social and ecological questions. 

It invites the audience to witness not a finished product, but a living, unfolding process. We hope they enter their own active process of meaning-making — as for us, that’s where the excitement lies.

You address some of the urgent issues of our time: countdowns, extinction, and future dreaming. How do you approach this mixture of threat and hope artistically?

In this work we begin with what we call symptoms—something unresolved, unsettling, or calling for attention. These might be concrete issues like ecological collapse or more subtle tensions like dislocation or a longing for future kinship. 

What we’ve found is that the body knows how to hold contradictions. It can contain grief and joy, collapse and resilience. That’s why we approach these large-scale urgencies not as themes to be illustrated but as experiences to be inhabited and explored through Animalarium´s Constellations. 

One of the surprising things about working with heavy topics is the aliveness it can generate. The work doesn’t stay in despair. It moves. It breathes. There is absurdity, laughter, and even joy.

In a way, Choreo-Constellating can be a speculative practice. We are not just reacting to crisis—we are rehearsing and connecting to futures. It is a dance between mourning and dreaming.

Your work is always a collective process. What makes this way of collaborating fruitful for you – and what challenges does it bring?

We’ve worked together for nearly a decade, and over time we’ve built a deep trust that allows us to take risks and stay fluid. Of course, working collectively also means navigating different perspectives, rhythms, and needs. But we’ve found that by really investing in the group dynamic, we create a space where we can let go and explore. That’s a success in itself. 

Our long-term collaboration is not simply a structure for making work—it’s a practice in itself. One that weaves together friendship, art-making, and a belief in shared growth over time.

The project is presented internationally and engages with different places, histories, and communities. How do these contexts shape your work ?

We did not want to tour with a fixed performance—we came with an artistic method and a structure that requires local input. We have our main themes of countdown, extinction and future dreaming, but each place has a specific ecology and its own current and historical relationships to these themes. Besides working with local performers, it was our local collaborators who chose topics and therefore shaped the dramaturgy of each Constellation. 

Our process tool for this is the “map” we use—whether you call it a map, a cloud, or a topic matrix— and it is our way to visualize and organize the layers that exist in a specific place. It helps us find tensions, contradictions, and connections. It’s a bit like finding tectonic plates—where something could shift, crack open, or collide.

We are also working with multiple languages— so far English, North Sámi and Swedish— and cultural translation, which adds yet another dimension to both the map and the performance event.