Performances
Performance Project pages:
this archive features theatre and film productions by Johannes Birringer, founding director of AlienNation Co., prior to the incorporation of the company in Texas
this archive includes the period in Chicago during which Birringer taught performance studies at Northwestern University and began the formation of the company, with the dance-theatre work „AlienNation“ (1993) yielding the name for the ensemble.
AlienNation Co., after its touring in Germany and Cuba, is incorporated in Texas as a non-profit arts organization and continues to create new works for the stage and on film, and also begins to offer workshops in dance and technology internationally. Birringer is invited to created an MA course in ‚dance-technology‘ at Ohio State University, but also joins the Anthropology Department at Rice University as a research fellow, and in 2003 is invited into the Live Art Faculty at Nottingham Trent University (UK).
From 2003 onward the activities in Houston, consequently, are reduced. The archive of creations expands after 2003, as Birringer founds the International Interaktionslabor in the disused coal mine Göttelborn (Germany, and in 2004 forms a new company, the Design-and-Performance Lab (DAP-Lab), further exploring newly emerging digital and telematic technologies. In 2005 Birringer organizes „Digital Cultures,“ one of most celebrated international dance and technology research laboratories, staged in Nottingham. In 2006 Birringer is appointed guest professor in ‚Performance Technologies‘ at Brunel University London. The original AlienNation Co. disbands, yet maintains its life as a collectivist-ensemble idea. Many of its associates remain in touch with each other.
this archive incorporates numerous activities by the creative collective in its performance and intermedia practices in Houston, London, Göttelborn, and with an expanding radius to international workshops in Japan, China, S Korea, Eastern Europe and South Africa.
In January 2026 the company re-unites for a special performance recital in Houston’s Moody Center for the Arts.