Silvana Mammone is a transdisciplinary artist based in Germany. Her current focus lies with various models of immersive art and art in public, in which sound including her voice play a key role. After two years as an assistant director at Theater Bonn, she studied the interdisciplinary „Master in Theatre“ at the Toneelacademie in Maastricht. In the course of her artistic research project, she has been preoccupied with gaining (neuro-) scientific knowledge on human perception. Being interested in diverse perspectives on consciousness, she also studies and practices various awareness and meditation techniques to include them in her artistic practice and methodology. She is driven by questions revolving around the biological, philosophical and cultural notions and views regarding the mind/body distinction within western culture. Striving to create art that diversely addresses our human longing for connection, Silvana's creative work nourishes and mingles artistic and scientific curiosity alike to ultimately soften the borders drawn between them. 

creation as dialogue

science as poetry

phytographía as philosophy


In indigenous ways of knowing we understand a thing only when we understand it with all four aspects of our being: mind, body, emotion and spirit. - Robin Wall Kimmerer

Silvana creates art that consciously addresses „all aspects of our being“ thereby inviting people to re-connect more profoundly and sensuously to the world, and to finally immerse themselves within it, thereby encouraging a more profound and devoted dialogue. Within this process, her works blur the boundaries between cognitive and sensual experience.

The performativity and influence of language on our thinking and behavior play another central role in Silvana's work. She dedicated her bachelor's degree to studying comparative literature and began writing texts for her projects early on. Experimenting with language by de- and re-constructing is a core focus of her artistic practice. Engaging in poetry, prose and scientific language alike, she creates under the premise that language holds a capacity for sensuousness if it triggers our imagination in certain ways or asks well developed questions. Although language fragments our reality, it also holds the capacity to bring us closer to the world around us. Especially since her latest project Ephemeral Ecologies she has been fascinated by the idea of inventing new words, even a new language. A language that will reveal and help us abandon habitual patterns of naming and conceptualizing. To her, this reinvention of language is one way to explore and ultimately actively shape humans relationship to the environment or to what we call nature - to what David Abram and many scientists and activists now call the more than human world.

 

In her essay about phytographía, Patrícia Vieira writes about how plants inscribe themselves into our culture through inscribing themselves into different art practices. Silvana takes a step back, exploring how plants inscribe themselves into our whole being. For to ask what „nature" is, to try to define it, to let our minds explore the limitless implications of the word, also means asking  where our place lies within it - ultimately, who we are. When we think of nature, we often think of landscapes untouched by human hands, of wild forests, and plants of course. Are humans part of nature and if so, why don't we feel and live according to it? Numerous scientific findings on ecological systems and phenomena like mutualism shed a light on the intricate bonds, interrelations and interdependencies that form what we call “nature”. Still, those scientific findings are but a piece in the puzzle of re-establishing something like an ecological balance with humans included. One key problem seems to be our own felt and lived alienation from the natural world, its wonders and our deep dependency on it. In her current pracitces and projects, Silvana addresses this as a cultural issue by not only researching new ways of composing language, drawing and music with the natural environment as an equal partner or teacher, but also by developing new ways of listening. For this, she develops diverse methods of deep listening, often inspired by Pauline Oliveros` sonic meditations. From there, she develops a continuous creative dialogue. Aiming at a methodology that is irrevocably bound to the environment, the artistic process becomes itself an ecology of ever-changing, shifting signs, frequently expanding her poetic landscape. 

 

  • Creative Experience / Projects

  • 11-12/2024 MKW NRW travel scholarship to Serbia, studying traditional Serbian singing and researching the relation between landscape and singing

  • 09/2023 Exhibition and workshop facilitation with ZORAS Collective at Helsinki Comics Festival, Helsinki, and Degrowth seminar Kohtuus Vaarassa, Koli National Park, Finland

  • 08/2023 Invitation of Wood Says to the symposium re_searching urbanity at the floating university, Berlin

  • 07&08/2023 Embroidery/Installation/Performance galdr as part of the exhibition natürlich positioniert (project management Hanna Smitmans, in cooperation with ArtspaceEleveneLAB). Additional narrative work and performance for satellite project Der Fenriswolf, Tübingen

  • 07/2023 Reading with vocal-musical elements: Der Fenriswolf at the festival “Echt Jetzt!”, Tübingen, Germany

  • 04/2023 two week residency with ZORAS Collective at Viernulvier (Vooruit) in Gent, Belgium

  • 01/2023 Voice for Musical Theatre TRANSPARENCE by Pablo Garretón Izquierdo in cooperation with Ensemble Electronic ID, Cologne

  • 10-12/2022 Artistic Research Project HOMO NATURALIS, funded by Fonds DAKU, Germany

  • 07/2022 one month Residency at SAARI MANOR with ZORAS Collective, funded by KONE Foundation, Mynämäki Finland

  • 03-09/2022 Touring with Soundwalk WOOD SAYS in cooperation with the Botanical Garden of the University Bochum, Landschaftspark Duisburg Nord & Botanical Gardens of the University Bonn, funded by the Fonds Darstellende Künste

  • 05/2022 collaboration with Julio Lugòn (Radio Jurassic), supported by TUO TUO Arts (Finland) and True Aether recordings for his album project of “Volumen NO.1” / https://trueaether.bandcamp.com/album/volumen-vol-1

  • 01/2022 five week Residency at RAMA Residencias Artisticas, creation of the audiovisual exhibition Ephemeral Ecologies, Maceira Portugal

  • 06/2021 soundwalk project WOOD SAYS on plant perception and communication

    In cooperation with the Botanical Gardens of University Bonn, funded by Fonds Darstellende Künste, Berlin and NRW Landesbüro Freie Darstellende Künste, Dortmund

  • 01/2021 scholarship for artistic research project “controlled hallucination:patterns of [sub]consciousness“ on Pauline Oliveros` sonic meditations explored through voice, funded by Fonds Darstellende Künste, Berlin and Flausen Netzwerk, Oldenburg

  • 04/2020 Butoh training with Stefano Taiuti, Uferstudios, Berlin

  • 12/2019 artist in residence at Quartier am Hafen, research on language/voice and movement, cooperation with contemporary + Butoh dancer Katharina Roll, Cologne

  • 11/2019 residency with liminal keys (music+poetry collective with double bass player Moritz Götzen) at PAF (Performing Arts Forum), St Erme, France

  • 09/2019 in-situ development and presentation of sound performance „Underground Vibrations“ in an empty car park with liminal keys at Cultura Nova Festival, Heerlen, Netherlands

  • 05/2019 cooperation with electronic composer Pablo Garretòn Izquierdo for his composition „Pananalytikon“ at HfMT und Musikfabrik, Cologne

  • 10/2018 creation/ direction of performance installation „Moments of Being“, based on Virginia Woolf`s short stories for the

    West Off Festival NRW, additional shows at FFT Düsseldorf, Studiobühne Köln, Theater im Ballsaal, Bonn

  • 2019-21 study of the interdisciplinary Master in Theatre, artistic research and final project, Toneelacademie, Maastricht, Netherlands

  • 12/2018 sound performance with liminal keys at Maschinenhaus, Essen

  • 2018 founding of theatre collective kaleidoskop with scenographer/visual artist Barbara Lenartz

  • 2015-17 assistant director and head of youth theatre club at Theater Bonn, Germany

  • 01/2015 three months 2nd assistant director with the production Mord by Dedi Baron at the Düsseldorfer Schaupielhaus, Düsseldorf

  • 01/2014 three months Volunteer at the Creative Learning Department at Arcola Theatre, London

  • 04/2014 Bachelor degree in Comparative Literature and English Studies, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany