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ARTISTIC PRACTICE · EDITORIAL CORE

Artist
Statement

A professional articulation of the conceptual, physical and research foundations that shape Merav Cohen’s work.

Read statement
01
CENTRAL PROPOSITION
The body is not only a performing instrument. It is a living archive: a place where memory, identity, relationship and transformation remain in motion.
02
STATEMENT FORMATS

One practice, two professional lengths.

Both versions are editorially prepared from the documented profile and research vocabulary. They are not presented as verbatim quotations from the artist.

01

Concise statement

For programmes, grant summaries and presentation pages.

My work begins with the body as a living archive: a place where memory, identity and relationships are continuously written and transformed. Through movement improvisation, Butoh, body–mind practice inspired by Jerzy Grotowski and live performance, I investigate the tension between action and representation, and between what is experienced inwardly and what becomes visible to others.

I am interested in movement that does not illustrate an idea but allows an encounter to emerge. The performer becomes both subject and material, carrying emotional, symbolic and interpersonal histories into the space. Choreography is therefore not a fixed arrangement of forms, but a process of listening, exposure and change.

Recommended use140–180 words
02

Extended statement

For artistic dossiers, institutions and research contexts.

My artistic practice begins with the body as an emotionally and symbolically charged space. I approach it as a living archive: a site where memory, identity, interpersonal relations and processes of transformation are held, revealed and rewritten. The body carries experience before it becomes language, and movement allows that experience to appear without reducing it to explanation.

My movement language is informed by improvisational practice, Butoh, body–mind work inspired by Jerzy Grotowski and live performance. These fields allow me to work at the threshold between control and surrender, form and impulse, action and representation. I am drawn to the moment in which a physical action stops functioning as an image and becomes an event—something lived by the performer and encountered directly by the audience.

Relationships are central to this research. I examine how one body responds to another, how presence can create intimacy or distance, and how personal material becomes collective experience. The performer is not asked simply to execute choreography, but to enter a process of attention in which sensation, memory and imagination can reorganise the movement from within.

For me, choreography is therefore a practice of transformation. It creates structures, but it also protects the possibility of change inside those structures. Whether I work through performance, teaching or the development of SHINUA, I seek conditions in which movement can function as research: a way of questioning what the body remembers, how identity is formed and how lived experience can be translated without losing its complexity.

Recommended use300–380 words
03
RESEARCH PILLARS

The vocabulary of the practice.

01Living archive

The body as a place where memory and experience remain active.

02Improvisation

Movement as inquiry rather than illustration or fixed execution.

03Transformation

Identity and relationship understood as processes in motion.

04Live encounter

The boundary between representation and lived experience.

05Body–mind work

Attention to sensation, impulse, presence and internal change.

06Interpersonal space

How bodies create intimacy, distance, tension and response.

04
PRACTICE MAP

From physical research to public encounter.

01Listen

Sensation, impulse and memory enter the studio.

02Investigate

Improvisation tests relations, images and physical states.

03Compose

Structures hold the work without closing its possibility.

04Encounter

The performance becomes a lived meeting with the audience.

05
EDITORIAL NOTE

This statement is an editorial synthesis derived from the verified profile record, including the documented research fields of movement improvisation, Butoh, body–mind work inspired by Jerzy Grotowski, live performance, the body as a living archive, and the relationship between action, representation and lived experience. Final first-person wording should be approved by Merav Cohen before external publication.