BIO
Camilla Graff Junior is a performance artist, curator and researcher born in Denmark in 1974. She holds a double Master's degree in performance studies from the Sorbonne Nouvelle University and the University of Copenhagen. She studied acting and contemporary dance at schools in Bergen and Paris, and directing at Queens College and at Robert Wilson Watermill Center in New York. She since 2007 lives and works in Berlin.
She is presently preparing a PhD project on ”autobiographical writing” at the and together with visual artist Luisa Greenfield, coordinates the "Crossing Contexts: Interventions through Artistic Research" study circle at the Nordic Summer University. She is in addition organizing a series of labs entitled “Grammar, vocabulary and writing strategies of today’s stage” in collaboration the Danish National School of Theater.
As a curator, Camilla is associated with Month of Performance Art – Berlin and within this platform runs a three-year-program. The past year’s edition was on ”gender” and this year’s is on “memory”.
As a performer, she participates in theatre, performance, contemporary dance, film, and video projects. She works with the film and stage directors: Richard Bean (FR), Richard Foreman (US), Sophie Haviland (US), Patricia Allio (FR), Léa Dant (FR), Nina Larissa Bassett (DK), Volker Schmidt (AT), and the collective performance groups Tomrummet (FR), Lis (IT), one hit wonder (DE), ici-même (Grenoble, FR) and the feminist action-group La Barbe (FR). In addition she is as an accordionist and vocalist, performing with projects like the punk-rock band Maiden Monsters (Berlin).
Camilla has since her teens conceived own performance, dance and theater works. She in
2002 in Paris founds Giraff Graff, an independent performing art company doing site-specific pieces and crossover collaborations in the field of contemporary theater and performance.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Camilla Graff Junior is currently working on a research project entitled “the mirror and its reflections” on autobiographical writing in performance.
She is during her residency in Estonia, in dialogue with different groups of audiences, developing a media performance on the human’s inner and outer animals entitled My mom is a wolf, my dad… What do our inner animals tell us? How can we enter into a dialogue with them? Camilla Graff Junior, aka former punk-rock musician Mona Motel, shares her experience based on autobiographical material, photos, video clips, a collection of plastic animals and family stories.
This project is the first in a trilogy within autobiographical writing. The second performance in the series Ex(s), love is a concept (in which we measure the pain) is likewise performed by Mona Motel and explores variations of narrations: ways of constructing, organizing and telling a love story.
Camilla’s artist residencies at Ptamigan in November and MoKs in December 2013 are supported by the Kulturkontakt Nord Mobility Programme and the Danish Arts Council Committee for Performing Arts.
