about
ABOUT
In her works, choreographer, performer, and artist researcher Miriam Jakob focuses on the interface between science and fiction. Through installations, films, and collaborative stage works, she playfully addresses questions of representation, accessibility, and inter-species communication. Her artistic inquiries often unfold in the contact zones of human and non-human worlds, inviting audiences to question established forms of knowledge and delve into their own perceptions. These performative, mostly transdisciplinary explorations celebrate uncertainty as a vehicle for encounter. Often created in transdisciplinary collaboration, these works are curious attempts that utilize a sense of uncertainty as a mode of encounter, initiating an ongoing inquiry into one’s own perception.
Her latest project, Geteilte Echos (2024) and its subsequent evolution, Schwächezonen (2024), delve into the fragile stability of landscapes—both physical and emotional—focusing on the mountain Hochvogel, precariously situated on the brink of collapse. The work expands on themes of memory, resonance, and the impermanence of structures, inviting audiences into a shared space of listening, tremblement and presence.
The projects build on her previous research, Den Berg hören – Choreografien des Zerfallens, which she conducted in 2022 with an interdisciplinary team in the Allgäu region of southern Germany. The research focused on the geologically unstable Hochvogel mountain, which geologists predict will eventually break apart. To anticipate this event, the mountain is continuously monitored with geophones that record its vibrations and natural frequencies. Drawing from the scientific data, field recordings, and somatic explorations around the mountain Hochvogel, they developed an experiential approach to relating to geological timescales and the presence of a future collapse in an experimental essay film in close collaboration with Arantxa Martínez, Dr.Susanne Schmitt and Felix Claßen.
Her body of work includes Friday, 23.1.1915 [sic] “as usual, sorry that I do not always…” (2013), How to Become a Journey (2013), Dynamic (2013), Travelling to the Four Corners of the Earth (2014), Letters to Dance (2016), In the Shadow of Man (2017), Mit/teilen (2019), The Broken Promise (2020), and the interdisciplinary event Currents of Breath (2022).
In 2021, she was a scholarship holder at Villa Kamogawa, a residency in Kyoto.
In 2020/2021, she participated in the Berlin Artistic Research Grant Programme (gkfd, Künstlerische Forschung Berliner Förderprogramm) together with Helsinki-based choreographer Jana Unmüßig for the research project “Breathing With,” in close collaboration with choreographer and dancer Lisa Densem. During the lockdown, they developed a speculative somatic practice exploring ways of being together while apart. This experience deepened her understanding of breath as a bridge: between self and environment, presence and absence, past and future.
In 2022, she continued her artistic research on breath within the framework of Distanz-Solo, with the project titled “Ecologies of Breath – On the Performativity of the Unrepresentable.”
In 2023, she began training as a breath therapist using the BreathExperience method, inspired by the work of Ilse Middendorf, further questioning how bodily perceptions can foster transformative possibilities. Supported by the Tanzpraxis Scholarship from the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe, she continues to explore the politics of embodiment and the possibilities of shared resonance through her interdisciplinary practice.
Miriam graduated from the MA Choreography program at the Theaterschool of Amsterdam (DAS Choreography), holds a BA in Dance, Context, and Choreography, and an MA in Anthropology (FU). She is also a member of the queer feminist collective ALTES Finanzamt e.V.