Interview

Interviewer: Petra, why do you organize your work into different themes?

Petra: I do that because each theme highlights a different field of tension in which the body moves, reacts, and gains meaning. They are distinct but always interconnected. It shows that the body is never separate from its context, the space it inhabits, or the people around it.

Interviewer: Can you tell us more about the themes themselves?

Petra: Of course! Urban Bodies is about how we move in the city. How architecture, traffic, rules, and social codes determine what you can and cannot do. I’ve even had people dance on a busy train station platform; you immediately see how both space and rules guide movement.

Bodies At Work focuses on the body in workplaces, offices, factories, anywhere labour happens. It’s about how the body must be productive, how it must be present, and what that does to your personality, vitality and energy.

Bodies of Art explores how art reflects our bodily image and physicality. How has art throughout history represented the body? How do performance artists use their bodies as carriers of meaning? In my labs, I try to make participants aware of this: the body is not just present ,it tells a story.

Body in Trouble zooms in on tension and vulnerability. How does the body cope with stress, illness, aging, technological pressures, or cultural and societal expectations? Sometimes painfully, sometimes with remarkable resilience.

And then there’s Bodies of Nature, my favourite for working outdoors. It’s about connecting the body with earth, water, trees, wind… How do we feel as part of the ecosystem? It’s a mix of biological, sensory, and even philosophical experience.

Interviewer: It sounds like the themes also interact with each other.

Petra: Exactly! They constantly overlap. It’s not a list of separate boxes. The body I study is always in relation to space, to others, to contexts. This keeps visible what I most want to show: the body is moving, connected, and always dependent on its environment.

Interviewer: That sounds poetic.

Petra: (laughs) Yes, it is poetic, at the same time very concrete. My work has to be felt, something you experience with your whole body. Theory and practice, idea and experience – in my work, they always intertwine.