Maria Brænder [she/they] is a cross-disciplinary artist based in Copenhagen. Currently, she is undertaking a practice-based PhD at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS); exploring and manifesting the ideas of radical environmental philosophy through ritualistic performance (and/or installation) experiences for audiences.
Brænder’s PhD project is (work-in-progress title): Eco-queer world-making: sensitizing and performing with (more-than-humxn) multi-perspectivity. Brænder seeks to challenge dichotomies of human/nature and self/world: to think (and attend to) that which is beyond the human.
Her practice-as-research methodology has a particular focus on sonic/performance/live art investigations & out-puts through an experimental, trans-disciplinary and collaborative approach.
At the moment, Brænder is working on Speaking in Wings, in Copenhagen Zoo’s tropical butterfly house where people can roam surrounded by butterflies. Here she is developing works for both butterflies and people - to be experienced on site later in 2024.
She is also moulding Spectral Chasings - a project about zooplankton in collaboration with scientists from the Scottish Association of Marine Science. A significant strand of this project is a performance installation which premiered in 2023, in Brønshøj Water Tower.
In 2020-23, she was a guest researcher at the Medical Museion, in Copenhagen. The Medical Museion is a university museum where museology meets interdisciplinary research. Here she was one of the core members of The Living Room - a project that makes the invisible practices of preservation visible (and audible!) by engaging with metabolic processes across the organic/inorganic divide. This way The Living Room works across conservation science, artistic practice and humanities research to develop other ways of working with objects at the museum.
Some of the artists and companies Brænder has collaborated with include:
Anna Katrin Egilstrød, Brønshøj Vandtårn, Centre of Contemporary Arts, in Glasgow, Claus Otto, Charlotte Bodil Hermansen, Cryptic Art House, Eduardo Abrantes, Hello!Earth, Hotel Pro Forma, Ines Bento Coelho, Jenny Gräf, Julie Sparsø Damkjær, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology, Laura Thompson, Lea Porsager, Lost in Sounds, Medical Museion, Nic Green, Rachel O’Neill, Radix Theatre, rouge-ah, Sara Valle Rocha, Sofia Ivarsson, Sounding Bodies, Stephen McEvoy, Stine Ruine, Suns of Satan and Thulani Rachia.
Education
2019 - ongoing PhD, with supervisors Professor Alistair MacDonald and Dr Laura Bissell,
at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, UK
2013 - 2017 BA Honours of the first class, Contemporary Performance Practice, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, UK
Awards/grants (selection)
RCS Research Grant, 2021 -2024
Danish Composers’ Society (KODA) Working Grant, 2023
Scottish Funding Council Scholarship, 2020
Cryptic Nights + residency, 2018
Developing Artistic Entrepreneurship/Edinburgh International Festival, 2017
The Millar Award, 2017 (Shortlist)
Three-year grant from the Scotland Trust, 2014 - 2017
Pls. get in touch for a full CV