About
Sylvia Rimat creates original contemporary performances with ‘a pinch of the surreal’.
Rimat practices across the boundaries of performance and theatre. She encourages her audience to interact playfully with elements of video, audio, new technologies, animals (imagined and real) and fragments of dance. Her work often explores and interrogates processes of the human mind (consciousness, memory or how we experience time), coupled with personal stories and our imagination, to ask big questions. Recent work explores our relationship with the natural world, i.e. tree communication via fungal networks compared to neuronal communication in the human brain, as well as notions of care beyond the human species and climate emergency.
Rimat’s development process follows a collaborative approach, drawing from specialists in eg Neuroscience, Mathematics, Psychology, and informed by people from diverse communities, such as members of the Hearing Voices Network Bristol or Knowle West Walking groups. Her research culminates in humorous performances that are equally entertaining and thought-provoking.
Born in Germany, Sylvia Rimat is based in Bristol, UK. Her work manifests in various formats, such as studio shows, one-on-one performance, encounters in public space, site-specific work and most recently digital media. Her work has been presented throughout the UK, Europe and in Australia, including the British Council Showcase at Edinburgh Fringe Festival, London’s Barbican Centre in SPILL Festival, In Between Time Festival (Bristol), various venues in Denmark, Poland, Germany and Spain, and in festivals in Australia (Perth, Sydney).
Sylvia is a member of artist-led collective Residence in Bristol. She is part of #CultureDeclares and determined to speak out about climate and ecological emergencies, take action and seek climate justice.
Image credit above: Paul Blakemore
