DAVID DRAGAN
2025 cave of noises  performance in collaboration 
with Sagil Ilyas Md.Amin 
45:00residency at New Fears Gallery, Berlin To be so tender yet unable to catch oneself while falling, yet able to catch another in the cave of noise. The performance looks at moments of stillness and care within the queer community—fragile moments often being forgotten. We chase fleeting feelings of belonging through staged narratives, only to lose ourselves in their repetition. We gather and gather, left with memories, as the need for comfort deepens. Capitalistic fragmented pieces of care, unable to find a constant. The cave becomes a safe space, its walls marked with traces of our presence. A space that extends into one’s body, big enough to share warmth with others. We are gatherers, not hunters, engaged in a ritual of duality—an intimate dance between two, an invocation of falling and catching, a consolation of fragments.

acts of listening/trees that never left

 performance 
20:00Zur Frohen Aussicht, Ernen
A performance of touch, hum, and quiet movement, where listening gathers like soil, holding traces of what has passed. Through breath, beings return to their myths, never fully leaving, their presence whispering back to the wind. Memory, story, and the land weave together, shaping a space where connection reveals itself as bound, etched and permanent.

Born from the film “Stones and their Whispers of Old Stories,” the performance follows the subtle rhythms of wind, leaves, and shifting earth. Three performers move with these currents, their bodies responding in kind, gestures tracing a dialogue with the land. Every motion, every pause becomes an act of listening—a gentle echo of stories long held by the world around them.

with Harumi Mumenthaler, Ilaria Rabagliati and Sagil Ilyas Md. Amin

requiem for a home video installation 
aluminium poles variable in size 
voiceover by Jorė Gritėnaitė
12:00Rautistrasse 3000, Zurich Memories inhabit spaces more fully than our bodies ever could. The impermanence of home becomes not just a passing moment, but a feeling—a jump between presence and absence—predominating the stasis from which memories are built. Walls absorb laughter, grief, and solitude, becoming monuments to things unsaid, lives once lived in their shadow.

The capacity to endure—through resistance, through reinvention—wears thin as emptiness settles in. When the furniture is gone and the echoes grow louder than any voice, even resilience begins to unravel. The space, stripped of function, becomes a vessel of memory alone, its meaning no longer tied to use, but to what once was.
Yet the breath survives in these walls. It waits, quiet and patient, woven into the plaster and the paint, into the cracks time could not erase. It waits for the inevitable claw to come—to rip apart what remains. To set loose what was held within, not just dust and wood, but the invisible weight of memory. 

The project looks at memory as a living organism, transforming it into mould, ever growing, like a silent echo. Routine loses its grasp and becomes abstract in a space with no function. The voice remembers and does not forget. 
video stills
exhibition view “Rautistrasse 3000”
documentation by Oliver Kümmerli
Stones and their Whispers of old Stories film
25:00in collaboration with 
Noah Kohlbrenner "Stones and their Whispers of old Stories" is a sensorial meditation on the intersection of myth, landscape, and body. Set against the backdrops of the Valais Alps and Transylvanian Carpathians, the film unfolds as a dialogue between ancient narratives and contemporary movement. Through the lens of dance, space becomes both stage and symbol, where whispers of forgotten stories are etched into the fabric of the earth. With a quiet, observant gaze, the film invites reflection on the ephemeral and enduring, past and present, myth and memory.

A film by: David Dragan & Noah Kohlbrenner
Editor: Simona Volpe
DOP: Jelin Nichele
Choreography & Costumes: David Dragan
Sound & Sound Design: David Graudenz
Camera Assistance: Elias Bötticher
Music: David Dragan
Performers: Ilaria Rabaliati, Harumi Mumenthaler, Sebastien Kapps, Maren Sauer, Joel Leupi, Irina Danescu, Raluca Cristea, Andrei Nistor, Roxana Popa, Dorin Eremia
Interviews: Ursula Walser-Biffiger, Andreas Weissen, Tiberiu Dragan, Dorina Dragan

2024 fissures of tomorrow performance
48:00Topic Hub, SibiuFissures of Tomorrow travels through the tension between organic intimacy and mechanical rigidity, reflecting the erosion of authenticity under technological mediation. Through structured, repetitive movements, it questions whether we wield technology or are tethered to it—a matrix shaping perception and connection. Vulnerability fractures under the weight of surveillance, as the movement embodies the automation of our emotions in an algorithmic age.

with Silvana Neda, Erika Hera, Ana Luca, Raluca Cristea, Andreea Agapi, Sultana Alexandra Ioana

 
I,II&III video installation
15:00Diploma 24 ZHDK The project discusses the divergence between inherited mythologies and personal identity, questioning the boundaries of tradition through a queer lens. It explores the dissonance between societal ideals—success, virtue, union—and the fragmented self. Focusing on birth, marriage and death, it reimagines the narrative as a fluid, non-binary celebration of shapes, fears and myth. What remains when union is freed from tradition? The work interrogates belonging, joy, and the politics of desire, visualising the space between past constraints and future possibilities, where the self can reconstitute and redefine its own narrative.

with Ousmane Ba, Leonard Simon, Sagil Ilyas Md.Amin, Oana Popa

 
self embraces
(solo)performance
07:28Hauser&Wirth Zürich
for ‘Cathy Josefowitz. Release’ The performance looks at the balance between intimacy and self-disclosure, questioning how genuine connections last through constant technological change. Drawing on ideas from Byung-Chul Han, it highlights how technology often reduces vulnerability to spectacle, eroding the depth of human relationships. The notion of “media automatisation” reflects concerns about the mechanization of human behavior and its impact on emotional authenticity. Ultimately, the work challenges the audience to see vulnerability as a radical act, an impulse, a movement, essential to reconnecting with humanity in an algorithmically driven world.

 
fusion to cope
(solo)performance
12:38RUF, ViennaThe Romanian saying, “If you wear beads, you cry in the tavern,” captures the cultural tension and societal judgment men often face when expressing traits that challenge traditional masculinity. In the context of this performance, the proverb becomes a lens through which we examine the personal struggle to navigate a conservative, religious society that holds rigid ideals about what it means to be a “real man.” This performance delves into the complexities of identity, gender, and self-expression, shaping a possible journey of resistance and resilience.

2023 
may I be a body
video installation
4:24 A body emerges from stillness, caught between light and shadow, glitching through the line between being seen and concealed. Movement starts as a silent rebellion, a dance of becoming in the soft pull of light. Fragments ripple across six mirrored screens, splintering identity into shimmering echoes, endlessly refracted yet whole. A low, firm hum envelops the space, a threshold, a vibration, a portal inward. Time dissolves; in this suspended realm, the non-binary body transcends boundaries, weaving light, sound, and self into an infinite reflection.
a poem for the windvideo6:25 The video unfolds as a journey carried by the invisible currents of the wind—each tell a whisper, a presence, a world in motion. Where is home? Can it be touched, or does it slip through the fingers, a fleeting illusion swept away by the wind? Movements dissolve into the air, sculpting the wind’s silence, a dance of form and absence. Each gesture is a fragment of a larger, unseen conversation—a visual hymn to belonging. Breath becomes verse, movement a response, an echo in the void. In this interplay, transformation lingers only briefly, leaving behind a quiet trace. Here, the boundaries between the material and the immaterial dissolve.