Eila Goldhahn PhD
Eila Goldhahn’s practice grows from an inquiry into how art, movement and ecology shape our shared habitats — the inter-relations of body, space and environment.
She works across performance, photography, installation and movement research, exploring embodiment in dance and movement through direct interaction with individuals and teams and through art visualisations in material form.
This arts-led research explores how the textures of contemporary experience — including the shifting thresholds of the Anthropocene — are revealed through materiality, gesture, and shared attention. Rooted in embodied practice, the work investigates how presence, perception, and relational awareness unfold through movement.
Eila is a teacher of the Discipline of Authentic Movement (Adler). She completed the first PhD (2007) dedicated to researching the artistic and philosophical foundations of this practice, contributing significant scholarship to its development as both an embodied discipline and a contemporary research methodology.
Eila is a teacher of the Discipline of Authentic Movement (Adler). She completed the first PhD (2007) dedicated to researching the artistic and philosophical foundations of this practice, contributing significant scholarship to its development as both an embodied discipline and a contemporary research methodology.
VISUAL ART:
Installation, performance and sculpture
by Eila Goldhahn
Hortus Conclusus at the German Embassy in Brussels
M A T R I CY C LE
Matricycle is a long-term artistic research project exploring material transformation, ecological reuse, and embodied making. Developed over nearly two decades, the work centres on the reuse of mattress springs as a means of investigating circularity, endurance, and care through physical labour and material experimentation.
Originating in doctoral research at Dartington College of Arts and supported through development funding from Plymouth University, Matricycle has evolved across sculptural, architectural, and speculative formats. Current iterations combine workshop-based making, collaborative prototyping, and AI-assisted digital image exploration to test future applications.
The project operates as an open, evolving system rather than a fixed outcome, foregrounding process, material logic, and collective enquiry.
© 2024. Eila Goldhahn & Stuart J Young. All rights reserved.
Matricycle
The haptic contact with materials leaves imprints of physical movements in the emerging sculptures. These visible forms are like an echo of the movement: they mirror the fleeting performance with the material. They touch upon the beginnings of embryonic movement: form and folding of early developmental stages like blastula and gastrula.
Material: steel wire and gauze
Works shown at: Dartington College of Arts UK
Kunsthalle Halle
Kunstverein Basis Frankfurt
Open Studios South Devon U
Development grant for the upcycling of pocket springs with support from the University Plymouth UKMaterial: steel wire and gauze
Works shown at: Dartington College of Arts UK
Kunsthalle Halle
Kunstverein Basis Frankfurt
Open Studios South Devon U
Durch den körperlichen Kontakt mit Materialien
enstehen Abdrücke von Bewegungen in Skulpturen. Diese Formen ähneln einem Echo: sie spiegeln
die Begegnung von flüchtigen Ereignissen mit Materialien.
Sie deuten auch auf den Anfang von embryonalen Bewegungen an, nämlich die Formung und Faltung in frühen Entwicklungsstadien wie Blastula und Gastrula.
Material: Stahldraht und Gaze
Dartington College of Arts UK
Kunsthalle Halle
Kunstverein Basis Frankfurt
Open Studios South Devon UK
Entwicklungszuschuss für die Wiederverwertung von Federkern in Designkontexten und Produkten mit freundlicher Unterstützung der University Plymouth UK
Eine Publikation über MATRICYCLE kann hier als PDF heruntergeladen werden. Realisiert mit Unterstützung des Landes Rheinland-Pfalz.
Material: Stahldraht und Gaze
Dartington College of Arts UK
Kunsthalle Halle
Kunstverein Basis Frankfurt
Open Studios South Devon UK
Entwicklungszuschuss für die Wiederverwertung von Federkern in Designkontexten und Produkten mit freundlicher Unterstützung der University Plymouth UK
Eine Publikation über MATRICYCLE kann hier als PDF heruntergeladen werden. Realisiert mit Unterstützung des Landes Rheinland-Pfalz.
Matricycle
MoverWitness Practices
What is often referred to as Authentic Movement forms both the ground and the portal of Goldhahn’s creative practice — a discipline of embodied awareness that attends to the dialogue between mover and witness.
Yet she questions the term authentic, with its implication of an essential or universal truth. In her doctoral research (Shared Habitats , PhD, 2007) she proposed the alternative term MoverWitness practice, to emphasise the relational field of this work: an evolving process in which moving and witnessing are reciprocal acts of perception, reflection, and imagination.
Within this practice, movement arises in response to inner impulse and environmental feedback, creating bridges between embodied perception and the wider ecological and social contexts in which we move. In workshops and performances, participants engage in forms of ecological attunement where gesture, stillness, and breath reveal the subtle interconnections of our shared habitats.
Writing & Publications
Writing is a generative space where movement and observation find language. Goldhahn’s German and English texts range from academic publications to reflective essays, interwoven with the embodied and ecological inquiries and images of her artistic practice. They bridge the personal and the academic, allowing somatic experience to speak alongside theory.
Some of this work questions capitalist frameworks that commodify bodies, time, and environments, seeking instead reciprocal forms of value and attention. Writing traces how the digital-aesthetic and the physical-material converge within shared habitat, extending the creative process into language.
CURRENT WRITING PROJECTS / RECENT PUBLICATIONS
Anatomy of a Residency:
Architecture, Artists and HabitatAnatomie einer Residenz: Architektur, Künstler und Kontext,(working title)
This bilingual english /german book investigates Pfälzer Hof Artists Residencies as an example of artistic ecosystems — a space where architecture, intention, and community practices intersect. Combining documentary material with a literary approach, the project traces the residency’s origins and asks how artistic habitats shape the work and relationships that unfold inside them.
This bilingual english /german book investigates Pfälzer Hof Artists Residencies as an example of artistic ecosystems — a space where architecture, intention, and community practices intersect. Combining documentary material with a literary approach, the project traces the residency’s origins and asks how artistic habitats shape the work and relationships that unfold inside them.
Situated within the town’s long-standing traditions of geological extraction and material knowledge, the book also examines how the site’s unique cultural landscape informs the residency’s character and the artistic exchanges it fosters.
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The former owner/hotelier of Pfaelzer Hof, Paul Schneider, was an empassioned billiard player.
The former owner/hotelier of Pfaelzer Hof, Paul Schneider, was an empassioned billiard player.DER DARTINGTON-EROS
Von wilden schönen Gärten der Utopie und des postmodernen Tanzes
Essay published in Lettre International / 149 / Sommer 2025 / Krieg & Frieden
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Von wilden schönen Gärten der Utopie und des postmodernen Tanzes
Essay published in Lettre International / 149 / Sommer 2025 / Krieg & Frieden
REFLECTIONS ON AUTHENTIC MOVEMENT
Theory, Practice and Arts-Led Research
Monograph published by Routledge / Summer 2022
“I have just finished your book! What a beautiful offering... It was clear throughout how thorough and wide your depth of thinking expanded, your reach into science and art and philosophy.”
Janet Adler
Founder of the Discipline of Authentic Movement
(1941 - 2023)
Read Reviews of “REFLECTIONS ON AUTHENTIC MOVEMENT“