Impulse Theater Festival

Cologne, Düsseldorf, Mülheim an der Ruhr

4-14 June 2020

STRICKEN, DIE INSTALLATION


STRICKEN takes place online.

How do Afro-German women relate to the past lives of their white grandmothers? In STRICKEN we see video portraits of six granddaughters who talk about Nazism and deep-seated resentments, about love and favourite meals cooked by their grannies, about their family heritage and present-day racism.

Tanzfaktur, Studio 5
Language: German with English subtitles

Extra:
05.06. 16:00 Talk in German with the artist and Jennifer Teege, the author of ‘My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me’. Chaired by Wilma Renfordt, Dramaturg, Impulse Theater Festival

© Carolin Seeliger
© Carolin Seeliger
© Carolin Seeliger

Magda Korsinsky has interviewed six women about their families: what were the values passed down to you? Which ones did you practice, question, change or reject? The results are open and honest portraits — projected onto cloth banners made from textiles that these women found in their grandmothers’ wardrobes: bed sheets, tablecloths and towels, some of which they have known since they were children. For these women their family history is something that binds them and separates them at the same time because unlike their white grandparents, under the Nazis they would have been among the persecuted. So how do they react to the guilt of their ancestors?

STRICKEN was inspired by the book ‘My Grandfather would have shot me’ by Jennifer Teege, who found out at the age of 38 that she is the granddaughter of the concentration camp Kommandant Amon Göth. “Anyone who is related to Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Göring or Amon Göth is forced to confront their family history,” Teege writes. “But what about all the others, those many nameless people who went along or joined in with what they did?” Jennifer Teege will be one of the guests at an audience discussion on 5 June.

Credits

Director, Installation, Interview: Magda Korsinsky
Sound, Video: Stefan Korsinsky
Seamstresses: Kunji Baerwald, Sofia Vannini
Interviewees: Binta, Denise, Matti, Miriam, Shaheen, Stephanie
Contact for touring enquiries: Magda Korsinsky, contact@magdakorsinsky.com

Production

In co-operation with Ballhaus Naunynstraße and Savvy Contemporary e.V. By kind permission of DENGLER und DENGLER Galerie für Schöne Künste, Stuttgart. With the generous support of the Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa, Berlin, and the Rudolf Augstein Stiftung.

Biographies

Magda Korsinsky is a visual artist, choreographer and lecturer with Czech and Eritrean roots. She studied Fine Art at UdK in Berlin, ENSBA in Paris and AVU in Prague and has presented her work in numerous exhibitions. In 2012 she graduated in Choreography from HZT Berlin. Her choreographic works have been shown at the Tanztage at the Sophiensæle, the Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin and Uferstudios. Since 2014, she has produced three dance pieces at Ballhaus Naunynstraße: ‘Gazes that Matter’ and two works, ‘STRICKEN’ and ‘PATTERNS’, in which she takes gestures along with how they are socialised and their stubbornness as the starting point for reflection on black identities in Germany.

Stefan Korsinsky holds a diploma in cultural studies and was a founding member of Expander Film Berlin. He studied Cultural Studies and Aesthetic Practice in Hildesheim and Sociology and German Literature in Bielefeld. Stefan Korsinsky works as a filmmaker and teaches at the Code University of Applied Sciences Berlin.