The Kids are Alright
“Our children should have a better life” is what their parents said when they came to Germany – and then saw their children grow up with racism. This video installation brings together the voices of six people with different migrant heritages who provide accounts of generational conflicts, political struggles and visions of the future.
CANCELLED
Tanzfaktur, Halle
Language: German with Enlish subtitles (partly)
A large room, video screens, a stylised playground roundabout, a rocking horse. Members of the audience sit on it and hear the family stories of young people whose families came to Germany as refugees from persecution, war and need. They talk about their parents’ hopes and ambitions, racially-motivated exclusion and violence and about the work they do for future generations as a psychologist, an antifascist activist and a researcher studying migration: “We are the children of the Nineties. And we still live in Germany. Our parents had to explain Solingen, Mölln and Rostock-Lichtenhagen to us. We talk to our children about Halle and Hanau.”
Credits
Concept: Simone Dede Ayivi
Video: Jones Seitz
Stage Design: Theresa Reiwer
Sound Design, Music: Katharina Pelosi
Light: Frieder Miller
Production Assistance, dramaturgical advice: Selma Böhmelmann
Assistance Design: Chris Erlbeck
Camera: Thomas Machholz
Experts: Nabila Bushra, Fatma Kar, Lenssa Mohammed, Dan Thy Nguyen, Kadir Özdemir
Production Management: ehrliche arbeit – freies Kulturbüro
Technical Production: Gefährliche Arbeit
Production
A production by Simone Dede Ayivi und Kompliz*innen in co-production with the Sophiensæle, Berlin. Funded through basic funding from the Senate Department for Culture and Europe and subsidy from the Capital Cultural Fund.
Biographies
Simone Dede Ayivi studied Cultural Studies and Aesthetic Practice at the University of Hildesheim. In 2016 as part of the akademie der autodidakten at Ballhaus Naunynstraße she devised the theatre project ‘JETZT BIN ICH HIER!’ together with post-migrant young people, in which they examined their current situation living in Germany. As part of FIRST BLACK WOMAN IN SPACE Ayivi spent three weeks with the entire production as Artist in Residence at Künstlerhaus Mousonturm. She has been working with a range of different Accomplices since 2012.
Katharina Pelosi studied at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen and works as a sonic artist in the fields of performance, choreography, audio drama and installation. She is a co-founder of the feminist performance collective Swoosh Lieu. From 2015–17 Katharina Pelosi was a member of the Graduate College Performing Citizenship with her practice-based doctoral thesis on “Sound as a medium of cultural memory in post-colonial Hamburg.” She has been awarded fellowships by Casa Baldi in Rome for 2021 and the Tarabya Cultural Academy in Istanbul for 2022.
Jones Seitz is a trained audio-visual media designer and has studied Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen and Porto. In addition to personal artistic research into resistance, she* also provides technical direction, lighting and video design for independent projects, such as for Simone Dede Ayivi, Helge Schmidt, Quast&Knoblich and Swoosh Lieu. Jones is a member and co-founder of the group LUKAS UND that produces its own stage plays at the FFT Düsseldorf. Since 2017 Jones has lived and worked mainly in Berlin.
Theresa Reiwer studied Film and Theatre Studies and Stage/Costume Design in Berlin and Istanbul. She works as a scenographer and costume designer for independent theatre productions and feature films. In her own works Reiwer creates VR films and experiments with augmented reality. SLOW ROOMS, her narrative spatial installation with AR elements, was awarded the Mart Stam Preis in 2019 and also helped her secure the Elsa Neumann Scholarship for 2020/21.
Selma Böhmelmann studied Cultural Studies and Political Sciences at Leuphana University. She completed assistant roles in a range of disciplines at institutions including the Schaubühne Berlin, the festival Augenblick mal! and the Volksbühne. In April 2020 she started her Masters in Theatre Studies at the FU Berlin. Since 2020 she has supported Simone Dede Ayivi as a production assistant and dramaturgical associate.