2 – 13 June 2021 in Cologne, Düsseldorf, Mülheim an der Ruhr + Online
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Programme

With this year’s selection the Impulse Theater Festival has adopted a special approach. By doing so the festival seeks to counteract the planning uncertainties and financial worries to which artists are currently exposed: It was only possible to definitely invite those productions which have been selected that can be realised under the public health regulations in force at the time of the festival. If a work has been selected but cannot be presented, the artists will receive a sum of prize money.

For a short time in February 2020 St. Pauli was made richer by an additional attraction: the Queens, a club exclusively for women who desire men. Treading a fine balance between art, sex work and care work, in 1:1 encounters with male performers its female visitors experienced what many people have painfully missed since the pandemic began: being touched. In the Impulse SHOWCASE, the Queens team is represented with a video message.

03.06.21 19:00 04.06.21 05.06.21 06.06.21 07.06.21 08.06.21 09.06.21 10.06.21 11.06.21 12.06.21 13.06.21

Video on demand (free of charge)

Language: German

© Margaux Weiß
© Margaux Weiß
© Margaux Weiß
© Margaux Weiß
© Margaux Weiß

Credits

Concept: Sibylle Peters
Camera: Ansuman Biswas u.a.
Cut: Nils Loefke, Sibylle Peters
Text and performance: Sibylle Peters, Charlotte Pfeifer, Ansuman Biswas, Nina Klöckner, Nils Loefke, Simon Mantei, Maik Reif, Michael von Schönberg, Bakary Trawally, Eidglas Xavier.

Thanks to Katharina Duve, Matthias Anton and the MS Stubnitz.

Production

A co-production with Kampnagel, Hamburg. Funded by a grant from the City of Hamburg’s Elbkulturfonds.

Biography

Sibylle Peters is a performance artist and cultural scientist. She is also the Artistic Director of FUNDUS THEATER/THEATRE OF RESEARCH in Hamburg and co-founder of the doctoral research programme Performing Citizenship. She often collaborates with the performance collective geheimagentur. Her most recent projects include QUEENS. THE HETERACLUB, which was selected for the Impulse SHOWCASE 2021.

Playblack

Joana Tischkau in person at TanzFaktur, live stream + chat

It’s Showtime, Baby! In PLAYBLACK songs and interviews by icons of pop history are copied and appropriated. A fast-paced collage about the role of Black stars in the white-dominated entertainment industry.

03.06. in person at TanzFaktur, live stream + chat
04.–06.06. Video on demand
Language: English and German

© Robin Junicke
© Robin Junicke
© Robin Junicke
© Robin Junicke

“If you’re thinking about being my Baby, it don’t matter if you’re black or white” the King of Pop professes in ‘Black or White’ is an audio-visual symbiosis of white rock guitar riffs and Black gangsta rap. On its release in 1991 Epic records described the song as a “rock ’n’ roll dance song about racial harmony”. It seems as if Pop Culture repeatedly claims that it is capable of overcoming racist power structures. This colour-blindness is addressed with a childish naivety and PLAYBLACK proves that exactly the opposite is true.

Hijacking the format of the German TV program Mini Playback Show, Joana Tischkau uses it to show that the lived experience of whiteness is not universal. In an ever-evolving battle with costumes, wigs and dance-moves, the performers are imitating a range of interviews and performances by different pop-historical icons: the choreography, gestures, facial expressions and playback – perfect copies.

PLAYBLACK exposes the ambivalent potential of the copy: In what way can they become an expression of solidarity, but also drift into being caricatures? The white German desire for Black embodiment is exposed when we lose ourselves in the the recesses, memories and projections of African American and Afro-German cultural productions. It’s Showtime Baby!

Credits

Concept and Choreography: Clara Reiner, Joana Tischkau
Chorus: Dilara Celebi, Nadina Kiala, Rahma Klein
Audio Direction : Jan Gehmlich
Dramaturgy: Elisabeth Hampe
Lighting: Dennis Dieter Kopp
Costumes: Ina Trenk, Nadine Wagner
Assistance: Leonie Kopineck
Graphic and Stage Design: Justus Gelberg
Picture Direction: Anh Trieu
DOP: An Nguyen
Vision Mixer: Nao Aphischai Luu
Production Management: Lisa Gehring
Streaming Operator: Jonathan Kastl
Camera: Michael Maurissens, Max Kluger

Production

A production by Joana Tischkau in co-operation with Künstlerhaus Mousonturm and students of the Choreography and Performance course at the Hessian Theatre Academy, funded by the City of Frankfurt Culture Department.

Biographies

Annedore Adei Antrie is currently the only Person of Colour in the Third Year studying Acting at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Frankfurt. As a human being who acts she appears on stage and in front of a camera in student and independent productions and hopes that after she has graduated she will be able as a Black performer to work on interesting and complex roles and that she will be spared stereotypical characters marked only by their Blackness. As a participant in the ‘Mini Playback Show’ she would perform Judi Jackson’s hit ‘Still’.

Jan Gehmlich studied Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen. He writes songs and produces audio dramas, podcasts, sound collages and stage works – often in collaboration with others. His work is guided by the principle of putting himself as a white cis male at the disposal of feminist and anti-racist art productions in which women and POCs can be perceived as authors. Because art is only half a living, he also drives a golf cart around Frankfurt airport bringing passengers to their gates. He is seeking work in the fields of sound, performance and emotional care.

Elisabeth Hampe studied Theatre Studies at the Free University Berlin and Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen. She writes concepts, works as a performer and dramaturg and also works in a Berlin record shop. She has a particular interest in the mechanics of representation in Black music and cultural production and has engaged critically with the much-discussed medium of blackfacing on German stages.

Dennis Dieter Kopp studied Theatre, Media and Literature at the University of Hildesheim. Since 2012 he has worked as a lighting technician, performer and dramaturg at venues including the Münchner Kammerspiele and for Oliver Zahn//HAUPTAKTION, Thermoboy FK, christians//schwenk, Henrike Iglesias, Markus&Markus, Marie Simons and Ceren Oran and Joana Tischkau. As a solo performer and member of cobragianni.cobra he has been responsible for ‘Let Me Be the Object of Your Desire’ (2012) and ‘EIN BISSCHEN MEHR MUSS MAN SCHON SEHEN oder: Wie ich mich in einen Schmetterling verwandelte’ (2017). His artistic practice is concerned mainly with issues of critical research into masculinity in searching for queer, feminist and intersectional perspectives. Having grown up in a home with very little pop music,

Clara Reiner only discovered the pleasures of the ‘Mini Playback Show’ through working on PLAYBACK. She now has a nose for the pitfalls of show business and has cultivated an ear worm. When she’s not touring with PLAYBLACK, she studies Choreography and Performance at the Institute of Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen. She makes both plays and things, usually works with others and is interested in non-human actors.

Joana Tischkau dances. One of her first memories is of dancing to Kaoma’s 1989 hit ‘Lambada’ at a children’s birthday party. This motivated her to register for lessons in jazz dance, street dance and videoclip dancing at the dance school next door. She subsequently studied Dance and Acting at Coventry University in Great Britain and Choreography and Performance at the Institute of Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen. Her artistic practice is a hybrid mess where the writings of bel hooks meet beatboxing, where a fitness workout can be produced based on white movement material and Roberto Blanco is worshipped as the king of Black German entertainment. PLAYBLACK is the graduation production for her Master’s degree.

Ina Trenk studies Stage and Costume Design at Offenbach University of Art and Design and came to know Joana Tischkau and Jan Gehmlich by their work together on the project ‘Der Urpsrung der Welt’ initiated by Anne Kapsner at the Hessian Theatre Academy. Although she was immediately inspired by Boney M’s stage outfits, she did not previously know the band. Her favourite song is ‘Green Grass of Tunnel’ by Múm.

Mit Echten Singen

Tanja Krone und Friedrich Greiling (Mittekill) in person at TanzFaktur, live stream

30 years after reunification Tanja Krone visits her home town in Saxony and asks: What was actually going on in 89/90? Krone and the musician Friedrich Greiling put the voices of her former companions together with a mixture of pop, rock, techno, disco and trance. A personal concert-performance that offers profound insights into East German realities.

© Robin Junicke
© Robin Junicke
© Robin Junicke
© Robin Junicke

Credits

On Stage: Tanja Krone, Friedrich Greiling
Backstage: Johanna-Yasirra Kluhs, Eva Lochner, Leonie Kusterer
With texts by: Ulla, Manu, Herr H., Carmen K., Randy, Herr N., Frau M., Eric, Marco, Josi, Kati, Verena, Katja, Antje

Production

With thanks to HELLERAU – European Centre for the Arts, Dresden.

Biographies

Tanja Krone is a director, curator, performer and musician. In her works she focusses on art as a space for possibilities, the aspect of social participation and searching for the poetic within the documentary. Since 2019 in her “Real” series MIT ECHTEN REDEN she has enabled voices of the past to be heard in a broad range of ways. Krone has been touring the provinces since 2020 together with Friedrich Greiling and the concert performance MIT ECHTEN SINGEN.

Friedrich Greiling is a musician who works both as a composer, lyricist, producer and performer and as a singer and songwriter for theatre, pop, film and clubs. In artistic projects such as VÖLKERWANDERUNG (Turbo Pascal, Theater Freiburg), WECHSELSTUBE (Deutsches Theater Berlin), UNTERSCHEIDET EUCH! (Theater an der Parkaue) and the European expedition FROM A TO BE – TRANSPORT/ART FOR FREE cast members devise and perform pieces of music under his direction. He produces electronic music, amongst other things, together with Jan Hohmann under the name Mittekill.

Body of Knowledge (at home)

Samara Hersch Phone call + video conference

Theatre visits the audience at home! The listeners are connected with each other and eight teenagers from Australia by phone. In physical isolation a touching dialogue ensues between generations – about intimacy, sexuality, fears for the future and grief.

05.06.21 22:30–23:45

SOLD OUT

06.06.21 13:00–14:15

SOLD OUT

11.06.21 22:30–23:45

SOLD OUT

13.06.21 11:00–12:15

SOLD OUT

13.06.21 13:00–14:15

SOLD OUT

Phone call + video conference
Language: English

© Pier Carthew
© Pier Carthew
© Pier Carthew

The original version of this piece successfully toured the stages of Australia and Europe in 2019. Against the background of the pandemic Samara Hersch has devised a new version of her work that enables members of the audience to participate from home. Connected by digital signals, young people and grown ups exchange knowledge and experiences and, protected by anonymity, accept the uncertain terms of an encounter with strangers.

To participate in the performance, you need a computer and a telephone with access to WhatsApp. You will also receive a package of props by post. To ask for the number that you can be contacted on by WhatsApp and your postal address, we will send you an email after you have bought your ticket. If necessary, please check your spam folder.

Credits

Lead Artist: Samara Hersch

Creative Technology: Fred Rodrigues, Nathan Fain
Artistic Associate: Cassandra Fumi
Dramaturgy: Maria Rößler
Production Support: Bec Reid
Photography: Pier Carthew

Production

BODY OF KNOWLEDGE was produced as part of Be SpectACTive! in co-production with the SICK! Festival, Liveworks Festival of Experimental Art and Carriageworks. The “At Home” version is a co-production by the International Summer Festival Kampnagel, Hamburg and the Zurich Theater Spektakel.

Biography

Samara Hersch is a theatre-maker, director and artist whose practice explores the intersections of contemporary performance and social engagement. She recently completed her Masters degree at Das Theatre in Amsterdam. She has a particular interest in cross-generational discourse and non-hierarchical forms of exchanging knowledge. Her work WE ALL KNOW WHAT’S HAPPENING, created with Lara Thoms and seven children from Melbourne, won the ZKB Encouragement Award and the Audience Prize at the Zürcher Theater Spektakel 2019 as well as the Green Room Award for the best contemporary and experimental performance in Melbourne.

Takdİr. Die Anerkennung

Ülkü Süngün on site in Cologne

Ten people were murdered by the NSU. Most Germans cannot even pronounce their names correctly. This is why Ülkü Süngün will invite passers-by to take part in a language course. A temporary memorial for Theodoros Boulgarides, Michèle Kiesewetter, Habil Kılıç, Mehmet Kubaşık, Abdurrahim Özüdoğru, Enver Şimşek, Süleyman Taşköprü, Mehmet Turgut, İsmail Yaşar and Halit Yozgat.

05.06.21 14:00–14:45
Language: German
TAKDİR. DIE ANERKENNUNG Ülkü Süngün © Robin Junicke
TAKDİR. DIE ANERKENNUNG Ülkü Süngün © Robin Junicke
© Christian Schuller

The performance starts with speech training: each time one person sits opposite the artist and practices with her the Turkish pronunciation of the letters “r”, “z”, “ı” and “ç”. Afterwards the participants learn to pronounce the names of the ten victims correctly and then recite them out loud together with Ülkü Süngün. The language course is broadcast using a speaker system and is amplified so that it can be heard all around. With every additional participant the “chorus of speakers and commemorators” grows louder.


Takdir is translated as appreciation, esteem. Memory and appreciation are generated through the act of repeatedly speaking their names, and a temporary memorial is established to the murder victims of the NSU. In her performance Ülkü Süngün investigates practices of remembrance culture in public spaces: who is recognised, who is honoured with memorials and who is not? How can remembrance take place publicly without being preserved with a monument? In what form can memory be contained in speech? And what does the moment of remembrance mean to each of us individually?

Production

An independent production by Ülkü Süngün.

Biography

Ülkü Süngün lives and works in Stuttgart, where she studied Sculpture at the State Academy of Art and Design. Her artistic research uses process-orientated and collaborative approaches to examine (the politics of) migration and identity and also memory. Her critical works focus on photography, installation and sculpture, and are also realised in the form of lecture performances. As a lecturer at the Merz Academy and the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design she has also worked on emancipatory issues around teaching. She realised her project ‘The Institute for Artistic Migration Research’ at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart. With the eponymous association founded in 2017 she makes her artistic and socially critical practice structurally visible while using spaces on a nomadic basis.

Language: German
Entry is free of charge.

Unterscheidet Euch!

Turbo Pascal Video conference

People are different and that is quite normal. But what about the difference between rich and poor? Does it have to be this way? And is it fair? An interactive online game based around the question of who or what determines which paths remain open to children and which do not.

08.06.21 10:00–11:15

School performance

08.06.21 18:00–19:15 09.06.21 10:00–11:15

School performance

Video conference
Language: German
For children aged between 9 and 14 and adults

Turbo Pascal_UNTERSCHEIDET EUCH_C_Daniela del Pomar
© Christian Brachwitz
© Christian Brachwitz

In the audience there are people with stripes, flowers and writing on their clothes. „I can’t make out any order!“ shouts one of the actors. Or do people get categorised anyway? Turbo Pascal play out social order together with the public and try to create disorder. The young members of the audience can choose which heading they feel happiest under — the shy kids, the cool kids, the football fans or the horse fans.

But is it also acceptable to separate rich and poor? And when is someone poor, or someone rich, or someone in the middle? Is someone who lives in a house with its own garden on the fringes of the city rich? Or only if they own five million Euro worth of shares? How does someone become poor, how does someone become rich? Does it depend on how much work someone does? Or was it already decided right from the start? And how did the people who appear here actually get involved in the theatre? One drew out theatre fans in the parental lottery, another tells us that, for his parents, money did not matter — he simply had to choose a profession he enjoyed. And a third had parents who owned very few books. Not all people have the same starting conditions, the same chances. And if you don’t recognise the differences, then you won’t be able to change them.

Winner of the IKARUS Theatre Prize 2019 awarded by the JugendKulturService Berlin.

Credits

Performers: Friedrich Greiling, Hanni Lorenz, Wolfgang Boos and alternating: Eva Plischke, Angela Löer, Frank Oberhäußer
Direction: Turbo Pascal
Stage Design, Costumes: Janina Janke
Music: Friedrich Greiling
Dramaturgy: Karola Marsch
Assistant Director, Stage Manager, Prompter: Melina Archipoff
Stage Technician: Henning Beckmann
Lighting: Rainer Pagel
Sound and Video Technician: Max Berthold
Make-Up: Karla Steudel
Props: Jens Blau
Contact for touring enquiries: Axel Möbius, axel.moebius[a]parkaue.de

Production

Production: Junges Staatstheater Berlin — Theater an der Parkaue.

Biography

Turbo Pascal is a theatre and performance collective from Berlin. They are interested in how people organise and imagine living together. They have made a name for themselves in the area of ”theatrical audience experiments“: they devise interactive stage plays and performative installations which the audience may follow, address, involve themselves in and become independent of in different ways each time. In this way the theatre becomes a public space of assembly and negotiation for social processes. Turbo Pascal includes the founding-members, conceivers and performers Angela Löer, Frank Oberhäußer, Eva Plischke, Veit Arlt, Luis Pfeiffer, the performers and productions managers Margret Schütz and Kathrin Feldhaus, the musician Friedrich Greiling, the stage designer Janina Janke, the video artist Gernot Wöltjen and the sonic artist and programmer Georg Werner.

Entry is free of charge.

Hate me, tender. Solo for future feminism

Teresa Vittucci in person at TanzFaktur, live stream

Purity, innocence and perfection – these are the attributes of the Virgin Mary. In a solo filled with humour and sensuality Teresa Vittucci searches for the feminist potential in this icon. She shows how the myth of a woman being sealed until she first has sex continues to influence notions of femininity to this day.

10.06. in person at TanzFaktur, live stream + chat (in German language)

12.06. in person at TanzFaktur, live stream + chat (in English language)

Language: English
Suitable for ages 18 and above

© Yushiko Kusano
© Yushiko Kusano
© Yushiko Kusano

In Christianity, Mary is seen as the ideal woman – because she unites what cannot be united, as both a virgin and a mother. Real women can never live up to this ideal. For them, the cult of Mary presents them with an impossible challenge. This makes Mary a source of self-hatred and of misogyny. But Mary is also merciful, vulnerable and filled with love. Teresa Vittucci creates images that respectfully grant space to these qualities – while unsparingly highlighting all the lies and false expectations that surround female virginity. A single silent image grows into a furious indictment. Vittucci sweeps away the story of the virgin’s hymen as a seal that guarantees freshness until it is pierced the first time she has sex. The icon empowers herself.

Credits

Concept and Performance: Teresa Vittucci
Dramaturgical Advice: Benjamin Egger, Veza Fernández, Rafał Pierzyński
Scenography: Jasmin Wiesli, Teresa Vittucci
Production Management: groundworkers // Kira Koplin
Production: OH DEAR Zürich
Contact for touring enquiries: Kira Koplin, kira[a]groundworkers.at

Production

Co-Production: Tanzhaus Zürich, Zürcher Theaterspektakel. Developed as part of the PREMIO Prize for Emerging Artists in Theatre and Dance, Espacion do Tempo Montemor. Funded by Migros-Kulturprozent, Pro Helvetia, Ernst Göhner Stiftung.

With special thanks to Julia Haenni, Gina Gurtner and Simone Aughterlony

Biography

Teresa Vittucci is a choreographer and performer. She is a graduate of the Conservatoire in Vienna, the Ailey School and the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance (SEAD) and completed her M.A. at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berne. Since 2013 she has worked as a solo performer and has devised such pieces as ‘UNLEASH’ (2012), ‘LUNCHTIME’ (2015), ‘ALL EYES ON’ (2017) and ‘HATE ME, TENDER’ (2018). She has collaborated with numerous artists including Simone Aughterlony, Marie-Caroline Hominal, Trajal Harrell and Nils Amadeus Lange. Teresa Vittucci is the Young Associate Artist (YAA!) at Tanzhaus Zürich for 2019/20. In 2019 she won the Swiss Dance Prize for HATE ME, TENDER.

“Take my hand as we collect money for old cans” Fehler Kuti und die Polizei urge. In their stage show they scramble together music, theatre and theory. What emerges is a danceable, quasi-religious ritual that reveals the racist and capitalist power relations of a country in which there have never been equal rights and opportunities for all.

11.06. 22:00-24:00 h: Live stream and chat with Julian Warner
12.06. 00:00–24:00 h: Video on demand
Language: German and English

© Julian Baumann
©Julian Baumann
© Julian Baumann
© Julian Baumann

Die Polizei start playing. Frontman Fehler Kuti sings about the German need for security and policies of nativism and law and order: ranging from the transfiguration of the German forests, passing through deindustrialisation and the class struggle to the information society and racial profiling. Together they reveal the racist and capitalist power structures of a country which has never had the same rights and opportunities for everyone. Who are the police here – who enforces the prevailing order, who keeps it alive?

Credits

By and with Markus Acher, Micha Acher, Cico Beck, Fehler Kuti, Theresa Loibl, Sascha Schwegeler

Dramaturgy: Adele Mike Dittrich Frydetzki
Scenography: Jana Schützendübel
Costumes: Katharina Böhringer
Light: Jonaid Khodabakhshi
Sound: Nicolas Sierig
Camera: Nicole Marianna Wytyczak, Joel Heyd
Cut: Su Steinmassl
Production Management: Veronika Heinrich

Production

A production by Julian Warner in co-production with the Münchner Kammerspiele. Funded by the Department of Culture of the State Capital Munich.

Biographies

Julian Warner works as a cultural anthropolgist in the fields of curating, music, performance art and research. He is Artistic Director of the Festival der Kulturregion Stuttgart 2022 and curator of the Spielart festival in Munich. Under the alias Fehler Kuti he also releases discursive pop. Warner has worked as a research assistant at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Göttingen. The anthology he has edited AFTER EUROPE – Beiträge zur dekolonialen Kritik is published by Verbrecher Verlag in April 2021.

Markus Acher is a singer, percussionist and composer. With his brother Micha Acher he is part of Weilheim band The Notwist. In addition to other band projects Acher also makes music for films, audio dramas and theatre. Together with Micha Acher he curated the festival ‘Alien Disko’ that was held four times at the Münchner Kammerspiele.

Micha Acher is a composer and musician and member of The Notwist. Since 2018 he has performed and composed in a trio with the jazz saxophonist Johannes Enders and the jazz percussionist Günther ‘Baby’ Sommer. Acher also makes music for theatre and films.

Cico Beck is a freelance composer and musician. He trained at Münster University of Music. In addition to his studies, Beck also worked on electronic, experimental and pop music and their intersections. Beck writes and performs music for theatre and dance productions, cinema and TV films and is active in several bands (including The Notwist).

Theresa Loibl studied clarinet at Nuremberg University of Music and also plays tuba, keyboard instruments, percussion and bass clarinet. As an instrumentalist she commutes for various band projects between Munich and New Orleans.

Sascha Schwegeler, born in Cologne, is a graphic designer and musician. He has been playing percussion in bands for as long as he can remember. Schwengeler is co-manager of the Munich record label Gutfeeling.

Tanz

Florentina Holzinger postponed to the Asphalt Festival

The grace and harmony of romantic ballet come up against crude jokes featuring artificial intestines, motor bikes and butcher’s hooks. In her critically acclaimed masterpiece, a lavish work that defies all taboos, Florentina Holzinger criticises and revels in the repressive treatment of the female body.

Postponed to the Asphalt Festival. Dates: 30.06. / 01.07. / 02.07.

Schauspiel Köln, Depot 1
Language: English
Suitable for ages 18 and above

© Eva Würdinger
© Nada Zgank
© Eva Würdinger
© Eva Würdinger

TANZ is framed by a ballet class led by Beatrice Cordua, who was the first ballerina to dance ‘The Rite of Spring’ naked in 1972. In her soft but unrelenting voice she guides her students through a strict training in “action ballet”: “sylphic studies”. In a series of collective rituals they learn how to control their bodies and minds and to assume supernatural powers: ranging from mentalists’ tricks to flying. Bodies float through the air, seemingly weightless, hanging from their hair or butcher’s hooks.

And a great deal of blood flows. In the third part of her trilogy about spectacular bodies and how they are disciplined, Florentina Holzinger directs brutal parodies of scenes made up of ballet, slapstick shows and horror movies. Not for the faint hearted. But what is being shocked and disgusted compared with the pain of an entire life as a ballerina?

Credits

Concept, Performance, Choreography: Florentina Holzinger

Performance by and with: Renée Copraij, Trixie Cordua, Evelyn Frantti, Lucifire, Annina Machaz, Maria Netti Nüganen, Suzn Payson, Laura Stokes, Veronica Thompson, Lydia Darling
Video Design, Live camera: Josefin Arnell
Sound Design, Live sound: Stefan Schneider
Lighting Design, Technical Direction: Anne Meeussen
Stage Design: Nikola Knezevic
Assistant Stage Design: Camilla Smolders
Dramaturgy: Renée Copraij, Sara Ostertag
Outside Eye: Michele Rizzo, Fernando Belfiore
Theory, Research: Anna Leon
Coaching: Btissame Amadour, Ghani Minne, Dave Tusk
Music Coach: Almut Lustig
Stunt Support: Haeger Stunt & Wireworks
Stunt Instructors: Stunt Cloud GmbH (Leo Plank, Phong Giang, Sandra Barger)
Management: Something Great & DANSCO
Distribution: Something Great
Production: Spirit
Executive Production: Laura Andreß
Financial Administration: Julia Haas/SMART
Contact for touring enquiries: Katharina Wallisch, katharina[a]somethinggreat.de

Production

Co-produced by Tanzquartier Wien, Spring Festival, Productiehuis Theater Rotterdam, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Arsenic, Münchner Kammerspiele, Take Me Somewhere Festival, deSingel, Beursschouwburg, Sophiensæle, Frascati Productions, Asphalt Festival, Theater im Pumpenhaus. Supported by O Espaço do Tempo, Fondation LUMA, De Châtel Award

Thanks to CAMPO Gent, ImPulsTanz, Eva Beresin, Tanz-Archiv MUK Wien, Studierende des Studiengangs „Maskenbild – Theater und Film“ der Theaterakademie August Everding München, Mochi Catering Wien. Funded by Kulturabteilung der Stadt Wien, Bundeskanzleramt für Kunst und Kultur (BKA), Performing Arts Fund NL.

Biography

Florentina Holzinger is regarded as one of the most provocative new choreographers in Europe. In her works she investigates different ways of representing the feminine and the potential of female physicality. Here she deliberately plays on shifting boundaries between high culture and entertainment, pop and trash. Several collaborations with Vincent Riebeek from 2011 onwards were followed by the solo ‘Recovery’, and ‘Apollon’. In 2012 Florentina Holzinger was awarded the Prix Jardin d’Europe at ImPulsTanz for her solo ‘Silk’. She is currently Artist in Residence at ICK in Amsterdam. From 2021/22 she will work at the Volksbühne in Berlin under its new Artistic Director René Pollesch and elsewhere.

The Kids are Alright

Simone Dede Ayivi und Kompliz*innen Cancelled

“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)

© Mayra Wallraff
© Mayra Wallraff
© Mayra Wallraff

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.

What does “family” mean in the 21st century? Seven stories from post-Soviet Moldova dispel all the idyllic clichés and instead show the reality of poverty and oppression. A theatrical exorcism of capitalism and patriarchy.

CANCELLED

Schauspiel Köln, Depot 2
Language: Moldovan Romanian, Russian, Romany with German and English surtitle

© Dorothea Tuch
© Dorothea Tuch
© Dorothea Tuch
At the beginning of the 1990s the Republic of Moldova declared its independence from the Soviet Union. However, the newly-created state was unable to provide for the welfare of its citizens. Many left their homeland to work abroad. Parents had to leave their children behind, couples became strangers, families fell apart. The government offered no help and unflinchingly maintained its Christian-influenced rhetoric about the superiority of the traditional family. ABOLIREA FAMILIEI dispels such idyllic clichés of care, love and support.

The performers tell very different family stories. They tell of mothers and fathers both absent and present, of women deprived of their rights, of illness and death, of domestic violence and of a life full of sacrifices, but also of families that go beyond those created by a married heterosexual couple and of those who succeed in escaping discrimination and poverty.

And a collective voice is repeatedly heard: the performers come together as a chorus that evokes a different future. They lay curses on monogamy, the patriarchy, the state, private property and capitalism. In their roles as modern witches, as children, parents and siblings, as a solidary community.

Credits

A performance by: Nicoleta Esinencu, Antosea Darca and Elena
Anmeghichean, Cătălina Bucos, Doina-Romanța Dochitan, Nora Dorogan,
Ciprian Marinescu, Kira Semionov, Elena Sîrbu, Doriana Talmazan, Artiom
Zavadovsky
Performers: Elena Anmeghichean, Cătălina Bucos,
Doina-Romanța Dochitan, Nicoleta Esinencu, Elena Sîrbu, Doriana
Talmazan, Artiom Zavadovsky
Lighting Design: Ulrich Kellermann
Sound Design: Janis Klinkhammer
Dramaturgical Consultant: Aenne Quiñones
Production Management: Anna Krauß
Technical Direction: Annette Becker
Contact for touring enquiries: Anna Krauß, a.krauss[a]hebbel-am-ufer.de

Production

Production: HAU Hebbel am Ufer. Co-production: FFT Düsseldorf, teatru-spălătorie. Funded through the Association of International Producing Houses by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media and the Goethe Institut. With generous support from the Neue Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.) and the HAU Hebbel am Ufer’s Circle of Friends.

Biography

Nicoleta Esinencu is a writer and director who lives and works in Chișinău. After a scholarship at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart she became internationally renowned with ‘FUCK YOU, Eu.ro.Pa!’ and won the Romanian dramAcum Theatre Prize. In 2010 Esinencu co-founded the independent initiative teatru-spălătorie for an alternative arts space in Chișinău. Her theatre projects consider social reality in the republic of Moldova and the associated contradictions of the post-Soviet era from a critical perspective on the whole of European history. Since 2012 Nicoleta Esinencu has consistently collaborated with the HAU Berlin, and in 2019/20 she was a guest of the DAAD’s Berlin Artist in Residence programme.

Heavy Hitters

Phil Hayes Cancelled

A sad song, weak knees and a boxer’s failed punches. Phil Hayes and John Rowley grapple with the question of when it is time for an ageing body to stop. How much blood, how much sweat has to flow? How much pain does it take for you to finally say: That’s enough?

CANCELLED

Tanzfaktur, Grube
Language: English

© Niklaus Spoerri
© Niklaus Spoerri
© Niklaus Spoerri
© Niklaus Spoerri

Credits

Concept, Direction, Music: Phil Hayes
Creation, Performance: Phil Hayes, John Rowley
Light, Technical Direction: Patrik Rimann
Production Management: Lukas Piccolin
Tour Management: Lise Leclerc

Production

A production by First Cut Productions in co-production with the Gessnerallee, Zurich.

Biographies

Born on England’s South coast, Phil Hayes is a performer, theatre director and musician. Hayes’s work is based on collaborative processes in which content and form are generated together with his partners. In collaboration with artists and companies such as Forced Entertainment, Simone Aughterlony, Maria Jerez, Nada Gambier and Thom Luz he has produced international touring works including LEGENDS & RUMOURS and THESE ARE MY PRINCIPLES..., often under the name First Cut Productions. In 2020 Phil Hayes was recognised for his stage work by the city of Zurich. He has lived in Zurich since 1998.

John Rowley is a performer, actor, theatre-maker and visual artist. Alongside works with his own company good cop bad cop, he regularly works with Forced Entertainment and National Theatre Wales. Rowley recently toured internationally with Heiner Goebbels’s EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED AND WOULD HAPPEN. Rowley has a cameo appearance in Juliet Ellis’s film debut RUBY that won a prize in the Drama section at the 2021 Berlin Independent Film Festival. He lives in Wales.

The Impulse ACADEMY plays a core role in understanding independent theatre. In this fourth edition participants from theory and practice will once again come together to consider key questions for the production and aesthetics of independent theatre and its place in society.

A performative archive of the independent theatre
02.06.–06.06., Graf-Adolf-Strasse 49, 40210 Düsseldorf + Online

The digital Impulse Archive ist online.

The Impulse Archive at Graf-Adolf-Strasse 49, 40210 Düsseldorf, is open from 03.–06.06.m 13:00–17:00 h. Please register here.

Since the Impulse Festival was founded, independent theatre has undergone major changes: aesthetically, thematically and structurally. What traces have these left in 31 years of festival history, what remnants are left? What statements do they allow us to make about the past? And what might an archive look like that not only conserves the past but contemporises it? The Impulse ACADEMY originally planned for our 30th anniversary is now established on a temporary basis: a living archive of three decades of festival history will be created in a disused shop unit in Düsseldorf. The Impulse ACADEMY simultaneously represents both an archive of art and the art of archiving.

Selected artists will make research trips to Düsseldorf and devise their own artistic approaches to relics of past festivals. They will examine statistics, objects, photos and audio-visual media, published programmes, press texts and eye witness accounts. In doing so they will search for dominant narratives and utopias and enquire about what is invisible, marginalised and excluded. At the end of the process, the artists will then open up their workshops and allow their archival work to be seen.

At the same time five collectives of artists from NRW that have responded to an open call from the Impulse Theater Festival will explore the question of what archiving their own artistic output might look like. In rummaging through their own archival collections they will experiment with various artistic (self-)archiving strategies on the boundaries of theatre, archives and digital art. They will present interim stages of their research during the ACADEMY. Visitors to the archive may explore the artists’ workrooms independently or on guided tours and participate in their research processes.

In daily Archive Talks, experts from the fields of cultural and media studies, museology, history, oral history and futurology will discuss archiving processes ranging between the culture of remembrance, utopian scenarios and making omissions visible.

Programme Leader: Daniel Richter
Production Management: Susanne Berthold
Concept for 2020: Kolja Burgschuld, Alice Ferl

The ACADEMY #1 — MAKING HISTORY is produced in co-operation with the Initiative für die Archive des Freien Theaters e.V., and the NRW KULTURsekretariat, the Ministry for Culture and Science of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Theatrical Community, Protest and International Collaboration in a Disembodied Age
10.–12.06., Conference programme online via Zoom, Workshops in various locations
Language: English

The pandemic has hit theatres hard all over the world. Places that were built for bodies to gather and share meaningful experiences together have spent most of the last year empty. The Impulse Academy takes a closer look at this situation. What is lost when performances and working processes take place in the digital space? And what is gained?

The three days of the ACADEMY will take place in a hybrid format, both online and in person in Düsseldorf and Cologne, Berne, Johannesburg and Minsk:

The lectures and discussions in the mornings will focus on the role of the body in creating communities, political protest and international collaboration. These will take place online via Zoom.

In a workshop held over multiple afternoons, participants will explore the art of touching, smell, intimacy and vulnerability. The workshop will take place in person in Düsseldorf.

10.06. Bodies and Communities

from 10:00–13:00 h, online (Zoom + live stream)
Please register if you want to take part via Zoom.
Link to the live stream (no registration necessary)


How important is physical togetherness to the theatrical experience and what do we lose when the audience is sitting at home watching on a laptop or mobile phone? How has our perception of intimacy and touch changed in times of physical distance?

10:00 Welcome

10:10 Bodies in solidarity
Keynote and discussion: Mazda Adli, Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the Charité Hospital, Berlin. Chaired by: Eva Neklyaeva
In his keynote speech the psychiatrist Mazda Adli shows why theatre has an existential importance as a place of assembly: collective emotional and cognitive experience makes a significant contribution to overcoming everyday stress and mental well-being, creates solidarity between people, thereby reinforcing social cohesion within society. In short: theatre keeps our souls healthy. But what role does the body play here? Do these effects occur when we are gathering in front of screens?

11:00 Stacie CC Graham: 15 minutes of mindfulness
Adviser and yogini Stacie CC Graham helps the audience to focus attention on their own bodies through short exercises.

11:15 Intimacy at a distance
Samara Hersch and Damian Rebgetz, input and discussion. Chaired by: Eva Neklyaeva
In their artistic practice, the director Samara Hersch and the actor and performer Damian Rebgetz intensively explore voice and sound as well as intimacy and distance. Both sets of themes have attracted increased attention as a result of Covid- 19. Samara and Damian recount their personal and artistic experiences. Samara Hersch is also represented in the Impulse SHOWCASE with the interactive online performance BODY OF KNOWLEDGE (AT HOME).
Video

12:00 h a p t i c a f f i n i t i e s – a study group on touch, haptic aesthetics and intimacy in the arts
Breakout rooms with:
Joshua Wicke
Antonia Rohwetter
Carolina Mendonca
Bryana Fritz und Henry Andersen
Sofie Luckhardt, Anneliese Ostertag and Rahel Spöhrer
Siegmar Zacharias
Anna Zett

In conversations and exercises in an informal and participatory setting, participants are invited to explore the desire for and loss of intimacy together with the ambivalence and reciprocity of touch. The hosts are practitioners from the fields of art and theory who are working on the theme of touch and intimacy in the arts.

11.06. Bodies and Political Protest

from 10:00–13:00 h, online (Zoom + live stream)
Please register if you want to take part via Zoom.
Link to the live stream (no registration necessary)


How important is the visibility and vulnerability of the body to the effectiveness of political protest movements? What influence has COVID-19 had on this?

10:00 Dance in Protest
Keynote and discussion: Kirsten Maar, Free University Berlin, Institute of Theatre Studies. Chaired by: Irina Bârcă
What potential do choreographic interventions have for protest movements in the age of the pandemic – whether in the context of Black Lives Matter, in Belarus, Poland or Hungary? In her keynote speech, Kirsten Maar will demonstrate choreography’s inherent potential to create a public sphere through assembly and intervention. Resilient and enduring bodies rehearse collectivity together by using the emancipatory potential of reciprocal touching.
Video

10:45 Stacie CC Graham: 15 minutes of mindfulness
Adviser and yogini Stacie CC Graham helps the audience to focus attention on their own bodies through short exercises.

11:00 Appelation, Ideology and the Weird
Joana Tischkau and Julian Warner, inputs and discussion Chaired by: Irina Bârcă
Joana Tischkau talks about visualising BLM protests in the last year. How were the resistant bodies staged in the media and which images are left over in the end? In his input, ‘The Discourse That Made Me’, Julian Warner appeals to us to rid ourselves of the false consciousness of a neoliberal diversity paradigm: “Instead of succumbing to analogies of African-American suffering, we must endeavour to create our own archaeologies in order to produce knowledge of specific oppressions. We will need our material bodies and a sense of the weird and the eerie in order to break free from the appellations of platform capitalism.”
Both artists are also represented in the Impulse SHOWCASE: Joana Tischkau with PLAYBLACK and Julian Warner with THE HISTORY OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY AS TOLD BY FEHLER KUTI UND DIE POLIZEI.

12:00 “It’s all so bad, even complete introverts go out.*
Discussion in co-operation with the Goethe Institut Belarus with Mikhail Gulin, Sophia Sadovskaya, Igor Shugaleev. Chaired by: Tania Arcimovich
Artists and activists from Belarus describe the role of the body in the public sphere as part of the protest movement. Which strategies were used and what effect did the pandemic have on these? What were the consequences for the cultural scene and the performing arts in particular?
*Placard slogan during the protests in Minsk in August 2020

12.06. Bodies and International Collaboration

from 10:00–13:00 h, online (Zoom + live stream)
Please register if you want to take part via Zoom.
Link to the live stream (no registration necessary)


How important are physical meetings to collective creative processes and developing good working relationships? To what extent can we replace them with online tools? And what does this mean for the future of a climate friendly, decolonial international collaboration?

10:00 Disembodied collaboration in creative processes – where does even the best digital tool reach its limits? Findings in media psychology after a year with Covid-19
Keynote and discussion: Maren Urner, HMKW, University of Applied Sciences for Media, Communication and Management, Cologne. Chaired by: Marta Keil
From one day to the other, the pandemic forced us to move our private, professional and cultural communication to the digital world. What are the risks, what the chances of "online lectures,” ”onlne meetings” and ”online gatherings”? What do we miss and what do we gain? How does it affect our well-being?
Video

10:45 Stacie CC Graham: 15 minutes of mindfulness
Adviser and yogini Stacie CC Graham helps the audience to focus attention on their own bodies through short exercises.

11:00 Travelling for Art
Ant Hampton and Lázaro Gabino Rodríguez (Lagartijas tiradas al sol, Mexico), inputs and discussion. Chaired by: Marta Keil
Ant Hampton is currently working on the project ‘Showing Without Going – live performance options without air travel’. Lázaro Gabino Rodríguez has responded with an open letter to Jerôme Bel’s call to refrain from the use of air travel in the performing arts. Both performance artists discuss the necessity of travel, talk about privileges and the luxury of abstention as well as about how their views have changed as a consequence of Covid-19.
Video

12:00 Disembodied co-operations
Jayachandran Palazhy (Attakkalari Center for Movement Arts, Bangalore) and Clara Vaughan (Market Theatre Laboratory, Johannesburg), inputs and discussion. Chaired by: Ogutu Muraya
Jayachandran Palazhy, Artistic Director of the Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts in Bangalore, and the Head of the Market Theatre Laboratory in Johannesburg, Clara Vaughan, talk about their experiences of rehearsal, performances and co-operation projects in the last year. What positive effects might there have been, but also where did the challenges lie – both locally and in an international context?
Video

12:45 Conclusions

10.–12.06. Exercises in Social Intimacy. An international workshop on the art of touching and other forbidden pleasures

from 14:30–17:30 h each day, Düsseldorf in person
By registration only (for further information see below)


Hosts: Sibylle Peters with Charlotte Pfeifer and Ansuman Biswas, and guest Moritz Frischkorn
Working language: English

What it means to be alone and what it means to be connected have changed because of the pandemic. Coronavirus is a shared problem that keeps us apart from each other. But the safety of isolation is accompanied by its own dangers: if our bodies cannot smell and touch other bodies, our stress levels remain high. Fear and depression take the place of shared vulnerability. Hedges of thorns start springing up around our castles. At the same time digital gatherings have replaced real get-togethers and connected people with each other – even globally – in new ways. Against this background, theatre and performance appear in a new light: as arts of intimacy that bring people close to each other and invite them to communicate and share their vulnerabilities.

EXERCISES IN SOCIAL INTIMACY will bring together 90 participants locally and globally, physically and digitally. Groups in Düsseldorf and Cologne, Bangalore, Berne, Johannesburg and Minsk will meet while each observing the public health regulations that apply in their location and conduct exchanges through video conferencing. They will explore the art of touching, smell and intimacy and experiment with the relationship between intimacy and distance.

“Pleasure Activism is called for in order to rediscover trust between bodies. Let us be the Princess who forces her way through the hedge of thorns and kisses Sleeping Beauty awake!” Sibylle Peters

It is only possible to take part in the workshop locally.
To participate in the workshop group in Düsseldorf you can register at email hidden; JavaScript is required. No particular previous experience is required. The cost of the workshop for three afternoons including catering is 30 Euro.
The workshop will take place in compliance with the public health regulations in force at the time. Participants agree to take a rapid Covid test each day that will be organized by the producers.

International co-hosts:
Bern University of the Arts, Theatre Division (Switzerland)
The Market Theatre Laboratory, Johannesburg (South Africa)
Universität zu Köln, Institut für Kunst & Kunsttheorie
Goethe Institut Belarus

Biographies

Mazda Adli is a psychiatrist and stress researcher. He runs the Fliedner Klinik in Berlin and the research group into affective disorders at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin. He founded the Interdisciplinary Forum on Neuro-Urbanism that examines the influence of city living on emotions and mental health and is the founder of the “Singing Shrinks”, the world’s only choir of psychiatrists. His book ‘Stress and the City: Why cities make us ill and why they are still good for us’ was published in 2017.

Tania Arcimovich is a writer, director and curator from Minsk. She graduated in Theatre Studies from the Belarus State Academy of the Arts in Minsk and has a Master’s in Cultural Studies from the European Humanities University in Vilnius. Since 2014, Tania Arcimovich has curated exhibitions, and produced a range of cultural and educational projects with institutions including the Gallery for Contemporary Art, Lohvinau publishing house, Minsk Photography Month and the TEART theatre festival. She taught at the European College of Liberal Arts in Belarus from 2016 to 2019. She is a co-founder of the ziErnie Performative Arts Platform and editor of the magazine pARTisan / pARTisanka. She is currently studying for a doctorate at the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC) at the Justus-Liebig University in Gießen.

Irina Bârcă is the Dramaturg at the FFT Düsseldorf with responsibility for children’s and youth theatre. Born and raised in Sibiu, Romania, she studied Acting in Bucharest and Theatre as Education at the University of Applied Sciences Osnabrück. From 2014 – 2017 she was Education Officer at the Theater an der Parkaue. She devises, produces and curates theatre projects principally for and with children and young people. At the FFT her work includes evolving formats in which theatres, schools and artists to encounter and co-operate with each other and theatre by digital natives. She is a member of numerous juries, the curatorial board of the Fonds Darstellende Künste and also curated the festival Augenblick mal! 2021.

Ansuman Biswas was born in India and trained in the UK. He has an international practice encompassing music, film, live art, installation, writing and theatre. He is interested in hybridity and interdisciplinarity – often working between science, art and industry, for instance, or between music, dance and visual art. Improvisation and play are key elements of his practice and at its core is the discipline of vipassana meditation.

Moritz Frischkorn has worked in the field of contemporary performing arts as a choreographer, performer and theoretician since 2014. His artistic and curatorial practice addresses choreographies of things and their social and political dimensions. In 2021 he was awarded his Doctorate at HafenCity University Hamburg for a thesis on the topic of “More-than-human Choreographies”. In recent years he has presented a series of his own works. His interdisciplinary research project ‘The Great Report’ on the relationship between choreography and logistics was premiered at Kampnagel in 2020.

Stacie CC Graham is a management consultant, executive coach, founder, speaker and writer. In her work, she uses practices and tools such as mindful leadership, intersectional attunement as well as emotional and social intelligence. Her holistic wellness brand, OYA: Body-Mind-Spirit Retreats, is dedicated to underrepresented communities typically underserved by the mainstream wellness industry. With an MS in economics and a PhD in psychology as well as experience living and working in different parts of the world, she continues to cultivate a nuanced understanding of underlying drivers of human motivation and behaviour.

Mikhail Gulin is an artist and curator. Since the 2000s, he has been one of the most influencing Belarusian artists making artistic interventions in public, focusing on how the public sphere works in Belarus. His artworks have been presented in galleries in Minsk, Brest, Eindhoven, Vilnius, Moscow, Warsaw, Kiev and other cities. Gulin participated in artistic symposiums and performance festivals in Lithuania, North Ossetia-Alania and Kazakhstan.

Ant Hampton is a performance artist. His works are characterised by a clear tension between strictly formal and structural elements and other elements that are lived and negotiated in the moment of performance. He has developed small-scale, intimate projects that involve members of the audience themselves and take place in cafés (‘Etiquette’) or libraries (‘The Quiet Volume’). His recent works encourage the public to take risks with genuine consequences (‘Someone Else’, ‘The Thing’).

The political and ethical implications of touch have come to the foreground within our current intensified experience of both the loss and the dangers of personal contact. Intimacies are both given and chosen that elude our control. Here touch manifests itself as the fundamental requirement of a vulnerable existence. It is a feature of reciprocal dependencies, porous physical boundaries, brutal intimacies and cross-species collaborations. The study group h a p t i c a f f i n i t i e s was initiated by Anneliese Ostertag, Sofie Luckhardt, Belle Santos and Rahel Spöhrer, meeting every week since the middle of April against this background to ask: what forms of touch take place in the performative arts that are noticed and unnoticed? How can we address the performativity and mediality of touch? And how can the manifold haptic encounters in the arts be understood on a consensual basis?

Samara Hersch is a theatre-maker, director and artist whose practice explores the intersections of contemporary performance and social engagement. She recently completed her Masters degree at Das Theatre in Amsterdam. She has a particular interest in cross-generational discourse and non-hierarchical forms of exchanging knowledge. Her work WE ALL KNOW WHAT’S HAPPENING, created with Lara Thoms and seven children from Melbourne, won the ZKB Encouragement Award and the Audience Prize at the Zürcher Theater Spektakel 2019 as well as the Green Room Award for the best contemporary and experimental performance in Melbourne.

Marta Keil is a performing arts curator, dramaturg and researcher. She focuses her curatorial and research practice on possible alternative processes of instituting and on redefining modes of working transnationally. Since 2019 she co-runs Performing Arts Institute in Warsaw, an independent organisation that aims at developing the independent performing arts field in Poland. Since 2019 she cooperates as a facilitator with the RESHAPE project that proposes instruments for transition towards an alternative, fairer, and unified arts ecosystem across Europe and the Southern Mediterranean.

Kirsten Maar has been Junior Professor for Dance Studies at the Free University Berlin since 2018 and works as a dramaturg. Her research focusses on choreographic practices in the 20th century, the removal of boundaries between choreography, architecture and the visual arts as well as intersectional discourses and canonical issues.

Ogutu Muraya is a writer and theater maker whose work is embedded in the practice of Orature. In his work, he searches for new forms of storytelling where socio-political aspects merge with the belief that art is an important catalyst for questioning certainties. He studied International Relations at USIU-Africa and graduated in 2016 with a Master in Arts at DAS Theatre. His texts have been published internationally. His performative works and storytelling have been featured in theatres and festivals around the globe. Ogutu is based in Nairobi where he continues his artistic practice and also teaches part time at the department of film and performing arts at KCA University.

Eva Neklyaeva is a curator concerned with the questions of freedom and is exploring these questions across performing art, politics and sexuality. At the moment, she is co-curating Samara Editions – performances by post; as well as Spielart Festival 2021. Previously, she has, amongst others, curated Santarcangelo Festival (2017–2019), and was Director of Baltic Circle International Contemporary Theatre Festival for six years. Under her leadership, the festival became an acclaimed international platform and laboratory for emerging multidisciplinary performance.

Jayachandran Palazhy is the Founder and Artistic Director of the Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts in Bangalore and an internationally sought-after dancer and choreographer. He graduated in Physics from Kerala and then started his training started in India with Bharatanatyam, Kathakali, Indian folk dances and the martial art form of Kalarippayattu. He also trained at the London Contemporary Dance School and studied Classical Ballet, Tai Chi, Capoeira and African Dance. He collaborated with international artists on multimedia dance productions involving digital arts and interactive technology. At Attakkalari he has directed the research and documentation project “NAGARIKA” – on the movement principles of Indian physical traditions. He has also worked on the “Role of Interactive Technology and Telematics in Performance” as part of a collaborative project at the Arizona State University.

Sibylle Peters is a performance artist and cultural scientist. She is also the Artistic Director of FUNDUS THEATER/THEATRE OF RESEARCH in Hamburg and co-founder of the doctoral research programme Performing Citizenship. She often collaborates with the performance collective geheimagentur. Her most recent projects include QUEENS. THE HETERACLUB, which was selected for the Impulse SHOWCASE 2021.

Charlotte Pfeifer is interested in extending the stage situation in an interplay of art, music, audio drama and performance. She began work as an actor and subsequently became a dramaturg and director. She now amalgamates various roles for projects on everyday topics, science fiction and rubbish and likes to devise these as part of a group. PMS-LOUNGE – HULDIGUNG EINES ZUSTANDS(PMS-LOUNGE – TRIBUTE TO A CONDITION) won the Audience Prize and the Jury Prize at the Hauptsache Frei Festival in 2018. Pfeifer produces self-devised children’s plays and happenings with the interdisciplianry group of artists TRAUMMASCHiNE Inc.

Damian Rebgetz studied classical voice, music theatre and has an MA in Sound Studies. He has performed in various theatre, music theatre, dance and performance contexts and was a member of the acting ensemble of Münchner Kammerspiele 2015–2020. His own performances are inspired by listening practices and memory as well as notions of music, noise, voice, sound, identity and materiality. In 2013, his performance “Something for the Fans” was coproduced by Impulse Theater Festival and HAU Hebbel am Ufer.

Lázaro Gabino Rodriguez holds a master degree in theater from the Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten (AHK). His work consists in explorations around notions of true and false, emerging from personal memories and their relation to fiction. In 2003 he founded with Luisa Pardo Lagartijas tiradas al sol, an artists collective dedicated to contemporary creation, with which they have developed projects that take their final form as theater pieces, texts, films, pedagogical processes and radio productions. Their work has been presented all across México and internationally.

Sophia Sadovskaya is an independent curator and art educator from Minsk. From 2012–2021, she curated the “EVAA project” (Environmental Visual Audial Art Project) which combines environmental activism and contemporary art practices. Additionally to her curatorial projects, Sadovskaya is the co-author of a series of books, “The Art of Belarus of the 20th century for kids”.

Igor Shugaleev is an independent actor and performer. He collaborated with TOKtheatre in Minsk and HUNCHTheatre Belarus. In 2019, Igor began to work on solo projects. Cooperating with artists across creative disciplines, he searches for his artistic language at the intersection of dance, theatre and performance.

Joana Tischkau dances. One of her first memories is of dancing to Kaoma’s 1989 hit ‘Lambada’ at a children’s birthday party. This motivated her to register for lessons in jazz dance, street dance and videoclip dancing at the dance school next door. She subsequently studied Dance and Acting at Coventry University in Great Britain and Choreography and Performance at the Institute of Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen. Her artistic practice is a hybrid mess where the writings of bel hooks meet beatboxing, where a fitness workout can be produced based on white movement material and Roberto Blanco is worshipped as the king of Black German entertainment. PLAYBLACK is the graduation production for her Master’s degree.

Maren Urner is Professor of Media Psychology at the HMKW University of Applied Sciences for Media, Communication and Management in Cologne. She has studied Cognitive Science and Neuroscience and took her Doctorate in Neuroscience at University College London. She founded the online magazine ‘Perspective Daily’ for constructive journalism in 2016 and was its editor until March 2019. Her first book ‘Schluss mit dem täglichen Weltuntergang’ was a bestseller and her second, ‘Raus aus der ewigen Dauerkrise’, will be published in 2021.

Clara Vaughan is the Head of the Market Theatre Laboratory in Johannesburg, South Africa, and a theatre-maker, arts facilitator, arts manager, and writer. At the Market Lab she brings together diverse theatre-practitioners and other artists to collaborate in various learning/making/experimenting/researching processes, with an emphasis on emerging artists, and subaltern experiences, voices and identities.

Julian Warner works as a cultural anthropolgist in the fields of curating, music, performance art and research. He is Artistic Director of the Festival der Kulturregion Stuttgart 2022 and curator of the Spielart festival in Munich. Under the alias Fehler Kuti he also releases discursive pop. Warner has worked as a research assistant at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Göttingen. The anthology he has edited AFTER EUROPE – Beiträge zur dekolonialen Kritik is published by Verbrecher Verlag in April 2021.

© Ansuman Biswas, Sibylle Peters
© Ansuman Biswas, Sibylle Peters
© Ansuman Biswas, Sibylle Peters

Direction ACADEMY #2: Anne Schulz
Direction Workshop: Sibylle Peters
Production Management: Lena Busse

The ACADEMY #2 – LOST IN SPACE? is funded by the Goethe Institut and the International Visitors Programme of the NRW KULTURsekretariat.

The Impulse CITY PROJECT connects urgent issues of our time with a local context – an approach to the performing arts that originated in the independent theatre scene. In this year’s edition of the festival, in co-operation with Ringlokschuppen Ruhr, it examines the ever increasing division between rich and poor.

The Unveiling

Club Real Ringlokschuppen Ruhr
13.06.21 18:00–20:00

Language: German
Entry is free of charge.

THE GREAT DIVIDE has been the talk of the town in Mülheim for weeks now. An unveiling ceremony will mark the completion of the festival. In a special event of celebration at the Ringlokschuppen Ruhr, the artists of Club Real will provide insights into how the project came about and describe the exciting process of making this complex artistic action a reality: Why Mülheim? Why a giant pair of scissors? And what effect can this action have on society in the city?

Simone Dede Ayivi und Kompliz*innen
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.
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.

God’s Entertainment
GGGNHM – GUGGENHEIM IN FLORIDSDORF?
An inflatable Guggenheim! Set up in a district on the outskirts of Vienna, this replica of the famous New York museum was both an attraction and an object of dispute. Here the group God’s Entertainment presented memories that would not otherwise find a place in any museum and adopted a critical position towards art as a tool of adding value and city marketing.
A production by God’s Entertainment in co-operation with engineer Thomas Herzig (pneumocell) and BMS Production Group. Funded by the City of Vienna Cultural Department and SHIFT – Basis Kultur Wien.

Phil Hayes
HEAVY HITTERS
A sad song, weak knees and a boxer’s failed punches. Phil Hayes and John Rowley grapple with the question of when it is time for an ageing body to stop. How much blood, how much sweat has to flow? How much pain does it take for you to finally say: That’s enough?
A production by First Cut Productions in co-production with the Gessnerallee, Zurich.

Samara Hersch
BODY OF KNOWLEDGE (AT HOME)
The theatre comes to its audience at home! Listeners are connected to each other and eight teenagers from Australia via telephone. In physical isolation a moving dialogue develops between generations – about intimacy, sexuality, fears for the future and grief.
BODY OF KNOWLEDGE was produced as part of Be SpectACTive! in co-production with the SICK! Festival, Liveworks Festival of Experimental Art and Carriageworks. The “At Home” version is a co-production by the International Summer Festival Kampnagel, Hamburg and the Zurich Theater Spektakel.

Tanja Krone and Friedrich Greiling (Mittekill)
MIT ECHTEN SINGEN
30 years after reunification Tanja Krone visits her home town in Saxony and asks: What was actually going on in 89/90? Krone and the musician Friedrich Greiling put the voices of her former companions together with a mixture of pop, rock, techno, disco and trance. A personal concert-performance that offers profound insights into East German realities.
With thanks to HELLERAU – European Centre for the Arts, Dresden.

Sibylle Peters
QUEENS. DER HETERACLUB
For a short time in February 2020 St. Pauli was made richer by an additional attraction: the Queens, a club exclusively for women who desire men. Treading a fine balance between art, sex work and care work, in 1:1 encounters with male performers its female visitors experienced what many people have painfully missed since the pandemic began: being touched.
A co-production with Kampnagel, Hamburg. Funded by a grant from the City of Hamburg’s Elbkulturfonds.

Ülkü Süngün
TAKDIR. DIE ANERKENNUNG
Ten people were murdered by the NSU. Most Germans cannot even pronounce their names correctly. This is why Ülkü Süngün will invite the audience to take part in a language course. A temporary memorial to Theodoros Boulgarides, Michèle Kiesewetter, Habil Kılıç, Mehmet Kubaşık, Abdurrahim Özüdoğru, Enver Şimşek, Süleyman Taşköprü, Mehmet Turgut, İsmail Yaşar and Halit Yozgat.
An independent production by Ülkü Süngün.

Joana Tischkau, Elisabeth Hampe, Frieder Blume, Anta Helena Recke
DEUTSCHES MUSEUM FÜR SCHWARZE UNTERHALTUNG UND BLACK MUSIC
The DMSUBM is a space for Black culture, popular music and history. It houses a comprehensive archive of records, magazines, autographs and other objects that museums have rarely appreciated until now. By doing so, the DMSUBM is also making a statement against the prevailing historical narrative.
A production by Tischkau & Hampe, artistic collaboration: Blume und Recke, in co-production with the Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt am Main, and HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin. Funded by the Frankfurt am Main Department of Culture, the Fonds Darstellende Künste e.V. and the Senate Department for Culture and Europe of the State of Berlin.

Julian Warner
THE HISTORY OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY AS TOLD BY FEHLER KUTI UND DIE POLIZEI
“Take my hand as we collect money for old cans,” Fehler Kuti und die Polizei urge. In their stage show they scramble together music, theatre and theory. What emerges is a danceable, quasi-religious ritual that reveals the racist and capitalist power relations of a country in which there have never been equal rights and opportunities for all.
A production by Julian Warner in co-production with the Münchner Kammerspiele. Funded by the Department of Culture of the State Capital Munich.