Concept: Simone Dede Ayivi
Video: Jones Seitz
Stage design: Theresa Reiwer
Sound, music: Katharina Pelosi
Lighting: Frieder Miller
Production assistant, dramaturgical collaborator: Selma Böhmelmann
Design assistant: Chris Erlbeck
Outdoor camera shots: Thomas Machholz
Experts: Nabila Bushra, Fatma Kar, Lenssa Mohammed, Dan Thy Nguyen, Kadir Özdemir
Production management: ehrliche arbeit – freies Kulturbüro
Technical production: Gefährliche Arbeit

A production by Simone Dede Ayivi und Kompliz*innen in co-production with Sophiensæle, Berlin. Funded by core funding from the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe and a grant from the Capital Cultural Fund.

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.

Concept, music, scenography: Daniel Dominguez Teruel
Voice: Mona Steinwidder, Nouri
Cornet: Lilli Pätzold
Sackbut: Alexandra Mikheeva, Dalton Harris, Sabine Gassner
Electric guitar: Homero Alonso Langbein
Flags: Hans Konrad, Felix Schlaich, Lisa Schlaich, Gerhard Schlaich, support: Ines Schlaich
Performance of dove: Mia Hadžikadunić, Daniel Dominguez Teruel
Artistic collaborator, styling: Golo Pauleit
Dramaturgical advice: Adnan Softić
Technical direction, Lighting technician: Florian Vitez
Sound technician: Benjamin Kurz

A production by Daniel Dominguez Teruel in co-production with the festival Hauptsache Frei, Hamburg. Funded by the Ministry of Culture and Media Hamburg, the Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media, the Rudolf Augstein Foundation and the revivals and touring fund of the umbrella organization for independent performing arts in Hamburg, on behalf of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg’s Ministry of Culture and Media. With generous support from HALLO: Verein zur Förderung raumöffnender Kultur e.V.

The Fahnenschwinger Konstanz e.V., were founded in 1990 as part of the Niederburg fanfare procession and are among the most famous flag wavers in Europe. They have performed at state receptions, opening ceremonies for both European and World championships and medieval tournaments, and have also been awarded numerous prizes at international festivals and competitions. As multiple German Champions and World Champions they hold several world records.

Sabine Gassner was born in Prien am Chiemsee in 1991 and studied Theatre, Film and Media Studies in Vienna. In 2012 she started a Bachelor’s degree in Trombone at Würzburg University of Music before moving in 2014 to study with Prof. Henning Wiegräbe at the State University of Music and the Performing Arts Stuttgart, where she also completed a Master’s from 2017 to 2019. She followed this with complementary studies at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis with Catherine Motuz. Sabine Gassner works both in Germany and internationally.

Mia Hadžikadunić is an artist and performer from Rijeka who has a strong connection with Hamburg. In her native city she works as a radio presenter with the community station Radio Roža and as a DJ and programmer at Club Manual. She began her theatrical career in 2014 as a member of the non-verbal theatre Dr. Inat in Pula and has continued to develop since then through a range of performances and dance forms, including projects at the K3 – Choreography Centre at Kampnagel. She feels it is important that the platforms and programmes in which she takes part as a performer create and maintain spaces that deal with significant political realities.

Dalton Harris graduated in Tenor and Bass Trombone in North Carolina and New Mexico. In New Mexico he was awarded a position with the Sandia Brass Quintet. He has performed throughout America (North and South) in numerous orchestras, jazz bands, new music ensembles and as a soloist. While studying for his bachelor’s degree, he learned to play the sackbut. In 2018 he then moved to Bremen, to study with Wim Becu at the University of the Arts, where he specialised in tenor and bass sackbut. He has performed in both Europe and America as a soloist and with the most prestigious ancient music ensembles. In 2022 Dalton Harris is delighted to have a full calendar of concert engagements spanning Europe, North and South America with ancient music and the New Mexico Contemporary Ensemble.

Alexandra Mikheeva studied Trumpet at the P. I. Tchaikovsky Conservatoire in Moscow, where she developed a great interest in ancient music, historical instruments and historical performance practices. In 2012 she moved to Bremen, to study the Baroque trumpet with Susan Williams at the University of the Arts HfK Bremen. There she also took regular sackbut lessons. Since then, Alexandra has regularly appeared as a member of various different celebrated Baroque orchestras and ancient music ensembles such as Weser-Renaissance Bremen, Elbipolis Baroque Orchestra and La Festa Musicale. Since 2015 she has run the sackbut ensemble “Sua dolce maestà”, which appears regularly at international festivals such as Oude Muziek Utrecht, MA Festival Brügge and Rigas Svetki. With her colleague Laura Dümpelmann she founded “Das Ensemble auf lauten Renaissance Instrumenten – Hans Pfeyfferey” in 2020 which works near Bremen and Magdeburg. She also co-devised Lilli Pätzold’s series of historical tower music in Bremen in 2021.

Nouri comes from a musical family – music has been with him his entire life. He trained as a singer in Damascus. Nouri has lived and worked in Hamburg since 2016, giving regular concerts with various different ensembles. After training as a chef, since 2022 he has mainly worked as a chef in a star restaurant.

Lilli Pätzold initially studied the recorder with Peter Holtslag at HfMT Hamburg. She won a scholarship from Yehudi Menuhin Live Music Now and was also awarded the Masefield Concert Scholarship by the Alfred Toepfer Stiftung and the Berenberg Bank Scholarship. Her long-standing collaboration with composers from the Hamburg region and beyond has led to a comprehensive collection of new solo and chamber music pieces for the recorder and, more recently, also for the cornet. In 2018 she decided to go to Bremen to study the cornet with Gebhard David. Since then, she has played with the European Hanseatic Ensemble 2021 directed by Manfred Cordes, as well as with Elbipolis, the Monteverdi Choir and the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin. Her special interest is currently the professional group of city pipers in the 17^th century and earlier. In the late summer of 2021, she performed a series of tower music with colleagues at the church of Unser Lieben Frauen in Bremen.

Golo Pauleit studied Fashion Design at the Kunsthochschule Berlin- Weißensee (BA) and at the der Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst in Basel (MA). His bachelor work was awarded the 2018 Mart Stam Prize. After completing his masters in Switzerland, he returned to Berlin, where he now works as a designer.

Mona Steinwidder lives and works in Hamburg as a musician and freelance artist. She completed her diploma in Visual Communication at the HfbK Hamburg with distinction. She has participated as a musician on a project basis in music theatre productions, multimedia works and dance performances since 2004 and has co-founded several labels including I saw Music and STSTST. In addition to her solo project Mohna she is also part of the experimental pop band Me Succeeds and has collaborated for several years with the electronica producer Christian Löffler. Since 2017 she has developed a multi-disciplinary solo project entitled ‘Museum of No Art’. She is currently engaged in an artistic research project ‘A Post-Female Voice’. She has performed a large number of concerts and tours – including the USA, France, Italy, Israel, Georgia, Poland, Czechia, Belgium, Denmark, Switzerland as well as the main hall at the Elbphilharmonie, the Volksbühne Berlin, the Columbiahalle Berlin and Kampnagel in Hamburg.

Daniel Dominguez Teruel works with music, performance and installation. He studied Musicology and Music Informatics in Freiburg, Karlsruhe and Barcelona, as well as Multimedia Composition in Hamburg. Since 2018, he has devised formats and settings for music theatre that deconstruct the German national anthem as an acoustic monument. Performances and installations have been seen at venues including ZKM Karlsruhe, EMW Shanghai, Destellos Foundation Buenos Aires, HAU Berlin, PHONOS Barcelona, EMAF Osnabrück, Kampnagel and the Elbphilharmonie.

With 12 years of professional experience and over 1,000 completed performances, Florian Vitez has considerable experience in the fields of production and project management. This spans a wide spectrum from international visiting productions in Germany to a range of projects in other countries including France, England and Switzerland. He has worked on touring productions, new productions, concerts, congresses and trade fairs, which has enabled him to rise to many challenges and continually expand his horizons. Complex financial planning and reporting have also become a further core competence over the years.

Concept and choreography: Sergiu Matis
Choreographic collaboration: Martin Hansen, Manon Parent
Performance: Sergiu Matis, Nicola Micallef, Manon Parent
Sound installation and composition: Antye Greie aka AGF
Text: Philip Ingman, Sergiu Matis, Mila Pavićević
Species research: Philip Ingman
Dramaturgy: Mila Pavićević
Sound: Martin Lutz
Production management: 4Culture Association
Distribution: Distribution: Danila – Freitag, Agentur für Performative Künste

A production by Sergiu Matis in co-production with 4Culture Association and WASP Studios. Funded by a grant from the Capital Cultural Fund and by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe. Co-financed by AFCN – The National Administration of Cultural Funds, Romania, the Romanian Cultural Institute and the Europalia Arts Festival, Belgium. With support from the Nationales Performance Netz (NPN), Centre For Drama Art, Zagreb, Art Radionica Lazareti, Dubrovnik, and ICI-CCN Montpellier Occitanie. Animal recordings are used with the kind permission of the Macaulay Library at Cornell University’s Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the xeno-canto Foundation.

Antye Greie (aka AGF) is a vocalist, musician, composer, producer, and new media artist. She was born and raised in East Germany. Her work explores speech and the spoken word, combined with electronic music. She also works on sound installations, moving image, audio visualization and real time video processing, and has written scores for feature films as well as theatre and dance performances. In 2011 she initiated the arts organization Hai Art on the island of Hailuoto, Finland, and acts as its curator and executive producer.

Martin Hansen is invested in forms of embodied inhabitation as a mode of performance, and has performed extensively with Tino Sehgal, Sergiu Matis, Alexandra Pirici, Laurie Young, Ligia Lewis, Christoph Winkler, Chunky Move and Not Yet It’s Difficult, among others. Martin choreographs bodies, language and objects to investigate economies of time and the politics of remembrance. He is a graduate of the HZT Berlin, and works between Berlin and Melbourne. Martin is committed to the social politics of art making, and develops frameworks and structures, meaning, collectives and events in Berlin. Martin was Germany’s ‘Dancer of the Year’ in 2012 and a danceWEB Scholar in 2013.

Nicola Micallef was born in Malta in 1999. She began her training in classical ballet at the age of 7. In 2010, she found her interest in contemporary dance and went on to further her training in this field. In 2018, she joined ŻfinMalta – National Dance Company of Malta as an apprentice, with Paolo Mangiola as artistic director. She joined full-time for the successive two seasons, where she had the opportunity to work with numerous internationally renowned choreographers and artists such as Roy Assaf, Jacopo Godani, Sergiu Matis, Jose Agudo and Jorge Crecis. Nicola has since found her base in Berlin, collaborating with Sergiu Matis, Sebastian Matthias and Agudo Dance Company, touring throughout Europe, as well as performing in the Expo 2020 Dubai.

Sergiu Matis is a Romanian choreographer born in 1981 in Cluj-Napoca. He received his dance education at the Liceul de Coregrafie in Cluj and the Mannheim Academy of Dance, and began his career at Tanztheater Nuremberg. He has been living and working in Berlin since 2008, creating his own works In 2014 he completed his masters in Solo/Dance/Authorship at HZT Berlin. His dance practice could be considered a relentless search through corporeal and digitalised archives, in order to place a critical lens on what has been filed away, salvage what was presumed lost, and reinvent what was undocumented. The accumulation of history serves as an old map, which becomes a departure point towards the revelation of a new imagining of dance.

Manon Parent is a choreographic and sonic artist based in Berlin. Trained at the Paris Conservatoire in contemporary dance and classical violin, since then she has dedicated her search to the interconnections between sound and movement. Now working as a dancer, musician, composer and choreographer, she searches beyond styles and aesthetics for the most honest bodies and voices. Manon currently collaborates with Ioannis Mandafounis, Jean P’ark, Kareth Schaffer, Sébastien Laurent, Margot Dorléans, Laurent Durupt and Roni Katz.

Welcome and introduction by Tobias Herzberg (Programme Lead ACADEMY #1)

What kind of safety is meant when we talk about safe spaces? What needs stand beside or against each other? Tobias Herzberg explains the themes of the ACADEMY, defines the terminological framework and introduces the contributors.

Keynote by Miriam Walther (theatre maker, Managing Director Republik, Zurich)

In a diverse society both theatres and the media have the duty to provide a stage for diverse views. Yet how should they react when a public forum is demanded for discriminatory or violent views? Should there be (no) tolerance for the intolerant? And what can theatre learn from other platforms that create a public sphere?

An endorsement by Antigone Akgün (freelance performer, dramaturg and writer, Frankfurt am Main)

The fact that utopias cannot be achieved instantly and without resistance is no longer a secret. However, German-speaking theatre institutions have made numerous efforts to become safer and to facilitate discrimination-free spaces for fragile artistic processes. What form do these efforts take? What adversities and what support do they encounter? And: what potential does art that has been produced under safer conditions have?

By Sahar Rahimi (director, performer, Munich)

If we understand theatre to be a space in which we can be both productively confused and watch with crystal-clear understanding, with astonishment and critical distance, with repulsion and analytical rigour, with intoxication and self-reflection, then it needs to contain an (artistic) freedom that the world does not provide. This is a plea not to apply the same standards to the parameters of producing art that we apply to artistic outcomes.

In three workshops held in parallel, theatremakers present how they create security or insecurity in their work. and invite participants in the ACADEMY to take part in practical exercises. Assignment to the workshops will take place at the beginning of the first day of the ACADEMY.

Workshop 1:
From immersion to inclusion: how theatre spaces empower or inhibit actors and audiences
Led by: Yulia Yáñez Schmidt (actor, Cologne)Immersion means to “dive in”. Immersive performances allow the audience to dive into playful settings where the performers often appear indistinguishable from their characters. The classic separation between audience and performers is blurred – uncertainty is built in! Best-known examples are the site-specific works of the Danish-Austrian performance group SIGNA, with whom Yulia Yáñez Schmidt toured to several European cities. As an actor with a physical disability she has been a permanent member of the Inclusive Acting Studio at Schauspiel Wuppertal since 2019/20: a model project that is the only one of its kind in Germany. Working on roles and the repertoires system in a civic theatre versus immersive site-specific performance: out of a direct comparison between her experiences of immersion and inclusion, Yulia Yáñez Schmidt develops an inventory of staircases and theatrical traditions and will animate others to immerse themselves in theatrical architecture.

Workshop 2: Showing solidarity without trying to be liked. Unsettling white privilege.
Led by: Iggy Malmborg, Johannes Maria Schmit (WHITE ON WHITE, Malmö/Stockholm)
Language: English

Between 2009 and 2016 White on White made a series of six theatre pieces, all with the explicit objective of producing an unsafe space for people holding white privilege, eroding the self-evident way that white audiences identify with the two white performers. During the workshop, the duo will give insight into the strategies used in the series and why these turned obsolete after the inauguration of Trump. They will also bring a sequence of dilemmas emerging in the present time, with which to entangle the participants, their most urgent question being: can we find a dialectical relation between safe processes and confrontational aesthetics?

Workshop 3: Escape routes from heteronormativity. A safe space for heteras
Led by: Sibylle Peters (performance artist and cultural researcher, Hamburg)

The heteronormative world is unsafe for women. It casts a veil over how frequently heterasexual women feel compelled to perform against their own interests and desires in intimate encounters. This fundamental imbalance creates mistrust and can quickly poison love, pleasure and flirtation. This is why there needs to be a safe space for heteras. The HETERACLUB (15.– 18.06. in the Impulse SHOWCASE) achieves this through the character of thefemale pimp. Under her direction, the participating men train themselves to be guided in their encounters with the heteras by their desires, and to be aware of and respect boundaries. This takes weeks. Is it possible to transfer procedures from the heteraclub to a workshop setting where heteras and heteros search together for escape routes from heteronormativity? No guarantees, only an experiment.

The bus shuttle goes directly to the CITY PROJECT in Düsseldorf and carries on to the SHOWCASE in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Estimated arrival time in Mülheim an der Ruhr: 20:00. Return journey around 23:30.

Antigone Akgün, born in Frankfurt am Main in 1993, studied Theatre, Film and Media Studies there along with Philosophy and Dramaturgy. As a performer she has worked together with artists including Rosana Cade and Laurie Brown, Martina Droste and Boris Nikitin, as well as composing texts for Julia Wissert and others, and her own play IN HER FACE oder die autorin ist tot at the Frankfurter Landungsbrücken. She has participated in the Hans Gratzer Stipendium (Schauspielhaus Vienna, 2021), running the Theatertreffen Blog 2022 and directing the city-wide project Der Brotladen after Brecht (Theater Bremen 2022).

Tobias Herzberg is a dramaturg and lecturer at the Institute of Language Arts at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. As Artistic Director of Studio Я at Berlin’s Maxim Gorki Theater he produced the queer week PUGS IN LOVE and other intersectional community festivals, discussion series and themed weekends on topics such as freedom of the press, of art and of opinion. He was Dramaturg at the Vienna Burgtheater from 2019 to 2021.

Iggy Malmborg was born in Malmö in 1987 and is a freelance actor and director. His artistic interest lies in the performative situation and the politics of theatre as machinery. He has worked together with Johannes Maria Schmit under the label WHITE ON WHITE since 2009. In 2020/21 he devised the sound installation ‘No More’ at the Contemporary Art Museum in Estonia. His new work ‘Iris, pupil, retina, etc.’ premiered at the Rosendal Teater in Trondheim in January 2022.

Sibylle Peters is a performance artist and cultural researcher. She is the Artistic Director of the research theatre FUNDUS THEATER in Hamburg and co-founder of the graduate college Performing Citizenship. Matters of importance to her include the theory and practice of assembly, participatory research processes. social intimacy, the lecture as performance, performance art for children, the impulse towards improbability and feminist seafaring. Her most recent works are: ‘Women of the Seven Seas’, geheimagentur Hamburg 2021, QUEENS. DER HETERACLUB (Impulse SHOWCASE 2022).

Sahar Rahimi, born in Tehran, is a director, writer and performer and currently lives in Munich. She studied at the Institute of Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen and is a co-founder of the performance group Monster Truck. She works in the independent sector and in civic theatres in the fields of theatre, performance, installation and video. At the centre of her work lies her interest in the ambivalent border areas between power and impotence.

Yulia Yáñez Schmidt has worked as an actor since 2009. Her first experiences of working as a performer came in the immersive performance installations of the Danish-Austrian collective SIGNA, with which she appeared at various theatres in Europe. She has been a member of the Inclusive Theatre Studio at Schauspiel Wuppertal since 2019/20. An inventory of her work spans stairwells and traditional theatre.

Johannes Maria Schmit was born in Trier in 1981. He studied Directing at the HfS Ernst Busch, Berlin. Schmit subsequently worked as Resident Director at the Centraltheater Leipzig. He has worked freelance in the German-speaking theatre since 2011, as well as in Sweden, where he founded the due WHITE ON WHITE with Iggy Malmborg. In 2020 Schmit’s debut as a film director ‘Neubau’ (screenplay by Tucké Royale) received its world premiere at the Filmfestival Max Ophüls Preis, where it won the prize for Best Film and was particularly praised by the jury for its “ability to create empathy.”

Miriam Walther is a director and culture and media manager. After growing up in Brazil and Switzerland, she studied dance and Theatre Directing in New York and Zurich. She is a co-founder of the transdisciplinary artistic collective Neue Dringlichkeit and the Zurich production platform for independent theatre ArtFAQ. She has been Managing Director of the digital magazine Republik since 2018.

A re-enactment of audience reactions to ‘Enjoy Racism’ by and with Monika Truong (theatremaker and sociologist, Zurich). Co-Facilitator: Marque Pham
Language: English

Monika Truong looks back at her production ‘Enjoy Racism’ (created in collaboration with Thom Reinhard, and presented, among other places, at the Impulse SHOWCASE in 2018). During the performance, the audience was divided into two groups on the basis of eye colour. One group experienced privileges, the other discrimination. The interactive production made it painfully evident how capricious structuring the allocation and withholding of privileges on the basis of physical characteristics is. In this re-enactment, Monika Truong offers insights into the documented reactions of the audience to the original production. Together with participants in the ACADEMY, the artist will read out comments that were made during the performances and examines the effects the production has had on her own position regarding safeness and vulnerability.

The round table discussions offer the opportunity to discuss specific questions in a small group with one or two experts. These discussions all take place in parallel, so the participants have to choose one of the topics on offer. Each round table discussion begins with a brief introduction to the topic by the experts: afterwards the conversation is open to all.

Round table discussion 1: Theatre in a glass house. How is art created in a transcultural protective space?
Discussion led by: Elisabeth Bernroitner (Brunnenpassage, Vienna)
The Brunnenpassage has operated as a transcultural art laboratory since 2007, based in a former market hall built of glass in one of the outer districts of Vienna. Elisabeth Bernroitner runs its theatre programme. She explains how a safe, diversity-aware framework facilitates collective artistic creation and will initiate a conversation about the imponderables of producing art in a transparent protective space.

Round table discussion 2: Queer comedy. How can political humour be done without stereotyping or excluding anyone?
Discussion led by: Denice Bourbon (PCCC* – Vienna's First Queer Comedy Club, Vienna)
Language: German
Denice Bourbon’s golden rule of comedy is: Don’t kick down! Laughter is a defence mechanism, at times from yourself. When you’re dishing it out, do so sideways, upwards, and of course, always with a twinkle in your eye. The Viennese personification of lesbian-queer entertainment initiates a discussion about jokes that are empowering and subversive fun in the name of political correctness.

Round table discussion 3: Sharing experiences: What spaces for conversation do marginalized communities need?
Discussion led by: Simone Dede Ayivi (writer, director, Berlin)
Language: German
In her documentary installation ‘The Kids Are Alright’ (which can be seen in this year’s Impulse SHOWCASE) Simone Dede Ayivi explores family histories, generational conflicts, political struggles and visions for the future in families with migrant heritage. Together with the participants in this round table conversation, she will reflect on her working method and talk about interviewing witnesses who have often been affected by racism and violence. How do we talk to each other? And how do we define responsibility in making art from the results of research?

Round table discussion 4: We for us. What opportunities are contained by working in an all BIPOC ensemble?
Discussion led by: Mable Preach (director, activist, Lukulule e.V., Hamburg)
Language: German
Together with her team of BIPOC performers, Mable Preach embarked on a bio-fictional enquiry into female actors within the anti-colonial resistance. In this round table discussion, the Hamburg-based director will discuss the challenges and limits of a safe space as a condition of rehearsal and invite reflection on the evolution of anti-racist strategies in the arts from a young, female perspective.

Round table discussion 5: White Money. How are global power relations reflected in the performing arts?
Discussion led by: Sophia Stepf (Flinn Works, Berlin) and Abhishek Thapar (theatremaker and researcher, Amsterdam)
Language: English
In 2021, the group Flinn Works organised the festival "White Money" as an attempt to expand and interrogate the boundaries of cultural funding structures. 'White Money' means cultural funding from Europe which flows towards the global south and dominates the global performing arts market. To what extent do global hierarchies through funding distribution influence artistic processes, content and aesthetics? What could be creative ways out of these dependencies?

The participants exchange the experiences and expertise that they have gained from the various ACADEMY formats in a one-to-one setting. Questions and a duration for the conversations will be supplied. The aim is to encounter multiple perspectives in a short time.

Chaired by: Tobias Herzberg (Programme Lead ACADEMY #1)

Antigone Akgün and Sahar Rahimi, who took up opposing positions at the beginning of the first day of the ACADEMY, reflect on the different viewpoints and impressions and potential shifts of perspective that have arisen during the ACADEMY. In a fishbowl format, everyone who wishes to is invited to take part in the discussion.

The bus shuttle goes directly to the SHOWCASE in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Return journey around 24:00.

Elisabeth Bernroitner curates transcultural, (post-)migrant, contemporary art and information projects. Since 2011 she has curated and run the theatre and performance programme at the ArtSocialSpace Brunnenpassage in Vienna and has been actively involved in international projects and museum co-operations. From 2016 to 2019 she was a member of the executive of IG Kultur in Vienna, and from 2016 to 2018 Artistic and Managing Director of PANGEA | Workshop of World Cultures in Linz. She had previously worked as Project Co-ordinator at Tanzquartier Wien. She studied Theatre Studies and Cultural Anthropology as well as Visual Culture and Performance Art Practices in Vienna and Madrid. Elisabeth Bernroitner also works as a freelance diversity trainer specialising in the arts and culture.

Denice Bourbon is a lesbian/queer-feminist performance artist, singer, writer, show host, curator, and stand-up comedian. She uses humour and entertainment as activist tools to draw attention to political issues. For a number of years, she has been working as a freelance artist in both theatre and film. Denice Bourbon has worked with artists such as Katrina Daschner, Gin Müller, Veza Fernández, Sabine Marte, Stefanie Sourial, Stefanie Sargnagel, Amina Handke, and Nesterval at venues such as brut, WUK, WERK X, Ateliertheater, Kosmos Theater, Spektakel, and many more. Denice Bourbon was a co-curator of Vienna’s first queer performance festival, Straight to Hell (2015, with Denise Kottlett) and co-founder of the queer stand-up comedy club PCCC*. In 2018, she was part of the cast for Nesterval’s acclaimed immersive production The Village.

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 of 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.

Mable Preach has been a regular presence on the Hamburg art scene for many years – as a director and choreographer, and as a curator and networker. She is the initiator of the festival for urban BIPoC youth culture FORMATION**NOW and Director of the cultural and youth association Lukulule. She recently presented EMB*RACE YOUR CROWN**, which she directed, as part of the season opening at Kampnagel, Hamburg. In her works, she engages in critical studies of racism and (neo-)colonialism, demands empowerment and produces alternative images and narratives to the white mainstream.

Sophia Stepf is Artistic Director of the company Flinn Works (Berlin) and works as a director, curator and lecturer. After studying Dramaturgy in Leipzig and Toronto, she worked as an Assistant and Dramaturg for Theater der Welt and the Wiener Festwochen. She has conceived and curated theatre projects and training in India on a regular basis since 2001, for institutions including the Goethe Institut and the National School of Drama. She curated the independent theatre festival Schwindelfrei in Mannheim from 2014 -2018. With Flinn Works she has won the ZKB Förderpreis (Zürich), four Meta Awards (Delhi) and the Fonds Darstellende Künste’s Tabori Award in 2021. She lives with her family in Berlin.

Abhishek Thapar was born in Moga, India, in 1985 and is a theatre maker, performer, puppeteer and artist. He lives in Amsterdam. Abhishek Thapar has a postgraduate qualification in Physical Theatre from the London International School of Performing Arts (LISPA) and completed the masters programme DAS Theatre at the Amsterdam University of the Arts.

Monika Truong, a sociologist, Sinologist and theatre maker, works alongside the ambivalences of our social norms in the contradictory experiential space of socialisation in small town Switzerland, a Chinese-Vietnamese background, academic training and freelance work in the independent theatre sector. Her piece ‘Enjoy Racism’ (together with Thom Reinhard) was presented at the IMPULSE Showcase 2018 and also won the Festival Prize at the festival ‘Politik im Freien Theater’ in the same year.

Welcome and introduction by Tobias Herzberg (Programme Lead ACADEMY #1)

What kind of safety is meant when we talk about safe spaces? What needs stand beside or against each other? Tobias Herzberg explains the themes of the ACADEMY, defines the terminological framework and introduces the contributors.

Keynote by Miriam Walther (theatre maker, Managing Director Republik, Zurich)

In a diverse society both theatres and the media have the duty to provide a stage for diverse views. Yet how should they react when a public forum is demanded for discriminatory or violent views? Should there be (no) tolerance for the intolerant? And what can theatre learn from other platforms that create a public sphere?

An endorsement by Antigone Akgün (freelance performer, dramaturg and writer, Frankfurt am Main)

The fact that utopias cannot be achieved instantly and without resistance is no longer a secret. However, German-speaking theatre institutions have made numerous efforts to become safer and to facilitate discrimination-free spaces for fragile artistic processes. What form do these efforts take? What adversities and what support do they encounter? And: what potential does art that has been produced under safer conditions have?

By Sahar Rahimi (director, performer, Munich)

If we understand theatre to be a space in which we can be both productively confused and watch with crystal-clear understanding, with astonishment and critical distance, with repulsion and analytical rigour, with intoxication and self-reflection, then it needs to contain an (artistic) freedom that the world does not provide. This is a plea not to apply the same standards to the parameters of producing art that we apply to artistic outcomes.

In three workshops held in parallel, theatremakers present how they create security or insecurity in their work. and invite participants in the ACADEMY to take part in practical exercises. Assignment to the workshops will take place at the beginning of the first day of the ACADEMY.

Workshop 1:
From immersion to inclusion: how theatre spaces empower or inhibit actors and audiences
Led by: Yulia Yáñez Schmidt (actor, Cologne)Immersion means to “dive in”. Immersive performances allow the audience to dive into playful settings where the performers often appear indistinguishable from their characters. The classic separation between audience and performers is blurred – uncertainty is built in! Best-known examples are the site-specific works of the Danish-Austrian performance group SIGNA, with whom Yulia Yáñez Schmidt toured to several European cities. As an actor with a physical disability she has been a permanent member of the Inclusive Acting Studio at Schauspiel Wuppertal since 2019/20: a model project that is the only one of its kind in Germany. Working on roles and the repertoires system in a civic theatre versus immersive site-specific performance: out of a direct comparison between her experiences of immersion and inclusion, Yulia Yáñez Schmidt develops an inventory of staircases and theatrical traditions and will animate others to immerse themselves in theatrical architecture.

Workshop 2: Showing solidarity without trying to be liked. Unsettling white privilege.
Led by: Iggy Malmborg, Johannes Maria Schmit (WHITE ON WHITE, Malmö/Stockholm)
Language: English

Between 2009 and 2016 White on White made a series of six theatre pieces, all with the explicit objective of producing an unsafe space for people holding white privilege, eroding the self-evident way that white audiences identify with the two white performers. During the workshop, the duo will give insight into the strategies used in the series and why these turned obsolete after the inauguration of Trump. They will also bring a sequence of dilemmas emerging in the present time, with which to entangle the participants, their most urgent question being: can we find a dialectical relation between safe processes and confrontational aesthetics?

Workshop 3: Escape routes from heteronormativity. A safe space for heteras
Led by: Sibylle Peters (performance artist and cultural researcher, Hamburg)

The heteronormative world is unsafe for women. It casts a veil over how frequently heterasexual women feel compelled to perform against their own interests and desires in intimate encounters. This fundamental imbalance creates mistrust and can quickly poison love, pleasure and flirtation. This is why there needs to be a safe space for heteras. The HETERACLUB (15.– 18.06. in the Impulse SHOWCASE) achieves this through the character of thefemale pimp. Under her direction, the participating men train themselves to be guided in their encounters with the heteras by their desires, and to be aware of and respect boundaries. This takes weeks. Is it possible to transfer procedures from the heteraclub to a workshop setting where heteras and heteros search together for escape routes from heteronormativity? No guarantees, only an experiment.

The bus shuttle goes directly to the CITY PROJECT in Düsseldorf and carries on to the SHOWCASE in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Estimated arrival time in Mülheim an der Ruhr: 20:00. Return journey around 23:30.

Antigone Akgün, born in Frankfurt am Main in 1993, studied Theatre, Film and Media Studies there along with Philosophy and Dramaturgy. As a performer she has worked together with artists including Rosana Cade and Laurie Brown, Martina Droste and Boris Nikitin, as well as composing texts for Julia Wissert and others, and her own play IN HER FACE oder die autorin ist tot at the Frankfurter Landungsbrücken. She has participated in the Hans Gratzer Stipendium (Schauspielhaus Vienna, 2021), running the Theatertreffen Blog 2022 and directing the city-wide project Der Brotladen after Brecht (Theater Bremen 2022).

Tobias Herzberg is a dramaturg and lecturer at the Institute of Language Arts at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. As Artistic Director of Studio Я at Berlin’s Maxim Gorki Theater he produced the queer week PUGS IN LOVE and other intersectional community festivals, discussion series and themed weekends on topics such as freedom of the press, of art and of opinion. He was Dramaturg at the Vienna Burgtheater from 2019 to 2021.

Iggy Malmborg was born in Malmö in 1987 and is a freelance actor and director. His artistic interest lies in the performative situation and the politics of theatre as machinery. He has worked together with Johannes Maria Schmit under the label WHITE ON WHITE since 2009. In 2020/21 he devised the sound installation ‘No More’ at the Contemporary Art Museum in Estonia. His new work ‘Iris, pupil, retina, etc.’ premiered at the Rosendal Teater in Trondheim in January 2022.

Sibylle Peters is a performance artist and cultural researcher. She is the Artistic Director of the research theatre FUNDUS THEATER in Hamburg and co-founder of the graduate college Performing Citizenship. Matters of importance to her include the theory and practice of assembly, participatory research processes. social intimacy, the lecture as performance, performance art for children, the impulse towards improbability and feminist seafaring. Her most recent works are: ‘Women of the Seven Seas’, geheimagentur Hamburg 2021, QUEENS. DER HETERACLUB (Impulse SHOWCASE 2022).

Sahar Rahimi, born in Tehran, is a director, writer and performer and currently lives in Munich. She studied at the Institute of Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen and is a co-founder of the performance group Monster Truck. She works in the independent sector and in civic theatres in the fields of theatre, performance, installation and video. At the centre of her work lies her interest in the ambivalent border areas between power and impotence.

Yulia Yáñez Schmidt has worked as an actor since 2009. Her first experiences of working as a performer came in the immersive performance installations of the Danish-Austrian collective SIGNA, with which she appeared at various theatres in Europe. She has been a member of the Inclusive Theatre Studio at Schauspiel Wuppertal since 2019/20. An inventory of her work spans stairwells and traditional theatre.

Johannes Maria Schmit was born in Trier in 1981. He studied Directing at the HfS Ernst Busch, Berlin. Schmit subsequently worked as Resident Director at the Centraltheater Leipzig. He has worked freelance in the German-speaking theatre since 2011, as well as in Sweden, where he founded the due WHITE ON WHITE with Iggy Malmborg. In 2020 Schmit’s debut as a film director ‘Neubau’ (screenplay by Tucké Royale) received its world premiere at the Filmfestival Max Ophüls Preis, where it won the prize for Best Film and was particularly praised by the jury for its “ability to create empathy.”

Miriam Walther is a director and culture and media manager. After growing up in Brazil and Switzerland, she studied dance and Theatre Directing in New York and Zurich. She is a co-founder of the transdisciplinary artistic collective Neue Dringlichkeit and the Zurich production platform for independent theatre ArtFAQ. She has been Managing Director of the digital magazine Republik since 2018.

A re-enactment of audience reactions to ‘Enjoy Racism’ by and with Monika Truong (theatremaker and sociologist, Zurich). Co-Facilitator: Marque Pham
Language: English

Monika Truong looks back at her production ‘Enjoy Racism’ (created in collaboration with Thom Reinhard, and presented, among other places, at the Impulse SHOWCASE in 2018). During the performance, the audience was divided into two groups on the basis of eye colour. One group experienced privileges, the other discrimination. The interactive production made it painfully evident how capricious structuring the allocation and withholding of privileges on the basis of physical characteristics is. In this re-enactment, Monika Truong offers insights into the documented reactions of the audience to the original production. Together with participants in the ACADEMY, the artist will read out comments that were made during the performances and examines the effects the production has had on her own position regarding safeness and vulnerability.

The round table discussions offer the opportunity to discuss specific questions in a small group with one or two experts. These discussions all take place in parallel, so the participants have to choose one of the topics on offer. Each round table discussion begins with a brief introduction to the topic by the experts: afterwards the conversation is open to all.

Round table discussion 1: Theatre in a glass house. How is art created in a transcultural protective space?
Discussion led by: Elisabeth Bernroitner (Brunnenpassage, Vienna)
The Brunnenpassage has operated as a transcultural art laboratory since 2007, based in a former market hall built of glass in one of the outer districts of Vienna. Elisabeth Bernroitner runs its theatre programme. She explains how a safe, diversity-aware framework facilitates collective artistic creation and will initiate a conversation about the imponderables of producing art in a transparent protective space.

Round table discussion 2: Queer comedy. How can political humour be done without stereotyping or excluding anyone?
Discussion led by: Denice Bourbon (PCCC* – Vienna's First Queer Comedy Club, Vienna)
Language: German
Denice Bourbon’s golden rule of comedy is: Don’t kick down! Laughter is a defence mechanism, at times from yourself. When you’re dishing it out, do so sideways, upwards, and of course, always with a twinkle in your eye. The Viennese personification of lesbian-queer entertainment initiates a discussion about jokes that are empowering and subversive fun in the name of political correctness.

Round table discussion 3: Sharing experiences: What spaces for conversation do marginalized communities need?
Discussion led by: Simone Dede Ayivi (writer, director, Berlin)
Language: German
In her documentary installation ‘The Kids Are Alright’ (which can be seen in this year’s Impulse SHOWCASE) Simone Dede Ayivi explores family histories, generational conflicts, political struggles and visions for the future in families with migrant heritage. Together with the participants in this round table conversation, she will reflect on her working method and talk about interviewing witnesses who have often been affected by racism and violence. How do we talk to each other? And how do we define responsibility in making art from the results of research?

Round table discussion 4: We for us. What opportunities are contained by working in an all BIPOC ensemble?
Discussion led by: Mable Preach (director, activist, Lukulule e.V., Hamburg)
Language: German
Together with her team of BIPOC performers, Mable Preach embarked on a bio-fictional enquiry into female actors within the anti-colonial resistance. In this round table discussion, the Hamburg-based director will discuss the challenges and limits of a safe space as a condition of rehearsal and invite reflection on the evolution of anti-racist strategies in the arts from a young, female perspective.

Round table discussion 5: White Money. How are global power relations reflected in the performing arts?
Discussion led by: Sophia Stepf (Flinn Works, Berlin) and Abhishek Thapar (theatremaker and researcher, Amsterdam)
Language: English
In 2021, the group Flinn Works organised the festival "White Money" as an attempt to expand and interrogate the boundaries of cultural funding structures. 'White Money' means cultural funding from Europe which flows towards the global south and dominates the global performing arts market. To what extent do global hierarchies through funding distribution influence artistic processes, content and aesthetics? What could be creative ways out of these dependencies?

The participants exchange the experiences and expertise that they have gained from the various ACADEMY formats in a one-to-one setting. Questions and a duration for the conversations will be supplied. The aim is to encounter multiple perspectives in a short time.

Chaired by: Tobias Herzberg (Programme Lead ACADEMY #1)

Antigone Akgün and Sahar Rahimi, who took up opposing positions at the beginning of the first day of the ACADEMY, reflect on the different viewpoints and impressions and potential shifts of perspective that have arisen during the ACADEMY. In a fishbowl format, everyone who wishes to is invited to take part in the discussion.

The bus shuttle goes directly to the SHOWCASE in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Return journey around 24:00.

Elisabeth Bernroitner curates transcultural, (post-)migrant, contemporary art and information projects. Since 2011 she has curated and run the theatre and performance programme at the ArtSocialSpace Brunnenpassage in Vienna and has been actively involved in international projects and museum co-operations. From 2016 to 2019 she was a member of the executive of IG Kultur in Vienna, and from 2016 to 2018 Artistic and Managing Director of PANGEA | Workshop of World Cultures in Linz. She had previously worked as Project Co-ordinator at Tanzquartier Wien. She studied Theatre Studies and Cultural Anthropology as well as Visual Culture and Performance Art Practices in Vienna and Madrid. Elisabeth Bernroitner also works as a freelance diversity trainer specialising in the arts and culture.

Denice Bourbon is a lesbian/queer-feminist performance artist, singer, writer, show host, curator, and stand-up comedian. She uses humour and entertainment as activist tools to draw attention to political issues. For a number of years, she has been working as a freelance artist in both theatre and film. Denice Bourbon has worked with artists such as Katrina Daschner, Gin Müller, Veza Fernández, Sabine Marte, Stefanie Sourial, Stefanie Sargnagel, Amina Handke, and Nesterval at venues such as brut, WUK, WERK X, Ateliertheater, Kosmos Theater, Spektakel, and many more. Denice Bourbon was a co-curator of Vienna’s first queer performance festival, Straight to Hell (2015, with Denise Kottlett) and co-founder of the queer stand-up comedy club PCCC*. In 2018, she was part of the cast for Nesterval’s acclaimed immersive production The Village.

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 of 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.

Mable Preach has been a regular presence on the Hamburg art scene for many years – as a director and choreographer, and as a curator and networker. She is the initiator of the festival for urban BIPoC youth culture FORMATION**NOW and Director of the cultural and youth association Lukulule. She recently presented EMB*RACE YOUR CROWN**, which she directed, as part of the season opening at Kampnagel, Hamburg. In her works, she engages in critical studies of racism and (neo-)colonialism, demands empowerment and produces alternative images and narratives to the white mainstream.

Sophia Stepf is Artistic Director of the company Flinn Works (Berlin) and works as a director, curator and lecturer. After studying Dramaturgy in Leipzig and Toronto, she worked as an Assistant and Dramaturg for Theater der Welt and the Wiener Festwochen. She has conceived and curated theatre projects and training in India on a regular basis since 2001, for institutions including the Goethe Institut and the National School of Drama. She curated the independent theatre festival Schwindelfrei in Mannheim from 2014 -2018. With Flinn Works she has won the ZKB Förderpreis (Zürich), four Meta Awards (Delhi) and the Fonds Darstellende Künste’s Tabori Award in 2021. She lives with her family in Berlin.

Abhishek Thapar was born in Moga, India, in 1985 and is a theatre maker, performer, puppeteer and artist. He lives in Amsterdam. Abhishek Thapar has a postgraduate qualification in Physical Theatre from the London International School of Performing Arts (LISPA) and completed the masters programme DAS Theatre at the Amsterdam University of the Arts.

Monika Truong, a sociologist, Sinologist and theatre maker, works alongside the ambivalences of our social norms in the contradictory experiential space of socialisation in small town Switzerland, a Chinese-Vietnamese background, academic training and freelance work in the independent theatre sector. Her piece ‘Enjoy Racism’ (together with Thom Reinhard) was presented at the IMPULSE Showcase 2018 and also won the Festival Prize at the festival ‘Politik im Freien Theater’ in the same year.

Welcome and introduction by Tobias Herzberg (Programme Lead ACADEMY #1)

What kind of safety is meant when we talk about safe spaces? What needs stand beside or against each other? Tobias Herzberg explains the themes of the ACADEMY, defines the terminological framework and introduces the contributors.

Keynote by Miriam Walther (theatre maker, Managing Director Republik, Zurich)

In a diverse society both theatres and the media have the duty to provide a stage for diverse views. Yet how should they react when a public forum is demanded for discriminatory or violent views? Should there be (no) tolerance for the intolerant? And what can theatre learn from other platforms that create a public sphere?

An endorsement by Antigone Akgün (freelance performer, dramaturg and writer, Frankfurt am Main)

The fact that utopias cannot be achieved instantly and without resistance is no longer a secret. However, German-speaking theatre institutions have made numerous efforts to become safer and to facilitate discrimination-free spaces for fragile artistic processes. What form do these efforts take? What adversities and what support do they encounter? And: what potential does art that has been produced under safer conditions have?

By Sahar Rahimi (director, performer, Munich)

If we understand theatre to be a space in which we can be both productively confused and watch with crystal-clear understanding, with astonishment and critical distance, with repulsion and analytical rigour, with intoxication and self-reflection, then it needs to contain an (artistic) freedom that the world does not provide. This is a plea not to apply the same standards to the parameters of producing art that we apply to artistic outcomes.

In three workshops held in parallel, theatremakers present how they create security or insecurity in their work. and invite participants in the ACADEMY to take part in practical exercises. Assignment to the workshops will take place at the beginning of the first day of the ACADEMY.

Workshop 1:
From immersion to inclusion: how theatre spaces empower or inhibit actors and audiences
Led by: Yulia Yáñez Schmidt (actor, Cologne)Immersion means to “dive in”. Immersive performances allow the audience to dive into playful settings where the performers often appear indistinguishable from their characters. The classic separation between audience and performers is blurred – uncertainty is built in! Best-known examples are the site-specific works of the Danish-Austrian performance group SIGNA, with whom Yulia Yáñez Schmidt toured to several European cities. As an actor with a physical disability she has been a permanent member of the Inclusive Acting Studio at Schauspiel Wuppertal since 2019/20: a model project that is the only one of its kind in Germany. Working on roles and the repertoires system in a civic theatre versus immersive site-specific performance: out of a direct comparison between her experiences of immersion and inclusion, Yulia Yáñez Schmidt develops an inventory of staircases and theatrical traditions and will animate others to immerse themselves in theatrical architecture.

Workshop 2: Showing solidarity without trying to be liked. Unsettling white privilege.
Led by: Iggy Malmborg, Johannes Maria Schmit (WHITE ON WHITE, Malmö/Stockholm)
Language: English

Between 2009 and 2016 White on White made a series of six theatre pieces, all with the explicit objective of producing an unsafe space for people holding white privilege, eroding the self-evident way that white audiences identify with the two white performers. During the workshop, the duo will give insight into the strategies used in the series and why these turned obsolete after the inauguration of Trump. They will also bring a sequence of dilemmas emerging in the present time, with which to entangle the participants, their most urgent question being: can we find a dialectical relation between safe processes and confrontational aesthetics?

Workshop 3: Escape routes from heteronormativity. A safe space for heteras
Led by: Sibylle Peters (performance artist and cultural researcher, Hamburg)

The heteronormative world is unsafe for women. It casts a veil over how frequently heterasexual women feel compelled to perform against their own interests and desires in intimate encounters. This fundamental imbalance creates mistrust and can quickly poison love, pleasure and flirtation. This is why there needs to be a safe space for heteras. The HETERACLUB (15.– 18.06. in the Impulse SHOWCASE) achieves this through the character of thefemale pimp. Under her direction, the participating men train themselves to be guided in their encounters with the heteras by their desires, and to be aware of and respect boundaries. This takes weeks. Is it possible to transfer procedures from the heteraclub to a workshop setting where heteras and heteros search together for escape routes from heteronormativity? No guarantees, only an experiment.

The bus shuttle goes directly to the CITY PROJECT in Düsseldorf and carries on to the SHOWCASE in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Estimated arrival time in Mülheim an der Ruhr: 20:00. Return journey around 23:30.

Antigone Akgün, born in Frankfurt am Main in 1993, studied Theatre, Film and Media Studies there along with Philosophy and Dramaturgy. As a performer she has worked together with artists including Rosana Cade and Laurie Brown, Martina Droste and Boris Nikitin, as well as composing texts for Julia Wissert and others, and her own play IN HER FACE oder die autorin ist tot at the Frankfurter Landungsbrücken. She has participated in the Hans Gratzer Stipendium (Schauspielhaus Vienna, 2021), running the Theatertreffen Blog 2022 and directing the city-wide project Der Brotladen after Brecht (Theater Bremen 2022).

Tobias Herzberg is a dramaturg and lecturer at the Institute of Language Arts at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. As Artistic Director of Studio Я at Berlin’s Maxim Gorki Theater he produced the queer week PUGS IN LOVE and other intersectional community festivals, discussion series and themed weekends on topics such as freedom of the press, of art and of opinion. He was Dramaturg at the Vienna Burgtheater from 2019 to 2021.

Iggy Malmborg was born in Malmö in 1987 and is a freelance actor and director. His artistic interest lies in the performative situation and the politics of theatre as machinery. He has worked together with Johannes Maria Schmit under the label WHITE ON WHITE since 2009. In 2020/21 he devised the sound installation ‘No More’ at the Contemporary Art Museum in Estonia. His new work ‘Iris, pupil, retina, etc.’ premiered at the Rosendal Teater in Trondheim in January 2022.

Sibylle Peters is a performance artist and cultural researcher. She is the Artistic Director of the research theatre FUNDUS THEATER in Hamburg and co-founder of the graduate college Performing Citizenship. Matters of importance to her include the theory and practice of assembly, participatory research processes. social intimacy, the lecture as performance, performance art for children, the impulse towards improbability and feminist seafaring. Her most recent works are: ‘Women of the Seven Seas’, geheimagentur Hamburg 2021, QUEENS. DER HETERACLUB (Impulse SHOWCASE 2022).

Sahar Rahimi, born in Tehran, is a director, writer and performer and currently lives in Munich. She studied at the Institute of Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen and is a co-founder of the performance group Monster Truck. She works in the independent sector and in civic theatres in the fields of theatre, performance, installation and video. At the centre of her work lies her interest in the ambivalent border areas between power and impotence.

Yulia Yáñez Schmidt has worked as an actor since 2009. Her first experiences of working as a performer came in the immersive performance installations of the Danish-Austrian collective SIGNA, with which she appeared at various theatres in Europe. She has been a member of the Inclusive Theatre Studio at Schauspiel Wuppertal since 2019/20. An inventory of her work spans stairwells and traditional theatre.

Johannes Maria Schmit was born in Trier in 1981. He studied Directing at the HfS Ernst Busch, Berlin. Schmit subsequently worked as Resident Director at the Centraltheater Leipzig. He has worked freelance in the German-speaking theatre since 2011, as well as in Sweden, where he founded the due WHITE ON WHITE with Iggy Malmborg. In 2020 Schmit’s debut as a film director ‘Neubau’ (screenplay by Tucké Royale) received its world premiere at the Filmfestival Max Ophüls Preis, where it won the prize for Best Film and was particularly praised by the jury for its “ability to create empathy.”

Miriam Walther is a director and culture and media manager. After growing up in Brazil and Switzerland, she studied dance and Theatre Directing in New York and Zurich. She is a co-founder of the transdisciplinary artistic collective Neue Dringlichkeit and the Zurich production platform for independent theatre ArtFAQ. She has been Managing Director of the digital magazine Republik since 2018.

A re-enactment of audience reactions to ‘Enjoy Racism’ by and with Monika Truong (theatremaker and sociologist, Zurich). Co-Facilitator: Marque Pham
Language: English

Monika Truong looks back at her production ‘Enjoy Racism’ (created in collaboration with Thom Reinhard, and presented, among other places, at the Impulse SHOWCASE in 2018). During the performance, the audience was divided into two groups on the basis of eye colour. One group experienced privileges, the other discrimination. The interactive production made it painfully evident how capricious structuring the allocation and withholding of privileges on the basis of physical characteristics is. In this re-enactment, Monika Truong offers insights into the documented reactions of the audience to the original production. Together with participants in the ACADEMY, the artist will read out comments that were made during the performances and examines the effects the production has had on her own position regarding safeness and vulnerability.

The round table discussions offer the opportunity to discuss specific questions in a small group with one or two experts. These discussions all take place in parallel, so the participants have to choose one of the topics on offer. Each round table discussion begins with a brief introduction to the topic by the experts: afterwards the conversation is open to all.

Round table discussion 1: Theatre in a glass house. How is art created in a transcultural protective space?
Discussion led by: Elisabeth Bernroitner (Brunnenpassage, Vienna)
The Brunnenpassage has operated as a transcultural art laboratory since 2007, based in a former market hall built of glass in one of the outer districts of Vienna. Elisabeth Bernroitner runs its theatre programme. She explains how a safe, diversity-aware framework facilitates collective artistic creation and will initiate a conversation about the imponderables of producing art in a transparent protective space.

Round table discussion 2: Queer comedy. How can political humour be done without stereotyping or excluding anyone?
Discussion led by: Denice Bourbon (PCCC* – Vienna's First Queer Comedy Club, Vienna)
Language: German
Denice Bourbon’s golden rule of comedy is: Don’t kick down! Laughter is a defence mechanism, at times from yourself. When you’re dishing it out, do so sideways, upwards, and of course, always with a twinkle in your eye. The Viennese personification of lesbian-queer entertainment initiates a discussion about jokes that are empowering and subversive fun in the name of political correctness.

Round table discussion 3: Sharing experiences: What spaces for conversation do marginalized communities need?
Discussion led by: Simone Dede Ayivi (writer, director, Berlin)
Language: German
In her documentary installation ‘The Kids Are Alright’ (which can be seen in this year’s Impulse SHOWCASE) Simone Dede Ayivi explores family histories, generational conflicts, political struggles and visions for the future in families with migrant heritage. Together with the participants in this round table conversation, she will reflect on her working method and talk about interviewing witnesses who have often been affected by racism and violence. How do we talk to each other? And how do we define responsibility in making art from the results of research?

Round table discussion 4: We for us. What opportunities are contained by working in an all BIPOC ensemble?
Discussion led by: Mable Preach (director, activist, Lukulule e.V., Hamburg)
Language: German
Together with her team of BIPOC performers, Mable Preach embarked on a bio-fictional enquiry into female actors within the anti-colonial resistance. In this round table discussion, the Hamburg-based director will discuss the challenges and limits of a safe space as a condition of rehearsal and invite reflection on the evolution of anti-racist strategies in the arts from a young, female perspective.

Round table discussion 5: White Money. How are global power relations reflected in the performing arts?
Discussion led by: Sophia Stepf (Flinn Works, Berlin) and Abhishek Thapar (theatremaker and researcher, Amsterdam)
Language: English
In 2021, the group Flinn Works organised the festival "White Money" as an attempt to expand and interrogate the boundaries of cultural funding structures. 'White Money' means cultural funding from Europe which flows towards the global south and dominates the global performing arts market. To what extent do global hierarchies through funding distribution influence artistic processes, content and aesthetics? What could be creative ways out of these dependencies?

The participants exchange the experiences and expertise that they have gained from the various ACADEMY formats in a one-to-one setting. Questions and a duration for the conversations will be supplied. The aim is to encounter multiple perspectives in a short time.

Chaired by: Tobias Herzberg (Programme Lead ACADEMY #1)

Antigone Akgün and Sahar Rahimi, who took up opposing positions at the beginning of the first day of the ACADEMY, reflect on the different viewpoints and impressions and potential shifts of perspective that have arisen during the ACADEMY. In a fishbowl format, everyone who wishes to is invited to take part in the discussion.

The bus shuttle goes directly to the SHOWCASE in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Return journey around 24:00.

Elisabeth Bernroitner curates transcultural, (post-)migrant, contemporary art and information projects. Since 2011 she has curated and run the theatre and performance programme at the ArtSocialSpace Brunnenpassage in Vienna and has been actively involved in international projects and museum co-operations. From 2016 to 2019 she was a member of the executive of IG Kultur in Vienna, and from 2016 to 2018 Artistic and Managing Director of PANGEA | Workshop of World Cultures in Linz. She had previously worked as Project Co-ordinator at Tanzquartier Wien. She studied Theatre Studies and Cultural Anthropology as well as Visual Culture and Performance Art Practices in Vienna and Madrid. Elisabeth Bernroitner also works as a freelance diversity trainer specialising in the arts and culture.

Denice Bourbon is a lesbian/queer-feminist performance artist, singer, writer, show host, curator, and stand-up comedian. She uses humour and entertainment as activist tools to draw attention to political issues. For a number of years, she has been working as a freelance artist in both theatre and film. Denice Bourbon has worked with artists such as Katrina Daschner, Gin Müller, Veza Fernández, Sabine Marte, Stefanie Sourial, Stefanie Sargnagel, Amina Handke, and Nesterval at venues such as brut, WUK, WERK X, Ateliertheater, Kosmos Theater, Spektakel, and many more. Denice Bourbon was a co-curator of Vienna’s first queer performance festival, Straight to Hell (2015, with Denise Kottlett) and co-founder of the queer stand-up comedy club PCCC*. In 2018, she was part of the cast for Nesterval’s acclaimed immersive production The Village.

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 of 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.

Mable Preach has been a regular presence on the Hamburg art scene for many years – as a director and choreographer, and as a curator and networker. She is the initiator of the festival for urban BIPoC youth culture FORMATION**NOW and Director of the cultural and youth association Lukulule. She recently presented EMB*RACE YOUR CROWN**, which she directed, as part of the season opening at Kampnagel, Hamburg. In her works, she engages in critical studies of racism and (neo-)colonialism, demands empowerment and produces alternative images and narratives to the white mainstream.

Sophia Stepf is Artistic Director of the company Flinn Works (Berlin) and works as a director, curator and lecturer. After studying Dramaturgy in Leipzig and Toronto, she worked as an Assistant and Dramaturg for Theater der Welt and the Wiener Festwochen. She has conceived and curated theatre projects and training in India on a regular basis since 2001, for institutions including the Goethe Institut and the National School of Drama. She curated the independent theatre festival Schwindelfrei in Mannheim from 2014 -2018. With Flinn Works she has won the ZKB Förderpreis (Zürich), four Meta Awards (Delhi) and the Fonds Darstellende Künste’s Tabori Award in 2021. She lives with her family in Berlin.

Abhishek Thapar was born in Moga, India, in 1985 and is a theatre maker, performer, puppeteer and artist. He lives in Amsterdam. Abhishek Thapar has a postgraduate qualification in Physical Theatre from the London International School of Performing Arts (LISPA) and completed the masters programme DAS Theatre at the Amsterdam University of the Arts.

Monika Truong, a sociologist, Sinologist and theatre maker, works alongside the ambivalences of our social norms in the contradictory experiential space of socialisation in small town Switzerland, a Chinese-Vietnamese background, academic training and freelance work in the independent theatre sector. Her piece ‘Enjoy Racism’ (together with Thom Reinhard) was presented at the IMPULSE Showcase 2018 and also won the Festival Prize at the festival ‘Politik im Freien Theater’ in the same year.

Welcome and introduction by Tobias Herzberg (Programme Lead ACADEMY #1)

What kind of safety is meant when we talk about safe spaces? What needs stand beside or against each other? Tobias Herzberg explains the themes of the ACADEMY, defines the terminological framework and introduces the contributors.

Keynote by Miriam Walther (theatre maker, Managing Director Republik, Zurich)

In a diverse society both theatres and the media have the duty to provide a stage for diverse views. Yet how should they react when a public forum is demanded for discriminatory or violent views? Should there be (no) tolerance for the intolerant? And what can theatre learn from other platforms that create a public sphere?

An endorsement by Antigone Akgün (freelance performer, dramaturg and writer, Frankfurt am Main)

The fact that utopias cannot be achieved instantly and without resistance is no longer a secret. However, German-speaking theatre institutions have made numerous efforts to become safer and to facilitate discrimination-free spaces for fragile artistic processes. What form do these efforts take? What adversities and what support do they encounter? And: what potential does art that has been produced under safer conditions have?

By Sahar Rahimi (director, performer, Munich)

If we understand theatre to be a space in which we can be both productively confused and watch with crystal-clear understanding, with astonishment and critical distance, with repulsion and analytical rigour, with intoxication and self-reflection, then it needs to contain an (artistic) freedom that the world does not provide. This is a plea not to apply the same standards to the parameters of producing art that we apply to artistic outcomes.

In three workshops held in parallel, theatremakers present how they create security or insecurity in their work. and invite participants in the ACADEMY to take part in practical exercises. Assignment to the workshops will take place at the beginning of the first day of the ACADEMY.

Workshop 1:
From immersion to inclusion: how theatre spaces empower or inhibit actors and audiences
Led by: Yulia Yáñez Schmidt (actor, Cologne)Immersion means to “dive in”. Immersive performances allow the audience to dive into playful settings where the performers often appear indistinguishable from their characters. The classic separation between audience and performers is blurred – uncertainty is built in! Best-known examples are the site-specific works of the Danish-Austrian performance group SIGNA, with whom Yulia Yáñez Schmidt toured to several European cities. As an actor with a physical disability she has been a permanent member of the Inclusive Acting Studio at Schauspiel Wuppertal since 2019/20: a model project that is the only one of its kind in Germany. Working on roles and the repertoires system in a civic theatre versus immersive site-specific performance: out of a direct comparison between her experiences of immersion and inclusion, Yulia Yáñez Schmidt develops an inventory of staircases and theatrical traditions and will animate others to immerse themselves in theatrical architecture.

Workshop 2: Showing solidarity without trying to be liked. Unsettling white privilege.
Led by: Iggy Malmborg, Johannes Maria Schmit (WHITE ON WHITE, Malmö/Stockholm)
Language: English

Between 2009 and 2016 White on White made a series of six theatre pieces, all with the explicit objective of producing an unsafe space for people holding white privilege, eroding the self-evident way that white audiences identify with the two white performers. During the workshop, the duo will give insight into the strategies used in the series and why these turned obsolete after the inauguration of Trump. They will also bring a sequence of dilemmas emerging in the present time, with which to entangle the participants, their most urgent question being: can we find a dialectical relation between safe processes and confrontational aesthetics?

Workshop 3: Escape routes from heteronormativity. A safe space for heteras
Led by: Sibylle Peters (performance artist and cultural researcher, Hamburg)

The heteronormative world is unsafe for women. It casts a veil over how frequently heterasexual women feel compelled to perform against their own interests and desires in intimate encounters. This fundamental imbalance creates mistrust and can quickly poison love, pleasure and flirtation. This is why there needs to be a safe space for heteras. The HETERACLUB (15.– 18.06. in the Impulse SHOWCASE) achieves this through the character of thefemale pimp. Under her direction, the participating men train themselves to be guided in their encounters with the heteras by their desires, and to be aware of and respect boundaries. This takes weeks. Is it possible to transfer procedures from the heteraclub to a workshop setting where heteras and heteros search together for escape routes from heteronormativity? No guarantees, only an experiment.

The bus shuttle goes directly to the CITY PROJECT in Düsseldorf and carries on to the SHOWCASE in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Estimated arrival time in Mülheim an der Ruhr: 20:00. Return journey around 23:30.

Antigone Akgün, born in Frankfurt am Main in 1993, studied Theatre, Film and Media Studies there along with Philosophy and Dramaturgy. As a performer she has worked together with artists including Rosana Cade and Laurie Brown, Martina Droste and Boris Nikitin, as well as composing texts for Julia Wissert and others, and her own play IN HER FACE oder die autorin ist tot at the Frankfurter Landungsbrücken. She has participated in the Hans Gratzer Stipendium (Schauspielhaus Vienna, 2021), running the Theatertreffen Blog 2022 and directing the city-wide project Der Brotladen after Brecht (Theater Bremen 2022).

Tobias Herzberg is a dramaturg and lecturer at the Institute of Language Arts at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. As Artistic Director of Studio Я at Berlin’s Maxim Gorki Theater he produced the queer week PUGS IN LOVE and other intersectional community festivals, discussion series and themed weekends on topics such as freedom of the press, of art and of opinion. He was Dramaturg at the Vienna Burgtheater from 2019 to 2021.

Iggy Malmborg was born in Malmö in 1987 and is a freelance actor and director. His artistic interest lies in the performative situation and the politics of theatre as machinery. He has worked together with Johannes Maria Schmit under the label WHITE ON WHITE since 2009. In 2020/21 he devised the sound installation ‘No More’ at the Contemporary Art Museum in Estonia. His new work ‘Iris, pupil, retina, etc.’ premiered at the Rosendal Teater in Trondheim in January 2022.

Sibylle Peters is a performance artist and cultural researcher. She is the Artistic Director of the research theatre FUNDUS THEATER in Hamburg and co-founder of the graduate college Performing Citizenship. Matters of importance to her include the theory and practice of assembly, participatory research processes. social intimacy, the lecture as performance, performance art for children, the impulse towards improbability and feminist seafaring. Her most recent works are: ‘Women of the Seven Seas’, geheimagentur Hamburg 2021, QUEENS. DER HETERACLUB (Impulse SHOWCASE 2022).

Sahar Rahimi, born in Tehran, is a director, writer and performer and currently lives in Munich. She studied at the Institute of Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen and is a co-founder of the performance group Monster Truck. She works in the independent sector and in civic theatres in the fields of theatre, performance, installation and video. At the centre of her work lies her interest in the ambivalent border areas between power and impotence.

Yulia Yáñez Schmidt has worked as an actor since 2009. Her first experiences of working as a performer came in the immersive performance installations of the Danish-Austrian collective SIGNA, with which she appeared at various theatres in Europe. She has been a member of the Inclusive Theatre Studio at Schauspiel Wuppertal since 2019/20. An inventory of her work spans stairwells and traditional theatre.

Johannes Maria Schmit was born in Trier in 1981. He studied Directing at the HfS Ernst Busch, Berlin. Schmit subsequently worked as Resident Director at the Centraltheater Leipzig. He has worked freelance in the German-speaking theatre since 2011, as well as in Sweden, where he founded the due WHITE ON WHITE with Iggy Malmborg. In 2020 Schmit’s debut as a film director ‘Neubau’ (screenplay by Tucké Royale) received its world premiere at the Filmfestival Max Ophüls Preis, where it won the prize for Best Film and was particularly praised by the jury for its “ability to create empathy.”

Miriam Walther is a director and culture and media manager. After growing up in Brazil and Switzerland, she studied dance and Theatre Directing in New York and Zurich. She is a co-founder of the transdisciplinary artistic collective Neue Dringlichkeit and the Zurich production platform for independent theatre ArtFAQ. She has been Managing Director of the digital magazine Republik since 2018.

A re-enactment of audience reactions to ‘Enjoy Racism’ by and with Monika Truong (theatremaker and sociologist, Zurich). Co-Facilitator: Marque Pham
Language: English

Monika Truong looks back at her production ‘Enjoy Racism’ (created in collaboration with Thom Reinhard, and presented, among other places, at the Impulse SHOWCASE in 2018). During the performance, the audience was divided into two groups on the basis of eye colour. One group experienced privileges, the other discrimination. The interactive production made it painfully evident how capricious structuring the allocation and withholding of privileges on the basis of physical characteristics is. In this re-enactment, Monika Truong offers insights into the documented reactions of the audience to the original production. Together with participants in the ACADEMY, the artist will read out comments that were made during the performances and examines the effects the production has had on her own position regarding safeness and vulnerability.

The round table discussions offer the opportunity to discuss specific questions in a small group with one or two experts. These discussions all take place in parallel, so the participants have to choose one of the topics on offer. Each round table discussion begins with a brief introduction to the topic by the experts: afterwards the conversation is open to all.

Round table discussion 1: Theatre in a glass house. How is art created in a transcultural protective space?
Discussion led by: Elisabeth Bernroitner (Brunnenpassage, Vienna)
The Brunnenpassage has operated as a transcultural art laboratory since 2007, based in a former market hall built of glass in one of the outer districts of Vienna. Elisabeth Bernroitner runs its theatre programme. She explains how a safe, diversity-aware framework facilitates collective artistic creation and will initiate a conversation about the imponderables of producing art in a transparent protective space.

Round table discussion 2: Queer comedy. How can political humour be done without stereotyping or excluding anyone?
Discussion led by: Denice Bourbon (PCCC* – Vienna's First Queer Comedy Club, Vienna)
Language: German
Denice Bourbon’s golden rule of comedy is: Don’t kick down! Laughter is a defence mechanism, at times from yourself. When you’re dishing it out, do so sideways, upwards, and of course, always with a twinkle in your eye. The Viennese personification of lesbian-queer entertainment initiates a discussion about jokes that are empowering and subversive fun in the name of political correctness.

Round table discussion 3: Sharing experiences: What spaces for conversation do marginalized communities need?
Discussion led by: Simone Dede Ayivi (writer, director, Berlin)
Language: German
In her documentary installation ‘The Kids Are Alright’ (which can be seen in this year’s Impulse SHOWCASE) Simone Dede Ayivi explores family histories, generational conflicts, political struggles and visions for the future in families with migrant heritage. Together with the participants in this round table conversation, she will reflect on her working method and talk about interviewing witnesses who have often been affected by racism and violence. How do we talk to each other? And how do we define responsibility in making art from the results of research?

Round table discussion 4: We for us. What opportunities are contained by working in an all BIPOC ensemble?
Discussion led by: Mable Preach (director, activist, Lukulule e.V., Hamburg)
Language: German
Together with her team of BIPOC performers, Mable Preach embarked on a bio-fictional enquiry into female actors within the anti-colonial resistance. In this round table discussion, the Hamburg-based director will discuss the challenges and limits of a safe space as a condition of rehearsal and invite reflection on the evolution of anti-racist strategies in the arts from a young, female perspective.

Round table discussion 5: White Money. How are global power relations reflected in the performing arts?
Discussion led by: Sophia Stepf (Flinn Works, Berlin) and Abhishek Thapar (theatremaker and researcher, Amsterdam)
Language: English
In 2021, the group Flinn Works organised the festival "White Money" as an attempt to expand and interrogate the boundaries of cultural funding structures. 'White Money' means cultural funding from Europe which flows towards the global south and dominates the global performing arts market. To what extent do global hierarchies through funding distribution influence artistic processes, content and aesthetics? What could be creative ways out of these dependencies?

The participants exchange the experiences and expertise that they have gained from the various ACADEMY formats in a one-to-one setting. Questions and a duration for the conversations will be supplied. The aim is to encounter multiple perspectives in a short time.

Chaired by: Tobias Herzberg (Programme Lead ACADEMY #1)

Antigone Akgün and Sahar Rahimi, who took up opposing positions at the beginning of the first day of the ACADEMY, reflect on the different viewpoints and impressions and potential shifts of perspective that have arisen during the ACADEMY. In a fishbowl format, everyone who wishes to is invited to take part in the discussion.

The bus shuttle goes directly to the SHOWCASE in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Return journey around 24:00.

Elisabeth Bernroitner curates transcultural, (post-)migrant, contemporary art and information projects. Since 2011 she has curated and run the theatre and performance programme at the ArtSocialSpace Brunnenpassage in Vienna and has been actively involved in international projects and museum co-operations. From 2016 to 2019 she was a member of the executive of IG Kultur in Vienna, and from 2016 to 2018 Artistic and Managing Director of PANGEA | Workshop of World Cultures in Linz. She had previously worked as Project Co-ordinator at Tanzquartier Wien. She studied Theatre Studies and Cultural Anthropology as well as Visual Culture and Performance Art Practices in Vienna and Madrid. Elisabeth Bernroitner also works as a freelance diversity trainer specialising in the arts and culture.

Denice Bourbon is a lesbian/queer-feminist performance artist, singer, writer, show host, curator, and stand-up comedian. She uses humour and entertainment as activist tools to draw attention to political issues. For a number of years, she has been working as a freelance artist in both theatre and film. Denice Bourbon has worked with artists such as Katrina Daschner, Gin Müller, Veza Fernández, Sabine Marte, Stefanie Sourial, Stefanie Sargnagel, Amina Handke, and Nesterval at venues such as brut, WUK, WERK X, Ateliertheater, Kosmos Theater, Spektakel, and many more. Denice Bourbon was a co-curator of Vienna’s first queer performance festival, Straight to Hell (2015, with Denise Kottlett) and co-founder of the queer stand-up comedy club PCCC*. In 2018, she was part of the cast for Nesterval’s acclaimed immersive production The Village.

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 of 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.

Mable Preach has been a regular presence on the Hamburg art scene for many years – as a director and choreographer, and as a curator and networker. She is the initiator of the festival for urban BIPoC youth culture FORMATION**NOW and Director of the cultural and youth association Lukulule. She recently presented EMB*RACE YOUR CROWN**, which she directed, as part of the season opening at Kampnagel, Hamburg. In her works, she engages in critical studies of racism and (neo-)colonialism, demands empowerment and produces alternative images and narratives to the white mainstream.

Sophia Stepf is Artistic Director of the company Flinn Works (Berlin) and works as a director, curator and lecturer. After studying Dramaturgy in Leipzig and Toronto, she worked as an Assistant and Dramaturg for Theater der Welt and the Wiener Festwochen. She has conceived and curated theatre projects and training in India on a regular basis since 2001, for institutions including the Goethe Institut and the National School of Drama. She curated the independent theatre festival Schwindelfrei in Mannheim from 2014 -2018. With Flinn Works she has won the ZKB Förderpreis (Zürich), four Meta Awards (Delhi) and the Fonds Darstellende Künste’s Tabori Award in 2021. She lives with her family in Berlin.

Abhishek Thapar was born in Moga, India, in 1985 and is a theatre maker, performer, puppeteer and artist. He lives in Amsterdam. Abhishek Thapar has a postgraduate qualification in Physical Theatre from the London International School of Performing Arts (LISPA) and completed the masters programme DAS Theatre at the Amsterdam University of the Arts.

Monika Truong, a sociologist, Sinologist and theatre maker, works alongside the ambivalences of our social norms in the contradictory experiential space of socialisation in small town Switzerland, a Chinese-Vietnamese background, academic training and freelance work in the independent theatre sector. Her piece ‘Enjoy Racism’ (together with Thom Reinhard) was presented at the IMPULSE Showcase 2018 and also won the Festival Prize at the festival ‘Politik im Freien Theater’ in the same year.

Welcome and introduction by Tobias Herzberg (Programme Lead ACADEMY #1)

What kind of safety is meant when we talk about safe spaces? What needs stand beside or against each other? Tobias Herzberg explains the themes of the ACADEMY, defines the terminological framework and introduces the contributors.

Keynote by Miriam Walther (theatre maker, Managing Director Republik, Zurich)

In a diverse society both theatres and the media have the duty to provide a stage for diverse views. Yet how should they react when a public forum is demanded for discriminatory or violent views? Should there be (no) tolerance for the intolerant? And what can theatre learn from other platforms that create a public sphere?

An endorsement by Antigone Akgün (freelance performer, dramaturg and writer, Frankfurt am Main)

The fact that utopias cannot be achieved instantly and without resistance is no longer a secret. However, German-speaking theatre institutions have made numerous efforts to become safer and to facilitate discrimination-free spaces for fragile artistic processes. What form do these efforts take? What adversities and what support do they encounter? And: what potential does art that has been produced under safer conditions have?

By Sahar Rahimi (director, performer, Munich)

If we understand theatre to be a space in which we can be both productively confused and watch with crystal-clear understanding, with astonishment and critical distance, with repulsion and analytical rigour, with intoxication and self-reflection, then it needs to contain an (artistic) freedom that the world does not provide. This is a plea not to apply the same standards to the parameters of producing art that we apply to artistic outcomes.

In three workshops held in parallel, theatremakers present how they create security or insecurity in their work. and invite participants in the ACADEMY to take part in practical exercises. Assignment to the workshops will take place at the beginning of the first day of the ACADEMY.

Workshop 1:
From immersion to inclusion: how theatre spaces empower or inhibit actors and audiences
Led by: Yulia Yáñez Schmidt (actor, Cologne)Immersion means to “dive in”. Immersive performances allow the audience to dive into playful settings where the performers often appear indistinguishable from their characters. The classic separation between audience and performers is blurred – uncertainty is built in! Best-known examples are the site-specific works of the Danish-Austrian performance group SIGNA, with whom Yulia Yáñez Schmidt toured to several European cities. As an actor with a physical disability she has been a permanent member of the Inclusive Acting Studio at Schauspiel Wuppertal since 2019/20: a model project that is the only one of its kind in Germany. Working on roles and the repertoires system in a civic theatre versus immersive site-specific performance: out of a direct comparison between her experiences of immersion and inclusion, Yulia Yáñez Schmidt develops an inventory of staircases and theatrical traditions and will animate others to immerse themselves in theatrical architecture.

Workshop 2: Showing solidarity without trying to be liked. Unsettling white privilege.
Led by: Iggy Malmborg, Johannes Maria Schmit (WHITE ON WHITE, Malmö/Stockholm)
Language: English

Between 2009 and 2016 White on White made a series of six theatre pieces, all with the explicit objective of producing an unsafe space for people holding white privilege, eroding the self-evident way that white audiences identify with the two white performers. During the workshop, the duo will give insight into the strategies used in the series and why these turned obsolete after the inauguration of Trump. They will also bring a sequence of dilemmas emerging in the present time, with which to entangle the participants, their most urgent question being: can we find a dialectical relation between safe processes and confrontational aesthetics?

Workshop 3: Escape routes from heteronormativity. A safe space for heteras
Led by: Sibylle Peters (performance artist and cultural researcher, Hamburg)

The heteronormative world is unsafe for women. It casts a veil over how frequently heterasexual women feel compelled to perform against their own interests and desires in intimate encounters. This fundamental imbalance creates mistrust and can quickly poison love, pleasure and flirtation. This is why there needs to be a safe space for heteras. The HETERACLUB (15.– 18.06. in the Impulse SHOWCASE) achieves this through the character of thefemale pimp. Under her direction, the participating men train themselves to be guided in their encounters with the heteras by their desires, and to be aware of and respect boundaries. This takes weeks. Is it possible to transfer procedures from the heteraclub to a workshop setting where heteras and heteros search together for escape routes from heteronormativity? No guarantees, only an experiment.

The bus shuttle goes directly to the CITY PROJECT in Düsseldorf and carries on to the SHOWCASE in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Estimated arrival time in Mülheim an der Ruhr: 20:00. Return journey around 23:30.

Antigone Akgün, born in Frankfurt am Main in 1993, studied Theatre, Film and Media Studies there along with Philosophy and Dramaturgy. As a performer she has worked together with artists including Rosana Cade and Laurie Brown, Martina Droste and Boris Nikitin, as well as composing texts for Julia Wissert and others, and her own play IN HER FACE oder die autorin ist tot at the Frankfurter Landungsbrücken. She has participated in the Hans Gratzer Stipendium (Schauspielhaus Vienna, 2021), running the Theatertreffen Blog 2022 and directing the city-wide project Der Brotladen after Brecht (Theater Bremen 2022).

Tobias Herzberg is a dramaturg and lecturer at the Institute of Language Arts at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. As Artistic Director of Studio Я at Berlin’s Maxim Gorki Theater he produced the queer week PUGS IN LOVE and other intersectional community festivals, discussion series and themed weekends on topics such as freedom of the press, of art and of opinion. He was Dramaturg at the Vienna Burgtheater from 2019 to 2021.

Iggy Malmborg was born in Malmö in 1987 and is a freelance actor and director. His artistic interest lies in the performative situation and the politics of theatre as machinery. He has worked together with Johannes Maria Schmit under the label WHITE ON WHITE since 2009. In 2020/21 he devised the sound installation ‘No More’ at the Contemporary Art Museum in Estonia. His new work ‘Iris, pupil, retina, etc.’ premiered at the Rosendal Teater in Trondheim in January 2022.

Sibylle Peters is a performance artist and cultural researcher. She is the Artistic Director of the research theatre FUNDUS THEATER in Hamburg and co-founder of the graduate college Performing Citizenship. Matters of importance to her include the theory and practice of assembly, participatory research processes. social intimacy, the lecture as performance, performance art for children, the impulse towards improbability and feminist seafaring. Her most recent works are: ‘Women of the Seven Seas’, geheimagentur Hamburg 2021, QUEENS. DER HETERACLUB (Impulse SHOWCASE 2022).

Sahar Rahimi, born in Tehran, is a director, writer and performer and currently lives in Munich. She studied at the Institute of Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen and is a co-founder of the performance group Monster Truck. She works in the independent sector and in civic theatres in the fields of theatre, performance, installation and video. At the centre of her work lies her interest in the ambivalent border areas between power and impotence.

Yulia Yáñez Schmidt has worked as an actor since 2009. Her first experiences of working as a performer came in the immersive performance installations of the Danish-Austrian collective SIGNA, with which she appeared at various theatres in Europe. She has been a member of the Inclusive Theatre Studio at Schauspiel Wuppertal since 2019/20. An inventory of her work spans stairwells and traditional theatre.

Johannes Maria Schmit was born in Trier in 1981. He studied Directing at the HfS Ernst Busch, Berlin. Schmit subsequently worked as Resident Director at the Centraltheater Leipzig. He has worked freelance in the German-speaking theatre since 2011, as well as in Sweden, where he founded the due WHITE ON WHITE with Iggy Malmborg. In 2020 Schmit’s debut as a film director ‘Neubau’ (screenplay by Tucké Royale) received its world premiere at the Filmfestival Max Ophüls Preis, where it won the prize for Best Film and was particularly praised by the jury for its “ability to create empathy.”

Miriam Walther is a director and culture and media manager. After growing up in Brazil and Switzerland, she studied dance and Theatre Directing in New York and Zurich. She is a co-founder of the transdisciplinary artistic collective Neue Dringlichkeit and the Zurich production platform for independent theatre ArtFAQ. She has been Managing Director of the digital magazine Republik since 2018.

A re-enactment of audience reactions to ‘Enjoy Racism’ by and with Monika Truong (theatremaker and sociologist, Zurich). Co-Facilitator: Marque Pham
Language: English

Monika Truong looks back at her production ‘Enjoy Racism’ (created in collaboration with Thom Reinhard, and presented, among other places, at the Impulse SHOWCASE in 2018). During the performance, the audience was divided into two groups on the basis of eye colour. One group experienced privileges, the other discrimination. The interactive production made it painfully evident how capricious structuring the allocation and withholding of privileges on the basis of physical characteristics is. In this re-enactment, Monika Truong offers insights into the documented reactions of the audience to the original production. Together with participants in the ACADEMY, the artist will read out comments that were made during the performances and examines the effects the production has had on her own position regarding safeness and vulnerability.

The round table discussions offer the opportunity to discuss specific questions in a small group with one or two experts. These discussions all take place in parallel, so the participants have to choose one of the topics on offer. Each round table discussion begins with a brief introduction to the topic by the experts: afterwards the conversation is open to all.

Round table discussion 1: Theatre in a glass house. How is art created in a transcultural protective space?
Discussion led by: Elisabeth Bernroitner (Brunnenpassage, Vienna)
The Brunnenpassage has operated as a transcultural art laboratory since 2007, based in a former market hall built of glass in one of the outer districts of Vienna. Elisabeth Bernroitner runs its theatre programme. She explains how a safe, diversity-aware framework facilitates collective artistic creation and will initiate a conversation about the imponderables of producing art in a transparent protective space.

Round table discussion 2: Queer comedy. How can political humour be done without stereotyping or excluding anyone?
Discussion led by: Denice Bourbon (PCCC* – Vienna's First Queer Comedy Club, Vienna)
Language: German
Denice Bourbon’s golden rule of comedy is: Don’t kick down! Laughter is a defence mechanism, at times from yourself. When you’re dishing it out, do so sideways, upwards, and of course, always with a twinkle in your eye. The Viennese personification of lesbian-queer entertainment initiates a discussion about jokes that are empowering and subversive fun in the name of political correctness.

Round table discussion 3: Sharing experiences: What spaces for conversation do marginalized communities need?
Discussion led by: Simone Dede Ayivi (writer, director, Berlin)
Language: German
In her documentary installation ‘The Kids Are Alright’ (which can be seen in this year’s Impulse SHOWCASE) Simone Dede Ayivi explores family histories, generational conflicts, political struggles and visions for the future in families with migrant heritage. Together with the participants in this round table conversation, she will reflect on her working method and talk about interviewing witnesses who have often been affected by racism and violence. How do we talk to each other? And how do we define responsibility in making art from the results of research?

Round table discussion 4: We for us. What opportunities are contained by working in an all BIPOC ensemble?
Discussion led by: Mable Preach (director, activist, Lukulule e.V., Hamburg)
Language: German
Together with her team of BIPOC performers, Mable Preach embarked on a bio-fictional enquiry into female actors within the anti-colonial resistance. In this round table discussion, the Hamburg-based director will discuss the challenges and limits of a safe space as a condition of rehearsal and invite reflection on the evolution of anti-racist strategies in the arts from a young, female perspective.

Round table discussion 5: White Money. How are global power relations reflected in the performing arts?
Discussion led by: Sophia Stepf (Flinn Works, Berlin) and Abhishek Thapar (theatremaker and researcher, Amsterdam)
Language: English
In 2021, the group Flinn Works organised the festival "White Money" as an attempt to expand and interrogate the boundaries of cultural funding structures. 'White Money' means cultural funding from Europe which flows towards the global south and dominates the global performing arts market. To what extent do global hierarchies through funding distribution influence artistic processes, content and aesthetics? What could be creative ways out of these dependencies?

The participants exchange the experiences and expertise that they have gained from the various ACADEMY formats in a one-to-one setting. Questions and a duration for the conversations will be supplied. The aim is to encounter multiple perspectives in a short time.

Chaired by: Tobias Herzberg (Programme Lead ACADEMY #1)

Antigone Akgün and Sahar Rahimi, who took up opposing positions at the beginning of the first day of the ACADEMY, reflect on the different viewpoints and impressions and potential shifts of perspective that have arisen during the ACADEMY. In a fishbowl format, everyone who wishes to is invited to take part in the discussion.

The bus shuttle goes directly to the SHOWCASE in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Return journey around 24:00.

Elisabeth Bernroitner curates transcultural, (post-)migrant, contemporary art and information projects. Since 2011 she has curated and run the theatre and performance programme at the ArtSocialSpace Brunnenpassage in Vienna and has been actively involved in international projects and museum co-operations. From 2016 to 2019 she was a member of the executive of IG Kultur in Vienna, and from 2016 to 2018 Artistic and Managing Director of PANGEA | Workshop of World Cultures in Linz. She had previously worked as Project Co-ordinator at Tanzquartier Wien. She studied Theatre Studies and Cultural Anthropology as well as Visual Culture and Performance Art Practices in Vienna and Madrid. Elisabeth Bernroitner also works as a freelance diversity trainer specialising in the arts and culture.

Denice Bourbon is a lesbian/queer-feminist performance artist, singer, writer, show host, curator, and stand-up comedian. She uses humour and entertainment as activist tools to draw attention to political issues. For a number of years, she has been working as a freelance artist in both theatre and film. Denice Bourbon has worked with artists such as Katrina Daschner, Gin Müller, Veza Fernández, Sabine Marte, Stefanie Sourial, Stefanie Sargnagel, Amina Handke, and Nesterval at venues such as brut, WUK, WERK X, Ateliertheater, Kosmos Theater, Spektakel, and many more. Denice Bourbon was a co-curator of Vienna’s first queer performance festival, Straight to Hell (2015, with Denise Kottlett) and co-founder of the queer stand-up comedy club PCCC*. In 2018, she was part of the cast for Nesterval’s acclaimed immersive production The Village.

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 of 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.

Mable Preach has been a regular presence on the Hamburg art scene for many years – as a director and choreographer, and as a curator and networker. She is the initiator of the festival for urban BIPoC youth culture FORMATION**NOW and Director of the cultural and youth association Lukulule. She recently presented EMB*RACE YOUR CROWN**, which she directed, as part of the season opening at Kampnagel, Hamburg. In her works, she engages in critical studies of racism and (neo-)colonialism, demands empowerment and produces alternative images and narratives to the white mainstream.

Sophia Stepf is Artistic Director of the company Flinn Works (Berlin) and works as a director, curator and lecturer. After studying Dramaturgy in Leipzig and Toronto, she worked as an Assistant and Dramaturg for Theater der Welt and the Wiener Festwochen. She has conceived and curated theatre projects and training in India on a regular basis since 2001, for institutions including the Goethe Institut and the National School of Drama. She curated the independent theatre festival Schwindelfrei in Mannheim from 2014 -2018. With Flinn Works she has won the ZKB Förderpreis (Zürich), four Meta Awards (Delhi) and the Fonds Darstellende Künste’s Tabori Award in 2021. She lives with her family in Berlin.

Abhishek Thapar was born in Moga, India, in 1985 and is a theatre maker, performer, puppeteer and artist. He lives in Amsterdam. Abhishek Thapar has a postgraduate qualification in Physical Theatre from the London International School of Performing Arts (LISPA) and completed the masters programme DAS Theatre at the Amsterdam University of the Arts.

Monika Truong, a sociologist, Sinologist and theatre maker, works alongside the ambivalences of our social norms in the contradictory experiential space of socialisation in small town Switzerland, a Chinese-Vietnamese background, academic training and freelance work in the independent theatre sector. Her piece ‘Enjoy Racism’ (together with Thom Reinhard) was presented at the IMPULSE Showcase 2018 and also won the Festival Prize at the festival ‘Politik im Freien Theater’ in the same year.

God's Entertainment is one of the theatre groups working experimentally in Austria who seek to transcend the conventions of theatre and performance and continually redefine their form. God's Entertainment work in the fields of performance, happenings, visual arts and sound. They view their work as a critical confrontation with Austria’s political and cultural identity and its society. The field of play used by this group of artists is not confined to theatre buildings: they also stage actions in public places. In doing so, the most important principle is actively involving the public.

A production by God’s Entertainment, the Impulse Theater Festival and the FFT Düsseldorf, made possible by Kunststiftung NRW and other festival funders. With the generous support of the City of Vienna’s Department of Culture – MA7.

Welcome and introduction by Tobias Herzberg (Programme Lead ACADEMY #1)

What kind of safety is meant when we talk about safe spaces? What needs stand beside or against each other? Tobias Herzberg explains the themes of the ACADEMY, defines the terminological framework and introduces the contributors.

Keynote by Miriam Walther (theatre maker, Managing Director Republik, Zurich)

In a diverse society both theatres and the media have the duty to provide a stage for diverse views. Yet how should they react when a public forum is demanded for discriminatory or violent views? Should there be (no) tolerance for the intolerant? And what can theatre learn from other platforms that create a public sphere?

An endorsement by Antigone Akgün (freelance performer, dramaturg and writer, Frankfurt am Main)

The fact that utopias cannot be achieved instantly and without resistance is no longer a secret. However, German-speaking theatre institutions have made numerous efforts to become safer and to facilitate discrimination-free spaces for fragile artistic processes. What form do these efforts take? What adversities and what support do they encounter? And: what potential does art that has been produced under safer conditions have?

By Sahar Rahimi (director, performer, Munich)

If we understand theatre to be a space in which we can be both productively confused and watch with crystal-clear understanding, with astonishment and critical distance, with repulsion and analytical rigour, with intoxication and self-reflection, then it needs to contain an (artistic) freedom that the world does not provide. This is a plea not to apply the same standards to the parameters of producing art that we apply to artistic outcomes.

In three workshops held in parallel, theatremakers present how they create security or insecurity in their work. and invite participants in the ACADEMY to take part in practical exercises. Assignment to the workshops will take place at the beginning of the first day of the ACADEMY.

Workshop 1:
From immersion to inclusion: how theatre spaces empower or inhibit actors and audiences
Led by: Yulia Yáñez Schmidt (actor, Cologne)Immersion means to “dive in”. Immersive performances allow the audience to dive into playful settings where the performers often appear indistinguishable from their characters. The classic separation between audience and performers is blurred – uncertainty is built in! Best-known examples are the site-specific works of the Danish-Austrian performance group SIGNA, with whom Yulia Yáñez Schmidt toured to several European cities. As an actor with a physical disability she has been a permanent member of the Inclusive Acting Studio at Schauspiel Wuppertal since 2019/20: a model project that is the only one of its kind in Germany. Working on roles and the repertoires system in a civic theatre versus immersive site-specific performance: out of a direct comparison between her experiences of immersion and inclusion, Yulia Yáñez Schmidt develops an inventory of staircases and theatrical traditions and will animate others to immerse themselves in theatrical architecture.

Workshop 2: Showing solidarity without trying to be liked. Unsettling white privilege.
Led by: Iggy Malmborg, Johannes Maria Schmit (WHITE ON WHITE, Malmö/Stockholm)
Language: English

Between 2009 and 2016 White on White made a series of six theatre pieces, all with the explicit objective of producing an unsafe space for people holding white privilege, eroding the self-evident way that white audiences identify with the two white performers. During the workshop, the duo will give insight into the strategies used in the series and why these turned obsolete after the inauguration of Trump. They will also bring a sequence of dilemmas emerging in the present time, with which to entangle the participants, their most urgent question being: can we find a dialectical relation between safe processes and confrontational aesthetics?

Workshop 3: Escape routes from heteronormativity. A safe space for heteras
Led by: Sibylle Peters (performance artist and cultural researcher, Hamburg)

The heteronormative world is unsafe for women. It casts a veil over how frequently heterasexual women feel compelled to perform against their own interests and desires in intimate encounters. This fundamental imbalance creates mistrust and can quickly poison love, pleasure and flirtation. This is why there needs to be a safe space for heteras. The HETERACLUB (15.– 18.06. in the Impulse SHOWCASE) achieves this through the character of thefemale pimp. Under her direction, the participating men train themselves to be guided in their encounters with the heteras by their desires, and to be aware of and respect boundaries. This takes weeks. Is it possible to transfer procedures from the heteraclub to a workshop setting where heteras and heteros search together for escape routes from heteronormativity? No guarantees, only an experiment.

The bus shuttle goes directly to the CITY PROJECT in Düsseldorf and carries on to the SHOWCASE in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Estimated arrival time in Mülheim an der Ruhr: 20:00. Return journey around 23:30.

Antigone Akgün, born in Frankfurt am Main in 1993, studied Theatre, Film and Media Studies there along with Philosophy and Dramaturgy. As a performer she has worked together with artists including Rosana Cade and Laurie Brown, Martina Droste and Boris Nikitin, as well as composing texts for Julia Wissert and others, and her own play IN HER FACE oder die autorin ist tot at the Frankfurter Landungsbrücken. She has participated in the Hans Gratzer Stipendium (Schauspielhaus Vienna, 2021), running the Theatertreffen Blog 2022 and directing the city-wide project Der Brotladen after Brecht (Theater Bremen 2022).

Tobias Herzberg is a dramaturg and lecturer at the Institute of Language Arts at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. As Artistic Director of Studio Я at Berlin’s Maxim Gorki Theater he produced the queer week PUGS IN LOVE and other intersectional community festivals, discussion series and themed weekends on topics such as freedom of the press, of art and of opinion. He was Dramaturg at the Vienna Burgtheater from 2019 to 2021.

Iggy Malmborg was born in Malmö in 1987 and is a freelance actor and director. His artistic interest lies in the performative situation and the politics of theatre as machinery. He has worked together with Johannes Maria Schmit under the label WHITE ON WHITE since 2009. In 2020/21 he devised the sound installation ‘No More’ at the Contemporary Art Museum in Estonia. His new work ‘Iris, pupil, retina, etc.’ premiered at the Rosendal Teater in Trondheim in January 2022.

Sibylle Peters is a performance artist and cultural researcher. She is the Artistic Director of the research theatre FUNDUS THEATER in Hamburg and co-founder of the graduate college Performing Citizenship. Matters of importance to her include the theory and practice of assembly, participatory research processes. social intimacy, the lecture as performance, performance art for children, the impulse towards improbability and feminist seafaring. Her most recent works are: ‘Women of the Seven Seas’, geheimagentur Hamburg 2021, QUEENS. DER HETERACLUB (Impulse SHOWCASE 2022).

Sahar Rahimi, born in Tehran, is a director, writer and performer and currently lives in Munich. She studied at the Institute of Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen and is a co-founder of the performance group Monster Truck. She works in the independent sector and in civic theatres in the fields of theatre, performance, installation and video. At the centre of her work lies her interest in the ambivalent border areas between power and impotence.

Yulia Yáñez Schmidt has worked as an actor since 2009. Her first experiences of working as a performer came in the immersive performance installations of the Danish-Austrian collective SIGNA, with which she appeared at various theatres in Europe. She has been a member of the Inclusive Theatre Studio at Schauspiel Wuppertal since 2019/20. An inventory of her work spans stairwells and traditional theatre.

Johannes Maria Schmit was born in Trier in 1981. He studied Directing at the HfS Ernst Busch, Berlin. Schmit subsequently worked as Resident Director at the Centraltheater Leipzig. He has worked freelance in the German-speaking theatre since 2011, as well as in Sweden, where he founded the due WHITE ON WHITE with Iggy Malmborg. In 2020 Schmit’s debut as a film director ‘Neubau’ (screenplay by Tucké Royale) received its world premiere at the Filmfestival Max Ophüls Preis, where it won the prize for Best Film and was particularly praised by the jury for its “ability to create empathy.”

Miriam Walther is a director and culture and media manager. After growing up in Brazil and Switzerland, she studied dance and Theatre Directing in New York and Zurich. She is a co-founder of the transdisciplinary artistic collective Neue Dringlichkeit and the Zurich production platform for independent theatre ArtFAQ. She has been Managing Director of the digital magazine Republik since 2018.

A re-enactment of audience reactions to ‘Enjoy Racism’ by and with Monika Truong (theatremaker and sociologist, Zurich). Co-Facilitator: Marque Pham
Language: English

Monika Truong looks back at her production ‘Enjoy Racism’ (created in collaboration with Thom Reinhard, and presented, among other places, at the Impulse SHOWCASE in 2018). During the performance, the audience was divided into two groups on the basis of eye colour. One group experienced privileges, the other discrimination. The interactive production made it painfully evident how capricious structuring the allocation and withholding of privileges on the basis of physical characteristics is. In this re-enactment, Monika Truong offers insights into the documented reactions of the audience to the original production. Together with participants in the ACADEMY, the artist will read out comments that were made during the performances and examines the effects the production has had on her own position regarding safeness and vulnerability.

The round table discussions offer the opportunity to discuss specific questions in a small group with one or two experts. These discussions all take place in parallel, so the participants have to choose one of the topics on offer. Each round table discussion begins with a brief introduction to the topic by the experts: afterwards the conversation is open to all.

Round table discussion 1: Theatre in a glass house. How is art created in a transcultural protective space?
Discussion led by: Elisabeth Bernroitner (Brunnenpassage, Vienna)
The Brunnenpassage has operated as a transcultural art laboratory since 2007, based in a former market hall built of glass in one of the outer districts of Vienna. Elisabeth Bernroitner runs its theatre programme. She explains how a safe, diversity-aware framework facilitates collective artistic creation and will initiate a conversation about the imponderables of producing art in a transparent protective space.

Round table discussion 2: Queer comedy. How can political humour be done without stereotyping or excluding anyone?
Discussion led by: Denice Bourbon (PCCC* – Vienna's First Queer Comedy Club, Vienna)
Language: German
Denice Bourbon’s golden rule of comedy is: Don’t kick down! Laughter is a defence mechanism, at times from yourself. When you’re dishing it out, do so sideways, upwards, and of course, always with a twinkle in your eye. The Viennese personification of lesbian-queer entertainment initiates a discussion about jokes that are empowering and subversive fun in the name of political correctness.

Round table discussion 3: Sharing experiences: What spaces for conversation do marginalized communities need?
Discussion led by: Simone Dede Ayivi (writer, director, Berlin)
Language: German
In her documentary installation ‘The Kids Are Alright’ (which can be seen in this year’s Impulse SHOWCASE) Simone Dede Ayivi explores family histories, generational conflicts, political struggles and visions for the future in families with migrant heritage. Together with the participants in this round table conversation, she will reflect on her working method and talk about interviewing witnesses who have often been affected by racism and violence. How do we talk to each other? And how do we define responsibility in making art from the results of research?

Round table discussion 4: We for us. What opportunities are contained by working in an all BIPOC ensemble?
Discussion led by: Mable Preach (director, activist, Lukulule e.V., Hamburg)
Language: German
Together with her team of BIPOC performers, Mable Preach embarked on a bio-fictional enquiry into female actors within the anti-colonial resistance. In this round table discussion, the Hamburg-based director will discuss the challenges and limits of a safe space as a condition of rehearsal and invite reflection on the evolution of anti-racist strategies in the arts from a young, female perspective.

Round table discussion 5: White Money. How are global power relations reflected in the performing arts?
Discussion led by: Sophia Stepf (Flinn Works, Berlin) and Abhishek Thapar (theatremaker and researcher, Amsterdam)
Language: English
In 2021, the group Flinn Works organised the festival "White Money" as an attempt to expand and interrogate the boundaries of cultural funding structures. 'White Money' means cultural funding from Europe which flows towards the global south and dominates the global performing arts market. To what extent do global hierarchies through funding distribution influence artistic processes, content and aesthetics? What could be creative ways out of these dependencies?

The participants exchange the experiences and expertise that they have gained from the various ACADEMY formats in a one-to-one setting. Questions and a duration for the conversations will be supplied. The aim is to encounter multiple perspectives in a short time.

Chaired by: Tobias Herzberg (Programme Lead ACADEMY #1)

Antigone Akgün and Sahar Rahimi, who took up opposing positions at the beginning of the first day of the ACADEMY, reflect on the different viewpoints and impressions and potential shifts of perspective that have arisen during the ACADEMY. In a fishbowl format, everyone who wishes to is invited to take part in the discussion.

The bus shuttle goes directly to the SHOWCASE in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Return journey around 24:00.

Elisabeth Bernroitner curates transcultural, (post-)migrant, contemporary art and information projects. Since 2011 she has curated and run the theatre and performance programme at the ArtSocialSpace Brunnenpassage in Vienna and has been actively involved in international projects and museum co-operations. From 2016 to 2019 she was a member of the executive of IG Kultur in Vienna, and from 2016 to 2018 Artistic and Managing Director of PANGEA | Workshop of World Cultures in Linz. She had previously worked as Project Co-ordinator at Tanzquartier Wien. She studied Theatre Studies and Cultural Anthropology as well as Visual Culture and Performance Art Practices in Vienna and Madrid. Elisabeth Bernroitner also works as a freelance diversity trainer specialising in the arts and culture.

Denice Bourbon is a lesbian/queer-feminist performance artist, singer, writer, show host, curator, and stand-up comedian. She uses humour and entertainment as activist tools to draw attention to political issues. For a number of years, she has been working as a freelance artist in both theatre and film. Denice Bourbon has worked with artists such as Katrina Daschner, Gin Müller, Veza Fernández, Sabine Marte, Stefanie Sourial, Stefanie Sargnagel, Amina Handke, and Nesterval at venues such as brut, WUK, WERK X, Ateliertheater, Kosmos Theater, Spektakel, and many more. Denice Bourbon was a co-curator of Vienna’s first queer performance festival, Straight to Hell (2015, with Denise Kottlett) and co-founder of the queer stand-up comedy club PCCC*. In 2018, she was part of the cast for Nesterval’s acclaimed immersive production The Village.

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 of 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.

Mable Preach has been a regular presence on the Hamburg art scene for many years – as a director and choreographer, and as a curator and networker. She is the initiator of the festival for urban BIPoC youth culture FORMATION**NOW and Director of the cultural and youth association Lukulule. She recently presented EMB*RACE YOUR CROWN**, which she directed, as part of the season opening at Kampnagel, Hamburg. In her works, she engages in critical studies of racism and (neo-)colonialism, demands empowerment and produces alternative images and narratives to the white mainstream.

Sophia Stepf is Artistic Director of the company Flinn Works (Berlin) and works as a director, curator and lecturer. After studying Dramaturgy in Leipzig and Toronto, she worked as an Assistant and Dramaturg for Theater der Welt and the Wiener Festwochen. She has conceived and curated theatre projects and training in India on a regular basis since 2001, for institutions including the Goethe Institut and the National School of Drama. She curated the independent theatre festival Schwindelfrei in Mannheim from 2014 -2018. With Flinn Works she has won the ZKB Förderpreis (Zürich), four Meta Awards (Delhi) and the Fonds Darstellende Künste’s Tabori Award in 2021. She lives with her family in Berlin.

Abhishek Thapar was born in Moga, India, in 1985 and is a theatre maker, performer, puppeteer and artist. He lives in Amsterdam. Abhishek Thapar has a postgraduate qualification in Physical Theatre from the London International School of Performing Arts (LISPA) and completed the masters programme DAS Theatre at the Amsterdam University of the Arts.

Monika Truong, a sociologist, Sinologist and theatre maker, works alongside the ambivalences of our social norms in the contradictory experiential space of socialisation in small town Switzerland, a Chinese-Vietnamese background, academic training and freelance work in the independent theatre sector. Her piece ‘Enjoy Racism’ (together with Thom Reinhard) was presented at the IMPULSE Showcase 2018 and also won the Festival Prize at the festival ‘Politik im Freien Theater’ in the same year.

Welcome and introduction by Tobias Herzberg (Programme Lead ACADEMY #1)

What kind of safety is meant when we talk about safe spaces? What needs stand beside or against each other? Tobias Herzberg explains the themes of the ACADEMY, defines the terminological framework and introduces the contributors.

Keynote by Miriam Walther (theatre maker, Managing Director Republik, Zurich)

In a diverse society both theatres and the media have the duty to provide a stage for diverse views. Yet how should they react when a public forum is demanded for discriminatory or violent views? Should there be (no) tolerance for the intolerant? And what can theatre learn from other platforms that create a public sphere?

An endorsement by Antigone Akgün (freelance performer, dramaturg and writer, Frankfurt am Main)

The fact that utopias cannot be achieved instantly and without resistance is no longer a secret. However, German-speaking theatre institutions have made numerous efforts to become safer and to facilitate discrimination-free spaces for fragile artistic processes. What form do these efforts take? What adversities and what support do they encounter? And: what potential does art that has been produced under safer conditions have?

By Sahar Rahimi (director, performer, Munich)

If we understand theatre to be a space in which we can be both productively confused and watch with crystal-clear understanding, with astonishment and critical distance, with repulsion and analytical rigour, with intoxication and self-reflection, then it needs to contain an (artistic) freedom that the world does not provide. This is a plea not to apply the same standards to the parameters of producing art that we apply to artistic outcomes.

In three workshops held in parallel, theatremakers present how they create security or insecurity in their work. and invite participants in the ACADEMY to take part in practical exercises. Assignment to the workshops will take place at the beginning of the first day of the ACADEMY.

Workshop 1:
From immersion to inclusion: how theatre spaces empower or inhibit actors and audiences
Led by: Yulia Yáñez Schmidt (actor, Cologne)Immersion means to “dive in”. Immersive performances allow the audience to dive into playful settings where the performers often appear indistinguishable from their characters. The classic separation between audience and performers is blurred – uncertainty is built in! Best-known examples are the site-specific works of the Danish-Austrian performance group SIGNA, with whom Yulia Yáñez Schmidt toured to several European cities. As an actor with a physical disability she has been a permanent member of the Inclusive Acting Studio at Schauspiel Wuppertal since 2019/20: a model project that is the only one of its kind in Germany. Working on roles and the repertoires system in a civic theatre versus immersive site-specific performance: out of a direct comparison between her experiences of immersion and inclusion, Yulia Yáñez Schmidt develops an inventory of staircases and theatrical traditions and will animate others to immerse themselves in theatrical architecture.

Workshop 2: Showing solidarity without trying to be liked. Unsettling white privilege.
Led by: Iggy Malmborg, Johannes Maria Schmit (WHITE ON WHITE, Malmö/Stockholm)
Language: English

Between 2009 and 2016 White on White made a series of six theatre pieces, all with the explicit objective of producing an unsafe space for people holding white privilege, eroding the self-evident way that white audiences identify with the two white performers. During the workshop, the duo will give insight into the strategies used in the series and why these turned obsolete after the inauguration of Trump. They will also bring a sequence of dilemmas emerging in the present time, with which to entangle the participants, their most urgent question being: can we find a dialectical relation between safe processes and confrontational aesthetics?

Workshop 3: Escape routes from heteronormativity. A safe space for heteras
Led by: Sibylle Peters (performance artist and cultural researcher, Hamburg)

The heteronormative world is unsafe for women. It casts a veil over how frequently heterasexual women feel compelled to perform against their own interests and desires in intimate encounters. This fundamental imbalance creates mistrust and can quickly poison love, pleasure and flirtation. This is why there needs to be a safe space for heteras. The HETERACLUB (15.– 18.06. in the Impulse SHOWCASE) achieves this through the character of thefemale pimp. Under her direction, the participating men train themselves to be guided in their encounters with the heteras by their desires, and to be aware of and respect boundaries. This takes weeks. Is it possible to transfer procedures from the heteraclub to a workshop setting where heteras and heteros search together for escape routes from heteronormativity? No guarantees, only an experiment.

The bus shuttle goes directly to the CITY PROJECT in Düsseldorf and carries on to the SHOWCASE in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Estimated arrival time in Mülheim an der Ruhr: 20:00. Return journey around 23:30.

Antigone Akgün, born in Frankfurt am Main in 1993, studied Theatre, Film and Media Studies there along with Philosophy and Dramaturgy. As a performer she has worked together with artists including Rosana Cade and Laurie Brown, Martina Droste and Boris Nikitin, as well as composing texts for Julia Wissert and others, and her own play IN HER FACE oder die autorin ist tot at the Frankfurter Landungsbrücken. She has participated in the Hans Gratzer Stipendium (Schauspielhaus Vienna, 2021), running the Theatertreffen Blog 2022 and directing the city-wide project Der Brotladen after Brecht (Theater Bremen 2022).

Tobias Herzberg is a dramaturg and lecturer at the Institute of Language Arts at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. As Artistic Director of Studio Я at Berlin’s Maxim Gorki Theater he produced the queer week PUGS IN LOVE and other intersectional community festivals, discussion series and themed weekends on topics such as freedom of the press, of art and of opinion. He was Dramaturg at the Vienna Burgtheater from 2019 to 2021.

Iggy Malmborg was born in Malmö in 1987 and is a freelance actor and director. His artistic interest lies in the performative situation and the politics of theatre as machinery. He has worked together with Johannes Maria Schmit under the label WHITE ON WHITE since 2009. In 2020/21 he devised the sound installation ‘No More’ at the Contemporary Art Museum in Estonia. His new work ‘Iris, pupil, retina, etc.’ premiered at the Rosendal Teater in Trondheim in January 2022.

Sibylle Peters is a performance artist and cultural researcher. She is the Artistic Director of the research theatre FUNDUS THEATER in Hamburg and co-founder of the graduate college Performing Citizenship. Matters of importance to her include the theory and practice of assembly, participatory research processes. social intimacy, the lecture as performance, performance art for children, the impulse towards improbability and feminist seafaring. Her most recent works are: ‘Women of the Seven Seas’, geheimagentur Hamburg 2021, QUEENS. DER HETERACLUB (Impulse SHOWCASE 2022).

Sahar Rahimi, born in Tehran, is a director, writer and performer and currently lives in Munich. She studied at the Institute of Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen and is a co-founder of the performance group Monster Truck. She works in the independent sector and in civic theatres in the fields of theatre, performance, installation and video. At the centre of her work lies her interest in the ambivalent border areas between power and impotence.

Yulia Yáñez Schmidt has worked as an actor since 2009. Her first experiences of working as a performer came in the immersive performance installations of the Danish-Austrian collective SIGNA, with which she appeared at various theatres in Europe. She has been a member of the Inclusive Theatre Studio at Schauspiel Wuppertal since 2019/20. An inventory of her work spans stairwells and traditional theatre.

Johannes Maria Schmit was born in Trier in 1981. He studied Directing at the HfS Ernst Busch, Berlin. Schmit subsequently worked as Resident Director at the Centraltheater Leipzig. He has worked freelance in the German-speaking theatre since 2011, as well as in Sweden, where he founded the due WHITE ON WHITE with Iggy Malmborg. In 2020 Schmit’s debut as a film director ‘Neubau’ (screenplay by Tucké Royale) received its world premiere at the Filmfestival Max Ophüls Preis, where it won the prize for Best Film and was particularly praised by the jury for its “ability to create empathy.”

Miriam Walther is a director and culture and media manager. After growing up in Brazil and Switzerland, she studied dance and Theatre Directing in New York and Zurich. She is a co-founder of the transdisciplinary artistic collective Neue Dringlichkeit and the Zurich production platform for independent theatre ArtFAQ. She has been Managing Director of the digital magazine Republik since 2018.

A re-enactment of audience reactions to ‘Enjoy Racism’ by and with Monika Truong (theatremaker and sociologist, Zurich). Co-Facilitator: Marque Pham
Language: English

Monika Truong looks back at her production ‘Enjoy Racism’ (created in collaboration with Thom Reinhard, and presented, among other places, at the Impulse SHOWCASE in 2018). During the performance, the audience was divided into two groups on the basis of eye colour. One group experienced privileges, the other discrimination. The interactive production made it painfully evident how capricious structuring the allocation and withholding of privileges on the basis of physical characteristics is. In this re-enactment, Monika Truong offers insights into the documented reactions of the audience to the original production. Together with participants in the ACADEMY, the artist will read out comments that were made during the performances and examines the effects the production has had on her own position regarding safeness and vulnerability.

The round table discussions offer the opportunity to discuss specific questions in a small group with one or two experts. These discussions all take place in parallel, so the participants have to choose one of the topics on offer. Each round table discussion begins with a brief introduction to the topic by the experts: afterwards the conversation is open to all.

Round table discussion 1: Theatre in a glass house. How is art created in a transcultural protective space?
Discussion led by: Elisabeth Bernroitner (Brunnenpassage, Vienna)
The Brunnenpassage has operated as a transcultural art laboratory since 2007, based in a former market hall built of glass in one of the outer districts of Vienna. Elisabeth Bernroitner runs its theatre programme. She explains how a safe, diversity-aware framework facilitates collective artistic creation and will initiate a conversation about the imponderables of producing art in a transparent protective space.

Round table discussion 2: Queer comedy. How can political humour be done without stereotyping or excluding anyone?
Discussion led by: Denice Bourbon (PCCC* – Vienna's First Queer Comedy Club, Vienna)
Language: German
Denice Bourbon’s golden rule of comedy is: Don’t kick down! Laughter is a defence mechanism, at times from yourself. When you’re dishing it out, do so sideways, upwards, and of course, always with a twinkle in your eye. The Viennese personification of lesbian-queer entertainment initiates a discussion about jokes that are empowering and subversive fun in the name of political correctness.

Round table discussion 3: Sharing experiences: What spaces for conversation do marginalized communities need?
Discussion led by: Simone Dede Ayivi (writer, director, Berlin)
Language: German
In her documentary installation ‘The Kids Are Alright’ (which can be seen in this year’s Impulse SHOWCASE) Simone Dede Ayivi explores family histories, generational conflicts, political struggles and visions for the future in families with migrant heritage. Together with the participants in this round table conversation, she will reflect on her working method and talk about interviewing witnesses who have often been affected by racism and violence. How do we talk to each other? And how do we define responsibility in making art from the results of research?

Round table discussion 4: We for us. What opportunities are contained by working in an all BIPOC ensemble?
Discussion led by: Mable Preach (director, activist, Lukulule e.V., Hamburg)
Language: German
Together with her team of BIPOC performers, Mable Preach embarked on a bio-fictional enquiry into female actors within the anti-colonial resistance. In this round table discussion, the Hamburg-based director will discuss the challenges and limits of a safe space as a condition of rehearsal and invite reflection on the evolution of anti-racist strategies in the arts from a young, female perspective.

Round table discussion 5: White Money. How are global power relations reflected in the performing arts?
Discussion led by: Sophia Stepf (Flinn Works, Berlin) and Abhishek Thapar (theatremaker and researcher, Amsterdam)
Language: English
In 2021, the group Flinn Works organised the festival "White Money" as an attempt to expand and interrogate the boundaries of cultural funding structures. 'White Money' means cultural funding from Europe which flows towards the global south and dominates the global performing arts market. To what extent do global hierarchies through funding distribution influence artistic processes, content and aesthetics? What could be creative ways out of these dependencies?

The participants exchange the experiences and expertise that they have gained from the various ACADEMY formats in a one-to-one setting. Questions and a duration for the conversations will be supplied. The aim is to encounter multiple perspectives in a short time.

Chaired by: Tobias Herzberg (Programme Lead ACADEMY #1)

Antigone Akgün and Sahar Rahimi, who took up opposing positions at the beginning of the first day of the ACADEMY, reflect on the different viewpoints and impressions and potential shifts of perspective that have arisen during the ACADEMY. In a fishbowl format, everyone who wishes to is invited to take part in the discussion.

The bus shuttle goes directly to the SHOWCASE in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Return journey around 24:00.

Elisabeth Bernroitner curates transcultural, (post-)migrant, contemporary art and information projects. Since 2011 she has curated and run the theatre and performance programme at the ArtSocialSpace Brunnenpassage in Vienna and has been actively involved in international projects and museum co-operations. From 2016 to 2019 she was a member of the executive of IG Kultur in Vienna, and from 2016 to 2018 Artistic and Managing Director of PANGEA | Workshop of World Cultures in Linz. She had previously worked as Project Co-ordinator at Tanzquartier Wien. She studied Theatre Studies and Cultural Anthropology as well as Visual Culture and Performance Art Practices in Vienna and Madrid. Elisabeth Bernroitner also works as a freelance diversity trainer specialising in the arts and culture.

Denice Bourbon is a lesbian/queer-feminist performance artist, singer, writer, show host, curator, and stand-up comedian. She uses humour and entertainment as activist tools to draw attention to political issues. For a number of years, she has been working as a freelance artist in both theatre and film. Denice Bourbon has worked with artists such as Katrina Daschner, Gin Müller, Veza Fernández, Sabine Marte, Stefanie Sourial, Stefanie Sargnagel, Amina Handke, and Nesterval at venues such as brut, WUK, WERK X, Ateliertheater, Kosmos Theater, Spektakel, and many more. Denice Bourbon was a co-curator of Vienna’s first queer performance festival, Straight to Hell (2015, with Denise Kottlett) and co-founder of the queer stand-up comedy club PCCC*. In 2018, she was part of the cast for Nesterval’s acclaimed immersive production The Village.

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 of 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.

Mable Preach has been a regular presence on the Hamburg art scene for many years – as a director and choreographer, and as a curator and networker. She is the initiator of the festival for urban BIPoC youth culture FORMATION**NOW and Director of the cultural and youth association Lukulule. She recently presented EMB*RACE YOUR CROWN**, which she directed, as part of the season opening at Kampnagel, Hamburg. In her works, she engages in critical studies of racism and (neo-)colonialism, demands empowerment and produces alternative images and narratives to the white mainstream.

Sophia Stepf is Artistic Director of the company Flinn Works (Berlin) and works as a director, curator and lecturer. After studying Dramaturgy in Leipzig and Toronto, she worked as an Assistant and Dramaturg for Theater der Welt and the Wiener Festwochen. She has conceived and curated theatre projects and training in India on a regular basis since 2001, for institutions including the Goethe Institut and the National School of Drama. She curated the independent theatre festival Schwindelfrei in Mannheim from 2014 -2018. With Flinn Works she has won the ZKB Förderpreis (Zürich), four Meta Awards (Delhi) and the Fonds Darstellende Künste’s Tabori Award in 2021. She lives with her family in Berlin.

Abhishek Thapar was born in Moga, India, in 1985 and is a theatre maker, performer, puppeteer and artist. He lives in Amsterdam. Abhishek Thapar has a postgraduate qualification in Physical Theatre from the London International School of Performing Arts (LISPA) and completed the masters programme DAS Theatre at the Amsterdam University of the Arts.

Monika Truong, a sociologist, Sinologist and theatre maker, works alongside the ambivalences of our social norms in the contradictory experiential space of socialisation in small town Switzerland, a Chinese-Vietnamese background, academic training and freelance work in the independent theatre sector. Her piece ‘Enjoy Racism’ (together with Thom Reinhard) was presented at the IMPULSE Showcase 2018 and also won the Festival Prize at the festival ‘Politik im Freien Theater’ in the same year.

God's Entertainment is one of the theatre groups working experimentally in Austria who seek to transcend the conventions of theatre and performance and continually redefine their form. God's Entertainment work in the fields of performance, happenings, visual arts and sound. They view their work as a critical confrontation with Austria’s political and cultural identity and its society. The field of play used by this group of artists is not confined to theatre buildings: they also stage actions in public places. In doing so, the most important principle is actively involving the public.

A production by God’s Entertainment, the Impulse Theater Festival and the FFT Düsseldorf, made possible by Kunststiftung NRW and other festival funders. With the generous support of the City of Vienna’s Department of Culture – MA7.

Concept: Simone Dede Ayivi
Video: Jones Seitz
Stage design: Theresa Reiwer
Sound, music: Katharina Pelosi
Lighting: Frieder Miller
Production assistant, dramaturgical collaborator: Selma Böhmelmann
Design assistant: Chris Erlbeck
Outdoor camera shots: Thomas Machholz
Experts: Nabila Bushra, Fatma Kar, Lenssa Mohammed, Dan Thy Nguyen, Kadir Özdemir
Production management: ehrliche arbeit – freies Kulturbüro
Technical production: Gefährliche Arbeit

A production by Simone Dede Ayivi und Kompliz*innen in co-production with Sophiensæle, Berlin. Funded by core funding from the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe and a grant from the Capital Cultural Fund.

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.

Performance, choreography, text, lyrics: Michael Turinsky
Music, lyrics: Tian Rotteveelstage
Stage design, costumes: Jenny Schleif

Lighting: Sveta Schwin

Photo, video: Michael Loizenbauer
Dramaturgical advice: Gabrielle Cram
Production: Anna Gräsel

A co-production by Michael Turinsky with Tanzquartier Wien and HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin. With support from the Culture Department of the City of Vienna and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport.

Michael Turinsky lives and works in Vienna as a choreographer, performer and theoretician. His interests focus on an ongoing analysis of the specific phenomenon of the body marked as “disabled” and also on a rigorous analysis of discourses around the productive tenson between politics and aesthetics.

With: Malarina (German), Jules Gleeson (English), Veza Fernandéz (English and German), Maria Muhar (German), hosted by: Denice Bourbon (English)

Denice Bourbon is a lesbian/queer-feminist performance artist, singer, writer, show host, curator, and stand-up comedian. She uses humour and entertainment as activist tools to draw attention to political issues. For a number of years, she has been working as a freelance artist in both theatre and film. Denice Bourbon has worked with artists such as Katrina Daschner, Gin Müller, Veza Fernández, Sabine Marte, Stefanie Sourial, Stefanie Sargnagel, Amina Handke, and Nesterval at venues such as brut, WUK, WERK X, Ateliertheater, Kosmos Theater, Spektakel, and many more. Denice Bourbon was a co-curator of Vienna’s first queer performance festival, Straight to Hell (2015, with Denise Kottlett) and co-founder of the queer stand-up comedy club PCCC*. In 2018, she was part of the cast for Nesterval’s acclaimed immersive production The Village.

Veza Fernández is an artist of the stage in all its expressions. Dance, theatre, performance, stand up comedy, concerts and living texts are her performing tools for making people cry, laugh, stand up and leave the theatre, the club, the show full of emotions, totally confused, not so sure whether they should feel happy or sad, laugh or just cry. Her background is as mixed as her art, stretching from punk music and queer underground to literature studies, experimental radio and contemporary dance. Her work has been shown mostly in local underground venues and occasionally in international theatres and some museums. Especially popular are her screaming workshops. Her favourite work so far is ‘Alalazo’, a solo work where she plays with all the voices that incarnate passion, rebellion and heart. Her art surrounds the strident voices that have just to come out, like the scream, the verbiage, the laugh, the moan and so on. She was an autodidact until she graduated of the DAS Graduate School (Amsterdam) with a MA in choreography. http://vezafernandez.com/

Jules Gleeson is a comedian from London, who focuses on topics both esoteric and vulgar — from hook-ups to Satanism, from stereotypes to communism. Jules made her debut at the opening gala of Wienwoche 2018 with her act ‘The Hundred Horny Heterosexuals of Hornet’. She has since become a regular performer with the PCCC* (including at Vienna Pride, Salzburg's MotzART Festival Kabarett, and Volksstimmefest).

Malarina was born in Picka Materina, Serbia, which is not connected by any motorway. Her parents came to Austria as Gastarbeiter. They intended to remain only temporarily until the Serbian economy recovered. When her parents finally gave up this hope, they sent for their children and raised them in beautiful Innsbruck. In 2011 Malarina finally fled to the capital of misanthropy, Vienna, in order no longer to disappoint Tyrolean expectations of friendliness. Since 2019 Malarina has attempted to foster cross-cultural understanding between Austrians, Slavs and elite Slavs through cabaret.

Maria Muhar, as born in Vienna in 1986, trained as a cook and then studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and the Institute of Creative Writing. She writes prose, poems and a variety of texts for the stage. Together with the writers’ Wiener Grippe/KW77 she recently wrote the stage play ‘Tuntschi. Eine Häutung’, which received its world premiere in 2021 at Bühnen Bern. Her first cabaret programme ‘Storno’ premieres in 2022.

Welcome and introduction by Tobias Herzberg (Programme Lead ACADEMY #1)

What kind of safety is meant when we talk about safe spaces? What needs stand beside or against each other? Tobias Herzberg explains the themes of the ACADEMY, defines the terminological framework and introduces the contributors.

Keynote by Miriam Walther (theatre maker, Managing Director Republik, Zurich)

In a diverse society both theatres and the media have the duty to provide a stage for diverse views. Yet how should they react when a public forum is demanded for discriminatory or violent views? Should there be (no) tolerance for the intolerant? And what can theatre learn from other platforms that create a public sphere?

An endorsement by Antigone Akgün (freelance performer, dramaturg and writer, Frankfurt am Main)

The fact that utopias cannot be achieved instantly and without resistance is no longer a secret. However, German-speaking theatre institutions have made numerous efforts to become safer and to facilitate discrimination-free spaces for fragile artistic processes. What form do these efforts take? What adversities and what support do they encounter? And: what potential does art that has been produced under safer conditions have?

By Sahar Rahimi (director, performer, Munich)

If we understand theatre to be a space in which we can be both productively confused and watch with crystal-clear understanding, with astonishment and critical distance, with repulsion and analytical rigour, with intoxication and self-reflection, then it needs to contain an (artistic) freedom that the world does not provide. This is a plea not to apply the same standards to the parameters of producing art that we apply to artistic outcomes.

In three workshops held in parallel, theatremakers present how they create security or insecurity in their work. and invite participants in the ACADEMY to take part in practical exercises. Assignment to the workshops will take place at the beginning of the first day of the ACADEMY.

Workshop 1:
From immersion to inclusion: how theatre spaces empower or inhibit actors and audiences
Led by: Yulia Yáñez Schmidt (actor, Cologne)Immersion means to “dive in”. Immersive performances allow the audience to dive into playful settings where the performers often appear indistinguishable from their characters. The classic separation between audience and performers is blurred – uncertainty is built in! Best-known examples are the site-specific works of the Danish-Austrian performance group SIGNA, with whom Yulia Yáñez Schmidt toured to several European cities. As an actor with a physical disability she has been a permanent member of the Inclusive Acting Studio at Schauspiel Wuppertal since 2019/20: a model project that is the only one of its kind in Germany. Working on roles and the repertoires system in a civic theatre versus immersive site-specific performance: out of a direct comparison between her experiences of immersion and inclusion, Yulia Yáñez Schmidt develops an inventory of staircases and theatrical traditions and will animate others to immerse themselves in theatrical architecture.

Workshop 2: Showing solidarity without trying to be liked. Unsettling white privilege.
Led by: Iggy Malmborg, Johannes Maria Schmit (WHITE ON WHITE, Malmö/Stockholm)
Language: English

Between 2009 and 2016 White on White made a series of six theatre pieces, all with the explicit objective of producing an unsafe space for people holding white privilege, eroding the self-evident way that white audiences identify with the two white performers. During the workshop, the duo will give insight into the strategies used in the series and why these turned obsolete after the inauguration of Trump. They will also bring a sequence of dilemmas emerging in the present time, with which to entangle the participants, their most urgent question being: can we find a dialectical relation between safe processes and confrontational aesthetics?

Workshop 3: Escape routes from heteronormativity. A safe space for heteras
Led by: Sibylle Peters (performance artist and cultural researcher, Hamburg)

The heteronormative world is unsafe for women. It casts a veil over how frequently heterasexual women feel compelled to perform against their own interests and desires in intimate encounters. This fundamental imbalance creates mistrust and can quickly poison love, pleasure and flirtation. This is why there needs to be a safe space for heteras. The HETERACLUB (15.– 18.06. in the Impulse SHOWCASE) achieves this through the character of thefemale pimp. Under her direction, the participating men train themselves to be guided in their encounters with the heteras by their desires, and to be aware of and respect boundaries. This takes weeks. Is it possible to transfer procedures from the heteraclub to a workshop setting where heteras and heteros search together for escape routes from heteronormativity? No guarantees, only an experiment.

The bus shuttle goes directly to the CITY PROJECT in Düsseldorf and carries on to the SHOWCASE in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Estimated arrival time in Mülheim an der Ruhr: 20:00. Return journey around 23:30.

Antigone Akgün, born in Frankfurt am Main in 1993, studied Theatre, Film and Media Studies there along with Philosophy and Dramaturgy. As a performer she has worked together with artists including Rosana Cade and Laurie Brown, Martina Droste and Boris Nikitin, as well as composing texts for Julia Wissert and others, and her own play IN HER FACE oder die autorin ist tot at the Frankfurter Landungsbrücken. She has participated in the Hans Gratzer Stipendium (Schauspielhaus Vienna, 2021), running the Theatertreffen Blog 2022 and directing the city-wide project Der Brotladen after Brecht (Theater Bremen 2022).

Tobias Herzberg is a dramaturg and lecturer at the Institute of Language Arts at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. As Artistic Director of Studio Я at Berlin’s Maxim Gorki Theater he produced the queer week PUGS IN LOVE and other intersectional community festivals, discussion series and themed weekends on topics such as freedom of the press, of art and of opinion. He was Dramaturg at the Vienna Burgtheater from 2019 to 2021.

Iggy Malmborg was born in Malmö in 1987 and is a freelance actor and director. His artistic interest lies in the performative situation and the politics of theatre as machinery. He has worked together with Johannes Maria Schmit under the label WHITE ON WHITE since 2009. In 2020/21 he devised the sound installation ‘No More’ at the Contemporary Art Museum in Estonia. His new work ‘Iris, pupil, retina, etc.’ premiered at the Rosendal Teater in Trondheim in January 2022.

Sibylle Peters is a performance artist and cultural researcher. She is the Artistic Director of the research theatre FUNDUS THEATER in Hamburg and co-founder of the graduate college Performing Citizenship. Matters of importance to her include the theory and practice of assembly, participatory research processes. social intimacy, the lecture as performance, performance art for children, the impulse towards improbability and feminist seafaring. Her most recent works are: ‘Women of the Seven Seas’, geheimagentur Hamburg 2021, QUEENS. DER HETERACLUB (Impulse SHOWCASE 2022).

Sahar Rahimi, born in Tehran, is a director, writer and performer and currently lives in Munich. She studied at the Institute of Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen and is a co-founder of the performance group Monster Truck. She works in the independent sector and in civic theatres in the fields of theatre, performance, installation and video. At the centre of her work lies her interest in the ambivalent border areas between power and impotence.

Yulia Yáñez Schmidt has worked as an actor since 2009. Her first experiences of working as a performer came in the immersive performance installations of the Danish-Austrian collective SIGNA, with which she appeared at various theatres in Europe. She has been a member of the Inclusive Theatre Studio at Schauspiel Wuppertal since 2019/20. An inventory of her work spans stairwells and traditional theatre.

Johannes Maria Schmit was born in Trier in 1981. He studied Directing at the HfS Ernst Busch, Berlin. Schmit subsequently worked as Resident Director at the Centraltheater Leipzig. He has worked freelance in the German-speaking theatre since 2011, as well as in Sweden, where he founded the due WHITE ON WHITE with Iggy Malmborg. In 2020 Schmit’s debut as a film director ‘Neubau’ (screenplay by Tucké Royale) received its world premiere at the Filmfestival Max Ophüls Preis, where it won the prize for Best Film and was particularly praised by the jury for its “ability to create empathy.”

Miriam Walther is a director and culture and media manager. After growing up in Brazil and Switzerland, she studied dance and Theatre Directing in New York and Zurich. She is a co-founder of the transdisciplinary artistic collective Neue Dringlichkeit and the Zurich production platform for independent theatre ArtFAQ. She has been Managing Director of the digital magazine Republik since 2018.

A re-enactment of audience reactions to ‘Enjoy Racism’ by and with Monika Truong (theatremaker and sociologist, Zurich). Co-Facilitator: Marque Pham
Language: English

Monika Truong looks back at her production ‘Enjoy Racism’ (created in collaboration with Thom Reinhard, and presented, among other places, at the Impulse SHOWCASE in 2018). During the performance, the audience was divided into two groups on the basis of eye colour. One group experienced privileges, the other discrimination. The interactive production made it painfully evident how capricious structuring the allocation and withholding of privileges on the basis of physical characteristics is. In this re-enactment, Monika Truong offers insights into the documented reactions of the audience to the original production. Together with participants in the ACADEMY, the artist will read out comments that were made during the performances and examines the effects the production has had on her own position regarding safeness and vulnerability.

The round table discussions offer the opportunity to discuss specific questions in a small group with one or two experts. These discussions all take place in parallel, so the participants have to choose one of the topics on offer. Each round table discussion begins with a brief introduction to the topic by the experts: afterwards the conversation is open to all.

Round table discussion 1: Theatre in a glass house. How is art created in a transcultural protective space?
Discussion led by: Elisabeth Bernroitner (Brunnenpassage, Vienna)
The Brunnenpassage has operated as a transcultural art laboratory since 2007, based in a former market hall built of glass in one of the outer districts of Vienna. Elisabeth Bernroitner runs its theatre programme. She explains how a safe, diversity-aware framework facilitates collective artistic creation and will initiate a conversation about the imponderables of producing art in a transparent protective space.

Round table discussion 2: Queer comedy. How can political humour be done without stereotyping or excluding anyone?
Discussion led by: Denice Bourbon (PCCC* – Vienna's First Queer Comedy Club, Vienna)
Language: German
Denice Bourbon’s golden rule of comedy is: Don’t kick down! Laughter is a defence mechanism, at times from yourself. When you’re dishing it out, do so sideways, upwards, and of course, always with a twinkle in your eye. The Viennese personification of lesbian-queer entertainment initiates a discussion about jokes that are empowering and subversive fun in the name of political correctness.

Round table discussion 3: Sharing experiences: What spaces for conversation do marginalized communities need?
Discussion led by: Simone Dede Ayivi (writer, director, Berlin)
Language: German
In her documentary installation ‘The Kids Are Alright’ (which can be seen in this year’s Impulse SHOWCASE) Simone Dede Ayivi explores family histories, generational conflicts, political struggles and visions for the future in families with migrant heritage. Together with the participants in this round table conversation, she will reflect on her working method and talk about interviewing witnesses who have often been affected by racism and violence. How do we talk to each other? And how do we define responsibility in making art from the results of research?

Round table discussion 4: We for us. What opportunities are contained by working in an all BIPOC ensemble?
Discussion led by: Mable Preach (director, activist, Lukulule e.V., Hamburg)
Language: German
Together with her team of BIPOC performers, Mable Preach embarked on a bio-fictional enquiry into female actors within the anti-colonial resistance. In this round table discussion, the Hamburg-based director will discuss the challenges and limits of a safe space as a condition of rehearsal and invite reflection on the evolution of anti-racist strategies in the arts from a young, female perspective.

Round table discussion 5: White Money. How are global power relations reflected in the performing arts?
Discussion led by: Sophia Stepf (Flinn Works, Berlin) and Abhishek Thapar (theatremaker and researcher, Amsterdam)
Language: English
In 2021, the group Flinn Works organised the festival "White Money" as an attempt to expand and interrogate the boundaries of cultural funding structures. 'White Money' means cultural funding from Europe which flows towards the global south and dominates the global performing arts market. To what extent do global hierarchies through funding distribution influence artistic processes, content and aesthetics? What could be creative ways out of these dependencies?

The participants exchange the experiences and expertise that they have gained from the various ACADEMY formats in a one-to-one setting. Questions and a duration for the conversations will be supplied. The aim is to encounter multiple perspectives in a short time.

Chaired by: Tobias Herzberg (Programme Lead ACADEMY #1)

Antigone Akgün and Sahar Rahimi, who took up opposing positions at the beginning of the first day of the ACADEMY, reflect on the different viewpoints and impressions and potential shifts of perspective that have arisen during the ACADEMY. In a fishbowl format, everyone who wishes to is invited to take part in the discussion.

The bus shuttle goes directly to the SHOWCASE in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Return journey around 24:00.

Elisabeth Bernroitner curates transcultural, (post-)migrant, contemporary art and information projects. Since 2011 she has curated and run the theatre and performance programme at the ArtSocialSpace Brunnenpassage in Vienna and has been actively involved in international projects and museum co-operations. From 2016 to 2019 she was a member of the executive of IG Kultur in Vienna, and from 2016 to 2018 Artistic and Managing Director of PANGEA | Workshop of World Cultures in Linz. She had previously worked as Project Co-ordinator at Tanzquartier Wien. She studied Theatre Studies and Cultural Anthropology as well as Visual Culture and Performance Art Practices in Vienna and Madrid. Elisabeth Bernroitner also works as a freelance diversity trainer specialising in the arts and culture.

Denice Bourbon is a lesbian/queer-feminist performance artist, singer, writer, show host, curator, and stand-up comedian. She uses humour and entertainment as activist tools to draw attention to political issues. For a number of years, she has been working as a freelance artist in both theatre and film. Denice Bourbon has worked with artists such as Katrina Daschner, Gin Müller, Veza Fernández, Sabine Marte, Stefanie Sourial, Stefanie Sargnagel, Amina Handke, and Nesterval at venues such as brut, WUK, WERK X, Ateliertheater, Kosmos Theater, Spektakel, and many more. Denice Bourbon was a co-curator of Vienna’s first queer performance festival, Straight to Hell (2015, with Denise Kottlett) and co-founder of the queer stand-up comedy club PCCC*. In 2018, she was part of the cast for Nesterval’s acclaimed immersive production The Village.

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 of 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.

Mable Preach has been a regular presence on the Hamburg art scene for many years – as a director and choreographer, and as a curator and networker. She is the initiator of the festival for urban BIPoC youth culture FORMATION**NOW and Director of the cultural and youth association Lukulule. She recently presented EMB*RACE YOUR CROWN**, which she directed, as part of the season opening at Kampnagel, Hamburg. In her works, she engages in critical studies of racism and (neo-)colonialism, demands empowerment and produces alternative images and narratives to the white mainstream.

Sophia Stepf is Artistic Director of the company Flinn Works (Berlin) and works as a director, curator and lecturer. After studying Dramaturgy in Leipzig and Toronto, she worked as an Assistant and Dramaturg for Theater der Welt and the Wiener Festwochen. She has conceived and curated theatre projects and training in India on a regular basis since 2001, for institutions including the Goethe Institut and the National School of Drama. She curated the independent theatre festival Schwindelfrei in Mannheim from 2014 -2018. With Flinn Works she has won the ZKB Förderpreis (Zürich), four Meta Awards (Delhi) and the Fonds Darstellende Künste’s Tabori Award in 2021. She lives with her family in Berlin.

Abhishek Thapar was born in Moga, India, in 1985 and is a theatre maker, performer, puppeteer and artist. He lives in Amsterdam. Abhishek Thapar has a postgraduate qualification in Physical Theatre from the London International School of Performing Arts (LISPA) and completed the masters programme DAS Theatre at the Amsterdam University of the Arts.

Monika Truong, a sociologist, Sinologist and theatre maker, works alongside the ambivalences of our social norms in the contradictory experiential space of socialisation in small town Switzerland, a Chinese-Vietnamese background, academic training and freelance work in the independent theatre sector. Her piece ‘Enjoy Racism’ (together with Thom Reinhard) was presented at the IMPULSE Showcase 2018 and also won the Festival Prize at the festival ‘Politik im Freien Theater’ in the same year.

Welcome and introduction by Tobias Herzberg (Programme Lead ACADEMY #1)

What kind of safety is meant when we talk about safe spaces? What needs stand beside or against each other? Tobias Herzberg explains the themes of the ACADEMY, defines the terminological framework and introduces the contributors.

Keynote by Miriam Walther (theatre maker, Managing Director Republik, Zurich)

In a diverse society both theatres and the media have the duty to provide a stage for diverse views. Yet how should they react when a public forum is demanded for discriminatory or violent views? Should there be (no) tolerance for the intolerant? And what can theatre learn from other platforms that create a public sphere?

An endorsement by Antigone Akgün (freelance performer, dramaturg and writer, Frankfurt am Main)

The fact that utopias cannot be achieved instantly and without resistance is no longer a secret. However, German-speaking theatre institutions have made numerous efforts to become safer and to facilitate discrimination-free spaces for fragile artistic processes. What form do these efforts take? What adversities and what support do they encounter? And: what potential does art that has been produced under safer conditions have?

By Sahar Rahimi (director, performer, Munich)

If we understand theatre to be a space in which we can be both productively confused and watch with crystal-clear understanding, with astonishment and critical distance, with repulsion and analytical rigour, with intoxication and self-reflection, then it needs to contain an (artistic) freedom that the world does not provide. This is a plea not to apply the same standards to the parameters of producing art that we apply to artistic outcomes.

In three workshops held in parallel, theatremakers present how they create security or insecurity in their work. and invite participants in the ACADEMY to take part in practical exercises. Assignment to the workshops will take place at the beginning of the first day of the ACADEMY.

Workshop 1:
From immersion to inclusion: how theatre spaces empower or inhibit actors and audiences
Led by: Yulia Yáñez Schmidt (actor, Cologne)Immersion means to “dive in”. Immersive performances allow the audience to dive into playful settings where the performers often appear indistinguishable from their characters. The classic separation between audience and performers is blurred – uncertainty is built in! Best-known examples are the site-specific works of the Danish-Austrian performance group SIGNA, with whom Yulia Yáñez Schmidt toured to several European cities. As an actor with a physical disability she has been a permanent member of the Inclusive Acting Studio at Schauspiel Wuppertal since 2019/20: a model project that is the only one of its kind in Germany. Working on roles and the repertoires system in a civic theatre versus immersive site-specific performance: out of a direct comparison between her experiences of immersion and inclusion, Yulia Yáñez Schmidt develops an inventory of staircases and theatrical traditions and will animate others to immerse themselves in theatrical architecture.

Workshop 2: Showing solidarity without trying to be liked. Unsettling white privilege.
Led by: Iggy Malmborg, Johannes Maria Schmit (WHITE ON WHITE, Malmö/Stockholm)
Language: English

Between 2009 and 2016 White on White made a series of six theatre pieces, all with the explicit objective of producing an unsafe space for people holding white privilege, eroding the self-evident way that white audiences identify with the two white performers. During the workshop, the duo will give insight into the strategies used in the series and why these turned obsolete after the inauguration of Trump. They will also bring a sequence of dilemmas emerging in the present time, with which to entangle the participants, their most urgent question being: can we find a dialectical relation between safe processes and confrontational aesthetics?

Workshop 3: Escape routes from heteronormativity. A safe space for heteras
Led by: Sibylle Peters (performance artist and cultural researcher, Hamburg)

The heteronormative world is unsafe for women. It casts a veil over how frequently heterasexual women feel compelled to perform against their own interests and desires in intimate encounters. This fundamental imbalance creates mistrust and can quickly poison love, pleasure and flirtation. This is why there needs to be a safe space for heteras. The HETERACLUB (15.– 18.06. in the Impulse SHOWCASE) achieves this through the character of thefemale pimp. Under her direction, the participating men train themselves to be guided in their encounters with the heteras by their desires, and to be aware of and respect boundaries. This takes weeks. Is it possible to transfer procedures from the heteraclub to a workshop setting where heteras and heteros search together for escape routes from heteronormativity? No guarantees, only an experiment.

The bus shuttle goes directly to the CITY PROJECT in Düsseldorf and carries on to the SHOWCASE in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Estimated arrival time in Mülheim an der Ruhr: 20:00. Return journey around 23:30.

Antigone Akgün, born in Frankfurt am Main in 1993, studied Theatre, Film and Media Studies there along with Philosophy and Dramaturgy. As a performer she has worked together with artists including Rosana Cade and Laurie Brown, Martina Droste and Boris Nikitin, as well as composing texts for Julia Wissert and others, and her own play IN HER FACE oder die autorin ist tot at the Frankfurter Landungsbrücken. She has participated in the Hans Gratzer Stipendium (Schauspielhaus Vienna, 2021), running the Theatertreffen Blog 2022 and directing the city-wide project Der Brotladen after Brecht (Theater Bremen 2022).

Tobias Herzberg is a dramaturg and lecturer at the Institute of Language Arts at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. As Artistic Director of Studio Я at Berlin’s Maxim Gorki Theater he produced the queer week PUGS IN LOVE and other intersectional community festivals, discussion series and themed weekends on topics such as freedom of the press, of art and of opinion. He was Dramaturg at the Vienna Burgtheater from 2019 to 2021.

Iggy Malmborg was born in Malmö in 1987 and is a freelance actor and director. His artistic interest lies in the performative situation and the politics of theatre as machinery. He has worked together with Johannes Maria Schmit under the label WHITE ON WHITE since 2009. In 2020/21 he devised the sound installation ‘No More’ at the Contemporary Art Museum in Estonia. His new work ‘Iris, pupil, retina, etc.’ premiered at the Rosendal Teater in Trondheim in January 2022.

Sibylle Peters is a performance artist and cultural researcher. She is the Artistic Director of the research theatre FUNDUS THEATER in Hamburg and co-founder of the graduate college Performing Citizenship. Matters of importance to her include the theory and practice of assembly, participatory research processes. social intimacy, the lecture as performance, performance art for children, the impulse towards improbability and feminist seafaring. Her most recent works are: ‘Women of the Seven Seas’, geheimagentur Hamburg 2021, QUEENS. DER HETERACLUB (Impulse SHOWCASE 2022).

Sahar Rahimi, born in Tehran, is a director, writer and performer and currently lives in Munich. She studied at the Institute of Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen and is a co-founder of the performance group Monster Truck. She works in the independent sector and in civic theatres in the fields of theatre, performance, installation and video. At the centre of her work lies her interest in the ambivalent border areas between power and impotence.

Yulia Yáñez Schmidt has worked as an actor since 2009. Her first experiences of working as a performer came in the immersive performance installations of the Danish-Austrian collective SIGNA, with which she appeared at various theatres in Europe. She has been a member of the Inclusive Theatre Studio at Schauspiel Wuppertal since 2019/20. An inventory of her work spans stairwells and traditional theatre.

Johannes Maria Schmit was born in Trier in 1981. He studied Directing at the HfS Ernst Busch, Berlin. Schmit subsequently worked as Resident Director at the Centraltheater Leipzig. He has worked freelance in the German-speaking theatre since 2011, as well as in Sweden, where he founded the due WHITE ON WHITE with Iggy Malmborg. In 2020 Schmit’s debut as a film director ‘Neubau’ (screenplay by Tucké Royale) received its world premiere at the Filmfestival Max Ophüls Preis, where it won the prize for Best Film and was particularly praised by the jury for its “ability to create empathy.”

Miriam Walther is a director and culture and media manager. After growing up in Brazil and Switzerland, she studied dance and Theatre Directing in New York and Zurich. She is a co-founder of the transdisciplinary artistic collective Neue Dringlichkeit and the Zurich production platform for independent theatre ArtFAQ. She has been Managing Director of the digital magazine Republik since 2018.

A re-enactment of audience reactions to ‘Enjoy Racism’ by and with Monika Truong (theatremaker and sociologist, Zurich). Co-Facilitator: Marque Pham
Language: English

Monika Truong looks back at her production ‘Enjoy Racism’ (created in collaboration with Thom Reinhard, and presented, among other places, at the Impulse SHOWCASE in 2018). During the performance, the audience was divided into two groups on the basis of eye colour. One group experienced privileges, the other discrimination. The interactive production made it painfully evident how capricious structuring the allocation and withholding of privileges on the basis of physical characteristics is. In this re-enactment, Monika Truong offers insights into the documented reactions of the audience to the original production. Together with participants in the ACADEMY, the artist will read out comments that were made during the performances and examines the effects the production has had on her own position regarding safeness and vulnerability.

The round table discussions offer the opportunity to discuss specific questions in a small group with one or two experts. These discussions all take place in parallel, so the participants have to choose one of the topics on offer. Each round table discussion begins with a brief introduction to the topic by the experts: afterwards the conversation is open to all.

Round table discussion 1: Theatre in a glass house. How is art created in a transcultural protective space?
Discussion led by: Elisabeth Bernroitner (Brunnenpassage, Vienna)
The Brunnenpassage has operated as a transcultural art laboratory since 2007, based in a former market hall built of glass in one of the outer districts of Vienna. Elisabeth Bernroitner runs its theatre programme. She explains how a safe, diversity-aware framework facilitates collective artistic creation and will initiate a conversation about the imponderables of producing art in a transparent protective space.

Round table discussion 2: Queer comedy. How can political humour be done without stereotyping or excluding anyone?
Discussion led by: Denice Bourbon (PCCC* – Vienna's First Queer Comedy Club, Vienna)
Language: German
Denice Bourbon’s golden rule of comedy is: Don’t kick down! Laughter is a defence mechanism, at times from yourself. When you’re dishing it out, do so sideways, upwards, and of course, always with a twinkle in your eye. The Viennese personification of lesbian-queer entertainment initiates a discussion about jokes that are empowering and subversive fun in the name of political correctness.

Round table discussion 3: Sharing experiences: What spaces for conversation do marginalized communities need?
Discussion led by: Simone Dede Ayivi (writer, director, Berlin)
Language: German
In her documentary installation ‘The Kids Are Alright’ (which can be seen in this year’s Impulse SHOWCASE) Simone Dede Ayivi explores family histories, generational conflicts, political struggles and visions for the future in families with migrant heritage. Together with the participants in this round table conversation, she will reflect on her working method and talk about interviewing witnesses who have often been affected by racism and violence. How do we talk to each other? And how do we define responsibility in making art from the results of research?

Round table discussion 4: We for us. What opportunities are contained by working in an all BIPOC ensemble?
Discussion led by: Mable Preach (director, activist, Lukulule e.V., Hamburg)
Language: German
Together with her team of BIPOC performers, Mable Preach embarked on a bio-fictional enquiry into female actors within the anti-colonial resistance. In this round table discussion, the Hamburg-based director will discuss the challenges and limits of a safe space as a condition of rehearsal and invite reflection on the evolution of anti-racist strategies in the arts from a young, female perspective.

Round table discussion 5: White Money. How are global power relations reflected in the performing arts?
Discussion led by: Sophia Stepf (Flinn Works, Berlin) and Abhishek Thapar (theatremaker and researcher, Amsterdam)
Language: English
In 2021, the group Flinn Works organised the festival "White Money" as an attempt to expand and interrogate the boundaries of cultural funding structures. 'White Money' means cultural funding from Europe which flows towards the global south and dominates the global performing arts market. To what extent do global hierarchies through funding distribution influence artistic processes, content and aesthetics? What could be creative ways out of these dependencies?

The participants exchange the experiences and expertise that they have gained from the various ACADEMY formats in a one-to-one setting. Questions and a duration for the conversations will be supplied. The aim is to encounter multiple perspectives in a short time.

Chaired by: Tobias Herzberg (Programme Lead ACADEMY #1)

Antigone Akgün and Sahar Rahimi, who took up opposing positions at the beginning of the first day of the ACADEMY, reflect on the different viewpoints and impressions and potential shifts of perspective that have arisen during the ACADEMY. In a fishbowl format, everyone who wishes to is invited to take part in the discussion.

The bus shuttle goes directly to the SHOWCASE in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Return journey around 24:00.

Elisabeth Bernroitner curates transcultural, (post-)migrant, contemporary art and information projects. Since 2011 she has curated and run the theatre and performance programme at the ArtSocialSpace Brunnenpassage in Vienna and has been actively involved in international projects and museum co-operations. From 2016 to 2019 she was a member of the executive of IG Kultur in Vienna, and from 2016 to 2018 Artistic and Managing Director of PANGEA | Workshop of World Cultures in Linz. She had previously worked as Project Co-ordinator at Tanzquartier Wien. She studied Theatre Studies and Cultural Anthropology as well as Visual Culture and Performance Art Practices in Vienna and Madrid. Elisabeth Bernroitner also works as a freelance diversity trainer specialising in the arts and culture.

Denice Bourbon is a lesbian/queer-feminist performance artist, singer, writer, show host, curator, and stand-up comedian. She uses humour and entertainment as activist tools to draw attention to political issues. For a number of years, she has been working as a freelance artist in both theatre and film. Denice Bourbon has worked with artists such as Katrina Daschner, Gin Müller, Veza Fernández, Sabine Marte, Stefanie Sourial, Stefanie Sargnagel, Amina Handke, and Nesterval at venues such as brut, WUK, WERK X, Ateliertheater, Kosmos Theater, Spektakel, and many more. Denice Bourbon was a co-curator of Vienna’s first queer performance festival, Straight to Hell (2015, with Denise Kottlett) and co-founder of the queer stand-up comedy club PCCC*. In 2018, she was part of the cast for Nesterval’s acclaimed immersive production The Village.

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 of 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.

Mable Preach has been a regular presence on the Hamburg art scene for many years – as a director and choreographer, and as a curator and networker. She is the initiator of the festival for urban BIPoC youth culture FORMATION**NOW and Director of the cultural and youth association Lukulule. She recently presented EMB*RACE YOUR CROWN**, which she directed, as part of the season opening at Kampnagel, Hamburg. In her works, she engages in critical studies of racism and (neo-)colonialism, demands empowerment and produces alternative images and narratives to the white mainstream.

Sophia Stepf is Artistic Director of the company Flinn Works (Berlin) and works as a director, curator and lecturer. After studying Dramaturgy in Leipzig and Toronto, she worked as an Assistant and Dramaturg for Theater der Welt and the Wiener Festwochen. She has conceived and curated theatre projects and training in India on a regular basis since 2001, for institutions including the Goethe Institut and the National School of Drama. She curated the independent theatre festival Schwindelfrei in Mannheim from 2014 -2018. With Flinn Works she has won the ZKB Förderpreis (Zürich), four Meta Awards (Delhi) and the Fonds Darstellende Künste’s Tabori Award in 2021. She lives with her family in Berlin.

Abhishek Thapar was born in Moga, India, in 1985 and is a theatre maker, performer, puppeteer and artist. He lives in Amsterdam. Abhishek Thapar has a postgraduate qualification in Physical Theatre from the London International School of Performing Arts (LISPA) and completed the masters programme DAS Theatre at the Amsterdam University of the Arts.

Monika Truong, a sociologist, Sinologist and theatre maker, works alongside the ambivalences of our social norms in the contradictory experiential space of socialisation in small town Switzerland, a Chinese-Vietnamese background, academic training and freelance work in the independent theatre sector. Her piece ‘Enjoy Racism’ (together with Thom Reinhard) was presented at the IMPULSE Showcase 2018 and also won the Festival Prize at the festival ‘Politik im Freien Theater’ in the same year.

Welcome and introduction by Tobias Herzberg (Programme Lead ACADEMY #1)

What kind of safety is meant when we talk about safe spaces? What needs stand beside or against each other? Tobias Herzberg explains the themes of the ACADEMY, defines the terminological framework and introduces the contributors.

Keynote by Miriam Walther (theatre maker, Managing Director Republik, Zurich)

In a diverse society both theatres and the media have the duty to provide a stage for diverse views. Yet how should they react when a public forum is demanded for discriminatory or violent views? Should there be (no) tolerance for the intolerant? And what can theatre learn from other platforms that create a public sphere?

An endorsement by Antigone Akgün (freelance performer, dramaturg and writer, Frankfurt am Main)

The fact that utopias cannot be achieved instantly and without resistance is no longer a secret. However, German-speaking theatre institutions have made numerous efforts to become safer and to facilitate discrimination-free spaces for fragile artistic processes. What form do these efforts take? What adversities and what support do they encounter? And: what potential does art that has been produced under safer conditions have?

By Sahar Rahimi (director, performer, Munich)

If we understand theatre to be a space in which we can be both productively confused and watch with crystal-clear understanding, with astonishment and critical distance, with repulsion and analytical rigour, with intoxication and self-reflection, then it needs to contain an (artistic) freedom that the world does not provide. This is a plea not to apply the same standards to the parameters of producing art that we apply to artistic outcomes.

In three workshops held in parallel, theatremakers present how they create security or insecurity in their work. and invite participants in the ACADEMY to take part in practical exercises. Assignment to the workshops will take place at the beginning of the first day of the ACADEMY.

Workshop 1:
From immersion to inclusion: how theatre spaces empower or inhibit actors and audiences
Led by: Yulia Yáñez Schmidt (actor, Cologne)Immersion means to “dive in”. Immersive performances allow the audience to dive into playful settings where the performers often appear indistinguishable from their characters. The classic separation between audience and performers is blurred – uncertainty is built in! Best-known examples are the site-specific works of the Danish-Austrian performance group SIGNA, with whom Yulia Yáñez Schmidt toured to several European cities. As an actor with a physical disability she has been a permanent member of the Inclusive Acting Studio at Schauspiel Wuppertal since 2019/20: a model project that is the only one of its kind in Germany. Working on roles and the repertoires system in a civic theatre versus immersive site-specific performance: out of a direct comparison between her experiences of immersion and inclusion, Yulia Yáñez Schmidt develops an inventory of staircases and theatrical traditions and will animate others to immerse themselves in theatrical architecture.

Workshop 2: Showing solidarity without trying to be liked. Unsettling white privilege.
Led by: Iggy Malmborg, Johannes Maria Schmit (WHITE ON WHITE, Malmö/Stockholm)
Language: English

Between 2009 and 2016 White on White made a series of six theatre pieces, all with the explicit objective of producing an unsafe space for people holding white privilege, eroding the self-evident way that white audiences identify with the two white performers. During the workshop, the duo will give insight into the strategies used in the series and why these turned obsolete after the inauguration of Trump. They will also bring a sequence of dilemmas emerging in the present time, with which to entangle the participants, their most urgent question being: can we find a dialectical relation between safe processes and confrontational aesthetics?

Workshop 3: Escape routes from heteronormativity. A safe space for heteras
Led by: Sibylle Peters (performance artist and cultural researcher, Hamburg)

The heteronormative world is unsafe for women. It casts a veil over how frequently heterasexual women feel compelled to perform against their own interests and desires in intimate encounters. This fundamental imbalance creates mistrust and can quickly poison love, pleasure and flirtation. This is why there needs to be a safe space for heteras. The HETERACLUB (15.– 18.06. in the Impulse SHOWCASE) achieves this through the character of thefemale pimp. Under her direction, the participating men train themselves to be guided in their encounters with the heteras by their desires, and to be aware of and respect boundaries. This takes weeks. Is it possible to transfer procedures from the heteraclub to a workshop setting where heteras and heteros search together for escape routes from heteronormativity? No guarantees, only an experiment.

The bus shuttle goes directly to the CITY PROJECT in Düsseldorf and carries on to the SHOWCASE in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Estimated arrival time in Mülheim an der Ruhr: 20:00. Return journey around 23:30.

Antigone Akgün, born in Frankfurt am Main in 1993, studied Theatre, Film and Media Studies there along with Philosophy and Dramaturgy. As a performer she has worked together with artists including Rosana Cade and Laurie Brown, Martina Droste and Boris Nikitin, as well as composing texts for Julia Wissert and others, and her own play IN HER FACE oder die autorin ist tot at the Frankfurter Landungsbrücken. She has participated in the Hans Gratzer Stipendium (Schauspielhaus Vienna, 2021), running the Theatertreffen Blog 2022 and directing the city-wide project Der Brotladen after Brecht (Theater Bremen 2022).

Tobias Herzberg is a dramaturg and lecturer at the Institute of Language Arts at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. As Artistic Director of Studio Я at Berlin’s Maxim Gorki Theater he produced the queer week PUGS IN LOVE and other intersectional community festivals, discussion series and themed weekends on topics such as freedom of the press, of art and of opinion. He was Dramaturg at the Vienna Burgtheater from 2019 to 2021.

Iggy Malmborg was born in Malmö in 1987 and is a freelance actor and director. His artistic interest lies in the performative situation and the politics of theatre as machinery. He has worked together with Johannes Maria Schmit under the label WHITE ON WHITE since 2009. In 2020/21 he devised the sound installation ‘No More’ at the Contemporary Art Museum in Estonia. His new work ‘Iris, pupil, retina, etc.’ premiered at the Rosendal Teater in Trondheim in January 2022.

Sibylle Peters is a performance artist and cultural researcher. She is the Artistic Director of the research theatre FUNDUS THEATER in Hamburg and co-founder of the graduate college Performing Citizenship. Matters of importance to her include the theory and practice of assembly, participatory research processes. social intimacy, the lecture as performance, performance art for children, the impulse towards improbability and feminist seafaring. Her most recent works are: ‘Women of the Seven Seas’, geheimagentur Hamburg 2021, QUEENS. DER HETERACLUB (Impulse SHOWCASE 2022).

Sahar Rahimi, born in Tehran, is a director, writer and performer and currently lives in Munich. She studied at the Institute of Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen and is a co-founder of the performance group Monster Truck. She works in the independent sector and in civic theatres in the fields of theatre, performance, installation and video. At the centre of her work lies her interest in the ambivalent border areas between power and impotence.

Yulia Yáñez Schmidt has worked as an actor since 2009. Her first experiences of working as a performer came in the immersive performance installations of the Danish-Austrian collective SIGNA, with which she appeared at various theatres in Europe. She has been a member of the Inclusive Theatre Studio at Schauspiel Wuppertal since 2019/20. An inventory of her work spans stairwells and traditional theatre.

Johannes Maria Schmit was born in Trier in 1981. He studied Directing at the HfS Ernst Busch, Berlin. Schmit subsequently worked as Resident Director at the Centraltheater Leipzig. He has worked freelance in the German-speaking theatre since 2011, as well as in Sweden, where he founded the due WHITE ON WHITE with Iggy Malmborg. In 2020 Schmit’s debut as a film director ‘Neubau’ (screenplay by Tucké Royale) received its world premiere at the Filmfestival Max Ophüls Preis, where it won the prize for Best Film and was particularly praised by the jury for its “ability to create empathy.”

Miriam Walther is a director and culture and media manager. After growing up in Brazil and Switzerland, she studied dance and Theatre Directing in New York and Zurich. She is a co-founder of the transdisciplinary artistic collective Neue Dringlichkeit and the Zurich production platform for independent theatre ArtFAQ. She has been Managing Director of the digital magazine Republik since 2018.

A re-enactment of audience reactions to ‘Enjoy Racism’ by and with Monika Truong (theatremaker and sociologist, Zurich). Co-Facilitator: Marque Pham
Language: English

Monika Truong looks back at her production ‘Enjoy Racism’ (created in collaboration with Thom Reinhard, and presented, among other places, at the Impulse SHOWCASE in 2018). During the performance, the audience was divided into two groups on the basis of eye colour. One group experienced privileges, the other discrimination. The interactive production made it painfully evident how capricious structuring the allocation and withholding of privileges on the basis of physical characteristics is. In this re-enactment, Monika Truong offers insights into the documented reactions of the audience to the original production. Together with participants in the ACADEMY, the artist will read out comments that were made during the performances and examines the effects the production has had on her own position regarding safeness and vulnerability.

The round table discussions offer the opportunity to discuss specific questions in a small group with one or two experts. These discussions all take place in parallel, so the participants have to choose one of the topics on offer. Each round table discussion begins with a brief introduction to the topic by the experts: afterwards the conversation is open to all.

Round table discussion 1: Theatre in a glass house. How is art created in a transcultural protective space?
Discussion led by: Elisabeth Bernroitner (Brunnenpassage, Vienna)
The Brunnenpassage has operated as a transcultural art laboratory since 2007, based in a former market hall built of glass in one of the outer districts of Vienna. Elisabeth Bernroitner runs its theatre programme. She explains how a safe, diversity-aware framework facilitates collective artistic creation and will initiate a conversation about the imponderables of producing art in a transparent protective space.

Round table discussion 2: Queer comedy. How can political humour be done without stereotyping or excluding anyone?
Discussion led by: Denice Bourbon (PCCC* – Vienna's First Queer Comedy Club, Vienna)
Language: German
Denice Bourbon’s golden rule of comedy is: Don’t kick down! Laughter is a defence mechanism, at times from yourself. When you’re dishing it out, do so sideways, upwards, and of course, always with a twinkle in your eye. The Viennese personification of lesbian-queer entertainment initiates a discussion about jokes that are empowering and subversive fun in the name of political correctness.

Round table discussion 3: Sharing experiences: What spaces for conversation do marginalized communities need?
Discussion led by: Simone Dede Ayivi (writer, director, Berlin)
Language: German
In her documentary installation ‘The Kids Are Alright’ (which can be seen in this year’s Impulse SHOWCASE) Simone Dede Ayivi explores family histories, generational conflicts, political struggles and visions for the future in families with migrant heritage. Together with the participants in this round table conversation, she will reflect on her working method and talk about interviewing witnesses who have often been affected by racism and violence. How do we talk to each other? And how do we define responsibility in making art from the results of research?

Round table discussion 4: We for us. What opportunities are contained by working in an all BIPOC ensemble?
Discussion led by: Mable Preach (director, activist, Lukulule e.V., Hamburg)
Language: German
Together with her team of BIPOC performers, Mable Preach embarked on a bio-fictional enquiry into female actors within the anti-colonial resistance. In this round table discussion, the Hamburg-based director will discuss the challenges and limits of a safe space as a condition of rehearsal and invite reflection on the evolution of anti-racist strategies in the arts from a young, female perspective.

Round table discussion 5: White Money. How are global power relations reflected in the performing arts?
Discussion led by: Sophia Stepf (Flinn Works, Berlin) and Abhishek Thapar (theatremaker and researcher, Amsterdam)
Language: English
In 2021, the group Flinn Works organised the festival "White Money" as an attempt to expand and interrogate the boundaries of cultural funding structures. 'White Money' means cultural funding from Europe which flows towards the global south and dominates the global performing arts market. To what extent do global hierarchies through funding distribution influence artistic processes, content and aesthetics? What could be creative ways out of these dependencies?

The participants exchange the experiences and expertise that they have gained from the various ACADEMY formats in a one-to-one setting. Questions and a duration for the conversations will be supplied. The aim is to encounter multiple perspectives in a short time.

Chaired by: Tobias Herzberg (Programme Lead ACADEMY #1)

Antigone Akgün and Sahar Rahimi, who took up opposing positions at the beginning of the first day of the ACADEMY, reflect on the different viewpoints and impressions and potential shifts of perspective that have arisen during the ACADEMY. In a fishbowl format, everyone who wishes to is invited to take part in the discussion.

The bus shuttle goes directly to the SHOWCASE in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Return journey around 24:00.

Elisabeth Bernroitner curates transcultural, (post-)migrant, contemporary art and information projects. Since 2011 she has curated and run the theatre and performance programme at the ArtSocialSpace Brunnenpassage in Vienna and has been actively involved in international projects and museum co-operations. From 2016 to 2019 she was a member of the executive of IG Kultur in Vienna, and from 2016 to 2018 Artistic and Managing Director of PANGEA | Workshop of World Cultures in Linz. She had previously worked as Project Co-ordinator at Tanzquartier Wien. She studied Theatre Studies and Cultural Anthropology as well as Visual Culture and Performance Art Practices in Vienna and Madrid. Elisabeth Bernroitner also works as a freelance diversity trainer specialising in the arts and culture.

Denice Bourbon is a lesbian/queer-feminist performance artist, singer, writer, show host, curator, and stand-up comedian. She uses humour and entertainment as activist tools to draw attention to political issues. For a number of years, she has been working as a freelance artist in both theatre and film. Denice Bourbon has worked with artists such as Katrina Daschner, Gin Müller, Veza Fernández, Sabine Marte, Stefanie Sourial, Stefanie Sargnagel, Amina Handke, and Nesterval at venues such as brut, WUK, WERK X, Ateliertheater, Kosmos Theater, Spektakel, and many more. Denice Bourbon was a co-curator of Vienna’s first queer performance festival, Straight to Hell (2015, with Denise Kottlett) and co-founder of the queer stand-up comedy club PCCC*. In 2018, she was part of the cast for Nesterval’s acclaimed immersive production The Village.

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 of 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.

Mable Preach has been a regular presence on the Hamburg art scene for many years – as a director and choreographer, and as a curator and networker. She is the initiator of the festival for urban BIPoC youth culture FORMATION**NOW and Director of the cultural and youth association Lukulule. She recently presented EMB*RACE YOUR CROWN**, which she directed, as part of the season opening at Kampnagel, Hamburg. In her works, she engages in critical studies of racism and (neo-)colonialism, demands empowerment and produces alternative images and narratives to the white mainstream.

Sophia Stepf is Artistic Director of the company Flinn Works (Berlin) and works as a director, curator and lecturer. After studying Dramaturgy in Leipzig and Toronto, she worked as an Assistant and Dramaturg for Theater der Welt and the Wiener Festwochen. She has conceived and curated theatre projects and training in India on a regular basis since 2001, for institutions including the Goethe Institut and the National School of Drama. She curated the independent theatre festival Schwindelfrei in Mannheim from 2014 -2018. With Flinn Works she has won the ZKB Förderpreis (Zürich), four Meta Awards (Delhi) and the Fonds Darstellende Künste’s Tabori Award in 2021. She lives with her family in Berlin.

Abhishek Thapar was born in Moga, India, in 1985 and is a theatre maker, performer, puppeteer and artist. He lives in Amsterdam. Abhishek Thapar has a postgraduate qualification in Physical Theatre from the London International School of Performing Arts (LISPA) and completed the masters programme DAS Theatre at the Amsterdam University of the Arts.

Monika Truong, a sociologist, Sinologist and theatre maker, works alongside the ambivalences of our social norms in the contradictory experiential space of socialisation in small town Switzerland, a Chinese-Vietnamese background, academic training and freelance work in the independent theatre sector. Her piece ‘Enjoy Racism’ (together with Thom Reinhard) was presented at the IMPULSE Showcase 2018 and also won the Festival Prize at the festival ‘Politik im Freien Theater’ in the same year.

God's Entertainment is one of the theatre groups working experimentally in Austria who seek to transcend the conventions of theatre and performance and continually redefine their form. God's Entertainment work in the fields of performance, happenings, visual arts and sound. They view their work as a critical confrontation with Austria’s political and cultural identity and its society. The field of play used by this group of artists is not confined to theatre buildings: they also stage actions in public places. In doing so, the most important principle is actively involving the public.

A production by God’s Entertainment, the Impulse Theater Festival and the FFT Düsseldorf, made possible by Kunststiftung NRW and other festival funders. With the generous support of the City of Vienna’s Department of Culture – MA7.

Welcome and introduction by Tobias Herzberg (Programme Lead ACADEMY #1)

What kind of safety is meant when we talk about safe spaces? What needs stand beside or against each other? Tobias Herzberg explains the themes of the ACADEMY, defines the terminological framework and introduces the contributors.

Keynote by Miriam Walther (theatre maker, Managing Director Republik, Zurich)

In a diverse society both theatres and the media have the duty to provide a stage for diverse views. Yet how should they react when a public forum is demanded for discriminatory or violent views? Should there be (no) tolerance for the intolerant? And what can theatre learn from other platforms that create a public sphere?

An endorsement by Antigone Akgün (freelance performer, dramaturg and writer, Frankfurt am Main)

The fact that utopias cannot be achieved instantly and without resistance is no longer a secret. However, German-speaking theatre institutions have made numerous efforts to become safer and to facilitate discrimination-free spaces for fragile artistic processes. What form do these efforts take? What adversities and what support do they encounter? And: what potential does art that has been produced under safer conditions have?

By Sahar Rahimi (director, performer, Munich)

If we understand theatre to be a space in which we can be both productively confused and watch with crystal-clear understanding, with astonishment and critical distance, with repulsion and analytical rigour, with intoxication and self-reflection, then it needs to contain an (artistic) freedom that the world does not provide. This is a plea not to apply the same standards to the parameters of producing art that we apply to artistic outcomes.

In three workshops held in parallel, theatremakers present how they create security or insecurity in their work. and invite participants in the ACADEMY to take part in practical exercises. Assignment to the workshops will take place at the beginning of the first day of the ACADEMY.

Workshop 1:
From immersion to inclusion: how theatre spaces empower or inhibit actors and audiences
Led by: Yulia Yáñez Schmidt (actor, Cologne)Immersion means to “dive in”. Immersive performances allow the audience to dive into playful settings where the performers often appear indistinguishable from their characters. The classic separation between audience and performers is blurred – uncertainty is built in! Best-known examples are the site-specific works of the Danish-Austrian performance group SIGNA, with whom Yulia Yáñez Schmidt toured to several European cities. As an actor with a physical disability she has been a permanent member of the Inclusive Acting Studio at Schauspiel Wuppertal since 2019/20: a model project that is the only one of its kind in Germany. Working on roles and the repertoires system in a civic theatre versus immersive site-specific performance: out of a direct comparison between her experiences of immersion and inclusion, Yulia Yáñez Schmidt develops an inventory of staircases and theatrical traditions and will animate others to immerse themselves in theatrical architecture.

Workshop 2: Showing solidarity without trying to be liked. Unsettling white privilege.
Led by: Iggy Malmborg, Johannes Maria Schmit (WHITE ON WHITE, Malmö/Stockholm)
Language: English

Between 2009 and 2016 White on White made a series of six theatre pieces, all with the explicit objective of producing an unsafe space for people holding white privilege, eroding the self-evident way that white audiences identify with the two white performers. During the workshop, the duo will give insight into the strategies used in the series and why these turned obsolete after the inauguration of Trump. They will also bring a sequence of dilemmas emerging in the present time, with which to entangle the participants, their most urgent question being: can we find a dialectical relation between safe processes and confrontational aesthetics?

Workshop 3: Escape routes from heteronormativity. A safe space for heteras
Led by: Sibylle Peters (performance artist and cultural researcher, Hamburg)

The heteronormative world is unsafe for women. It casts a veil over how frequently heterasexual women feel compelled to perform against their own interests and desires in intimate encounters. This fundamental imbalance creates mistrust and can quickly poison love, pleasure and flirtation. This is why there needs to be a safe space for heteras. The HETERACLUB (15.– 18.06. in the Impulse SHOWCASE) achieves this through the character of thefemale pimp. Under her direction, the participating men train themselves to be guided in their encounters with the heteras by their desires, and to be aware of and respect boundaries. This takes weeks. Is it possible to transfer procedures from the heteraclub to a workshop setting where heteras and heteros search together for escape routes from heteronormativity? No guarantees, only an experiment.

The bus shuttle goes directly to the CITY PROJECT in Düsseldorf and carries on to the SHOWCASE in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Estimated arrival time in Mülheim an der Ruhr: 20:00. Return journey around 23:30.

Antigone Akgün, born in Frankfurt am Main in 1993, studied Theatre, Film and Media Studies there along with Philosophy and Dramaturgy. As a performer she has worked together with artists including Rosana Cade and Laurie Brown, Martina Droste and Boris Nikitin, as well as composing texts for Julia Wissert and others, and her own play IN HER FACE oder die autorin ist tot at the Frankfurter Landungsbrücken. She has participated in the Hans Gratzer Stipendium (Schauspielhaus Vienna, 2021), running the Theatertreffen Blog 2022 and directing the city-wide project Der Brotladen after Brecht (Theater Bremen 2022).

Tobias Herzberg is a dramaturg and lecturer at the Institute of Language Arts at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. As Artistic Director of Studio Я at Berlin’s Maxim Gorki Theater he produced the queer week PUGS IN LOVE and other intersectional community festivals, discussion series and themed weekends on topics such as freedom of the press, of art and of opinion. He was Dramaturg at the Vienna Burgtheater from 2019 to 2021.

Iggy Malmborg was born in Malmö in 1987 and is a freelance actor and director. His artistic interest lies in the performative situation and the politics of theatre as machinery. He has worked together with Johannes Maria Schmit under the label WHITE ON WHITE since 2009. In 2020/21 he devised the sound installation ‘No More’ at the Contemporary Art Museum in Estonia. His new work ‘Iris, pupil, retina, etc.’ premiered at the Rosendal Teater in Trondheim in January 2022.

Sibylle Peters is a performance artist and cultural researcher. She is the Artistic Director of the research theatre FUNDUS THEATER in Hamburg and co-founder of the graduate college Performing Citizenship. Matters of importance to her include the theory and practice of assembly, participatory research processes. social intimacy, the lecture as performance, performance art for children, the impulse towards improbability and feminist seafaring. Her most recent works are: ‘Women of the Seven Seas’, geheimagentur Hamburg 2021, QUEENS. DER HETERACLUB (Impulse SHOWCASE 2022).

Sahar Rahimi, born in Tehran, is a director, writer and performer and currently lives in Munich. She studied at the Institute of Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen and is a co-founder of the performance group Monster Truck. She works in the independent sector and in civic theatres in the fields of theatre, performance, installation and video. At the centre of her work lies her interest in the ambivalent border areas between power and impotence.

Yulia Yáñez Schmidt has worked as an actor since 2009. Her first experiences of working as a performer came in the immersive performance installations of the Danish-Austrian collective SIGNA, with which she appeared at various theatres in Europe. She has been a member of the Inclusive Theatre Studio at Schauspiel Wuppertal since 2019/20. An inventory of her work spans stairwells and traditional theatre.

Johannes Maria Schmit was born in Trier in 1981. He studied Directing at the HfS Ernst Busch, Berlin. Schmit subsequently worked as Resident Director at the Centraltheater Leipzig. He has worked freelance in the German-speaking theatre since 2011, as well as in Sweden, where he founded the due WHITE ON WHITE with Iggy Malmborg. In 2020 Schmit’s debut as a film director ‘Neubau’ (screenplay by Tucké Royale) received its world premiere at the Filmfestival Max Ophüls Preis, where it won the prize for Best Film and was particularly praised by the jury for its “ability to create empathy.”

Miriam Walther is a director and culture and media manager. After growing up in Brazil and Switzerland, she studied dance and Theatre Directing in New York and Zurich. She is a co-founder of the transdisciplinary artistic collective Neue Dringlichkeit and the Zurich production platform for independent theatre ArtFAQ. She has been Managing Director of the digital magazine Republik since 2018.

A re-enactment of audience reactions to ‘Enjoy Racism’ by and with Monika Truong (theatremaker and sociologist, Zurich). Co-Facilitator: Marque Pham
Language: English

Monika Truong looks back at her production ‘Enjoy Racism’ (created in collaboration with Thom Reinhard, and presented, among other places, at the Impulse SHOWCASE in 2018). During the performance, the audience was divided into two groups on the basis of eye colour. One group experienced privileges, the other discrimination. The interactive production made it painfully evident how capricious structuring the allocation and withholding of privileges on the basis of physical characteristics is. In this re-enactment, Monika Truong offers insights into the documented reactions of the audience to the original production. Together with participants in the ACADEMY, the artist will read out comments that were made during the performances and examines the effects the production has had on her own position regarding safeness and vulnerability.

The round table discussions offer the opportunity to discuss specific questions in a small group with one or two experts. These discussions all take place in parallel, so the participants have to choose one of the topics on offer. Each round table discussion begins with a brief introduction to the topic by the experts: afterwards the conversation is open to all.

Round table discussion 1: Theatre in a glass house. How is art created in a transcultural protective space?
Discussion led by: Elisabeth Bernroitner (Brunnenpassage, Vienna)
The Brunnenpassage has operated as a transcultural art laboratory since 2007, based in a former market hall built of glass in one of the outer districts of Vienna. Elisabeth Bernroitner runs its theatre programme. She explains how a safe, diversity-aware framework facilitates collective artistic creation and will initiate a conversation about the imponderables of producing art in a transparent protective space.

Round table discussion 2: Queer comedy. How can political humour be done without stereotyping or excluding anyone?
Discussion led by: Denice Bourbon (PCCC* – Vienna's First Queer Comedy Club, Vienna)
Language: German
Denice Bourbon’s golden rule of comedy is: Don’t kick down! Laughter is a defence mechanism, at times from yourself. When you’re dishing it out, do so sideways, upwards, and of course, always with a twinkle in your eye. The Viennese personification of lesbian-queer entertainment initiates a discussion about jokes that are empowering and subversive fun in the name of political correctness.

Round table discussion 3: Sharing experiences: What spaces for conversation do marginalized communities need?
Discussion led by: Simone Dede Ayivi (writer, director, Berlin)
Language: German
In her documentary installation ‘The Kids Are Alright’ (which can be seen in this year’s Impulse SHOWCASE) Simone Dede Ayivi explores family histories, generational conflicts, political struggles and visions for the future in families with migrant heritage. Together with the participants in this round table conversation, she will reflect on her working method and talk about interviewing witnesses who have often been affected by racism and violence. How do we talk to each other? And how do we define responsibility in making art from the results of research?

Round table discussion 4: We for us. What opportunities are contained by working in an all BIPOC ensemble?
Discussion led by: Mable Preach (director, activist, Lukulule e.V., Hamburg)
Language: German
Together with her team of BIPOC performers, Mable Preach embarked on a bio-fictional enquiry into female actors within the anti-colonial resistance. In this round table discussion, the Hamburg-based director will discuss the challenges and limits of a safe space as a condition of rehearsal and invite reflection on the evolution of anti-racist strategies in the arts from a young, female perspective.

Round table discussion 5: White Money. How are global power relations reflected in the performing arts?
Discussion led by: Sophia Stepf (Flinn Works, Berlin) and Abhishek Thapar (theatremaker and researcher, Amsterdam)
Language: English
In 2021, the group Flinn Works organised the festival "White Money" as an attempt to expand and interrogate the boundaries of cultural funding structures. 'White Money' means cultural funding from Europe which flows towards the global south and dominates the global performing arts market. To what extent do global hierarchies through funding distribution influence artistic processes, content and aesthetics? What could be creative ways out of these dependencies?

The participants exchange the experiences and expertise that they have gained from the various ACADEMY formats in a one-to-one setting. Questions and a duration for the conversations will be supplied. The aim is to encounter multiple perspectives in a short time.

Chaired by: Tobias Herzberg (Programme Lead ACADEMY #1)

Antigone Akgün and Sahar Rahimi, who took up opposing positions at the beginning of the first day of the ACADEMY, reflect on the different viewpoints and impressions and potential shifts of perspective that have arisen during the ACADEMY. In a fishbowl format, everyone who wishes to is invited to take part in the discussion.

The bus shuttle goes directly to the SHOWCASE in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Return journey around 24:00.

Elisabeth Bernroitner curates transcultural, (post-)migrant, contemporary art and information projects. Since 2011 she has curated and run the theatre and performance programme at the ArtSocialSpace Brunnenpassage in Vienna and has been actively involved in international projects and museum co-operations. From 2016 to 2019 she was a member of the executive of IG Kultur in Vienna, and from 2016 to 2018 Artistic and Managing Director of PANGEA | Workshop of World Cultures in Linz. She had previously worked as Project Co-ordinator at Tanzquartier Wien. She studied Theatre Studies and Cultural Anthropology as well as Visual Culture and Performance Art Practices in Vienna and Madrid. Elisabeth Bernroitner also works as a freelance diversity trainer specialising in the arts and culture.

Denice Bourbon is a lesbian/queer-feminist performance artist, singer, writer, show host, curator, and stand-up comedian. She uses humour and entertainment as activist tools to draw attention to political issues. For a number of years, she has been working as a freelance artist in both theatre and film. Denice Bourbon has worked with artists such as Katrina Daschner, Gin Müller, Veza Fernández, Sabine Marte, Stefanie Sourial, Stefanie Sargnagel, Amina Handke, and Nesterval at venues such as brut, WUK, WERK X, Ateliertheater, Kosmos Theater, Spektakel, and many more. Denice Bourbon was a co-curator of Vienna’s first queer performance festival, Straight to Hell (2015, with Denise Kottlett) and co-founder of the queer stand-up comedy club PCCC*. In 2018, she was part of the cast for Nesterval’s acclaimed immersive production The Village.

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 of 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.

Mable Preach has been a regular presence on the Hamburg art scene for many years – as a director and choreographer, and as a curator and networker. She is the initiator of the festival for urban BIPoC youth culture FORMATION**NOW and Director of the cultural and youth association Lukulule. She recently presented EMB*RACE YOUR CROWN**, which she directed, as part of the season opening at Kampnagel, Hamburg. In her works, she engages in critical studies of racism and (neo-)colonialism, demands empowerment and produces alternative images and narratives to the white mainstream.

Sophia Stepf is Artistic Director of the company Flinn Works (Berlin) and works as a director, curator and lecturer. After studying Dramaturgy in Leipzig and Toronto, she worked as an Assistant and Dramaturg for Theater der Welt and the Wiener Festwochen. She has conceived and curated theatre projects and training in India on a regular basis since 2001, for institutions including the Goethe Institut and the National School of Drama. She curated the independent theatre festival Schwindelfrei in Mannheim from 2014 -2018. With Flinn Works she has won the ZKB Förderpreis (Zürich), four Meta Awards (Delhi) and the Fonds Darstellende Künste’s Tabori Award in 2021. She lives with her family in Berlin.

Abhishek Thapar was born in Moga, India, in 1985 and is a theatre maker, performer, puppeteer and artist. He lives in Amsterdam. Abhishek Thapar has a postgraduate qualification in Physical Theatre from the London International School of Performing Arts (LISPA) and completed the masters programme DAS Theatre at the Amsterdam University of the Arts.

Monika Truong, a sociologist, Sinologist and theatre maker, works alongside the ambivalences of our social norms in the contradictory experiential space of socialisation in small town Switzerland, a Chinese-Vietnamese background, academic training and freelance work in the independent theatre sector. Her piece ‘Enjoy Racism’ (together with Thom Reinhard) was presented at the IMPULSE Showcase 2018 and also won the Festival Prize at the festival ‘Politik im Freien Theater’ in the same year.

Welcome and introduction by Tobias Herzberg (Programme Lead ACADEMY #1)

What kind of safety is meant when we talk about safe spaces? What needs stand beside or against each other? Tobias Herzberg explains the themes of the ACADEMY, defines the terminological framework and introduces the contributors.

Keynote by Miriam Walther (theatre maker, Managing Director Republik, Zurich)

In a diverse society both theatres and the media have the duty to provide a stage for diverse views. Yet how should they react when a public forum is demanded for discriminatory or violent views? Should there be (no) tolerance for the intolerant? And what can theatre learn from other platforms that create a public sphere?

An endorsement by Antigone Akgün (freelance performer, dramaturg and writer, Frankfurt am Main)

The fact that utopias cannot be achieved instantly and without resistance is no longer a secret. However, German-speaking theatre institutions have made numerous efforts to become safer and to facilitate discrimination-free spaces for fragile artistic processes. What form do these efforts take? What adversities and what support do they encounter? And: what potential does art that has been produced under safer conditions have?

By Sahar Rahimi (director, performer, Munich)

If we understand theatre to be a space in which we can be both productively confused and watch with crystal-clear understanding, with astonishment and critical distance, with repulsion and analytical rigour, with intoxication and self-reflection, then it needs to contain an (artistic) freedom that the world does not provide. This is a plea not to apply the same standards to the parameters of producing art that we apply to artistic outcomes.

In three workshops held in parallel, theatremakers present how they create security or insecurity in their work. and invite participants in the ACADEMY to take part in practical exercises. Assignment to the workshops will take place at the beginning of the first day of the ACADEMY.

Workshop 1:
From immersion to inclusion: how theatre spaces empower or inhibit actors and audiences
Led by: Yulia Yáñez Schmidt (actor, Cologne)Immersion means to “dive in”. Immersive performances allow the audience to dive into playful settings where the performers often appear indistinguishable from their characters. The classic separation between audience and performers is blurred – uncertainty is built in! Best-known examples are the site-specific works of the Danish-Austrian performance group SIGNA, with whom Yulia Yáñez Schmidt toured to several European cities. As an actor with a physical disability she has been a permanent member of the Inclusive Acting Studio at Schauspiel Wuppertal since 2019/20: a model project that is the only one of its kind in Germany. Working on roles and the repertoires system in a civic theatre versus immersive site-specific performance: out of a direct comparison between her experiences of immersion and inclusion, Yulia Yáñez Schmidt develops an inventory of staircases and theatrical traditions and will animate others to immerse themselves in theatrical architecture.

Workshop 2: Showing solidarity without trying to be liked. Unsettling white privilege.
Led by: Iggy Malmborg, Johannes Maria Schmit (WHITE ON WHITE, Malmö/Stockholm)
Language: English

Between 2009 and 2016 White on White made a series of six theatre pieces, all with the explicit objective of producing an unsafe space for people holding white privilege, eroding the self-evident way that white audiences identify with the two white performers. During the workshop, the duo will give insight into the strategies used in the series and why these turned obsolete after the inauguration of Trump. They will also bring a sequence of dilemmas emerging in the present time, with which to entangle the participants, their most urgent question being: can we find a dialectical relation between safe processes and confrontational aesthetics?

Workshop 3: Escape routes from heteronormativity. A safe space for heteras
Led by: Sibylle Peters (performance artist and cultural researcher, Hamburg)

The heteronormative world is unsafe for women. It casts a veil over how frequently heterasexual women feel compelled to perform against their own interests and desires in intimate encounters. This fundamental imbalance creates mistrust and can quickly poison love, pleasure and flirtation. This is why there needs to be a safe space for heteras. The HETERACLUB (15.– 18.06. in the Impulse SHOWCASE) achieves this through the character of thefemale pimp. Under her direction, the participating men train themselves to be guided in their encounters with the heteras by their desires, and to be aware of and respect boundaries. This takes weeks. Is it possible to transfer procedures from the heteraclub to a workshop setting where heteras and heteros search together for escape routes from heteronormativity? No guarantees, only an experiment.

The bus shuttle goes directly to the CITY PROJECT in Düsseldorf and carries on to the SHOWCASE in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Estimated arrival time in Mülheim an der Ruhr: 20:00. Return journey around 23:30.

Antigone Akgün, born in Frankfurt am Main in 1993, studied Theatre, Film and Media Studies there along with Philosophy and Dramaturgy. As a performer she has worked together with artists including Rosana Cade and Laurie Brown, Martina Droste and Boris Nikitin, as well as composing texts for Julia Wissert and others, and her own play IN HER FACE oder die autorin ist tot at the Frankfurter Landungsbrücken. She has participated in the Hans Gratzer Stipendium (Schauspielhaus Vienna, 2021), running the Theatertreffen Blog 2022 and directing the city-wide project Der Brotladen after Brecht (Theater Bremen 2022).

Tobias Herzberg is a dramaturg and lecturer at the Institute of Language Arts at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. As Artistic Director of Studio Я at Berlin’s Maxim Gorki Theater he produced the queer week PUGS IN LOVE and other intersectional community festivals, discussion series and themed weekends on topics such as freedom of the press, of art and of opinion. He was Dramaturg at the Vienna Burgtheater from 2019 to 2021.

Iggy Malmborg was born in Malmö in 1987 and is a freelance actor and director. His artistic interest lies in the performative situation and the politics of theatre as machinery. He has worked together with Johannes Maria Schmit under the label WHITE ON WHITE since 2009. In 2020/21 he devised the sound installation ‘No More’ at the Contemporary Art Museum in Estonia. His new work ‘Iris, pupil, retina, etc.’ premiered at the Rosendal Teater in Trondheim in January 2022.

Sibylle Peters is a performance artist and cultural researcher. She is the Artistic Director of the research theatre FUNDUS THEATER in Hamburg and co-founder of the graduate college Performing Citizenship. Matters of importance to her include the theory and practice of assembly, participatory research processes. social intimacy, the lecture as performance, performance art for children, the impulse towards improbability and feminist seafaring. Her most recent works are: ‘Women of the Seven Seas’, geheimagentur Hamburg 2021, QUEENS. DER HETERACLUB (Impulse SHOWCASE 2022).

Sahar Rahimi, born in Tehran, is a director, writer and performer and currently lives in Munich. She studied at the Institute of Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen and is a co-founder of the performance group Monster Truck. She works in the independent sector and in civic theatres in the fields of theatre, performance, installation and video. At the centre of her work lies her interest in the ambivalent border areas between power and impotence.

Yulia Yáñez Schmidt has worked as an actor since 2009. Her first experiences of working as a performer came in the immersive performance installations of the Danish-Austrian collective SIGNA, with which she appeared at various theatres in Europe. She has been a member of the Inclusive Theatre Studio at Schauspiel Wuppertal since 2019/20. An inventory of her work spans stairwells and traditional theatre.

Johannes Maria Schmit was born in Trier in 1981. He studied Directing at the HfS Ernst Busch, Berlin. Schmit subsequently worked as Resident Director at the Centraltheater Leipzig. He has worked freelance in the German-speaking theatre since 2011, as well as in Sweden, where he founded the due WHITE ON WHITE with Iggy Malmborg. In 2020 Schmit’s debut as a film director ‘Neubau’ (screenplay by Tucké Royale) received its world premiere at the Filmfestival Max Ophüls Preis, where it won the prize for Best Film and was particularly praised by the jury for its “ability to create empathy.”

Miriam Walther is a director and culture and media manager. After growing up in Brazil and Switzerland, she studied dance and Theatre Directing in New York and Zurich. She is a co-founder of the transdisciplinary artistic collective Neue Dringlichkeit and the Zurich production platform for independent theatre ArtFAQ. She has been Managing Director of the digital magazine Republik since 2018.

A re-enactment of audience reactions to ‘Enjoy Racism’ by and with Monika Truong (theatremaker and sociologist, Zurich). Co-Facilitator: Marque Pham
Language: English

Monika Truong looks back at her production ‘Enjoy Racism’ (created in collaboration with Thom Reinhard, and presented, among other places, at the Impulse SHOWCASE in 2018). During the performance, the audience was divided into two groups on the basis of eye colour. One group experienced privileges, the other discrimination. The interactive production made it painfully evident how capricious structuring the allocation and withholding of privileges on the basis of physical characteristics is. In this re-enactment, Monika Truong offers insights into the documented reactions of the audience to the original production. Together with participants in the ACADEMY, the artist will read out comments that were made during the performances and examines the effects the production has had on her own position regarding safeness and vulnerability.

The round table discussions offer the opportunity to discuss specific questions in a small group with one or two experts. These discussions all take place in parallel, so the participants have to choose one of the topics on offer. Each round table discussion begins with a brief introduction to the topic by the experts: afterwards the conversation is open to all.

Round table discussion 1: Theatre in a glass house. How is art created in a transcultural protective space?
Discussion led by: Elisabeth Bernroitner (Brunnenpassage, Vienna)
The Brunnenpassage has operated as a transcultural art laboratory since 2007, based in a former market hall built of glass in one of the outer districts of Vienna. Elisabeth Bernroitner runs its theatre programme. She explains how a safe, diversity-aware framework facilitates collective artistic creation and will initiate a conversation about the imponderables of producing art in a transparent protective space.

Round table discussion 2: Queer comedy. How can political humour be done without stereotyping or excluding anyone?
Discussion led by: Denice Bourbon (PCCC* – Vienna's First Queer Comedy Club, Vienna)
Language: German
Denice Bourbon’s golden rule of comedy is: Don’t kick down! Laughter is a defence mechanism, at times from yourself. When you’re dishing it out, do so sideways, upwards, and of course, always with a twinkle in your eye. The Viennese personification of lesbian-queer entertainment initiates a discussion about jokes that are empowering and subversive fun in the name of political correctness.

Round table discussion 3: Sharing experiences: What spaces for conversation do marginalized communities need?
Discussion led by: Simone Dede Ayivi (writer, director, Berlin)
Language: German
In her documentary installation ‘The Kids Are Alright’ (which can be seen in this year’s Impulse SHOWCASE) Simone Dede Ayivi explores family histories, generational conflicts, political struggles and visions for the future in families with migrant heritage. Together with the participants in this round table conversation, she will reflect on her working method and talk about interviewing witnesses who have often been affected by racism and violence. How do we talk to each other? And how do we define responsibility in making art from the results of research?

Round table discussion 4: We for us. What opportunities are contained by working in an all BIPOC ensemble?
Discussion led by: Mable Preach (director, activist, Lukulule e.V., Hamburg)
Language: German
Together with her team of BIPOC performers, Mable Preach embarked on a bio-fictional enquiry into female actors within the anti-colonial resistance. In this round table discussion, the Hamburg-based director will discuss the challenges and limits of a safe space as a condition of rehearsal and invite reflection on the evolution of anti-racist strategies in the arts from a young, female perspective.

Round table discussion 5: White Money. How are global power relations reflected in the performing arts?
Discussion led by: Sophia Stepf (Flinn Works, Berlin) and Abhishek Thapar (theatremaker and researcher, Amsterdam)
Language: English
In 2021, the group Flinn Works organised the festival "White Money" as an attempt to expand and interrogate the boundaries of cultural funding structures. 'White Money' means cultural funding from Europe which flows towards the global south and dominates the global performing arts market. To what extent do global hierarchies through funding distribution influence artistic processes, content and aesthetics? What could be creative ways out of these dependencies?

The participants exchange the experiences and expertise that they have gained from the various ACADEMY formats in a one-to-one setting. Questions and a duration for the conversations will be supplied. The aim is to encounter multiple perspectives in a short time.

Chaired by: Tobias Herzberg (Programme Lead ACADEMY #1)

Antigone Akgün and Sahar Rahimi, who took up opposing positions at the beginning of the first day of the ACADEMY, reflect on the different viewpoints and impressions and potential shifts of perspective that have arisen during the ACADEMY. In a fishbowl format, everyone who wishes to is invited to take part in the discussion.

The bus shuttle goes directly to the SHOWCASE in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Return journey around 24:00.

Elisabeth Bernroitner curates transcultural, (post-)migrant, contemporary art and information projects. Since 2011 she has curated and run the theatre and performance programme at the ArtSocialSpace Brunnenpassage in Vienna and has been actively involved in international projects and museum co-operations. From 2016 to 2019 she was a member of the executive of IG Kultur in Vienna, and from 2016 to 2018 Artistic and Managing Director of PANGEA | Workshop of World Cultures in Linz. She had previously worked as Project Co-ordinator at Tanzquartier Wien. She studied Theatre Studies and Cultural Anthropology as well as Visual Culture and Performance Art Practices in Vienna and Madrid. Elisabeth Bernroitner also works as a freelance diversity trainer specialising in the arts and culture.

Denice Bourbon is a lesbian/queer-feminist performance artist, singer, writer, show host, curator, and stand-up comedian. She uses humour and entertainment as activist tools to draw attention to political issues. For a number of years, she has been working as a freelance artist in both theatre and film. Denice Bourbon has worked with artists such as Katrina Daschner, Gin Müller, Veza Fernández, Sabine Marte, Stefanie Sourial, Stefanie Sargnagel, Amina Handke, and Nesterval at venues such as brut, WUK, WERK X, Ateliertheater, Kosmos Theater, Spektakel, and many more. Denice Bourbon was a co-curator of Vienna’s first queer performance festival, Straight to Hell (2015, with Denise Kottlett) and co-founder of the queer stand-up comedy club PCCC*. In 2018, she was part of the cast for Nesterval’s acclaimed immersive production The Village.

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 of 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.

Mable Preach has been a regular presence on the Hamburg art scene for many years – as a director and choreographer, and as a curator and networker. She is the initiator of the festival for urban BIPoC youth culture FORMATION**NOW and Director of the cultural and youth association Lukulule. She recently presented EMB*RACE YOUR CROWN**, which she directed, as part of the season opening at Kampnagel, Hamburg. In her works, she engages in critical studies of racism and (neo-)colonialism, demands empowerment and produces alternative images and narratives to the white mainstream.

Sophia Stepf is Artistic Director of the company Flinn Works (Berlin) and works as a director, curator and lecturer. After studying Dramaturgy in Leipzig and Toronto, she worked as an Assistant and Dramaturg for Theater der Welt and the Wiener Festwochen. She has conceived and curated theatre projects and training in India on a regular basis since 2001, for institutions including the Goethe Institut and the National School of Drama. She curated the independent theatre festival Schwindelfrei in Mannheim from 2014 -2018. With Flinn Works she has won the ZKB Förderpreis (Zürich), four Meta Awards (Delhi) and the Fonds Darstellende Künste’s Tabori Award in 2021. She lives with her family in Berlin.

Abhishek Thapar was born in Moga, India, in 1985 and is a theatre maker, performer, puppeteer and artist. He lives in Amsterdam. Abhishek Thapar has a postgraduate qualification in Physical Theatre from the London International School of Performing Arts (LISPA) and completed the masters programme DAS Theatre at the Amsterdam University of the Arts.

Monika Truong, a sociologist, Sinologist and theatre maker, works alongside the ambivalences of our social norms in the contradictory experiential space of socialisation in small town Switzerland, a Chinese-Vietnamese background, academic training and freelance work in the independent theatre sector. Her piece ‘Enjoy Racism’ (together with Thom Reinhard) was presented at the IMPULSE Showcase 2018 and also won the Festival Prize at the festival ‘Politik im Freien Theater’ in the same year.

Director, voice: Lawrence Abu Hamdan
Live Sound Design: Mohammad Choucair
Live video, Scenography and research: Nabla Yahya

A co-production by Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt am Main, and Frankfurt LAB for ‘This Is Not Lebanon. Festival for Visual Arts, Performance, Music and Talks’, an element of the project ‘Architecture of the Mal-tempered Environment (AT)’ which was developed as part of the ‘2022 Future Fields Commission in Time-Based Media’, a joint project between Philadelphia Museum of Art and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. The research was partly funded by Art Research Sound, a research project under the direction of Prof. Peter Kiefer, Mainz School of Music, Gutenberg Research College, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.

In his works, Lawrence Abu Hamdan examines the intersection between sonic and political phenomena. His acoustic investigations, which he has undertaken solo and together with other members of the research group Forensic Architecture have sometimes been presented as evidence before the British courts in asylum and migration cases. He completed a PhD at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths College, London, in 2017 and has been a Fellow of the Gray Centre for Arts and Inquiry at the University of Chicago and of the Vera List Centre for Art and Politics at the New School in New York City. Abu Hamdan has presented works at the 58th Venice Biennale, at Tate Modern and at MoMA. In 2019 he created a provisional collective together with the other nominated artists, Helen Cammock, Oscar Murillo and Tai Shani, in order to receive the Turner Prize jointly.

Concept and choreography: Sergiu Matis
Choreographic collaboration: Martin Hansen, Manon Parent
Performance: Sergiu Matis, Nicola Micallef, Manon Parent
Sound installation and composition: Antye Greie aka AGF
Text: Philip Ingman, Sergiu Matis, Mila Pavićević
Species research: Philip Ingman
Dramaturgy: Mila Pavićević
Sound: Martin Lutz
Production management: 4Culture Association
Distribution: Distribution: Danila – Freitag, Agentur für Performative Künste

A production by Sergiu Matis in co-production with 4Culture Association and WASP Studios. Funded by a grant from the Capital Cultural Fund and by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe. Co-financed by AFCN – The National Administration of Cultural Funds, Romania, the Romanian Cultural Institute and the Europalia Arts Festival, Belgium. With support from the Nationales Performance Netz (NPN), Centre For Drama Art, Zagreb, Art Radionica Lazareti, Dubrovnik, and ICI-CCN Montpellier Occitanie. Animal recordings are used with the kind permission of the Macaulay Library at Cornell University’s Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the xeno-canto Foundation.

Antye Greie (aka AGF) is a vocalist, musician, composer, producer, and new media artist. She was born and raised in East Germany. Her work explores speech and the spoken word, combined with electronic music. She also works on sound installations, moving image, audio visualization and real time video processing, and has written scores for feature films as well as theatre and dance performances. In 2011 she initiated the arts organization Hai Art on the island of Hailuoto, Finland, and acts as its curator and executive producer.

Martin Hansen is invested in forms of embodied inhabitation as a mode of performance, and has performed extensively with Tino Sehgal, Sergiu Matis, Alexandra Pirici, Laurie Young, Ligia Lewis, Christoph Winkler, Chunky Move and Not Yet It’s Difficult, among others. Martin choreographs bodies, language and objects to investigate economies of time and the politics of remembrance. He is a graduate of the HZT Berlin, and works between Berlin and Melbourne. Martin is committed to the social politics of art making, and develops frameworks and structures, meaning, collectives and events in Berlin. Martin was Germany’s ‘Dancer of the Year’ in 2012 and a danceWEB Scholar in 2013.

Nicola Micallef was born in Malta in 1999. She began her training in classical ballet at the age of 7. In 2010, she found her interest in contemporary dance and went on to further her training in this field. In 2018, she joined ŻfinMalta – National Dance Company of Malta as an apprentice, with Paolo Mangiola as artistic director. She joined full-time for the successive two seasons, where she had the opportunity to work with numerous internationally renowned choreographers and artists such as Roy Assaf, Jacopo Godani, Sergiu Matis, Jose Agudo and Jorge Crecis. Nicola has since found her base in Berlin, collaborating with Sergiu Matis, Sebastian Matthias and Agudo Dance Company, touring throughout Europe, as well as performing in the Expo 2020 Dubai.

Sergiu Matis is a Romanian choreographer born in 1981 in Cluj-Napoca. He received his dance education at the Liceul de Coregrafie in Cluj and the Mannheim Academy of Dance, and began his career at Tanztheater Nuremberg. He has been living and working in Berlin since 2008, creating his own works In 2014 he completed his masters in Solo/Dance/Authorship at HZT Berlin. His dance practice could be considered a relentless search through corporeal and digitalised archives, in order to place a critical lens on what has been filed away, salvage what was presumed lost, and reinvent what was undocumented. The accumulation of history serves as an old map, which becomes a departure point towards the revelation of a new imagining of dance.

Manon Parent is a choreographic and sonic artist based in Berlin. Trained at the Paris Conservatoire in contemporary dance and classical violin, since then she has dedicated her search to the interconnections between sound and movement. Now working as a dancer, musician, composer and choreographer, she searches beyond styles and aesthetics for the most honest bodies and voices. Manon currently collaborates with Ioannis Mandafounis, Jean P’ark, Kareth Schaffer, Sébastien Laurent, Margot Dorléans, Laurent Durupt and Roni Katz.

Concept: Simone Dede Ayivi
Video: Jones Seitz
Stage design: Theresa Reiwer
Sound, music: Katharina Pelosi
Lighting: Frieder Miller
Production assistant, dramaturgical collaborator: Selma Böhmelmann
Design assistant: Chris Erlbeck
Outdoor camera shots: Thomas Machholz
Experts: Nabila Bushra, Fatma Kar, Lenssa Mohammed, Dan Thy Nguyen, Kadir Özdemir
Production management: ehrliche arbeit – freies Kulturbüro
Technical production: Gefährliche Arbeit

A production by Simone Dede Ayivi und Kompliz*innen in co-production with Sophiensæle, Berlin. Funded by core funding from the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe and a grant from the Capital Cultural Fund.

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.

God's Entertainment is one of the theatre groups working experimentally in Austria who seek to transcend the conventions of theatre and performance and continually redefine their form. God's Entertainment work in the fields of performance, happenings, visual arts and sound. They view their work as a critical confrontation with Austria’s political and cultural identity and its society. The field of play used by this group of artists is not confined to theatre buildings: they also stage actions in public places. In doing so, the most important principle is actively involving the public.

A production by God’s Entertainment, the Impulse Theater Festival and the FFT Düsseldorf, made possible by Kunststiftung NRW and other festival funders. With the generous support of the City of Vienna’s Department of Culture – MA7.

God's Entertainment is one of the theatre groups working experimentally in Austria who seek to transcend the conventions of theatre and performance and continually redefine their form. God's Entertainment work in the fields of performance, happenings, visual arts and sound. They view their work as a critical confrontation with Austria’s political and cultural identity and its society. The field of play used by this group of artists is not confined to theatre buildings: they also stage actions in public places. In doing so, the most important principle is actively involving the public.

A production by God’s Entertainment, the Impulse Theater Festival and the FFT Düsseldorf, made possible by Kunststiftung NRW and other festival funders. With the generous support of the City of Vienna’s Department of Culture – MA7.

God's Entertainment is one of the theatre groups working experimentally in Austria who seek to transcend the conventions of theatre and performance and continually redefine their form. God's Entertainment work in the fields of performance, happenings, visual arts and sound. They view their work as a critical confrontation with Austria’s political and cultural identity and its society. The field of play used by this group of artists is not confined to theatre buildings: they also stage actions in public places. In doing so, the most important principle is actively involving the public.

A production by God’s Entertainment, the Impulse Theater Festival and the FFT Düsseldorf, made possible by Kunststiftung NRW and other festival funders. With the generous support of the City of Vienna’s Department of Culture – MA7.

Concept, text, direction: Helgard Haug
Composition: Barbara Morgenstern
Orchestra: Zafraan Ensemble
Hands: Johannes Benecke, Mia Rainprechter
Speakers: Emma Becker, Evi Filippou, Margot Gödrös, Ruth Reinecke, Mia Rainprechter, Louise Stölting
Stage design: Evi Bauer
Video and lighting design: Marc Jungreithmeier
Sound design: Peter Breitenbach
Conductor: Premil Petrović
Arranger: Davor Branimir Vincze
Dramaturgy: Juliane Männel
Outside eye: Aljoscha Begrich
Technical direction: Andreas Mihan
Researcher, assistant director: Lisa Homburger
Costumes and assistant stage designer: Christine Ruynat
Assistant sound designer: Rozenn Lièvre
Production management: Louise Stölting
Zafraan Ensemble musicians on stage: Matthias Badczong (clarinet), Evi Filippou (percussion), Josa Gerhard (violin), Martin Posegga (saxophone), Beltane Ruiz (double bass)

A production by Rimini Apparat in co-production with PACT Zollverein, Essen, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, Volkstheater Vienna, The Factory Manchester and Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt am Main. Funded by grants from the Capital Cultural Fund and the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe. With thanks to Figurentheater Grashüpfer.

Helgard Haug is a writer and director. She had been accepted for a place in Marine Biology but then chaged her mind to study Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen. In 2002 she founded the theatre label Rimini Protokoll along with Stefan Kaegi and Daniel Wetzel. She frequently develops her stage plays, interventions, scenic installations and audio dramas with experts who have gained their knowledge and skills outside the theatre. She also likes to transpose spaces or social patterns into theatrical form. Many of her works are characterised by interactivity and a playful use of technology. Five of her productions have been invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen, most recently ALL RIGHT. GOOD NIGHT. When Helgard Haug was awarded the Mühlheim Playwriting Prize together with Daniel Wetzel in 2007 for ‘Karl Marx: Das Kapital. Volume One’, this sparked a wide-ranging debate about new forms of authorship and postdramatic theatre. Helgard Haug has also won several awards for her audio dramas, including the ARD Radio Drama Prize and the War Blind Prize for Audio Drama.

Barbara Morgenstern is an electronic musician, composer, producer and choral director. She has released her music since 1998, initially on the Berlin label Monika Enterprise, and, since 2018, on Staatsakt. Since 2007 she has run the “Chor der Kulturen der Welt” at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, for which she composes, writes arrangements and devises the programme. She has worked consistently with Rimini Protokoll since 2012.

Zafraan stands for music that reflects all facets of contemporay life, contemporary society and contemporary reality. Interacting with other art forms, Zafraan observes, explores and processes what surrounds us: the people, events, nature, technologies, normalities and absurdities of today. The group, which consists of ten regular members from Spain, France, New Zealand, Australia and Germany, was formed in Berlin in 2009 and mainly plays a contemporary repertoire, which is covered by a core ensemble of violin, viola, cello, bass, flute, clarinet, saxophone, harp, piano and percussion.

God's Entertainment is one of the theatre groups working experimentally in Austria who seek to transcend the conventions of theatre and performance and continually redefine their form. God's Entertainment work in the fields of performance, happenings, visual arts and sound. They view their work as a critical confrontation with Austria’s political and cultural identity and its society. The field of play used by this group of artists is not confined to theatre buildings: they also stage actions in public places. In doing so, the most important principle is actively involving the public.

A production by God’s Entertainment, the Impulse Theater Festival and the FFT Düsseldorf, made possible by Kunststiftung NRW and other festival funders. With the generous support of the City of Vienna’s Department of Culture – MA7.

Female Pimps: Charlotte Pfeifer, Eidglas Xavier, Sibylle Peters
One-on-one performers: Ansuman Biswas, Findus, Michael von Schönberg, Valerian Süß, Viktor Teimann
Assistant: Conny May
Stage design: Matthias Anton
Photos: Margaux Weiß
Graphics: David Caines
Styling: Katharina Duve
Production: ehrliche arbeit – freies Kulturbüro

A co-production with Kampnagel, Hamburg. Funded by Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media and by a grant from the Elbkulturfonds of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg und Hansestadt Hamburg. With support from the Fuck Yeah sex shop collective, Hamburg, and the Live Art Development Agency, London.

Sibylle Peters is an artist and researcher. She studied Literature and Cultural Studies in addition to Philosophy and has taught at universities in Hamburg, Berlin, Basel, Wales and Gießen. Peters creates performance lectures and live art projects that focus on participation and collective research, often in collaboration with geheimagentur. She also co-founded and serves as Director of the transgenerational performance laboratory Fundus Theater / Theatre of Research in Hamburg, in which children, artists and researchers meet as explorers. She is also the co-founder and Director of the doctoral research programme Performing Citizenship in Hamburg and has been a Visiting Professor for Transdisciplinary Devising at the Folkwang University of the Arts.

Female Pimps: Charlotte Pfeifer, Eidglas Xavier, Sibylle Peters
One-on-one performers: Ansuman Biswas, Findus, Michael von Schönberg, Valerian Süß, Viktor Teimann
Assistant: Conny May
Stage design: Matthias Anton
Photos: Margaux Weiß
Graphics: David Caines
Styling: Katharina Duve
Production: ehrliche arbeit – freies Kulturbüro

A co-production with Kampnagel, Hamburg. Funded by Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media and by a grant from the Elbkulturfonds of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg und Hansestadt Hamburg. With support from the Fuck Yeah sex shop collective, Hamburg, and the Live Art Development Agency, London.

Sibylle Peters is an artist and researcher. She studied Literature and Cultural Studies in addition to Philosophy and has taught at universities in Hamburg, Berlin, Basel, Wales and Gießen. Peters creates performance lectures and live art projects that focus on participation and collective research, often in collaboration with geheimagentur. She also co-founded and serves as Director of the transgenerational performance laboratory Fundus Theater / Theatre of Research in Hamburg, in which children, artists and researchers meet as explorers. She is also the co-founder and Director of the doctoral research programme Performing Citizenship in Hamburg and has been a Visiting Professor for Transdisciplinary Devising at the Folkwang University of the Arts.

Female Pimps: Charlotte Pfeifer, Eidglas Xavier, Sibylle Peters
One-on-one performers: Ansuman Biswas, Findus, Michael von Schönberg, Valerian Süß, Viktor Teimann
Assistant: Conny May
Stage design: Matthias Anton
Photos: Margaux Weiß
Graphics: David Caines
Styling: Katharina Duve
Production: ehrliche arbeit – freies Kulturbüro

A co-production with Kampnagel, Hamburg. Funded by Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media and by a grant from the Elbkulturfonds of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg und Hansestadt Hamburg. With support from the Fuck Yeah sex shop collective, Hamburg, and the Live Art Development Agency, London.

Sibylle Peters is an artist and researcher. She studied Literature and Cultural Studies in addition to Philosophy and has taught at universities in Hamburg, Berlin, Basel, Wales and Gießen. Peters creates performance lectures and live art projects that focus on participation and collective research, often in collaboration with geheimagentur. She also co-founded and serves as Director of the transgenerational performance laboratory Fundus Theater / Theatre of Research in Hamburg, in which children, artists and researchers meet as explorers. She is also the co-founder and Director of the doctoral research programme Performing Citizenship in Hamburg and has been a Visiting Professor for Transdisciplinary Devising at the Folkwang University of the Arts.

Concept, text, direction: Helgard Haug
Composition: Barbara Morgenstern
Orchestra: Zafraan Ensemble
Hands: Johannes Benecke, Mia Rainprechter
Speakers: Emma Becker, Evi Filippou, Margot Gödrös, Ruth Reinecke, Mia Rainprechter, Louise Stölting
Stage design: Evi Bauer
Video and lighting design: Marc Jungreithmeier
Sound design: Peter Breitenbach
Conductor: Premil Petrović
Arranger: Davor Branimir Vincze
Dramaturgy: Juliane Männel
Outside eye: Aljoscha Begrich
Technical direction: Andreas Mihan
Researcher, assistant director: Lisa Homburger
Costumes and assistant stage designer: Christine Ruynat
Assistant sound designer: Rozenn Lièvre
Production management: Louise Stölting
Zafraan Ensemble musicians on stage: Matthias Badczong (clarinet), Evi Filippou (percussion), Josa Gerhard (violin), Martin Posegga (saxophone), Beltane Ruiz (double bass)

A production by Rimini Apparat in co-production with PACT Zollverein, Essen, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, Volkstheater Vienna, The Factory Manchester and Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt am Main. Funded by grants from the Capital Cultural Fund and the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe. With thanks to Figurentheater Grashüpfer.

Helgard Haug is a writer and director. She had been accepted for a place in Marine Biology but then chaged her mind to study Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen. In 2002 she founded the theatre label Rimini Protokoll along with Stefan Kaegi and Daniel Wetzel. She frequently develops her stage plays, interventions, scenic installations and audio dramas with experts who have gained their knowledge and skills outside the theatre. She also likes to transpose spaces or social patterns into theatrical form. Many of her works are characterised by interactivity and a playful use of technology. Five of her productions have been invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen, most recently ALL RIGHT. GOOD NIGHT. When Helgard Haug was awarded the Mühlheim Playwriting Prize together with Daniel Wetzel in 2007 for ‘Karl Marx: Das Kapital. Volume One’, this sparked a wide-ranging debate about new forms of authorship and postdramatic theatre. Helgard Haug has also won several awards for her audio dramas, including the ARD Radio Drama Prize and the War Blind Prize for Audio Drama.

Barbara Morgenstern is an electronic musician, composer, producer and choral director. She has released her music since 1998, initially on the Berlin label Monika Enterprise, and, since 2018, on Staatsakt. Since 2007 she has run the “Chor der Kulturen der Welt” at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, for which she composes, writes arrangements and devises the programme. She has worked consistently with Rimini Protokoll since 2012.

Zafraan stands for music that reflects all facets of contemporay life, contemporary society and contemporary reality. Interacting with other art forms, Zafraan observes, explores and processes what surrounds us: the people, events, nature, technologies, normalities and absurdities of today. The group, which consists of ten regular members from Spain, France, New Zealand, Australia and Germany, was formed in Berlin in 2009 and mainly plays a contemporary repertoire, which is covered by a core ensemble of violin, viola, cello, bass, flute, clarinet, saxophone, harp, piano and percussion.

Female Pimps: Charlotte Pfeifer, Eidglas Xavier, Sibylle Peters
One-on-one performers: Ansuman Biswas, Findus, Michael von Schönberg, Valerian Süß, Viktor Teimann
Assistant: Conny May
Stage design: Matthias Anton
Photos: Margaux Weiß
Graphics: David Caines
Styling: Katharina Duve
Production: ehrliche arbeit – freies Kulturbüro

A co-production with Kampnagel, Hamburg. Funded by Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media and by a grant from the Elbkulturfonds of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg und Hansestadt Hamburg. With support from the Fuck Yeah sex shop collective, Hamburg, and the Live Art Development Agency, London.

Sibylle Peters is an artist and researcher. She studied Literature and Cultural Studies in addition to Philosophy and has taught at universities in Hamburg, Berlin, Basel, Wales and Gießen. Peters creates performance lectures and live art projects that focus on participation and collective research, often in collaboration with geheimagentur. She also co-founded and serves as Director of the transgenerational performance laboratory Fundus Theater / Theatre of Research in Hamburg, in which children, artists and researchers meet as explorers. She is also the co-founder and Director of the doctoral research programme Performing Citizenship in Hamburg and has been a Visiting Professor for Transdisciplinary Devising at the Folkwang University of the Arts.

Led by: Sandra Selimović, Zoe Gudović, Carmen Gheorghe
Language: German and English

“Honour” is a powerful concept that the patriarchy employs to restrict the rights of women and queers. As a consequence, more and more Roma women’s activists and queer-feminists and artists in various countries, above all in Eastern Europe, are working on questioning the politics of “honour”. They are creating new narratives around the body, gender identity and sexual orientation and are trying to use political means to change how these are represented in a range of areas of society. The workshop will analyse how this struggle can put the combination of art, theatre and activism to strategic use.

Register here.

Led by: Arne Vogelgesang
Language: German

This workshop gives an overview of the means and methods with which political battles are being conducted on social media and beyond: by both anti-humanitarian and progressive movements. It will pay particular attention to the question of where activist online practice between identification and anonymity touches on areas of theatre and the performative.

Register here.

Led by: Black Earth Collective
Language: German and English

This workshop addresses intersections between colonialism and the climate crisis and uses performance as a tool to embody breaking open the binary oppositions between human and nature, men and women, Black and white. It is concerned with recognising centuries-old anti-colonial struggles, listening to movements and communities that have been silenced, who now stand at the forefront of the climate crisis, and paying attention to prognoses for the coming decades that are currently being ignored.

The Black Earth Collective particularly welcomes BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour) and queers to attend this workshop.

Register here.

+++ This workshop is cancelled. +++

Led by: Can Gülcü
Language: German

This workshop focuses on the question of how artistic-activist strategies can be used to attack racist normativity and right-wing extremism. How can we change the rules about who can speak and who can be listened to and taken seriously? How can buried and repressed knowledge be disclosed? Art as art and as kanakish, anti-racist, proletarian, anti-capitalist activism. During the workshop these emancipatory struggles will be discussed and considered together, for example with reference to issues around the NSU.

Register here.

Black Earth Collective is a BIPoC environmental & climate justice collective founded in Berlin. The collective is concerned with issues including sustainability, veganism, environmental and climate justice from decolonial perspectives. How are the oppression of marginalized groups of people and the oppression of nature connected? Who is particularly affected by climate change? And how can movements dedicated to these issues be reclaimed? The collective not only seeks to scrutinise the white and cis-heterosexual dominated, left-wing environmental activist sector but primarily to create a space for intersectional activism.

Carmen Gheorghe is a Roma feminist, activist and scholar from Romania. She has been engaged in civil society for the last 19 years and her main work was focused on Roma women and girls’ rights through grassroots work, community development, gender issues, intersectionality, politics of identity, gender-based violence and reproductive justice. She is the co-founder of E-Romnja Association, a Roma feminist NGO in Romania who’s building a new narrative about Roma girls and women in Romanian. She was also co/author for articles about Roma feminism, anti-racism for social justice, intersectionality and labour market. Since 2019 she developed an academic course on Roma feminism and politics of identity.

Zoe Gudović is a lesbian artist, feminist, activist, cultural manager, producer and organizer. She comes from Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and moved to Vienna in October 2021. Since 1995, she has been involved in the work and research of informal and engaged theatre forms. In her practice, she combines art and activism in order to change the existing consciousness and social relations. Theatre educator. Performer. Drag King Transformer. Toilet artist. Worked, founded or was in groups and collectives: Women at Work, Act Women, Queer Belgrade, Charming Princess-band, Reconstruction Women's Fund. Lecturer at Women's Studies (Faculty of Political Science in Belgrade), on the topic of Feminist Art in Public Space. Organizer of street engagement performances against violence against women. Organizer of numerous campaigns for the visibility of LGBTQ +, women's human rights and people from the margins. Since 2001, she has connected artists from all over the world with activists from Serbia under the name "Women's Movement - Women's Theatre - Women's Body". Winner of the Jelena Šantić Award for a combination of art and activism. Winner of Befem’s Feminist Achievement Award for promoting feminism outside the feminist movement. She edits and hosts the radio show Ženergija.

Can Gülcü was born in Bursa in 1976, has lived in Austria since 1990 and works in Vienna as a cultural creative, public relations and campaign worker and activist, focussing on political communication, political/participatory cultural work and social, political and socio-economic power relations. He currently works in the department for digital agendas at the Arbeiterkammer Vienna.

Sandra Selimović is an actor, director, rapper and activist. Born in Zaječar, Serbia in 1981, she first appeared on stage in 1994. She is currently appearing at the Burgtheater Vienna in ‘The Doctor’ by Robert Icke and at the Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin in ‘Roma Armee’ directed by Yael Ronen. She has worked as a freelance actor and director at the Volkstheater Vienna, Schauspiel Essen, Staatstheater Kassel and in the independent theatre sector in Austria, Germany and Romania. Together with Tina Leisch, she co-directed her first documentary film ‘Gangster Girls’ in Schwarzau women’s prison, which was screened at the Viennale and the Munich Documentary Festival. In 2010 she founded the first ever feminist Roma theatre organisation Romano Svato together with her sister Simonida Selimović – at the same time the two of them started making music as the rap duo Mindj Panther. Their productions examine racism, sexism, identity, feminism and exclusion while shattering stereotypical images and clichés of the Roma as an ethnic group. As a self-aware and queer romni, Sandra Selimović is both a pioneer of women’s rights within the Roma community and also an activist against discrimination against gypsies. In 2013 her debut work as a director at the Vienna Akademietheater won her the Junger Burg’s audience award.

Arne Vogelgesang realises experimental art projects using documentary material, new media, fiction and performance with the theatre label internil and under his own name. Among other topics, these focus on radical political propaganda on the internet. He also gives lectures and workshops on his research, plays around with virtual reality and human representation in 3D and writes occasional texts. https://vogelgesang.internil.net

With: Natalie Ananda Assmann and Gin Müller (Programme Leads ACADEMY #2)

Lecture by Isabell Lorey (Professor of Queer Studies at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne) followed by discussion
in person + online
Language: German
Entry is free of charge. No registration required.
Click here for the online stream.

This lecture argues for a radical, new, democratic queer-feminist activism in the political present. It does not foreground identities and representations, but rather caring relationships and a common bond in shared vulnerability. Here it formulates a radical alternative to neoliberal democracy and the authoritarian populisms that result from it.

Register here.

Shuttle bus to the Impulse SHOWCASE in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Return journey around 23:00.

Natalie Ananda Assmann has worked as a freelance artist, director, performer, actor and cultural creative since 2006. Residencies in São Paulo, Tel Aviv and New York played a key role in forming her artistic thinking. Assmann’s works operate in the crossover between performative interventions, theatre in public spaces and activist approaches to art and culture. In recent years she has worked increasingly in queer-feminist collectives and focussed on a variety of artistic resistance practices. This year Natalie Assmann became Co-Director of the festival Wienwoche. She lives and works in Vienna.

Isabell Lorey is a political theorist and Professor of Queer Studies at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. She also works for transversal (http://transversal.at), the publication platform of the European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies (eipcp). Her books include: ‘Immer Ärger mit dem Subjekt. On Butler and Foucault’, 1996/2017; ‘Figuren des Immunen. Elements of a Political Theory’, Zürich: Diaphanes 2011; ‘Die Regierung der Prekären, New Edition’, Vienna: Turia+Kant 2020; ‘Demokratie im Präsenz. A Theory of the Political Present’, Berlin: Suhrkamp 2020.

Gin Müller is a dramaturg, queer ar/ctivist and teacher. He currently works as a Lecturer at the University of Vienna (Institute of Theatre, Film and Media Studies, since 2008), and was Visiting Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna from 2017 to 2019. At the same time, he has created numerous theatre/performance/art projects (principally in co-operation with brut Vienna) and worked as a curator, dramaturg and activist on the projects ‘Queer Base’ (Welcome and Support for LGBT-Refugees), ‘TransX/-Rosa Lila Villa’ (since 2009), ‘VolxTheaterKarawane’ (2001–2004). He is the author of the book: Gin/i Müller, ‘Possen des Performativen. Theatre, Activism and Queer Politics’, republicart 7, Vienna: Turia+ Kant 2008. http://ginmueller.klingt.org

Register here.

Online lecture by Ricardo Dominguez (Professor for Visual Arts at the University of California San Diego)
followed by discussion
Live stream + online
Language: English
Entry is free of charge. No registration required.
Click here for the online stream.

Ricardo Dominguez will focus on three lines of flights he has co-created: The history of Electronic Civil Disobedience, flight facilitation gestures for immigrants and refugees, and speculative dronology.

Meeting point: Keupstraße 40, 51063 Köln

Ricardo Dominguez is the chair of the Department of Visual Arts, UCSD. Dominguez was a founding member of Critical Art Ensemble (http://critical-art.net/) and a co-founder of Electronic Disturbance Theater 1.0 (EDT), a group who developed virtual sit-in technologies in solidarity with the Zapatistas communities in Chiapas, Mexico, in 1998 (https://anthology.rhizome.org/...). With Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0/b.a.n.g. lab project with Brett Stalbaum, Micha Cardenas, Amy Sara Carroll, and Elle Mehrmand, the Transborder Immigrant Tool - https://tbt.tome.press/ - (a GPS cell phone safety net tool for crossing the Mexico/US border) was the winner of “Transnational Communities Award” (2008), an award funded by Cultural Contact, Endowment for Culture Mexico–US and handed out by the US Embassy in Mexico. He was under investigation for 3 years for this project by the FBI, U.S. Congress and UCSD. The Transborder Immigrant Tool has been exhibited in many national and international venues. He was a Society for the Humanities Fellow at Cornell University (2017-18), a Rockefeller Fellow (Bellagio Center, Italy) during the summer of (2018), and a UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy Fellow (2021). Ricardo is also chair of the Department of the Visual Arts. Many of his articles and essays can be found at: https://ucsd.academia.edu/Rica... And he recently has re-collective exibition of 40 years of collaboration at the Center for Digital Culture in Mexico City, Mexico: https://hipermedial.centrocult...

Lecture by Natasha A. Kelly (communication sociologist, author, curator and artist) followed by discussion
in person + online
Language: German
Entry is free of charge. No registration required.
Click here for the online stream.

Register here.

Shuttle bus to the Impulse SHOWCASE in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Return journey around 00:30.

Natasha A. Kelly is an author and artist who holds a PhD in Communication Studies and Sociology. She made her film debut at the 10th Berlin Berlinale in 2018 with the award-winning and internationally successful documentary ‘Milli’s Awakening’. She made her directing debut in 2019 with the international production in three countries and in three languages of her doctoral thesis ‘Afrokultur’. She published two further books in 2021: ‘Racism. Structural Problems Require Structural Solutions’ with Atrium Verlag and ‘Sisters and Souls’ with Orlanda Verlag. http://www.natashaakelly.com

Online lecture by Karin Harrasser (Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Art and Design Linz) followed by discussion
Language: German
Entry is free of charge. No registration required.
Click here for the online stream.

The pandemic and the massive changes in global environmental conditions have worldwide have produced fragile political bodies. Subjects perceive themselves as under threat. The reactions to this shared experience that takes on very different forms depending on geography, social standing, gender and age are uneven: politics of (common) care meet attempts at self-isolation. A solidary approach to vulnerability meets with attempts to negate this vulnerability and to outsource the responsibility that arises from it.

Shuttle bus to the Impulse SHOWCASE in Mülheim an der Ruhr. No return journey.

Location: Kölner Straße 313, 40227 Düsseldorf

Karin Harrasser is Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Art and Design Linz, where she is also Vice Rector for Research. After studying History and German Literature, she completed her doctorate at the University of Vienna with a thesis on the narratives of digital cultures and her postdoctoral qualification at the Humboldt University in Berlin on “Protheses. Figures of a Wounded Modernity” (published in 2016 by Vorwerk 8, Berlin). Alongside her academic career, she has also participated in various artistic and curatorial projects, for example at Kampnagel Hamburg, Tanzquartier Wien and with MAPA Teatro and the Colombian Truth Commission in Bogotá. Together with Elisabeth Timm, she edits the ‘Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften’. Her book ‘Surazo. Monika und Hans Ert: Eine deutsche Geschichte in Bolivien’ will be published soon.

Led by: Sandra Selimović, Zoe Gudović, Carmen Gheorghe
Language: German and English

“Honour” is a powerful concept that the patriarchy employs to restrict the rights of women and queers. As a consequence, more and more Roma women’s activists and queer-feminists and artists in various countries, above all in Eastern Europe, are working on questioning the politics of “honour”. They are creating new narratives around the body, gender identity and sexual orientation and are trying to use political means to change how these are represented in a range of areas of society. The workshop will analyse how this struggle can put the combination of art, theatre and activism to strategic use.

Register here.

Led by: Arne Vogelgesang
Language: German

This workshop gives an overview of the means and methods with which political battles are being conducted on social media and beyond: by both anti-humanitarian and progressive movements. It will pay particular attention to the question of where activist online practice between identification and anonymity touches on areas of theatre and the performative.

Register here.

Led by: Black Earth Collective
Language: German and English

This workshop addresses intersections between colonialism and the climate crisis and uses performance as a tool to embody breaking open the binary oppositions between human and nature, men and women, Black and white. It is concerned with recognising centuries-old anti-colonial struggles, listening to movements and communities that have been silenced, who now stand at the forefront of the climate crisis, and paying attention to prognoses for the coming decades that are currently being ignored.

The Black Earth Collective particularly welcomes BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour) and queers to attend this workshop.

Register here.

+++ This workshop is cancelled. +++

Led by: Can Gülcü
Language: German

This workshop focuses on the question of how artistic-activist strategies can be used to attack racist normativity and right-wing extremism. How can we change the rules about who can speak and who can be listened to and taken seriously? How can buried and repressed knowledge be disclosed? Art as art and as kanakish, anti-racist, proletarian, anti-capitalist activism. During the workshop these emancipatory struggles will be discussed and considered together, for example with reference to issues around the NSU.

Register here.

Black Earth Collective is a BIPoC environmental & climate justice collective founded in Berlin. The collective is concerned with issues including sustainability, veganism, environmental and climate justice from decolonial perspectives. How are the oppression of marginalized groups of people and the oppression of nature connected? Who is particularly affected by climate change? And how can movements dedicated to these issues be reclaimed? The collective not only seeks to scrutinise the white and cis-heterosexual dominated, left-wing environmental activist sector but primarily to create a space for intersectional activism.

Carmen Gheorghe is a Roma feminist, activist and scholar from Romania. She has been engaged in civil society for the last 19 years and her main work was focused on Roma women and girls’ rights through grassroots work, community development, gender issues, intersectionality, politics of identity, gender-based violence and reproductive justice. She is the co-founder of E-Romnja Association, a Roma feminist NGO in Romania who’s building a new narrative about Roma girls and women in Romanian. She was also co/author for articles about Roma feminism, anti-racism for social justice, intersectionality and labour market. Since 2019 she developed an academic course on Roma feminism and politics of identity.

Zoe Gudović is a lesbian artist, feminist, activist, cultural manager, producer and organizer. She comes from Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and moved to Vienna in October 2021. Since 1995, she has been involved in the work and research of informal and engaged theatre forms. In her practice, she combines art and activism in order to change the existing consciousness and social relations. Theatre educator. Performer. Drag King Transformer. Toilet artist. Worked, founded or was in groups and collectives: Women at Work, Act Women, Queer Belgrade, Charming Princess-band, Reconstruction Women's Fund. Lecturer at Women's Studies (Faculty of Political Science in Belgrade), on the topic of Feminist Art in Public Space. Organizer of street engagement performances against violence against women. Organizer of numerous campaigns for the visibility of LGBTQ +, women's human rights and people from the margins. Since 2001, she has connected artists from all over the world with activists from Serbia under the name "Women's Movement - Women's Theatre - Women's Body". Winner of the Jelena Šantić Award for a combination of art and activism. Winner of Befem’s Feminist Achievement Award for promoting feminism outside the feminist movement. She edits and hosts the radio show Ženergija.

Can Gülcü was born in Bursa in 1976, has lived in Austria since 1990 and works in Vienna as a cultural creative, public relations and campaign worker and activist, focussing on political communication, political/participatory cultural work and social, political and socio-economic power relations. He currently works in the department for digital agendas at the Arbeiterkammer Vienna.

Sandra Selimović is an actor, director, rapper and activist. Born in Zaječar, Serbia in 1981, she first appeared on stage in 1994. She is currently appearing at the Burgtheater Vienna in ‘The Doctor’ by Robert Icke and at the Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin in ‘Roma Armee’ directed by Yael Ronen. She has worked as a freelance actor and director at the Volkstheater Vienna, Schauspiel Essen, Staatstheater Kassel and in the independent theatre sector in Austria, Germany and Romania. Together with Tina Leisch, she co-directed her first documentary film ‘Gangster Girls’ in Schwarzau women’s prison, which was screened at the Viennale and the Munich Documentary Festival. In 2010 she founded the first ever feminist Roma theatre organisation Romano Svato together with her sister Simonida Selimović – at the same time the two of them started making music as the rap duo Mindj Panther. Their productions examine racism, sexism, identity, feminism and exclusion while shattering stereotypical images and clichés of the Roma as an ethnic group. As a self-aware and queer romni, Sandra Selimović is both a pioneer of women’s rights within the Roma community and also an activist against discrimination against gypsies. In 2013 her debut work as a director at the Vienna Akademietheater won her the Junger Burg’s audience award.

Arne Vogelgesang realises experimental art projects using documentary material, new media, fiction and performance with the theatre label internil and under his own name. Among other topics, these focus on radical political propaganda on the internet. He also gives lectures and workshops on his research, plays around with virtual reality and human representation in 3D and writes occasional texts. https://vogelgesang.internil.net

With: Natalie Ananda Assmann and Gin Müller (Programme Leads ACADEMY #2)

Lecture by Isabell Lorey (Professor of Queer Studies at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne) followed by discussion
in person + online
Language: German
Entry is free of charge. No registration required.
Click here for the online stream.

This lecture argues for a radical, new, democratic queer-feminist activism in the political present. It does not foreground identities and representations, but rather caring relationships and a common bond in shared vulnerability. Here it formulates a radical alternative to neoliberal democracy and the authoritarian populisms that result from it.

Register here.

Shuttle bus to the Impulse SHOWCASE in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Return journey around 23:00.

Natalie Ananda Assmann has worked as a freelance artist, director, performer, actor and cultural creative since 2006. Residencies in São Paulo, Tel Aviv and New York played a key role in forming her artistic thinking. Assmann’s works operate in the crossover between performative interventions, theatre in public spaces and activist approaches to art and culture. In recent years she has worked increasingly in queer-feminist collectives and focussed on a variety of artistic resistance practices. This year Natalie Assmann became Co-Director of the festival Wienwoche. She lives and works in Vienna.

Isabell Lorey is a political theorist and Professor of Queer Studies at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. She also works for transversal (http://transversal.at), the publication platform of the European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies (eipcp). Her books include: ‘Immer Ärger mit dem Subjekt. On Butler and Foucault’, 1996/2017; ‘Figuren des Immunen. Elements of a Political Theory’, Zürich: Diaphanes 2011; ‘Die Regierung der Prekären, New Edition’, Vienna: Turia+Kant 2020; ‘Demokratie im Präsenz. A Theory of the Political Present’, Berlin: Suhrkamp 2020.

Gin Müller is a dramaturg, queer ar/ctivist and teacher. He currently works as a Lecturer at the University of Vienna (Institute of Theatre, Film and Media Studies, since 2008), and was Visiting Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna from 2017 to 2019. At the same time, he has created numerous theatre/performance/art projects (principally in co-operation with brut Vienna) and worked as a curator, dramaturg and activist on the projects ‘Queer Base’ (Welcome and Support for LGBT-Refugees), ‘TransX/-Rosa Lila Villa’ (since 2009), ‘VolxTheaterKarawane’ (2001–2004). He is the author of the book: Gin/i Müller, ‘Possen des Performativen. Theatre, Activism and Queer Politics’, republicart 7, Vienna: Turia+ Kant 2008. http://ginmueller.klingt.org

Register here.

Online lecture by Ricardo Dominguez (Professor for Visual Arts at the University of California San Diego)
followed by discussion
Live stream + online
Language: English
Entry is free of charge. No registration required.
Click here for the online stream.

Ricardo Dominguez will focus on three lines of flights he has co-created: The history of Electronic Civil Disobedience, flight facilitation gestures for immigrants and refugees, and speculative dronology.

Meeting point: Keupstraße 40, 51063 Köln

Ricardo Dominguez is the chair of the Department of Visual Arts, UCSD. Dominguez was a founding member of Critical Art Ensemble (http://critical-art.net/) and a co-founder of Electronic Disturbance Theater 1.0 (EDT), a group who developed virtual sit-in technologies in solidarity with the Zapatistas communities in Chiapas, Mexico, in 1998 (https://anthology.rhizome.org/...). With Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0/b.a.n.g. lab project with Brett Stalbaum, Micha Cardenas, Amy Sara Carroll, and Elle Mehrmand, the Transborder Immigrant Tool - https://tbt.tome.press/ - (a GPS cell phone safety net tool for crossing the Mexico/US border) was the winner of “Transnational Communities Award” (2008), an award funded by Cultural Contact, Endowment for Culture Mexico–US and handed out by the US Embassy in Mexico. He was under investigation for 3 years for this project by the FBI, U.S. Congress and UCSD. The Transborder Immigrant Tool has been exhibited in many national and international venues. He was a Society for the Humanities Fellow at Cornell University (2017-18), a Rockefeller Fellow (Bellagio Center, Italy) during the summer of (2018), and a UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy Fellow (2021). Ricardo is also chair of the Department of the Visual Arts. Many of his articles and essays can be found at: https://ucsd.academia.edu/Rica... And he recently has re-collective exibition of 40 years of collaboration at the Center for Digital Culture in Mexico City, Mexico: https://hipermedial.centrocult...

Lecture by Natasha A. Kelly (communication sociologist, author, curator and artist) followed by discussion
in person + online
Language: German
Entry is free of charge. No registration required.
Click here for the online stream.

Register here.

Shuttle bus to the Impulse SHOWCASE in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Return journey around 00:30.

Natasha A. Kelly is an author and artist who holds a PhD in Communication Studies and Sociology. She made her film debut at the 10th Berlin Berlinale in 2018 with the award-winning and internationally successful documentary ‘Milli’s Awakening’. She made her directing debut in 2019 with the international production in three countries and in three languages of her doctoral thesis ‘Afrokultur’. She published two further books in 2021: ‘Racism. Structural Problems Require Structural Solutions’ with Atrium Verlag and ‘Sisters and Souls’ with Orlanda Verlag. http://www.natashaakelly.com

Online lecture by Karin Harrasser (Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Art and Design Linz) followed by discussion
Language: German
Entry is free of charge. No registration required.
Click here for the online stream.

The pandemic and the massive changes in global environmental conditions have worldwide have produced fragile political bodies. Subjects perceive themselves as under threat. The reactions to this shared experience that takes on very different forms depending on geography, social standing, gender and age are uneven: politics of (common) care meet attempts at self-isolation. A solidary approach to vulnerability meets with attempts to negate this vulnerability and to outsource the responsibility that arises from it.

Shuttle bus to the Impulse SHOWCASE in Mülheim an der Ruhr. No return journey.

Location: Kölner Straße 313, 40227 Düsseldorf

Karin Harrasser is Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Art and Design Linz, where she is also Vice Rector for Research. After studying History and German Literature, she completed her doctorate at the University of Vienna with a thesis on the narratives of digital cultures and her postdoctoral qualification at the Humboldt University in Berlin on “Protheses. Figures of a Wounded Modernity” (published in 2016 by Vorwerk 8, Berlin). Alongside her academic career, she has also participated in various artistic and curatorial projects, for example at Kampnagel Hamburg, Tanzquartier Wien and with MAPA Teatro and the Colombian Truth Commission in Bogotá. Together with Elisabeth Timm, she edits the ‘Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften’. Her book ‘Surazo. Monika und Hans Ert: Eine deutsche Geschichte in Bolivien’ will be published soon.

Led by: Sandra Selimović, Zoe Gudović, Carmen Gheorghe
Language: German and English

“Honour” is a powerful concept that the patriarchy employs to restrict the rights of women and queers. As a consequence, more and more Roma women’s activists and queer-feminists and artists in various countries, above all in Eastern Europe, are working on questioning the politics of “honour”. They are creating new narratives around the body, gender identity and sexual orientation and are trying to use political means to change how these are represented in a range of areas of society. The workshop will analyse how this struggle can put the combination of art, theatre and activism to strategic use.

Register here.

Led by: Arne Vogelgesang
Language: German

This workshop gives an overview of the means and methods with which political battles are being conducted on social media and beyond: by both anti-humanitarian and progressive movements. It will pay particular attention to the question of where activist online practice between identification and anonymity touches on areas of theatre and the performative.

Register here.

Led by: Black Earth Collective
Language: German and English

This workshop addresses intersections between colonialism and the climate crisis and uses performance as a tool to embody breaking open the binary oppositions between human and nature, men and women, Black and white. It is concerned with recognising centuries-old anti-colonial struggles, listening to movements and communities that have been silenced, who now stand at the forefront of the climate crisis, and paying attention to prognoses for the coming decades that are currently being ignored.

The Black Earth Collective particularly welcomes BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour) and queers to attend this workshop.

Register here.

+++ This workshop is cancelled. +++

Led by: Can Gülcü
Language: German

This workshop focuses on the question of how artistic-activist strategies can be used to attack racist normativity and right-wing extremism. How can we change the rules about who can speak and who can be listened to and taken seriously? How can buried and repressed knowledge be disclosed? Art as art and as kanakish, anti-racist, proletarian, anti-capitalist activism. During the workshop these emancipatory struggles will be discussed and considered together, for example with reference to issues around the NSU.

Register here.

Black Earth Collective is a BIPoC environmental & climate justice collective founded in Berlin. The collective is concerned with issues including sustainability, veganism, environmental and climate justice from decolonial perspectives. How are the oppression of marginalized groups of people and the oppression of nature connected? Who is particularly affected by climate change? And how can movements dedicated to these issues be reclaimed? The collective not only seeks to scrutinise the white and cis-heterosexual dominated, left-wing environmental activist sector but primarily to create a space for intersectional activism.

Carmen Gheorghe is a Roma feminist, activist and scholar from Romania. She has been engaged in civil society for the last 19 years and her main work was focused on Roma women and girls’ rights through grassroots work, community development, gender issues, intersectionality, politics of identity, gender-based violence and reproductive justice. She is the co-founder of E-Romnja Association, a Roma feminist NGO in Romania who’s building a new narrative about Roma girls and women in Romanian. She was also co/author for articles about Roma feminism, anti-racism for social justice, intersectionality and labour market. Since 2019 she developed an academic course on Roma feminism and politics of identity.

Zoe Gudović is a lesbian artist, feminist, activist, cultural manager, producer and organizer. She comes from Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and moved to Vienna in October 2021. Since 1995, she has been involved in the work and research of informal and engaged theatre forms. In her practice, she combines art and activism in order to change the existing consciousness and social relations. Theatre educator. Performer. Drag King Transformer. Toilet artist. Worked, founded or was in groups and collectives: Women at Work, Act Women, Queer Belgrade, Charming Princess-band, Reconstruction Women's Fund. Lecturer at Women's Studies (Faculty of Political Science in Belgrade), on the topic of Feminist Art in Public Space. Organizer of street engagement performances against violence against women. Organizer of numerous campaigns for the visibility of LGBTQ +, women's human rights and people from the margins. Since 2001, she has connected artists from all over the world with activists from Serbia under the name "Women's Movement - Women's Theatre - Women's Body". Winner of the Jelena Šantić Award for a combination of art and activism. Winner of Befem’s Feminist Achievement Award for promoting feminism outside the feminist movement. She edits and hosts the radio show Ženergija.

Can Gülcü was born in Bursa in 1976, has lived in Austria since 1990 and works in Vienna as a cultural creative, public relations and campaign worker and activist, focussing on political communication, political/participatory cultural work and social, political and socio-economic power relations. He currently works in the department for digital agendas at the Arbeiterkammer Vienna.

Sandra Selimović is an actor, director, rapper and activist. Born in Zaječar, Serbia in 1981, she first appeared on stage in 1994. She is currently appearing at the Burgtheater Vienna in ‘The Doctor’ by Robert Icke and at the Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin in ‘Roma Armee’ directed by Yael Ronen. She has worked as a freelance actor and director at the Volkstheater Vienna, Schauspiel Essen, Staatstheater Kassel and in the independent theatre sector in Austria, Germany and Romania. Together with Tina Leisch, she co-directed her first documentary film ‘Gangster Girls’ in Schwarzau women’s prison, which was screened at the Viennale and the Munich Documentary Festival. In 2010 she founded the first ever feminist Roma theatre organisation Romano Svato together with her sister Simonida Selimović – at the same time the two of them started making music as the rap duo Mindj Panther. Their productions examine racism, sexism, identity, feminism and exclusion while shattering stereotypical images and clichés of the Roma as an ethnic group. As a self-aware and queer romni, Sandra Selimović is both a pioneer of women’s rights within the Roma community and also an activist against discrimination against gypsies. In 2013 her debut work as a director at the Vienna Akademietheater won her the Junger Burg’s audience award.

Arne Vogelgesang realises experimental art projects using documentary material, new media, fiction and performance with the theatre label internil and under his own name. Among other topics, these focus on radical political propaganda on the internet. He also gives lectures and workshops on his research, plays around with virtual reality and human representation in 3D and writes occasional texts. https://vogelgesang.internil.net

With: Natalie Ananda Assmann and Gin Müller (Programme Leads ACADEMY #2)

Lecture by Isabell Lorey (Professor of Queer Studies at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne) followed by discussion
in person + online
Language: German
Entry is free of charge. No registration required.
Click here for the online stream.

This lecture argues for a radical, new, democratic queer-feminist activism in the political present. It does not foreground identities and representations, but rather caring relationships and a common bond in shared vulnerability. Here it formulates a radical alternative to neoliberal democracy and the authoritarian populisms that result from it.

Register here.

Shuttle bus to the Impulse SHOWCASE in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Return journey around 23:00.

Natalie Ananda Assmann has worked as a freelance artist, director, performer, actor and cultural creative since 2006. Residencies in São Paulo, Tel Aviv and New York played a key role in forming her artistic thinking. Assmann’s works operate in the crossover between performative interventions, theatre in public spaces and activist approaches to art and culture. In recent years she has worked increasingly in queer-feminist collectives and focussed on a variety of artistic resistance practices. This year Natalie Assmann became Co-Director of the festival Wienwoche. She lives and works in Vienna.

Isabell Lorey is a political theorist and Professor of Queer Studies at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. She also works for transversal (http://transversal.at), the publication platform of the European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies (eipcp). Her books include: ‘Immer Ärger mit dem Subjekt. On Butler and Foucault’, 1996/2017; ‘Figuren des Immunen. Elements of a Political Theory’, Zürich: Diaphanes 2011; ‘Die Regierung der Prekären, New Edition’, Vienna: Turia+Kant 2020; ‘Demokratie im Präsenz. A Theory of the Political Present’, Berlin: Suhrkamp 2020.

Gin Müller is a dramaturg, queer ar/ctivist and teacher. He currently works as a Lecturer at the University of Vienna (Institute of Theatre, Film and Media Studies, since 2008), and was Visiting Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna from 2017 to 2019. At the same time, he has created numerous theatre/performance/art projects (principally in co-operation with brut Vienna) and worked as a curator, dramaturg and activist on the projects ‘Queer Base’ (Welcome and Support for LGBT-Refugees), ‘TransX/-Rosa Lila Villa’ (since 2009), ‘VolxTheaterKarawane’ (2001–2004). He is the author of the book: Gin/i Müller, ‘Possen des Performativen. Theatre, Activism and Queer Politics’, republicart 7, Vienna: Turia+ Kant 2008. http://ginmueller.klingt.org

Register here.

Online lecture by Ricardo Dominguez (Professor for Visual Arts at the University of California San Diego)
followed by discussion
Live stream + online
Language: English
Entry is free of charge. No registration required.
Click here for the online stream.

Ricardo Dominguez will focus on three lines of flights he has co-created: The history of Electronic Civil Disobedience, flight facilitation gestures for immigrants and refugees, and speculative dronology.

Meeting point: Keupstraße 40, 51063 Köln

Ricardo Dominguez is the chair of the Department of Visual Arts, UCSD. Dominguez was a founding member of Critical Art Ensemble (http://critical-art.net/) and a co-founder of Electronic Disturbance Theater 1.0 (EDT), a group who developed virtual sit-in technologies in solidarity with the Zapatistas communities in Chiapas, Mexico, in 1998 (https://anthology.rhizome.org/...). With Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0/b.a.n.g. lab project with Brett Stalbaum, Micha Cardenas, Amy Sara Carroll, and Elle Mehrmand, the Transborder Immigrant Tool - https://tbt.tome.press/ - (a GPS cell phone safety net tool for crossing the Mexico/US border) was the winner of “Transnational Communities Award” (2008), an award funded by Cultural Contact, Endowment for Culture Mexico–US and handed out by the US Embassy in Mexico. He was under investigation for 3 years for this project by the FBI, U.S. Congress and UCSD. The Transborder Immigrant Tool has been exhibited in many national and international venues. He was a Society for the Humanities Fellow at Cornell University (2017-18), a Rockefeller Fellow (Bellagio Center, Italy) during the summer of (2018), and a UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy Fellow (2021). Ricardo is also chair of the Department of the Visual Arts. Many of his articles and essays can be found at: https://ucsd.academia.edu/Rica... And he recently has re-collective exibition of 40 years of collaboration at the Center for Digital Culture in Mexico City, Mexico: https://hipermedial.centrocult...

Lecture by Natasha A. Kelly (communication sociologist, author, curator and artist) followed by discussion
in person + online
Language: German
Entry is free of charge. No registration required.
Click here for the online stream.

Register here.

Shuttle bus to the Impulse SHOWCASE in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Return journey around 00:30.

Natasha A. Kelly is an author and artist who holds a PhD in Communication Studies and Sociology. She made her film debut at the 10th Berlin Berlinale in 2018 with the award-winning and internationally successful documentary ‘Milli’s Awakening’. She made her directing debut in 2019 with the international production in three countries and in three languages of her doctoral thesis ‘Afrokultur’. She published two further books in 2021: ‘Racism. Structural Problems Require Structural Solutions’ with Atrium Verlag and ‘Sisters and Souls’ with Orlanda Verlag. http://www.natashaakelly.com

Online lecture by Karin Harrasser (Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Art and Design Linz) followed by discussion
Language: German
Entry is free of charge. No registration required.
Click here for the online stream.

The pandemic and the massive changes in global environmental conditions have worldwide have produced fragile political bodies. Subjects perceive themselves as under threat. The reactions to this shared experience that takes on very different forms depending on geography, social standing, gender and age are uneven: politics of (common) care meet attempts at self-isolation. A solidary approach to vulnerability meets with attempts to negate this vulnerability and to outsource the responsibility that arises from it.

Shuttle bus to the Impulse SHOWCASE in Mülheim an der Ruhr. No return journey.

Location: Kölner Straße 313, 40227 Düsseldorf

Karin Harrasser is Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Art and Design Linz, where she is also Vice Rector for Research. After studying History and German Literature, she completed her doctorate at the University of Vienna with a thesis on the narratives of digital cultures and her postdoctoral qualification at the Humboldt University in Berlin on “Protheses. Figures of a Wounded Modernity” (published in 2016 by Vorwerk 8, Berlin). Alongside her academic career, she has also participated in various artistic and curatorial projects, for example at Kampnagel Hamburg, Tanzquartier Wien and with MAPA Teatro and the Colombian Truth Commission in Bogotá. Together with Elisabeth Timm, she edits the ‘Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften’. Her book ‘Surazo. Monika und Hans Ert: Eine deutsche Geschichte in Bolivien’ will be published soon.

God's Entertainment is one of the theatre groups working experimentally in Austria who seek to transcend the conventions of theatre and performance and continually redefine their form. God's Entertainment work in the fields of performance, happenings, visual arts and sound. They view their work as a critical confrontation with Austria’s political and cultural identity and its society. The field of play used by this group of artists is not confined to theatre buildings: they also stage actions in public places. In doing so, the most important principle is actively involving the public.

A production by God’s Entertainment, the Impulse Theater Festival and the FFT Düsseldorf, made possible by Kunststiftung NRW and other festival funders. With the generous support of the City of Vienna’s Department of Culture – MA7.

Female Pimps: Charlotte Pfeifer, Eidglas Xavier, Sibylle Peters
One-on-one performers: Ansuman Biswas, Findus, Michael von Schönberg, Valerian Süß, Viktor Teimann
Assistant: Conny May
Stage design: Matthias Anton
Photos: Margaux Weiß
Graphics: David Caines
Styling: Katharina Duve
Production: ehrliche arbeit – freies Kulturbüro

A co-production with Kampnagel, Hamburg. Funded by Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media and by a grant from the Elbkulturfonds of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg und Hansestadt Hamburg. With support from the Fuck Yeah sex shop collective, Hamburg, and the Live Art Development Agency, London.

Sibylle Peters is an artist and researcher. She studied Literature and Cultural Studies in addition to Philosophy and has taught at universities in Hamburg, Berlin, Basel, Wales and Gießen. Peters creates performance lectures and live art projects that focus on participation and collective research, often in collaboration with geheimagentur. She also co-founded and serves as Director of the transgenerational performance laboratory Fundus Theater / Theatre of Research in Hamburg, in which children, artists and researchers meet as explorers. She is also the co-founder and Director of the doctoral research programme Performing Citizenship in Hamburg and has been a Visiting Professor for Transdisciplinary Devising at the Folkwang University of the Arts.

Female Pimps: Charlotte Pfeifer, Eidglas Xavier, Sibylle Peters
One-on-one performers: Ansuman Biswas, Findus, Michael von Schönberg, Valerian Süß, Viktor Teimann
Assistant: Conny May
Stage design: Matthias Anton
Photos: Margaux Weiß
Graphics: David Caines
Styling: Katharina Duve
Production: ehrliche arbeit – freies Kulturbüro

A co-production with Kampnagel, Hamburg. Funded by Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media and by a grant from the Elbkulturfonds of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg und Hansestadt Hamburg. With support from the Fuck Yeah sex shop collective, Hamburg, and the Live Art Development Agency, London.

Sibylle Peters is an artist and researcher. She studied Literature and Cultural Studies in addition to Philosophy and has taught at universities in Hamburg, Berlin, Basel, Wales and Gießen. Peters creates performance lectures and live art projects that focus on participation and collective research, often in collaboration with geheimagentur. She also co-founded and serves as Director of the transgenerational performance laboratory Fundus Theater / Theatre of Research in Hamburg, in which children, artists and researchers meet as explorers. She is also the co-founder and Director of the doctoral research programme Performing Citizenship in Hamburg and has been a Visiting Professor for Transdisciplinary Devising at the Folkwang University of the Arts.

Concept: Simone Dede Ayivi
Video: Jones Seitz
Stage design: Theresa Reiwer
Sound, music: Katharina Pelosi
Lighting: Frieder Miller
Production assistant, dramaturgical collaborator: Selma Böhmelmann
Design assistant: Chris Erlbeck
Outdoor camera shots: Thomas Machholz
Experts: Nabila Bushra, Fatma Kar, Lenssa Mohammed, Dan Thy Nguyen, Kadir Özdemir
Production management: ehrliche arbeit – freies Kulturbüro
Technical production: Gefährliche Arbeit

A production by Simone Dede Ayivi und Kompliz*innen in co-production with Sophiensæle, Berlin. Funded by core funding from the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe and a grant from the Capital Cultural Fund.

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.

Female Pimps: Charlotte Pfeifer, Eidglas Xavier, Sibylle Peters
One-on-one performers: Ansuman Biswas, Findus, Michael von Schönberg, Valerian Süß, Viktor Teimann
Assistant: Conny May
Stage design: Matthias Anton
Photos: Margaux Weiß
Graphics: David Caines
Styling: Katharina Duve
Production: ehrliche arbeit – freies Kulturbüro

A co-production with Kampnagel, Hamburg. Funded by Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media and by a grant from the Elbkulturfonds of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg und Hansestadt Hamburg. With support from the Fuck Yeah sex shop collective, Hamburg, and the Live Art Development Agency, London.

Sibylle Peters is an artist and researcher. She studied Literature and Cultural Studies in addition to Philosophy and has taught at universities in Hamburg, Berlin, Basel, Wales and Gießen. Peters creates performance lectures and live art projects that focus on participation and collective research, often in collaboration with geheimagentur. She also co-founded and serves as Director of the transgenerational performance laboratory Fundus Theater / Theatre of Research in Hamburg, in which children, artists and researchers meet as explorers. She is also the co-founder and Director of the doctoral research programme Performing Citizenship in Hamburg and has been a Visiting Professor for Transdisciplinary Devising at the Folkwang University of the Arts.