Simone Dede Ayivi und Kompliz*innen
The Kids are Alright
“Our children will be better off,” the parents said when they came to Germany – and then watched their children grow up with racism. This video installation brings together the voices of six people from different migrant heritages and their accounts of generational conflicts, political struggles and visions of the future.
Ringlokschuppen Ruhr
Language: German with English surtitles
10.06. after the show:
Exchange of experiences with Daniela Georgieva and Marie Krings (Ringlokschuppen Ruhr)
17.06. after the show:
Exchange of experiences with Daniela Georgieva (Ringlokschuppen Ruhr)
A wide space, video screens, a stylised playground roundabout, a rocking horse. This is what the audience sit on while they listen to the family stories of young people who came to Germany in the decades after the war – escaping persecution, war and deprivation. They talk about their parents’ hopes and ambitions, racially-motivated exclusion and violence, and about the political work that they conduct for future generations as a psychologist, an anti-fascist activist and as a migration researcher: “We are children of the 90s. And we still live in Germany. Our parents had to explain Solingen, Mölln and Rostock-Lichtenhagen to us. And we talk to our children about Halle and Hanau.”
Credits ›
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
Production ›
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.
Biographies ›
Simone Dede Ayivi studied Cultural Studies and Aesthetic Practice at the University of Hildesheim. In 2016 as part of the akademie der autodidakten at Ballhaus Naunynstraße she devised the theatre project ‘JETZT BIN ICH HIER!’ together with post-migrant young people, in which they examined their current situation living in Germany. As part of FIRST BLACK WOMAN IN SPACE Ayivi spent three weeks with the entire production as Artist in Residence at Künstlerhaus Mousonturm. She has been working with a range of different Accomplices since 2012.
Katharina Pelosi studied at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen and works as a sonic artist in the fields of performance, choreography, audio drama and installation. She is a co-founder of the feminist performance collective Swoosh Lieu. From 2015–17 Katharina Pelosi was a member of the Graduate College Performing Citizenship with her practice-based doctoral thesis on “Sound as a medium of cultural memory in post-colonial Hamburg.” She has been awarded fellowships by Casa Baldi in Rome for 2021 and the Tarabya Cultural Academy in Istanbul for 2022.
Jones Seitz is a trained audio-visual media designer and has studied Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen and Porto. In addition to personal artistic research into resistance, she* also provides technical direction, lighting and video design for independent projects, such as for Simone Dede Ayivi, Helge Schmidt, Quast&Knoblich and Swoosh Lieu. Jones is a member and co-founder of the group LUKAS UND that produces its own stage plays at the FFT Düsseldorf. Since 2017 Jones has lived and worked mainly in Berlin.
Theresa Reiwer studied Film and Theatre Studies and Stage/Costume Design in Berlin and Istanbul. She works as a scenographer and costume designer for independent theatre productions and feature films. In her own works Reiwer creates VR films and experiments with augmented reality. SLOW ROOMS, her narrative spatial installation with AR elements, was awarded the Mart Stam Preis in 2019 and also helped her secure the Elsa Neumann Scholarship for 2020/21.
Selma Böhmelmann studied Cultural Studies and Political Sciences at Leuphana University. She completed assistant roles in a range of disciplines at institutions including the Schaubühne Berlin, the festival Augenblick mal! and the Volksbühne. In April 2020 she started her Masters in Theatre Studies at the FU Berlin. Since 2020 she has supported Simone Dede Ayivi as a production assistant and dramaturgical associate.