Archives: Projekte

A Theater Performance About Passion, Beauty and Encounters Beyond the Norm

Fucking Disabled is a collective poetic piece about sex and desire, which was directed by David von Westphalen. The cast: A beautiful woman with an unusual shape and an enchanting voice. A performer with unconventional movement and articulation. A tantric sex worker. And a beautiful, graceful dancer. It is about unfettered pleasure, unnecessary taboos and the joy of sexual freedom. It is about the fact that sexuality with a disability is more normal than people without a disability would think. And that passion can blossom again when that which is normal is no longer normal. It is not a drama, there are no characters, and it is not documentary theater; it is a sensual piece based on the performers’ personalities.
“Of course! We also want sex and we have sex, what did you think?” they declare. Telling their own stories, the four performers of the evening lead us out of the thicket of prejudice right into the realm of eroticism. They use the performance to pave the way which can allow disabled and non-disabled people to live out a liberated sexuality in this society. “We are also desirable and sexy!” they exclaim. But how can you be heard if your speech is also impeded? How do you connect with each other if the customary sequence of seduction and the usual dating rules prove to be useless?
To this effect, the performers provide a protected space for thoughts and perceptions for themselves and the audience, in which tenderness and attraction are made possible. Here, in unvarnished beauty, it is revealed how enjoyable it is not to be restricted by the predefined paths of eroticism. The hybrid combination of poetry, musical theater, performance, scenes and essays enables us to contemplate, feel and experience all of this in a new light at any given time.

Köln-Sülz is the Jungle and we take you for a stroll. In vacated stores we stumbled upon faintly glimmering gordic knots kinked of private fate and metropolitan history. Where urban reality cracks open, and where behind sealed off doors and below dysfunctional neon signs whispered stories tickle our ears, hiSTOREy leads the audience out of the theater into the city. Hidden in the public space blank spaces all too often escape us in the fluid stream of urban presence. Hey there, is this an interspace? A blind spot squatted by dancers and their solo pieces – incarnations of the places’ history. En route through Sülz CADAM. dive into the metropolitan surface, uncover anecdotes and curiosities, that are essential to the life in the ‘Veedel’. Right now we are trying, with our hands and feet, to unravel the threads, sparks drizzle and whoever curiously peeks through the gap in the masked window, might think they witnessed a dance…

WELTMASCHINE ON TOUR is an contiuously evolving artwork and an artistic bow to Franz Gsellmann, the legendary creator of the WELTMASCHINE. The Styrian farmer had been continuously working on a single device, starting in 1958, carrying on until his death in 1981. His construction was build of more than one thousand particular elements, which Gsellmann had been collecting accurately through the years. Anyway his Machine had no output. Nor did it serve any visible function. Today it serves as a tourist’s attraction in Gsellmanns hometown Kaag.

WELTMASCHINE TOUR sets Gsellmanns creation to the beginning of a new journey, which is going to be both documentary and fictional. It all happens on board of a caravan, travelling from Franz Gsellmann’s origins in Kaag to the Bavarian capital which Christoph Theussl has chosen as his place to be. The new machine will be dealing with the question of usefulness of human behaviour.

Strange things might happen on the way. The participants might emerge with new, not necessarily human identities, their encounters with strangers on the way might change the world we live in forever.

The evolving process will be documented within an online diary:

https://weltmaschineunterwegs.wordpress.com

Everything vibrates: The stage in Anna Konjetzky’s chipping is constantly in motion: cubes are moving- sometimes very slowly and hardly noticeable, sometimes faster and seemingly running everything down, changing images and shapes flood the space, breaking it, making it wide or flat. In the middle of it: the body of a dancer that needs to assert itself against, and with, the space; that needs to adjust to constantly new circumstances and that needs to find new ways around.

The body must adjust to new situations constantly, finding its way through the oscillating space: each step is a new balancing act; every movement newly devised; newly counterbalanced; and each way newly found. Even the passive body cannot rest on this stage: the moving space encroaches, deforms and swallows it. The body is driven restlessly to exhaustion and beyond. “In my opinion, restlessness is a very exiting aspect for the research of the body and movements. Yet, also the society seems to become faster and faster. Inundated by information, always reachable and available, seemingly limitless self-determination and the dictum of being permanently productive are a societal space that constantly forces—or enables—us to do certain “steps.“ (Anna Konjetzky)

||:ein Bein hier und ein Bein dort:|| ist eine Reise in den Kopf eines Kindes, zu all jenen Phantasiewesen, zu allen Erinnerungen, zu den Träumen und Gedanken, die dort ihren Platz haben. Vor allem aber zu jenen Parallelwelten, die in den Köpfen leben – gespeist aus Phantasie oder Erinnerung. Es sind die Orte, an denen die Monster wohnen – die guten und die bösen – , Orte an denen das Grauen herrscht und solche, die Heimat und Trost bedeuten.

„Die Fragen, die ich mir und auch den Kindern gestellt hatte waren: Was passiert mit Dir, wenn Du die Welt und fast alle vertrauten Zusammenhänge wechselst? Was bedeutet es für deine Phantasie, deine Bilder im Kopf, auch deine Bewegungen, deinen Körper, wenn sich deren kulturelle Zusammenhänge auflösen? Was für Strategien werden entwickelt, um mit der Fremdheit zurechtzukommen? Wie nimmt man Raum ein und wie macht man sich ihn zu eigen? Und: Wird die eigene Heimat auf Dauer zu einem Phantasieort – ob im Guten oder Bösen?“ (Anna Konjetzky)