Romuald Krężel & René Alejandro Huari Mateus
April 2025
During the residency at HELLERAU, the choreographers and performers Romuald Krężel and René Alejandro Huari Mateus will work on the artistic research project “Ecological Proletariat”. The aim is to deepen and link two areas that Romuald Krężel has focused on in recent years of his artistic practice and research – the ecological discourse and the social class discourse in the context of the creation and production of performing arts.
What kind of class struggle is behind the ecological crisis? Who can afford to be ecological today? How does climate change become a class struggle, and what do the ecologies of the different classes look like? How do ecological issues relate to contemporary choreography, both on an artistic and production level? Who can follow the example of choreographer Jérôme Bel and give up flying in order to reduce their ecological footprint, and who cannot do this in the performing arts? And does reducing one’s carbon footprint even matter after we learn that the concept was invented as part of BP’s big greenwashing campaign in 2004-2006? What are the invisible social class structures behind the moral discussions about abandoning labor strategies in the arts that largely produce CO2? The research is inspired by the book “The Climate Change as a Class War” by Matthew T. Huber, who analyzes the climate crisis from the perspective of class struggle. “Ecological Proletariat” aims to fill a gap in the prevailing discourses of contemporary choreography and performance, in which questions of ecology and social class are treated separately and rarely together.
Romuald Krężel was born in Poland and works as a choreographer and performer in Berlin. He holds an MA in choreography and performance from the Justus Liebig University in Giessen and an MA in acting from the Film School in Łódź in Poland. His artistic work is based on extended choreographic practices that incorporate visual and performative elements. The resulting movement-based performances, site-specific installations, participatory projects, videos and other hybrid formats explore themes such as labor, resistance, class struggle, climate change and the potential exchange between humans and non-humans.
His most recent stage performances are the result of extensive artistic research processes and have been presented at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, the Palais de la Porte Dorée in Paris, the Warszawa Biennale in Warsaw and numerous festivals and theaters, including HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Sophiensaele, Uferstudios, HELLERAU – European Center for the Arts in Dresden; Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm in Frankfurt; Nowy Theater and Komuna Warszawa Theater in Warsaw/Poland. He has received numerous art and research grants.
René Alejandro Huari Mateus has lived in Germany for almost a quarter of a century, yet her pronunciation reveals a different origin – something that she finds beautiful in others but perceives as a flaw in herself. She studied dance, performance and choreography and weaves her practice at the intersection of these arts. She also designs lighting and costumes and enjoys writing texts. The relationship between dance and choreography is inherently violent. Positioning oneself against violence without showing it is an impossible undertaking. But it is precisely in this impossibility that a tension grows – an aesthetic force, a gesture that eludes us and yet remains tangible. A field that appears not in images, but in their absence. Her works have been shown in theaters, museums, gardens and courtyards, at festivals and in public spaces, in hidden cellars, forgotten halls and halls that were only valid for one night. They also found space in digital worlds, for communities that are not bound to places but exist in networks. She is proud to have managed to make a living from art. It is always hard work. And she knows that if cuts are made, she will be the first to suffer. But she hopes that it will still be possible. Despite everything.
