Since 2018, based on the experience of the EBOLA epidemics in Africa, scientists have been carrying out simulations that have been tested on people in the field (ministers, hospital managers and security forces) in various countries in North-West Africa. All of them are professionals, yet they were all baffled when it came to managing the unmanageable. In the beginning of 2019, we accessed the scenarios used for these simulations. We copied them and used them to develop a simulation game, scientifically validated, in collaboration with the doctor who created the original simulations, and with game developers. The simulation game works for a group of players between 40 and 100. There are no actors, just two coordinators who guide the players through the game. When entering the room, the players choose to join one of the 8 groups listed below and put on a corresponding colored vest, before joining their table, their « base ». The groups are: The groups are:

• Health
• Research
• Security
• Governmental communication
• Press
• Vital ressources
• Economy
• Population

Within their group, they receive a charter with their professional imperatives. The game takes place in 3 phases, which correspond to the 3 phases of development of a pandemic. Between each phase, representatives from each group meet at the crisis meeting table to communicate the progress of their group work and make decisions together. The consequences of all these decisions change the course and outcome of the game: 4 possible future scenarios. We finished the creation of the first version of this game in November 2019, before the arrival of Covid-19. Of course, we were impressed by how reality took over. From the very moment Wuhan started to be quarantined, in December 2019, all the things we learned theoretically became true. We thought the game lost its meaning and was to be discarded. But then we went through the material, again and again, to see how and if it still « works ». The game seems completely resilient to the paradigm shift that today’s situation has created. We believe this is possible due to two main things: the precision of the simulation model by Doctor Philippe Cano – everything that has happened or is still happening is without exception in his original simulation from 2018 – and the incredible quality of the adaptation work by the game developers, Théo Rivière et Corentin Lebrat. The meaning of the game is changing though: it is no longer a dystopian anticipation game, but a cathartic, digesting one. We didn’t change anything in the basic material of the game. Everything was and is there. We just added a more complex role to the group of representatives of the civil population. Indeed, in the original simulations they hardly exist – but during the first lockdown we realized how everybody thought about the world to live in afterwards, how everybody had opinions about the ways countries managed pandemics, what kind of lock-down to choose etcetera. Now, VIRUS gives space to utopia, to the prospect that another world can come out of a pandemic. Are we ready to give up flying as often as we used to?  Can we afford not to have seasonal foreign workers growing and picking our vegetables for a paltry wage? Can we do better than the governments in handling a pandemic? Can we establish other forms of government? Can we create a better world? We played so far in The Netherlands, Germany, Swiss-Germany and France. It’s incredibly interesting to see how different societies appear, some ending in dictatorships, others in utopic forms of governing. It is fun to see how popular votes are proposed by the players, or questions or subjects added to the public debates that take place. The most stimulating part of the game is now indeed in how the players take the game over, on how they play WITH the game. That’s something I like a lot, in my work in general, to see how a group of people can USE a piece for or in society. Can we create a better world? Well, in VIRUS, we can. By Yan Duyvendak

Judith Hellmann, Artistic Assistant at HELLERAU, spoke with Romy Weyrauch and Michael McCrae about the new work of theatrical subversion. What was the starting point of your current work? The pandemic fundamentally hit our working world. A tour and many planned projects were cancelled for the time being. Suddenly we had a lot of time to think. The first weeks in lockdown were quiet and somehow devoid of meaning. When reality shifts in such a way, you first have to understand it and find ways out of your own numbness. It was clear to us that for an indefinite period of time we would no longer be able to work in the same way as before – and that doesn’t just refer to economic issues. In our work, we examine – sometimes more, sometimes less – the preconditions of the present. Now we had to find not only new ways of financing and of reaching the public in the pandemic, but also to develop a different relevance. So we asked ourselves in a double sense: what does theater in crisis mean? How can we respond to the new situation aesthetically and in terms of content? The result of this discussion was the idea for the project cycle “The Living Dead.” The first part of the cycle – the online project – is already running. Could you briefly describe it? Currently, great efforts are being made to combat the pandemic. Some of the measures are leading to sharp social confrontations. But those who are particularly affected by the pandemic are hardly given a voice in the public debate. The “Archive of the Living Dead” is an online platform where people belonging to the so-called Corona risk groups can leave a video legacy for posterity. In addition, with the “Archive of the Living Dead” we are trying to find an artistic way of dealing with the statistics by asking those affected about their personal approach to this risk to their own life or death, which is both concrete and abstract at the same time. How does the project continue? In the second part of the cycle, we are interested, for example, in the question of what a terminal for the “archive of the living dead” might look like, in which the archive is transferred into real space. Such a terminal could be placed in old people’s and nursing homes or in museums. At the moment we are sifting through the submitted video legacies, editing footage for the stage, and contacting the interviewees to ask them about their current situation. And we are currently trying out a lot of technical possibilities, with 360° camera technology. With this we are preparing the third part of the project cycle, the stage play with the working title “Living Minus Dead”. Here we would like to address, among other things, the question of what a commemoration of the victims of the pandemic might look like and what social function this commemoration might fulfill.

HELLERAU and the Landesbühnen Sachsen are starting their work together on Saxony’s first “Relaxed Performance” this year. Leonie Kusterer (HELLERAU) talked about it with Wagner Moreira, director of the dance company of the Landesbühnen Sachsen, and performer Sophie Hauenherm. What is a Relaxed Performance? Is theater not relaxed enough? No. Not always and not for everyone. When you go to the theater, as a spectator you assume that you have to behave quietly so as not to disturb the actions of the artists. Not to speak in between, to show appropriate reactions at the right moment and not to leave the auditorium during an act. This action is a socially recognized sign of respect for art. The Relaxed Performance format, however, allows for a relaxed and natural way of being. It lets people enjoy the theater as they are and as they are feeling. It gives the audience the opportunity to decide what suits them best: sitting, standing or lying down? In the dark or in the light? To take a break in between and relax to process the content or to watch the piece again to get familiar with the material step by step. Attending a tactile tour to experience the stage space before attending the play. Not being exposed to overly strong and/or stress-producing stimuli such as strobe lights or fog. To be allowed to articulate during the performance, to move when it seems appropriate or when one feels the need to do so. Relaxed Performance makes all this possible. What is the theme of your work? The central theme of our work is “Difference”, the English word for “difference”. We investigate and experience differences in various aspects and span a wide field of being, thinking and being able – spatially, physically, psychologically. In the work we celebrate our “differences”, we work on them positively with each other and thus also work on a hierarchylessness. Because differences are the most beautiful and interesting things in life and in the world. Why is it important for you to position such a Relaxed Performance within the professional Saxon theater and dance landscape? The form and practice of Relaxed Performance is unfortunately not yet very well known in the Saxon theater landscape. Together with the Landesbühnen Sachsen and with HELLERAU, we feel a strong need to break new ground in the area of mobility and accessibility. Our aim is to break down barriers and open up the theater to a wide range of audiences who, for various reasons, have so far been unable to visit the houses and plays. Culture is, after all, a human right. Sophie, you are a performer in this work. You studied at the Palucca University of Dance in Dresden. What are your experiences on the subject of accessibility and the stage institution? Accessibility starts in language, especiallythrough the choice of expression of certain subjects. People with mental and/or physical disabilities must not be made to feel that their voices are worth less or even go unheard. Everyone has the right to be a part of the arts with their individual abilities, because dance and movement themselves are are value-free. However, people write the rules for dance, and these are being broken down piece by piece today to counteract the existing stigmatization. Most important is the openness towards the participants, especially on the level of communication. Even if an experience with people with disabilities does not yet exist, it is very possible to find a way together through an exchange between different individuals. I have experienced this through my own situation, in which it became possible for me to graduate from Palucca University despite my physical disability. Wagner, you are a choreographer and the new director of the dance company of the Landesbühnen Sachsen. How did you come to the theme cluster part-have and inclusion in dance? After an engagement as a stage dancer in Zittau, a major injury followed with an invasive operation on my hip joint. This made my further career as a dancer impossible. As a dance teacher and choreographer, I worked with people with disabilities in Brazil from a very early age. The fact that I wanted to continue working in this field was reinforced when I read an advertisement for dancers with and without disabilities for a professional production in Cologne. I felt addressed and located at the same time. Since then I have been working in various mixed-abled contexts in different positions and countries. Mixedability became not only a form for me, it became my artistic aesthetic. How will you design the production process to create real equality between people with and without disabilities? We will develop the piece together in a collaborative artistic process. It is no longer about the signature of an artistic or choreographic director. The director/choreographer simply shapes the individual images into a round evening. The performers and dancers see themselves as part of the creation, they are asked to actively participate in the process.

In the area comparison of major German cities, Dresden with 328.28 km2 is in 4th place after Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne. As of December 31, 2019, Dresden ranked 12th in a comparison of major German cities with 563,011 inhabitants. What position will the city of Dresden take in this decade of the 21st century between tradition and innovation, between regionality and internationality, between art and high technology? What kind of social and community life can be established in Dresden for residents as well as visitors and temporary guests? And what relationship is the capital of Saxony developing with its neighbors in rural and regional areas, but also in Poland and the Czech Republic and far beyond internationally? The focus “City.Space.River.” marks the beginning of an artistic examination of current social and cultural developments in the urban space of Dresden and its surroundings. HELLERAU, itself located on the periphery between city and country and in the first German garden city, is dedicated to contemporary interdisciplinary projects dealing with urban and public living spaces. The historical reference to the prefabricated slab buildings and new housing estates of the GDR plays a role here, as do current disputes about affordable housing and existential fears about the preservation of private and public living spaces. With the Elbe and the banks on both sides, Dresden has the inestimable value of a large public space, accessible to all the people of the city. At this place HELLERAU realizes the European project “Moving Borders – Ark of Underestimated Knowledge” and invites residents and visitors alike to art and encounters. Participants inside of Stadt.Raum.Fluss. Maximilian Hanisch/Sarah Methner (DE) with “Plattenbauten – Inseln der Gegenwart”, Prodromos Tsinikoris (GR) with “Ein Kirschgarten”; Xiao Ke & Zi Han (CN) with “Republic of Dance” as well as Margarete Kiss/Leon Lechner (DE) and Kieron Jina (RZ) with installative formats. Participants from ARK Dresden: Ark for Underestimated Knowledge Quarantine (GB) and Katja Heiser/missingdots and Mustafa Hasan (Safy) a.o.

Plattenbauten – Islands of the present

Can a type of building that is often discredited as ugly be a kind of aesthetic link between experiences in different places of the world and bring people from different parts of the world together? Sarah Methner and Maximilian Hanisch were both born shortly before the fall of the Wall in East Berlin and Dresden, respectively. For their generation, the GDR is on the one hand a distant narrative of parents and relatives and on the other hand an inseparable part of everything they grew up with. So inseparable, in fact, that it was only a few years ago that the two really realized they wanted to realize a theater work about this strange East German identity. The idea of making something seemingly genuinely East German the center of the production developed out of their shared interest in architecture and the desire for a thematically narrow focus: the Plattenbau. In the GDR, one in four people lived in a prefabricated building. And anyone who didn’t live there knew someone from the Plattenbau. For some, they stand for dreariness and social decline. Others defend them and with them their biographies and memories. Especially since the rupture of the Wende era and the devaluation of East German achievements can also be seen in the reception of the apartments. Prefabricated housing was in demand in GDR times and had a positive-sounding name: New Housing Estates. Because of their good infrastructure, they were considered proof of socialist achievement and represented progress and modernity. The ideal cities of large panel construction also had a strong symbolic power: Just as the buildings could be planned on the drawing board, socialist togetherness was also to be realized in all areas of life. Prefabricated housing estates are extremely common because of the simplicity of modular construction. They exist all over the world from Moscow to Paris to Copenhagen. And also in places where you would not expect them from a European perspective, for example in Mexico or Vietnam. In all these places, people have adapted, repurposed and appropriated buildings. And even if only a few settlements have a direct architectural connection to the former GDR, and even if not all of them were built in a modular fashion, the external similarity of the buildings triggered a connection to the East for Methner and Hanisch each time. Could the interchangeability and similarity of the prefabricated buildings be an opportunity to rethink an East German idea of home and identity in a sustainable way? Could the Plattenbau be a gateway to the world in which it is possible to understand history as something common? After all, the slabs look similar, but each apartment has different and unique biographies associated with it. The symbolism of prefabricated buildings is also not universal. The view of them is shaped by various factors, such as the economic performance of the respective country, the respective narratives of governments, private actors, residents and architects, the location of the settlements and their external condition: Marzahn-Hellersdorf, once Europe’s largest prefabricated housing area, is located in Sarah Methner’s hometown of Berlin. Forty years ago, the dream of equality for all people was to be realized here with the help of socialist urban planning. Starting in 1977, 60,000 apartments were built here and gratefully accepted by East Berlin’s population. Since reunification, the image of the district has suffered. Marzahn still fails to attract high earners, cultural workers and academics. They prefer the old buildings in the center or single-family homes on the outskirts. Although the shape and construction of the buildings are similar, prefabricated buildings are perceived completely differently in cities like Shanghai and Hong Kong, where Max Hanisch lived for a long time. They are also not located on the outskirts like the Gorbitz and Prohlis districts in Max’s hometown of Dresden, but directly in the centers. The buildings fit into the narrative of the social rise of the Chinese population, which is characterized by a large migration movement from the countryside to the city. Compared to houses in the countryside, prefabricated buildings stand for better infrastructure and progress – as they once did in the GDR. Methner and Hanisch made a preparatory contribution to the theater work through their research trips and contact with theaters in various countries around the world. In their exchanges with interviewees, both were repeatedly amazed by a kind of productive irritation – whether they were talking to people from Moscow, Hong Kong or Basel: each time they heard familiar stories that were at the same time foreign to them. The prefabricated building became a crystallization point for world politics, family history and the everyday drama of living. The interviewees, in turn, were positively irritated when Methner and Hanisch told them what moved them about the subject.

A Cherry Orchard (AT) By Martin Valdés-Stauber

In Chekhov’s work, nothing happens, but everything happens. From the beginning, the end of The Cherry Orchard and the social decline of the protagonists seem inevitable. Ways out are dismissed. But what actually happens to the Ranevskaya family when the play ends? Director Prodromos Tsinikoris traces the fates of Liouba, Anja, Warja and Gajew and documents not only their loss, but above all where this social and biographical break leads the dearly loved characters. Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard provides a brief excerpt from their lives and paints them as figures already condemned. Who are these characters beyond Chekhov’s text? How does the life of the three women Lyuba, Varia, Anja develop from today’s point of view? What does the future of the cherry orchard look like? Will it be cut down to build vacation apartments? Will these serve as retreats during a pandemic or as places to take a breather for an exhausted (Central European) performance elite? Who spends the lockdown and how? Who owns the city? The discussion of Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard forces a discussion about property and capitalism. Greek artists:inside know all too well what it means to give up one’s cherry orchard: they all know the pressure on the housing market caused by large international investors, changing eviction laws, and private individuals who want to secure their place in the South. Good location, good weather, cheap prices. In order to afford rising rents, many people (in Athens, but also elsewhere in the European south) have to offer their apartments on Airbnb – and thus become price drivers and gentrifiers themselves. The current pandemic only suspends this development for a short time and replaces it with another, crisis-like situation. The normalization of the epidemiological situation will re-establish the state of emergency on the housing market and lead to forced evictions again. In keeping with the focus on “Stadt.Raum.Fluss.”, the new work by Prodromos Tsinikoris, in an interweaving of literary examination and documentary work, deals with the right to the city, the conditions on the labor market, and the fate of those affected.    

Why does a stupid saying hurt us, even though it’s just words? Why do best friends call each other “bitch” without offending each other? Because it is an unintentional or intentional indication that we belong to a group. Insults and vulgarities, as strange as they sound, help us identify with others and at the same time set ourselves apart. Entire societies and cultures are also structured through various forms of disparagement. Research on invective is dedicated to the different phenomena of public disparagement and slighting, e.g. in art and theater, in the legal system, on the internet or in TV shows. At TU Dresden, the Collaborative Research Center “Invectivity” addresses the topic of disparagement in social, political and cultural contexts in the digital age. The final conference after four years of research will take place at HELLERAU in combination with a performative artistic program. HELLERAU invites thematically appropriate artistic performances and installations by Joana Tischkau, Paul Plamper and Monster Truck. For the HELLERAU magazine Joana Tischkau, choreographer of “Playblack”, talks to the “singing cultural anthropologist” Julian Warner, about whom Der Spiegel wrote that his music could be the sound of decolonization. Together they play a quartet online that Joana developed especially for the Mini Playblack Show as part of her research and sent to Julian in the mail. Joana Tischkau (JT): I’ve already shuffled my cards. We’re splitting the cards now. So in our game there are less categories than in a normal quartet. We could think about something else, for example there is the category Race1, but we didn’t arrange them in a hierarchical way. There is no value system. Julian Warner (JW): Let’s go through some examples. Why does Mariah Carey have “Um” as a race? JT: We have a scene in the play about that. Mariah’s mother was white Irish and her father was black African American. She was often asked “What are you?” at the beginning of her career. And she always had to explain her story. People in the U.S. naturally wanted to categorize her – musically and ethnically. She was considered racially ambiguous and was often asked: Is she black2 or white3? Similarly with Rachel Dolezal4, who also has a card in the quartet. On “The Real,” she was asked, “Why do you want to be Black?” And she replies, “Well, I think that sometimes how you feel is more powerful than how you’re born.” JW: That’s the pop cultural promise, after all, that I don’t have to die or be seen as the person I came into the world as. I understand why in the U.S. you can’t just go and say “I can change my race like I can change my gender,” but basically I would want her to. Or do you think that’s naive? JT: No, I totally empathize with her narrative, for example, that she is also a mother and sister of Black children herself and had to take responsibility for them and position herself as a mother to the racism that existed in the country. Nevertheless, one can ask, why do you still have to put this performance on top of it and also put on the costume? Or rather, just put on the costume, but don’t claim to be black! JW: But what is the threat? Is it a threat that she says there is no such thing as being black? JT: Yes, of course. The slight for Black people is that all of these things that Rachel lists in her book as legitimizing what makes her a Black person are fiction or semi-fiction, a caricature of Blackness. Iat’s about hair. It’s about a certain kind of history of suffering. For example, she equates her story of suffering, of being raised by very Christian, strict parents, with Black people suffering through racism. Of course, her character makes it clear that Blackness doesn’t exist, but these “accessories” and the performance she uses are a reality for Black people who have a very emotional relationship to these things. That’s why there’s the debate about cultural appropriation. JW: So you’re saying appropriation is not the problem – go for it because it’s culture! But their claiming to have a Black identity is the dangerous thing, because it robs other people who are actually Black, or who can’t choose what they are, of resources. JT: Right, but how do you deal with the reality of people who can’t just break free of that, like she can? To date, it’s always been assumed that being black socially is not a bonus, not a cultural capital. Rachel Dolezal has shown that being black now has positive connotations that have to be acknowledged as a reality. JW: I would say that being black has probably always been associated with positive things. The history of ethnology, for example, is also the history of a philia for the foreign. JT: I want to come back to the bridging, to this gesture of empathy or universal humanity in some examples. This also relates to the debate about George Floyd. White Germany suddenly manages to bridge the gap after George Floyd was killed and this video was seen. JW: But how is the bridge being built? Black to black and white to white. Like racism is always just anti-black racism. JT: On the one hand, yes, you would say, thank you for finally waking up. And on the other hand, you’re depressed and shocked that it took that. And there you are again with the question, which images manage to create this kind of empathy and bridge-building and this kind of solidarity? Why didn’t all the arson attacks on refugee shelters in the 1990s or the anti-Semitic attacks manage to trigger such a wave of indignation, solidarity and empathy as George Floyd has managed to do now? JW: It seems like only the vulnerable Black body is able to accomplish this empathy and this invocation of universal humanity. Why don’t racist murders in shisha bars accomplish that? On the other hand, when I look at the Black Lives Matter protests, I think I’ve probably never seen so many politicized Black people in this country. JT: It’s almost a Black Awakening. Whereas I’m also afraid of this effect of hyper-identification with Blackness, that here identity politics is not really taken seriously by a lot of Black people and simplistically said: No, you are only allowed to talk about your pain, your experience, your discrimination and nothing else. This expectation that you also have to perform your identity – that’s also the criticism that was brought to me, with the question: Why do you do this? with the question: Why don’t you make art about your experience as a black woman in Germany? Germany? And in no way am I allowed to abstract that experience and say, ok, I’m doing this too, among many other things. JW: We run the risk of confusing the means and the ends of anti-racist reform. Saying we demand the right to represent ourselves creates voice in the discourse. But this essentialism is a strategy. I think art educator Nora Sternfeld is right when she says movements are always strong when they imagine a goal for all. Navigating this irresolvable tension between the particular and the universal is the task of our time5. Glossary

1. Race refers to a social construct for the purpose of talking about the suffering and consequences of racism.
2. Blackness/Blackness is a self-designation and is capitalized to indicate that it is a constructed pattern of attribution and not a “real characteristic” based on the color of one’s skin. Blackness describes a social position affected by racism.
3. whiteness/whiteness Analogously, the political and social construction whiteness/whiteness describes the dominant and privileged position within the power relation of racism, which otherwise often remains unspoken and unnamed.
4. Rachel Dolezal is a U.S. cultural scholar and civil rights activist who self-identified as African American, contrary to her actual heritage.
5. Julian Warner (ed.) After Europe. Contributions to decolonial criticism. Verbrecher Verlag (Apr. 21, 2021).

Leonie Reineke and Moritz Lobeck in conversation about crises, market mechanisms and the vision of unconditional solidarity in the music business. Leonie Reineke (LR): The next edition of the festival TONLAGEN is planned for April 2021. However, we are in a phase in which masses of music events have been and are being cancelled. In this memorable time, is it rather wasted work, or – on the contrary – particularly important to think about the concept of “festival” per se? Moritz Lobeck (ML): For me, many questions arise right now, first and foremost: What can a festival be today at all? Festivals are not part of the humus, the permanent structure of contemporary music life in a city, for example. They are rather a kind of stopover; a waymark that allows us to observe current events for a short period of time in a compressed form and perhaps to identify tendencies – whether aesthetic or cultural-political. For me, several points would be important: I would like to make visible which ensembles and initiatives for contemporary music there are here locally, in Dresden, in Saxony. Until 2009, the event was also called “Dresden Contemporary Music Days”; I deliberately took up this name again and added it as a subtitle to “TONLAGEN”. Based on this “regional” focus, another idea is to focus less on composition commissions and the assembly line production of new pieces, and more on ensembles themselves. I am particularly interested in those groups that – in the sense of a community of practice – are made up of composers, interpreters, sound directors, i.e. various actors who work together on the same thing, but still share the workload. There are a lot of self-organized, very vital, curious and above all diversely positioned young groups. LR: And it is precisely in these small, often grassroots-democratically organized ensembles that the truly “new” music is created. Because an orchestra cannot guarantee the flexibility of rehearsal and communication that a piece requires, which includes special playing techniques or long experimentation in advance. Smaller, free ensembles, on the other hand, have for decades been the nuclei with which composers realize their most personal, exciting and wildest ideas. Orchestral pieces are usually more cautious and conventional; this is simply due to the apparatus. In this respect, it is tremendously important – for the further development of contemporary music itself – to make the survival of these free ensembles possible and to offer them protective spaces so that they are not eaten up by the market. But these shelters don’t exist as long as you can only shimmy from one funded individual project to the next. ML: We would like to discuss this topic in a symposium at TONLAGEN 2021: How can sustainable structures be developed for the independent music scene? How can the young ensembles become viable without having to imitate the large institutions? How can the freelancers work in halfway secure structures so that they can concentrate on their art in the long term? These must be very simple and concrete questions about secure production conditions and income. LR: … especially since, in the worst case, constant project-based work also leads to aesthetic impoverishment – namely when it’s only a matter of making the next project application as attractive as possible and convincing the funders with fancy buzzwords. This would mean that something would be lost twice over: individual livelihoods and artistic impulses in general. In this context, even the Corona short-term grants do not create sustainability. We can see how the current situation is scaring off young people. Many are once again considering whether they should study music at all. Because they see what significance the cultural sector can have for politics. And it is, of course, the small, independent groups that are most likely to perish – those that do not represent the mainstream, but rather something special, something off the beaten track, something that is absolutely necessary in a rich artistic and cultural life. ML: In this respect, this Corona crisis is actually interesting. Because it also reveals another crisis that has been there for a long time: public funding for independent groups is simply underfunded, especially in the area of contemporary music. But how does one solve this problem? Launching a petition or writing another open letter to politicians will probably not be very effective. Because they don’t have any long-term solutions at hand. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to approach the big institutions directly? I have in mind a kind of solidarity-based model that would could be installed within our existing, highly developed and subsidized orchestra system. For example, concert halls and opera houses could make their rooms and workshops available to freelancers and include them in their subscription programs with paid concerts. LR: For this model, however, it seems important to me to demand flat hierarchies or to make sure that the free people are not suddenly indebted to the institutions and have to fulfill a number of conditions. I think that creating a truly unconditional solidarity is not at all easy to realize in our thinking and acting shaped by the capitalist system. For we have long lived in a consciousness according to which artists are also entrepreneurs (and their work is a commodity). Of course, this makes ideas like the one you’ve just expressed a great challenge. ML: That’s why it would be important to make it clear that this is not about a return-on-investment thinking along the lines of: “We’ll support you in realizing your projects and becoming successful entrepreneurs if you meet our conditions”. The freedom of art and creativity must be guaranteed. There are already some promising initiatives for independent music ensembles at permanent venues – for example, at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, HELLERAU has a double-pass project with the soloist ensemble Kaleidoskop and the Hanover State Opera, and the Konzerthaus Berlin wants to open itself up to the independent scene in 2021. But that would have to become more. And we should think more carefully about systematically working on structures that make such collaborations possible. In the 2000s, there was something similar in the form of the “New Music Network,” funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation. Regional and municipal networks worked together for several years to structurally strengthen the new music scene. Mobilizing forces and funds for something like this again would be a very good measure, especially at the present time. TONLAGEN – 30th Dresden Contemporary Music Days 15.04.–02.05.2021

Since 2017, the Sebastian Weber Dance Company in Leipzig has been working with a permanent ensemble, a band, a choreographic assistant, a production manager, a PR crew. The artistic director of the company talks about courage, strategies and quiet hopes. Sebastian Weber, there aren’t that many supra-regional dance companies from Saxony, especially not with their own ensemble. What is important about that? In the beginning, there wasn’t so much the idea of building a new ensemble. I wanted to reinvent my choreographic methods – tap dance, actually. But the collaborative process inspires. We tried out everything. Out of that came a huge push, that’s still the core today. Company and work are one. Like an expedition team: the situation can change, should even change. But the team stands. How do you set up a company strategically? I have wishes and visions for the company, independent of ideas for individual pieces. My lick into the future is 20 percent plan and 80 percent agility. The trick is to have a strong sense, a compass, of what’s good for the company. Then the weather can change rapidly, but we still don’t lose our bearings so easily. We can’t do it without funding. For example, if I want to get a three-year conceptual grant, I have to outline what I plan to do in those years. The questions I have to answer in such applications help me understand my own ideas. It sharpens my focus. What’s the biggest challenge of trying to work long-term? I have to try to acquire multi-year funding to be able to offer prospects to my team and partners. And I have to find allies. So strong houses or festivals that choose us, regionally and internationally. I tell everyone we are looking for partnerships, not jobs. If contemporary dance is a niche, then tap dance is even more so! How can you escape this niche and to where? Tap dance as a label is a curse and a blessing. Some people think it’s cool that we’re doing something new. They think that just as there is New Circus or Nuevo Flamenco, the weaver will do New Tap Dance. Others have no desire for it in principle. It’s also a question of how inclusive the aesthetics of a house, a festival program wants to be. What should the name Sebastian Weber Dance Company stand for? I don’t think about the name. I always have the feeling of being a beginner. Almost an impostor. But we do try to set a high standard for ourselves. To our fitness, our technique, our creativity and our commitment to each other. My dream would be: The company becomes so strong that we don’t have to be afraid that tomorrow everything will be over. We once wrote down our wishes: our own rehearsal center. Wooden floor. A junior company. A tour of Japan … Why not? Abridged version; the full article appeared in tanz magazine, November 2020.

In our “Faces” series, we introduce people who work in front of or behind the scenes to ensure that everything runs smoothly in the building and that our guests feel comfortable. Henriette Roth (HELLERAU) talks to Jakob Schneider. How long have you been working at HELLERAU and what are your responsibilities? In 2016, I was looking for something new after dropping out of my studies. My roommate at the time was training to be an event technology specialist at HELLERAU and took me with him. That’s how I got involved and spent two years helping with stage construction as a stage hand. I had a lot of fun doing that. That’s why I started my apprenticeship as an event technology specialist and finished it in 2019. During the apprenticeship, I got to know all areas such as sound, lighting and stage technology and specialized in “lighting”. Then, fortunately, shortly before I finished my apprenticeship, the position as an event technology specialist at HELLERAU was created and I got it. What does a typical day at HELLERAU look like? Of course, I first say “good morning” to all my colleagues when I arrive. Then I put on my work shoes and off I go. The day is always dictated by the production we are setting up. Usually the companies come with their finished pieces and we have already received the stage plan adapted to HELLERAU from the company technicians. We implement this on site. For this purpose, the trusses are stacked in the hall and hooked into the motors. Then the lamps can be placed. After a function check, the lamps are aligned and possibly provided with color filters. If the company does not bring its own lighting technicians, we then program the piece so that the lamps shine as desired in the appropriate places. Sometimes we have to react with the light to certain actions on stage, but in the set-up rehearsals there is then enough time to rehearse all the sequences well. Can you remember a particular challenge? For “Lyod. The Ice” by Kornél Mundruczó/Proton Theatre from Budapest, as part of the festival “89/19 – Before/After” we set up a revolving stage in a steel frame. This was a real challenge for all stage technicians. But it all worked out well. What do you particularly like about HELLERAU? What’s special about the house are the colleagues and the art. The team here is really great. Even if there are differences of opinion, everything can be clarified quickly in a conversation. And because of the many people with their know-how, there are always great solutions, even to complicated questions. And artistically, I come into contact with topics here that I might not have looked at otherwise, but which I find exciting. I can take something away for myself from almost every piece.

A conversation by Wolfram Sander (HELLERAU) with choreographer Lea Moro and Bettina Weber from Konglomerat e.V. Would you like to introduce yourselves briefly? Lea Moro (LM): I work in the field of choreography and dance. My last work “Alle Augen Staunen/ All Our Eyes Believe” is for young audiences, for children from the age of eight, and I had a lot of fun thinking about the audience in a very mixed way and dealing with how children perceive dance and theater pieces. What kind of audiences:are they? I wondered how we construct the world with all our senses. We focused on different ecosystems: the air, the land, and the water, with the claim that there is not one explanation or attribution for things that is right or wrong, but many. The exciting thing is actually the discovery and the play itself, and that in the process very different individual world views can come about – and yet we all live together on this planet. Bettina Weber (BW): I studied childhood education, but have always done an open workshop in parallel with many other people and finally ended up here at Konglomerat e.V. in Dresden, where we have different trades from low- to high-tech on 800 m2. Here you can do everything: screen printing, sewing, laser cutting, CNC milling, developing photos or working with wood. Through free access to technology, tools, machines and knowledge, people put themselves back in context to processes of creation. How does a plastic bottle, my T-shirt or a great screen print actually come into being? This interweaving of theoretical knowledge and practical action knowledge is totally given here. In addition, as a prototypical place with open working structures, we also deal with overarching questions, such as what the work of the future might look like. The workshops as a tool for urban development. You can go out. You are a doer. You can change your world. We also want to open up a space for people to be able to tell their own story with a theme or a material. For example, we made plastic granules out of a yogurt cup and created a new product out of it: a clothespin. And now we are no longer telling the story of garbage, but of a resource and its transformation. In terms of material flows, questions then arise: Who produces this material? Where does it come from, how is it used, and where does it go from there? Instead of just picking out small fragments of processes, we should try to understand the complexity behind them again. The path from the first playful search and trial and error to the finalization of a stage work and the premiere, which is often created under time pressure, also describes quite a transformation process. How do development and work relate to each other? LM: In dance and theater, it’s not so easy, because what is created has the status of a “final product,” and I personally find it exciting to say: we have created something unfinished. Bettina has just described how space can change society. In relation to the theater space, complexity for me means how we can succeed in asking questions of each other and also in speaking and sharing experiences. Otherwise, a dullness develops. We recently had performances with school classes in Geneva. As soon as it started, the teachers kept saying “Shh, shh!”. They were afraid that their students would not behave well. That’s actually a pity, because it’s precisely the “going along” that’s great. You’re excited and don’t know what’s coming. How do we manage to come together again in wonder, amazement and questioning? I realize with myself that it is not always easy to really ask questions. BW: I always talk about future spaces or so-called future sanctuaries. We really need real spaces where we can experiment with the future. These are special sanctuaries and we realize that we have to reclaim and reappropriate them more and more. To have a space where you are allowed to ask questions. To have a space in which one is also allowed to simply fail. That’s the only way to find out what the future is and what it feels like. Have you ever seen a dancer with three-meter-long blue tentacles, spun a spider web in your room with your feet, virtually counted viruses, or heard of fungal spores or orthoceras? No, then follow the Instagram account @alloureyesbelieve. Here you can expect wondrous information and illustrations, tricky quiz questions and previously secret insights into the creation process.  

“Every time I think I’ve sorted out my life, capitalism collapses.” Juliet Let’s dive into social media weariness, the cause of our tired eyes. What are the techniques of resignation that we are exposed to? The blissful ignorance after browsing an entire ecosystem of narratives is not surprising. Culture is a pendulum, and the pendulum is swaying. The organized optimism, hardcoded in online advertisements and other forms of algorithmic advice, turned out to be merely producing anxiety. “What can’t be cured, must be endured.” (Caroline Cowles Richards) The suffering, sorrow and misery is getting tagged and filtered by our own self-censorship. We’ve been captured and feel frozen. What we receive is the anger of the Online Other. The growing imbalance of digital enchantment is neither causing a revolution or revolt, nor does it fade out. Welcome to the Great Stagnation. We, the Online Billions, stuck on the platform. Don’t you wonder how we ever get here? The early promise of the platform was an easy one: everyone benefits, both producers, customers and founders. No winners or losers, everyone will be included and plays along. The robust software platform as Kulturideal has long replaced the homepage, blog and website and the related web design studio as a start-up model. We long to harness value instead of losing ourselves in the messiness of the rhizomatic network. Why a chaotic supply of different apps and websites if we can have one where all friends, family, neighbours, comrades and friends as ‘users’ are gathered? The unified platform dream has further consolidated the ‘venture capital’ mode of operation of hypergrowth in the shortest amount of time, aimed at a ‘unicorn’ market domination and eventually monopoly position. While only very few will become billionaire, the lottery aspect of the ruthless Darwinist strategy still attracts many. It’s hegemonic, as they say. Elon Musk’s appeal has not yet fainted. The celebrity obsession is such that the pop critique of capitalism will not really question the right to become a billionaire. We all want to run our own platform—regardless what we are longing for. Once we’re locked-in, the path to infinity has been blocked. Instead, we’re caught in a Truman Show-like repetition of the perpetual now, toiling around in the micro-mess of online others that try to do their best, masking their failures and despair—like everyone else. Franco Berardi observes the mental state of today’s students: “I see them from my window, he writes, “lonely, watching the screens of their smartphones, nervously rushing to classes, sadly going back to the expensive rooms that their families are renting for them. I feel their gloom, I feel the aggressiveness latent in their depression.” In the social media era the Oblomov position of being incapable of making important decisions or undertaking significant action is no longer an option—in particular for those that cannot economically afford to get stuck within the abyss. We experience the sadness of online existentialism minus the absurdity. If only ‘interpassivity’ was ever really implemented in code (instead of being yet another Austrian idea), we would indulge in a permanent state of indolent apathy. Instead there’s nothing passive about human-machine interactions. Being on social, the Zen status of detachment is an ontological impossibility. We’re never really lurking—our presence is always noted—and we can therefor never truly enjoy the secretive voyeur status. Interaction is our tragic existence. Instead, we’re constantly asked to upgrade, fill in forms and rank our taxi drivers. Real existing socialism never seemed to end. It was then, and still is, virtually impossible to even imagine a life beyond the communist platform, in this age to live a life without Amazon, Facebook and Google. How can redesign the ‘social’ in such a way that it will become impossible—even unthinkable—for algorithms, trolls and bots that try to permanent disrupt our thinking and behaviour to occur? We cannot spend all time and energy to reinvent the social without taking freedom into account. Not the ‘liberty’ as defined by right-wing libertarians but freedom as Hannah Ahrendt and Isaac Berlin speak about. This is not just freedom from addictive and manipulative software. Can we rethink AI and algorithms in such a way that they become pets or toys, tools that work for us, instead of large, invisible, oppressive systems that try to deceive and ‘educate’ us? Technological freedom means the ability to master our tools, let them work for us, but also to put them aside, turn them off and forget about it all. In short, we long for tools that assist us, instead of colonizing our inner life behind our backs. We need to re-invent the techno-social in a radical manner, here, right now, in Dresden, in Europe. Geert Lovink is the founding director of the Institute of network cultures (INC) and, together with Pit Schultz, with whom he initiated the “Hybrid Workspace” project for Documenta X, is considered the founder of network criticism. His current book “Sad by Design: On Platform Nihilism” was published in 2019.

A project by Quarantine (GB), Katja Heiser (DE) and Mustafa Hasan (SY/DE) In the framework of the cooperation Moving Borders of seven European partners For the European project “Moving Borders” seven European production houses, festivals and public institutions in Porto, Athens, Strasbourg, Dresden, Mülheim an der Ruhr, Warsaw and Utrecht are working together over two years. Moving Borders is a model project of international cooperation: the content and concept of the project was developed by the partners, while the British performance group Quarantine was invited to develop a concept for all the cities, which will be implemented locally and in exchange with each other. In the seven partner cities, seven different editions of a community art project will be created – adapted to the very different cultural, demographic and historical circumstances on site and together with local artists, civil society actors and citizens. The project explores the theme of “borders” and their social, political, cultural, economic and ecological manifestations in our contemporary European societies. At a time when nationalist, xenophobic and other discriminatory currents are again experiencing a dangerous upswing in Europe and economic inequality is growing, “Moving Borders” examines the phenomenon of borders that we encounter in everyday life: as social and cultural divisions, but also as moving borders of a progressive society that is constantly reforming itself.

An Ark for Every City

The British performance group Quarantine, founded in 1998, created the artistic concept ARK. Local artists invite citizens and social communities to create an ark in public space in a joint creative process lasting several months. This can take on very different creative or conceptual forms. In any case, during and after its completion, the ark will be a place for encounters, participation, discourse and performance, and thus a symbol for a world that endures, promotes and welcomes diversity. For local elaboration, each partner city is addressing questions such as: Where are borders in our city? What are the nature of these boundaries – geographic, architectural, social, cultural, etc.? Which communities do we want to involve and bring together? In what place can the Ark be located? Which themes play a role on the Ark? The partners in the various European cities have developed very different project ideas: In Porto, a temporary school is being built; in Athens, a circus for nomadic life is being developed in a working-class neighborhood with clubs and a queer scene; in Utrecht, a mobile ark is moving through all parts of the city, and much more.

ARK Dresden: Ark for underrated knowledge

The Ark in Dresden will be located on the banks of the Elbe, a place shared and used by all Dresden:ers. We want to involve different Dresden communities, e.g. talk to people who still grew up, learned, worked and started families in the GDR and whose knowledge and experience was to a large extent no longer in demand after the Wende. This experience is also shared by people who have only arrived in Dresden in recent years, who had to leave their homeland due to war, terror, poverty or other existential threats, and who left behind not only many people and things, but also knowledge and experience that often do not count here. We want to collect this knowledge and these experiences and make them visible so that they do not get lost. And perhaps a new and common vision for the future can emerge precisely from this? What do we want to bring to safety, to take with us from the old life and to keep? What is to be newly created on the ark? The ark for underestimated knowledge will be filled with the help of interested citizens and will be presented at the festival “Stadt.Raum.Fluss. Contemporary Perspectives on the City” festival from June 4-6, 2021. On the banks of the Elbe between Johannstadt and Neustadt, around the Johanna” ferry dock, a public place for encounters and exchange of experiences, for workshops and conversations will be created. Performative interventions will take place on the ferryboat Johanna for an interested audience and random passengers. For this we are looking for people who want to share their experiences and knowledge with us, who want to fill the ark with knowledge or who are interested in helping to build the ark. Feel free to contact us at: hellerau@movingborders.org

The inventors of the ARK project: Quarantine about Quarantine.

Our process is dialogue-based. We talk to people and discover who they are and what their story is, what their beliefs are, how they see the world … We try to work where there is room for different experiences, abilities, intelligences and expressions to coexist. We believe that in order to make real social progress, we need to find new ways to reframe our ideas of democracy, of who gets to speak and make decisions, and of how to bring together people with opposing experiences and beliefs. From the beginning, Quarantine’s work has sought to bring together people who don’t normally meet, to acknowledge differences and connections, to engage with them, and to imagine how we might live together, how we might move forward. The artists:group Quarantine was founded in 1998 by directors Richard Gregory and Renny O’Shea and designer Simon Banham in Manchester, UK. They work worldwide in theater, performance and public intervention.

Richard Gregory, artistic director of Quarantine*

For us, the Ark is the image of a space where we can gather to discuss the question of what to save. But it is also, of course, a concept that provokes. Who decides what boundaries should be drawn? Who decides who is let through, who can stay? Who decides who or what we should save? Who is this “we?” I like being in situations where different kinds of intelligence are brought to bear and are equal. I am very uncomfortable when a particular language that expresses so-called knowledge dominates – a very Western power play where access to a particular vocabulary, buys power. It is a massive problem that supposedly politically progressive art usually only appeals to people who look and sound like the people who created it. For us and other British artists, it is absolutely essential to create and maintain relationships with Europe. I don’t want to be trapped on an island with rigid borders, living in an imaginary version of its own past. I want to welcome people and continue to be able to be part of a big conversation that allows me to work as an artist across Europe and around the world. I want to help find ways for a generation younger than me to also enjoy this experience, this privilege. * Excerpts from an interview with Paula Oevermann, Project Coordination Moving Borders in HELLERAU

It means all the happiness in the world to him, he wants to tackle it, he wants to dare dance with his company, with the audience and actually with the whole city, said Jacopo Godani when he presented his concepts and visions for the newly founded Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company in HELLERAU in October 2015 as artistic director, chief choreographer and managing director. Because every thing has its time, smart people recognize the signs of the times, William Forsythe had said goodbye after ten years with his company. A company for contemporary dance in Frankfurt and Dresden was to continue to exist, with funding from both cities and the federal states. Godani’s commitment was intended as a change of aesthetic direction. It is remarkable how he was able to implement his own concept despite initial resistance. This is how this company goes its way, Godani brings in his rich experience as a choreographer, and also reflects on his studies in the visual arts. Soon it becomes noticeable what he meant with regard to the demands on the dancers: “Strong technique – open minds”. Soon there are projects with the Dresden Palucca University of Dance, graduates dance in the company, like David Leonidas Thiel from the beginning. His retrospect today: “Our goal was to raise clarity, precision of movement language to a higher level as efficiently as possible.” He appreciates the detailed work while being physically and intellectually challenging. Godani sees it similarly: “We’re here,” he said soon after the start, “we’ve invented ourselves.” But he does not want to stop incorporating other art movements, always allowing himself to be questioned. He is increasingly broadening his artistic horizons, even as he puts creations by Forsythe in a new light with the young troupe. He engages Rafael Bonachela of the Sidney Dance Company, an important choreographer. There are choreographies with live music, in collaboration with Frankfurt’s Ensemble Modern. In 2017, when second funding was secured for the company’s next three years, audience numbers increased by 45 percent. Interest outside Germany is growing, and with the name of the company, the name of Dresden is carried into the world of dance. Interest is aroused in Godani’s concepts, which are about the question of the correspondences of art to social changes. And in 2019, it was clear to Dresden’s mayor of culture Annekatrin Klepsch that the company would continue the history of modern dance in Dresden-Hellerau, also as a cultural ambassador for the state capital. If funding is now secured for the third round until 2023, there is once again reason for her to be pleased, “because interesting artistic signatures for contemporary dance can be perpetuated, making collaborations in the city and the expansion of participatory projects with the local citizenry possible.” This could also mean – in keeping with the times – an online workshop for primary school teachers: Movement and dance in mathematics lessons. In addition, Jacopo Godani and the company will open up further horizons in the dialogue with other arts. And this could have started so grandiose with the first premiere of this third round. It was possible to win the renowned choreographer Marco Goecke for a world premiere with the beautiful title “Good Old Moone” in Dresden: “I have never been to Dresden before! It is a great pleasure for me to work with such a historically significant and forward-looking company,” Goecke said during the work. Godani is convinced “that he will be able to exploit the Company’s potential through his specific, dance background and choreographic originality.” A renewed encounter with William Forsythe’s masterpiece “Quintet” at HELLERAU had been looked forward to, as well as a world premiere by Jacopo Godani. “Zeitgeist Tanz” – the title of this evening – premiere now postponed to May 2021. Originally, a joint production with Schauspiel Frankfurt under the title “10 Odd Emotions” was planned for May, which was also to come to Dresden. New dates for this first-time collaboration can hopefully be announced soon. Godani sees the collaboration as a challenge for dancers and actors: “Never before have we done such a cooperation. Moreover, it is interesting for us to expand our horizons also spatially by presenting ourselves on a new stage. I would like to pursue this cross-genre work to offer the dancers multifaceted experiences.” Dancer Roberta Inghilterra, who trained at the Accademia Teatro alla Scala in Milan and has only been a member of the company since 2018, also appreciates such experiences. She feels welcome and has the chance to “show new values in the dance world.” The work, she says, allows her to “perceive more than what the eye is used to seeing at first glance.” Just as they set out for new shores with the Frankfurt Schauspiel, so too in Dresden in a world premiere in collaboration with the Ensemble Modern as part of the Dresden Music Festival. Mutual enrichment of the arts was also what attracted Armin Frauenschuh after his experiences as a dancer, when he accepted the position as production manager, scheduler and tour manager. He is well aware of the company’s high international standing based on numerous inquiries from tour organizers and festivals. Of course, this start into the third round of the Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company is not free of problems within the framework of current restrictions. But what strength can be discovered when these challenges are accepted. The work does not stop. Dance goes on, overcomes distances, creates closeness despite great distance. This is also what the constantly expanding spectrum of the Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company stands for. By Boris Gruhl

For centuries, many people have migrated to other countries to work and earn money. Today, this global labor migration is one of the most complex and at the same time invisible phenomena of our society. In some states or cities, for example in Singapore or Dubai, migrant workers now make up the vast majority of the population, but with very limited rights and sometimes precarious living conditions. Migrant workers also fill important gaps in Germany – they work in home care, in industry, in the construction sector. Dresden-based Taiwanese choreographer Fang Yun Lo and her colleagues – Ho Chi Minh City-based choreographer Ngo Thanh Phuong and Berlin-based Taiwanese set designer Cheng Ting Chen – have interviewed more than 100 affected people in Germany and Taiwan on this topic since 2018, mostly through spontaneous encounters at the workplace, in stores, snack bars and stores. They have focused on the stories of Vietnamese immigrants. immigrants – also because their story mirrors the German history of division and reunification in a very special way. What promises and desires lead young people from Vietnam and other countries of the “global south” into these dependencies? How do they differ from the guest and contract workers of the 1980s? How do these conditions manifest themselves for those affected in each case and what does this tell us about our societies? “Home Away From Home” weaves a touching, polyphonic journey through the theater and the world from all these memories. Six performers from Germany and Taiwan, whom the audience meets at various stations, tell their stories of global migration and intercultural reality, but at the same time also report on the complex history of a divided German state and the xenophobia in East Asian industrialized countries such as Taiwan, which is still little reflected today. Fang Yun Lo (Dresden/Essen/Taichung), Artistic Director I have often started theater projects with my own experiences – and this time is no exception. The difference is that this project is not about me, but about “us”. Vietnamese immigrants in Germany and Taiwan are at the center of the project, they stand as a symbol for the immigrants and emigrants of this world. It is a great task for me to enter another culture and to come into contact with the people. Each of the more than 100 interviews I have conducted was not just a “normal” interview to collect material – it was always a moving and beautiful experience to dive into a private memory together. This special, empathetic moment is also what we want to share with the audience:inside on stage. Ultimately, we are not concerned with Vietnamese or migrants, but with people. Cheng Ting Chen (Taipei/Berlin), stage design In 2020, I have worked in theater for 15 years and lived in Germany for 10 years. In the course of this staging process, I have constantly rediscovered my identity in the world and myself. But I was also able to learn a lot about the history and inevitability of migration, about flight, beginnings and the return of different people. The stage installation I am creating for the piece draws on these experiences: How can the senses and thinking in theater be opened through spaces and objects so that we can better understand others and ourselves? Ngô Thanh Phương (Ho Chi Minh City), co-director As a Vietnamese artist, I am concerned in this theater project with the way of thinking of old as well as young Vietnamese people, in different circumstances, in different places. I hope this production will teach us Vietnamese people the power of contemporary art by confidently bringing our reality to a wide audience through our bodies and voices. But it is also a journey from the past to the present, from Vietnam to Taiwan and from Vietnam to Germany. Working on this project was and is really a big, moving journey for me.

The artist duo Æ with Akila Subiyakto (ID) and Elias Graversen (BO/DK) formed in fall 2019. During their HELLERAU residency in November 2020 they worked on their first album. They spoke with Eleanor Müller and Janne Arp (HELLERAU) about their creative process and the residency. What inspired you guys to start the band? Elias (EG): We met through my friend who studied with Akila. At first we wrote only one song: “blind enough”. Then came the idea to make an EP*. Since I’ve been studying in Berlin, I’ve played in a lot of bands. I love the live aspect of music. But at some point I also wanted to make music as a duo and in a different style. There’s a different sense of freedom in that. Akila (AS): For me it’s the opposite, because I used to work alone. I found it easier most of the time, and I thought that no one could understand my ideas. But because of that, you become very perfectionistic, and when someone criticized my music, I often felt like I was being personally attacked. It was very hard for me to distance myself from my work. That’s what I learned when I made music with Elias, because he knows how to compromise. Your songs are about postcolonialism, love and sexuality. How do you connect these themes? AS: I’m from Indonesia and I’ve been living in Germany for four years. The idea of love I grew up with in Indonesia and the idea of love here in Europe are different. In Indonesian culture, we always put “white people” above us. I was not aware of that. I felt like I was in a movie, when I went out with European men or women, somehow always put them above me. This distorted perception is a result of postcolonialism. But love has to be equal. EG: My mother is Danish and my father is from Bolivia, and when you grow up you gradually become aware of these differences. There’s this huge billboard with a tall blonde model in the middle of La Paz in Bolivia, where almost nobody looks like that. And then you idolize that way of looking, and you don’t manage to see yourself anymore. AS: We also included part of the Indonesian president’s independence speech about freedom in our song. We want to make it audible that we are liberated from colonialism and oppression, but we are still influenced by it. I know now that I am not Indonesian, not European, I am just Akila. I think it’s good not to define myself by anything. Are your themes also recognizable in your musical style? EG: We originally started with crossover: R&B with some trap elements in some of our tracks. In HELLERAU we got more into indie and also some techno. I was very new to this kind of music, and I personally never thought I would ever sing over a trap beat. I think the cool thing about it all is that we’re singing about relatively unusual things that you don’t hear too often. AS: The way Elias writes is really poetic. If you listen to pop music nowadays, the artists:inside always sing about love, sex and money. Our musical direction is like that too, but the lyrics are the exact opposite. EG: It’s the contrast! You have this beat and two softies singing.

In 1979 The Buggles released their song “Video killed the Radio Star”. The video for this song was the first video on MTV – aired on August 01, 1981 at 00:01. On February 27, 2000 at 02:57, the video again achieved cult status: it was the millionth video broadcast on MTV. Are these numbers still interesting today and: Where is actually this MTV? Could you write songs like “TikTok killed the Video Star” today? Or “Instagram eats SPEX”? It might be interesting to see how MTV would have reacted to this C19 virus, which not only makes life difficult for the free, alternative and independent music scene and clubs, but also their survival. At least the MTV generation reacted well: Katja Lucker not only heads the Musicboard Berlin, she was also one of the first to draw attention to the foreseeable problems of the club scene in the spring of 2020 – and to act: As co-initiator and on the jury advisory board of the United We Stream initiative, she was instrumental in one of the most groundbreaking and successful projects, in which, among other things, Arte Concert developed United We Stream from a fundraising campaign for Berlin clubs – a global cultural platform and streaming initiative in the digital space. From Dresden, the club objekt klein a got one of the first coveted slots and, with the newly founded KLUBNETZ Dresden, was soon one of the motors that ensured the audibility and visibility of the club scene, which had been condemned to silence, in digital as well as political space. In April 2020, together with Katja Lucker and Maureen Noe, we developed the idea of transforming the previous “foreign residencies” of Musicboard Berlin, which allowed Berlin bands to travel to Asia, Africa or America, into “domestic residencies”: Instead of Detroit, Havana or Los Angeles, the residency locations were suddenly called: HELLERAU, Schloss Bröllin in Meck-Pomm or Sternhagen Gut by Gudrun Gut. In HELLERAU numerous new songs were created in this way of the bands Æ and in cooperation with CTM Berlin a music video project by Born in Flamez, which will be presented at Bandstand 2021. Bandstand 2021 wants to enable a previously successful format in currently difficult circumstances with the new format #BandstandMusikvideo. In addition, specially produced video projects and other events, including in cooperation with KLUBNETZ Dresden, discussions on the current situation and perspectives of the music and club scene will be made audible and visible. will be made audible and visible. And maybe there will be a song with the title: “Video saved the Club Culture”! From Rosa Müller and Moritz Lobeck (HELLERAU)

“Antje Pfundtner in Gesellschaft” (APiG) under the artistic direction of Hamburg choreographer Antje Pfundtner was last seen at HELLERAU in February 2020 with “Alles auf Anfang”. In addition to their stage works, APiG develops formats of artistic sharing. Since 2018, the three-year dialogue platform “Tischgesellschaften” has served as a regular exchange with other artists and is made possible by the funding TANZPAKT Stadt-Land-Bund. In January 2021, the “Tischgesellschaft” “Back again!” will take place at HELLERAU on the topic of revival and sustainable work as a public format. André Schallenberg, Programme Director Theatre/Dance at HELLERAU spoke with Antje Pfundtner (AP) and Anne Kersting (AK). How did the idea for the “Tischgesellschaften” come about? AK: We have initiated similar formats before, for example the “Memory Exchange”, but they were always linked to certain stage projects in order to make them financially possible at all. We were moved by the questions of how we can research beyond concrete productions: To what extent are artists not only producers and how can we ourselves become actors in all the other areas? AP: For me personally, the “table societies” arise from a question that I have been asking myself for 20 years, since the beginning of my artistic work: What do artists do who have reached the “structural end of their career”, who are structurally limited by the exhaustion of all funding possibilities? Do they stagnate, fall behind, transform themselves into another field? These questions seemed less threatening to me if they were shared. With this, I also wanted to set an impulse to become active as an artist myself, to formulate themes differently, to share funds differently and thus to approach institutions and our audiences at eye level. We hope that this will lead to a sustainable self-empowerment of the scene – through the development of concrete approaches for a cross-project financing of dance art, but also through the bundling of energies and resources. We trust that in the end something will be found that does not lead to a definition or a framework of thought, but to an openness that stimulates. How do you choose the topics for the “table companies”? AP: We have two basic questions: how do you share ideas and how do you share money? Sharing ideas is often linked to questions of copyright, authorship – very sensitive points, not only in the arts. And sharing money is of course sensitive per se. I think it’s very good and important that these are such sensitive issues. In the context of this, we have gathered three other topics: the question of re-da, i.e. re-performance, with which we will also come to Dresden. Why is art often not “sustainable” in its production, since many works disappear again after their first performances? The second question concerns money and its distribution. That is also a question of power. We are currently setting up our own fund as an experiment, into which artists pay. It is meant as an instrument to be able to play through the financing of art and its mechanisms. The third question concerns the audience: Audiences keep us alive. How do we work with them and for them? What partnerships do we enter into with them? Do you also see this as a political work? AK: Godard put it perfectly: he doesn’t make films about politics, but political films. So it’s about working and doing – communicating a practice. AP: We have a need for broad communication and negotiation. The confrontation, the utterance in itself is also a political act. I have never understood why people say that dance is apolitical. It is first and foremost a form of expression that makes itself public and to which you have to relate. There are also colleagues who separate their artistic work from their political work. I find that very interesting because that has always been one thing for me. The “table societies” follow a larger idea of artistic work. How would you describe it? AK: It’s about making yourself and your artistic practice available as a medium. The “table societies” make this dialogue possible. They offer a discursive space for action as a public platform. Unlike the default: you get money, so you perform something publicly. But that has nothing to do with publication per se, but with exploitation. AP: I’ve been asked before, “What do you actually do during the day?” It is unimaginable for many people what kind of work lies behind artistic activity, what research and searching movements. Everything that comes before and after a play is also our work, the stage production is only one part of it. And in the best case, it’s just “dealing” with social issues. Contemporary dance has opened up extremely widely in recent decades, both aesthetically and formally. In doing so, it has also managed to strongly influence many other art forms and society. We are moving in this environment. For me, contemporary dance is the most exciting art form. Tip! 22. – 24.01. Tischgesellschaft: “Back again!” Talk and film documentary “Vertanzt” | Antje Pfundtner in Gesellschaft (DE)  

Classic question. Have you been interested in the connection between colour and interpersonal relationships for some time or how did you come to this topic? I have always been interested in colour in relation to listening to and perceiving music and the proprioception of my body movement, which creates patterns of undulating changing colours and textures. I later discovered this perception to be called synaesthesia. Even though I was not directly aware that colour had an emotional effect on me, I came to realise it represented a state of homeostasis – I was relaxed enough to experience my body.  What makes Kandinsky’s theory of colour different from others? What grabbed my attention about Kandinsky was his inquiry into a non-secular spiritual experience that was created by an external artefact composed of smaller objects that are in a sort of composed harmony. This led me to read some of his books. In his books Concerning the Spiritual in Art and Point and Line to Plane, in great detail, he lays out a system in which he describes how placing different objects, that have different shapes and colours beside each other can change the viewer’s internal emotional experience. As a choreographer, these books resonated with me as choreography is initially composing a space temporally, that is filled with performers that are creating evolving forms in relationship with the space of the stage and others in that space.  When I was reading these books, I felt as if I was reading a type of choreographic handbook. Spinner Light was to be premiered in April in HELLERAU. Unfortunately you had to interrupt rehearsals because of Corona, and now the premiere in December has to be cancelled, so you decided to show a film. How did the situation influence your further rehearsals and the play? Honestly, I think it has helped it has given me more limitation. My feeling before the interruption of Corona was that there were too many possibilities even though the work does aim to reach an experience of internal harmony that Ross Mckim calls the numinous in his book In the Shadow of the Dancing Shamen. Dramaturgically speaking there were far more possibilities than limitations on how to reach that experience. Now because of the Hygiene rules, Romy Rexheuser, the costume and stage designer, came up with a stage design that allows the maximum amount of public with four dancers in the Nancy Spero room, which has created limitations. I feel these limitations have helped me imagine how to go forward and how to use what we created in the one week that we worked from our own homes in lockdown. Did you learn something about colours and people that impressed you the most? I feel like I clarified something that possibly has been at play in my sensory world for a while, that being the impact of the colour blue. When talking with one of the dancers in the time of the lockdown yellow was very present in her life and she was considering why I found this a very satisfying and curious experience. What exactly can the audience* expect when they watch Spinner Light? An energetic work that interweaves and combines the stories of four individual’s exploration and expressions of intricate dance movement and compositional rhythms that is set in an atmospheric environment that slips between the actual space and another. Which colour do you like to be surrounded by most? I like to be surrounded by a mixture of colours and textures; however, I am drawn more towards richer and darker themes contrasted with a few sparks of vivid turquoises and pinks. Sat 19.12. 8 pm Filmpremiere Spinner Light Charles Washington/Pinkmetalpetal Productions (GB/DE)

Voices of artists during the Corona lockdown in spring 2020 The crisis triggered by COVID-19 is hitting artists worldwide hard and directly, both artistically and economically. Performances were cancelled, the borders were closed, there was no applause and no prospect of an early return to the old normality. Digital space quickly developed as a new platform for exchange, communication, presentation, and made it possible to make individual situations visible and share them on a larger scale. The alliance of international production houses invited 35 international artists* to share statements from their individual and artistic situation during the lockdown, thereby gaining insights from all over the world. Here you can find a selection of the VOICES Marta Keil, Grzegorz Reske/ResKeil (Warsaw) “Strangely enough, this sudden (re)materialization of borders also happens at the very moment when we start the EU project “Moving Borders”. This project, which was developed almost two years ago as an artistic mapping of material and immaterial borders, separations and ruptures in urban and social textures, suddenly took on completely new dimensions. Xiao Ke x Zi Han (Shanghai) “The understanding of distance has changed and the city we live in seems more distant. The epidemic has transformed the real world into an empty city where people live in isolated spaces and throw personal expressions into virtual worlds. Our identity is being refreshed and is at the same time an eternal theme, which is now particularly sensitive and important. We are still spending more time at home, avoiding firstly the possibility of infection and secondly too much persecution”. Monika Gintersdorfer and Knut Klaßen/Gintersdorfer/Klaßen (Berlin) “What happened then: Cancellation of all following performance data, corona exit restriction and travel stop. The consequences: Residence permits cannot be extended in time, they expire just like the already booked flights to the performances. Just poof: some of us are paperless and unemployed at the same time since April. Where are the two transnational groups now that we have been building up for years? A return to a local existence is a nightmare for us, we want to continue the transnational work in order to counter a Eurocentric view of the world and culture with something polyphonic. Dóra Büki/Proton Theatre (Budapest) “The keyword is: uncertainty. As an independent company without state support, we know this word well. In the current situation, uncertainty has reached a completely new level: a time with almost only questions and hardly any answers.” Trinidad Gonzáles (Santiago de Chile) “A few months ago we were living our revolution, and the streets of my neighborhood were crowded with people all the time. We were angry, but happy. Something very important was going on, and we had the future of our country in our hands. We danced a lot. We shared food and wine. The streets were very lively. Now we are in the opposite scenario.” Eisa Jocson (Manila) “To continue to live, to continue to produce despite the conditions is an act of resistance. Russ Ligtas (Manila) “Work was refuge, liberation and rest.” All statements can be found at www.produktionshaeuser.de/voices  

A conversation about solidarity and the future of criticism on the occasion of the Academy for Contemporary Theater Journalism From November 2019 to March 2020, the first Academy for Contemporary Theater Journalism took place on the initiative of the Alliance of International Production Houses. In Essen, Dresden and Hamburg, 20 critics* from all over Germany explored the possibilities and demands of journalism that does justice to the diverse productions and production methods of contemporary theater forms. Here, the organizers Esther Boldt (EB) and Philipp Schulte (PS) talk to two participants, the freelance author Theresa Luise Gindlstrasser (TLG) and the taz editor Jan-Paul Koopmann (JPK), about their experiences. EB: Why did you apply to participate in the academy? JPK: I never really have the opportunity to exchange texts with colleagues outside of a concrete assignment that are not created in a current production flow. Thinking and discussing about fundamental issues is simply not part of my everyday work. EB: How have you perceived the academy so far, have your expectations been met? TLG: I find the selection of participants very coherent, compliments to the jury. Very different people come together here, from different age groups and from different media – like television, radio or newspapers. The participants also hold various positions there, for example as editors, volunteers or freelancers. This is balanced on the one hand and diverse on the other – so we don’t run out of topics. JPK: And yet we always manage to find ourselves on the same level. The common denominator is our interest in contemporary forms, in contemporary theater. PS: Theater criticism, like writing in general, is a solitary activity. Conversations, moments of exchange are perhaps unusual beyond a certain media structure or hierarchy. Can one say so? TGL: Yes, there is a big difference between writing on the one hand and art, theater, on the other hand, where conversation, exchange and work-in-progress are always part of the work. The concentrated reviews of our texts without production pressure that we had at the academy also distinguish them from the Theatertreffen blog, for example. EB: There is certainly an exchange within editorial offices: at best, a discussion about the meaning and purpose of a text is held and one also receives feedback from the supervising editor. JPK: Yes, but this is a completely different level. In an editorial conference, we don’t talk about fundamental issues. In the Academy, on the other hand, a space is opened up where we can talk about key issues: What actually is contemporary theater, what forms are there, what topics are negotiated? And what does it mean to write about theater? Such debates cannot be held in an editorial conference. When can they be? EB: Is there a moment in the academy that you remember especially, that you perceived as special? JKP: For me the density was special, in which we worked, in which everyone was always present. You sit in the theater until late in the evening, and at breakfast the discussion already continues, not only over days, but also over several modules. TGL: I can think of two moments: From Essen, I remember a conversation about where the corrective sits. I believe that this question is one of the most pressing of our time – not only in terms of cultural criticism, but also very specifically politically in our democracy. And secondly, Lisa Lucassen of She She Pop, as an invited expert in Dresden, said: “What, you think that criticism is a dialogue? I have never heard that before!” I found this clash of ideas interesting! PS: Do you see a concrete benefit of the academy beyond the idealistic value? TLG: I think that a solidarization has taken place or an awareness of it has been awakened. If I want what I do to be perceived as an offer for dialogue, then perhaps I have to do more for it. EB: What do you wish for the future of theater journalism? JPK: I would like to read more about people who think about culture and who conduct a theater discourse in our newspaper without being trained journalists. So that there are other perspectives, other types of audience participating in the public discourse, besides the trained critics, who are still needed. TLG: There is so much ego, so much Amazon, so many star ratings. If I could make a wish, it would be that criticism would slow down. Not necessarily in terms of production processes, but in terms of manners and judgements. Then criticism would be something old-fashioned in the best sense, slow, groping, something that remains critical not only of the object but also of itself. Esther Boldt works as an author, dance and theater critic for nachtkritik.de, Theater heute and the taz, among others, as well as for Hessischer Rundfunk. Dr. Philipp Schulte is professor for performance theory at the Norwegian Theater Academy and managing director of the Hessian Theater Academy. The theater scholar publishes on contemporary theater forms and teaches at universities in Germany and abroad. Theresa Luise Gindlstrasser, born in 1989, lives in Vienna. She works as a freelance author and critic for nachtkritik.de, Falter, Wiener Zeitung and others. Jan-Paul Koopmann, born 1982, works as an editor for the taz in Bremen and writes freely for nachtkritik.de and other media about culture and violence.

Since when do you work in HELLERAU and what are your tasks? Since 2009 I have been responsible for the daily cleaning at the Festspielhaus Hellerau, i.e. sanitary facilities, floors, artists’ dressing rooms, dance floors, surfaces, ventilation, heating and much more. Every day is different. When I arrive early, I first look at the schedule to see what’s on that day. For example, when artists* rehearse in the morning, I have to organize my schedule so that the room is ready at the beginning of the rehearsal. Everything else must be subordinate. I keep my own cleaning book to keep track of everything. If the guest is satisfied, you have done everything right. It is important that I pay attention to the different materials in the house, for example the historical floor tiles, the stone stairs or the railings. These are not cleaned to make them shine, but to keep the historical appearance. How did you come to HELLERAU? I was assigned the Festspielhaus Hellerau by my former company Piepenbrock Dienstleistungen. I still remember my first week of work well. In the beginning I always got lost. Was there a special challenge that you mastered? We once had an extremely dirty white dance floor. I went to work with many different agents and found out that it could be cleaned easily with scouring milk. After cleaning, however, the dance floor is usually too smooth and must be blunted to prevent the dancers* from slipping. For a dark dance floor I work with Cola, for a light floor with Sprite. And there were artists here who used turmeric or soot and sun milk on stage. Last year on “Mystery Magnet” by Miet Warlop the artists* worked with a lot of color. The whole way from the stage over the staircase to the dressing rooms was affected. So I had to do a real basic cleaning with glitter sponge, scouring milk and single disc machine and get everything clean again. But before I say “That’s not possible”, it takes a long time. What do you find so special in HELLERAU? HELLERAU is the only place where I say: I enjoy working here. It’s a pleasant working atmosphere and the contact with the artists* is also nice. Since I started working here, I have a completely different relationship to art. Once the MDR Symphony Orchestra rehearsed here. I sneaked quietly into the hall via the south gallery and listened briefly. If you have music in the background when you’re cleaning, everything goes much faster. Others have to pay and I just get it delivered. In December 2020 HELLERAU will bid farewell to Werner Lange in retirement. We thank him very much for his many years of work.