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(c) Charlotte Bösling

The feminist performance group Swoosh Lieu transforms the theatre into a playful, technology-based manifesto party in which the explosive power of the centuries-old, marginalised figure of the witch becomes a figure of hope for a future beyond masculine hegemony.

The original meaning of deus ex machina was of a divine being that appeared with the aid of a machine. For Swoosh Lieu this machine is a goddess worshipped by the new “haggers”. A blend of “hags” and “hackers”, these are the alchemists of the future, experimenting with lifestyles that ignore biological descent and binary gender roles. They decode body images, narrative forms, stage technology and develop queer-feminist concepts of kinship.

The stage space is transformed into a circuit board, which instead of a chronological narrative, produces the maximum possible de-hierarchised connection, in which futurist tech constructs become narrators, spotlights turn into animals and the performers into connections. Past and future, human and machine merge in a magic fog. Swoosh Lieu’s theatre is simultaneously both a playground and a battle zone, a laboratory and a tenderness machine.

Age: 16+
Language: German with English surtitle
Duration: approx. 70 minutes
Note: Strobe lights are used in some parts.