Rosa Wernecke/Boris Nikitin/Wilma Renfordt
(Berlin/Basel)
Learning from the Lockdown: Immunity and Touch
online
Buchpräsentation/Discussion
- 26.02.2021, 8 p.m.admission free, via Zoom
Theatre has largely been in lockdown since March 2020. Performances have been cancelled, postponed or relocated to digital spaces. Is there something we can learn from this crisis? How do we want to carry on afterwards? The Impulse Theatre Festival has gathered contributions from more than 30 protagonists of the independent theatre scene. In the book “Learning from the Lockdown?”, they write about the insights, ideas and political demands sparked by the Corona crisis. At the book launch, Boris Nikitin and Rosa Wernecke (Swoosh Lieu) will discuss the issue of “immunity”: the theatre lockdown provides protection from the virus, but also prevents direct contact with what is happening on stage. But isn’t the power of theatre based precisely on exposing ourselves to close contact, on taking the risk of experiencing deep encounters, on bringing one’s own vulnerability into play? Will the pandemic, as Paul B. Preciado suspects, turn us into an immune community: untouchable and radically individual?
Duration: approx. 60 Min.
Language: German
More information on the publishers website Alexander Verlag Berlin.
The event will take place as a Webinar via Zoom.
-> Link to the Webinar
“Lernen aus dem Lockdown? Nachdenken über Freies Theater” (Learning from the Lockdown? Thoughts on Independent Theatre) is a publication of the Impulse Theatre Festival, edited by Haiko Pfost, Wilma Renfordt and Falk Schreiber for the NRW KULTURsekretariat. Published in October 2020 by Alexander Verlag Berlin, 2nd edition January 2021.
Cast & Credits
Gefördert durch die Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung als Teil der Reihe „Corponomy – Politiken des Körpers in Tanz, Performance und Gesellschaft“.
Biography
Rosa Wernecke
Rosa Wernecke studied Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen and Media Arts in Cologne. She is a co-founder of the feminist performance and media collective Swoosh Lieu, with whom she regularly produces performances and installations at Künstlerhaus Mousonturm. Her works have been invited e.g. to the German Dance Platform, the Stückemarkt of the Berlin Theatertreffen, the Impulse Festival Cologne and the Festival Politik im freien Theater. She is also a co-founder of the network gefährliche arbeit for queer-feminist FLINT* theatre workers, who apply an artistic understanding of their material to the technical trades of theatre. As a light and video artist, she works in the field of performance, dance and new music with artists such as Heinrich Horwitz, Sarah Nemtsov, Rose Beermann, Simone Dede Ayivi. In 2018 she received a postgraduate “Artistic Research” scholarship from the Hessian Theatre Academy and was artist-in-residence at the Villa Kamogawa of the Goethe-Institut Kyoto Japan. In 2021, she is part of the artist exchange programme Home-Frankfurt-Tel Aviv and recipient of a scholarship from the Tarabya Cultural Academy in Istanbul.
Biography
Boris Nikitin
Boris Nikitin is a theatre director, author, curator and essayist. In his plays, texts and festivals, he has been exploring the boundaries between documentation, propaganda and fake and the subsequent constructions of reality and identity since 2007. Since 2016, Nikitin has also increasingly turned his attention to the relationship between art and illness. “Like few others, Boris Nikitin pushes theatre to a critical edge,” writes Theater heute. In 2017, Nikitin was awarded the J.M.R. Lenz – Dramatikerpreis for his complete works, and in 2020 he received the Swiss Theatre Prize. Nikitin’s works have been invited to the Impulse Theater Festival four times and he is a regular guest at Mousonturm, most recently with his solo piece “Attempt on Dying”. The thoughts formulated in this play on the subject of coming-out form the basis for Nikitin’s contribution to the publication “Learning from the Lockdown”.
Biography
Wilma Renfordt
Wilma Renfordt works as dramaturge for the Impulse Theater Festival since 2017. Born in 1982, she grew up in the Ruhr area and then studied theatre studies at the Free University of Berlin, before working freelance as a dramaturge, author and curatorial assistant, e.g. as part of the group copy & waste. In 2016/17, she was dramaturge for steirischer herbst in Graz.