From Friday, May 3, 2024, the material performance Five Exhibits by the KMZ collective will once again be on the program at Schaubude Berlin. The TFIM Collective presents The Feeling is Mutual from Friday, May 17, 2024, in The Feeling is Mutual fundamental emotional experiences are playfully explored through projections, materiality and sensory impressions. There is also something new to experience in the children’s program at Schaubude Berlin: From June 9, 2024, Schaubude Berlin will be presenting its own production “Bear. A contemporary witness tells” – based on the biography of Irene Grumach-Shirun, written by Jill Levenfeld – at the premiere.
Image above: KMZ Kollektiv, Berlin, Fünf Exponate, Courtesy Schaubude Berlin © Gianmarco Bresadola
The mutuality of things
In May, the material performance Fünf Exponate (Five Exhibits) by the KMZ collective will once again be on the program at Schaubude Berlin. The internationally successful production delves into the complex web of museum, heritage, appropriation, return, knowledge and belief. It takes its starting point from Alexander von Humboldt and his travels to Latin America. Even in the role of discoverers and discoverers, three Latinx performers break the Humboldtian gaze: in sculptures, plants, stones and their own biographies, they search for decolonial counter-histories and create a shimmering web from two everyday products – potatoes and plaster unexpected images and dense stories. (May 3-5)
The TFIM Collective invites you to immersive self-experience in mid-May: In The Feeling is Mutual, fundamental emotional experiences are playfully explored through projections, materiality and sensory impressions. At the interface of physical and digital – with sound, performance installation and 3D media – the hybrid performance creates individual and communal moments between viewers and artists. The cycles of nature and the fluidity of water lead to an empathetic state that reminds us that we are not just ourselves. (Premiere May 17th)
There is also something new to experience in the children’s program at Schaubude Berlin: In June, the Schaubude Berlin will bring its own production Bär. Ein Zeitzeuge erzählt (Bear. A contemporary witness tells) – based on the biography of Irene Grumach-Shirun, written by Jill Levenfeld – at the premiere. A documentary object theater about the life of a Jewish child during the Nazi era, told from the perspective of a teddy bear. Bear, called “Bärchen”, is a teddy bear and is over 100 years old. His eyes have seen a lot. He was there in very good moments, but also in very bad ones, for example when the walls shook because of the bombs. Or when Irene’s grandmother was deported. So far, Bear has preferred to avoid these memories. Now he enters with us rooms that have been closed for a long time, in which important stages in his biography come to life again with shadow play and sound. (Premiere June 29th)
KMZ Kollektiv, Berlin: Fünf Exponate
(Performance and Materialtheater)
An evening with Alexander von Humboldt – great scientist, namesake of the Humboldt Forum, second discoverer of America! Even in the role of both the discovered and the discoverers, three Latinx performers break the Humboldtian gaze. They search for decolonial counter-stories in sculptures, plants, stones and their own biographies: using two products – potatoes and plaster – they create a dazzling web of unexpected images and dense narratives.
The biographical material performance “Five Exhibits” by KMZ Collective is a plea against the Western gaze. The Latin American-European team shows decolonial perspectives on the complex web of topics surrounding museums, heritage, appropriation, return, knowledge and faith in a postcolonial present and negotiates the possibilities of dialogue and cooperation on an equal level between the global south and north.
TFIM Collective, Berlin: THE FEELING IS MUTUAL
(Hybrid Performance)
»The Feeling is Mutual« is a hybrid performance that playfully explores fundamental emotional experiences through projections, materiality and sensory impressions. At the interface of physical and digital with sound, performance installations and 3D media, she creates individual and communal moments between viewers (online and on site) and artists. The cycles of nature and the fluidity of water lead to an empathetic state that reminds us that we are not just ourselves.
OutOfTheBox, Berlin/Hildesheim: IN SKILLS WE TRUST
(Interactive Installation)
Advancement through education. Education through Internet. – Two promises that were the driving force behind meritocracy for many years. But while some people use digital services to advance their careers, the work of others is increasingly being timed and monitored by digital technologies. Based on interviews, “In Skills we Trust” makes visible the biographies of people who have completed a so-called “class trip”. Using specially developed software, participants explore the biographical material in a playful setting.
OutOfTheBox develops speculative software and designs performative spaces of experience at the interface of theater, media art and game design.
The project is the second part of OutOfTheBox’s “Algorithms of poverty” program series on the topic of digital inequality.
Schaubude Berlin: Bär. Ein Zeitzeuge erzählt
(A documentary object theater about the life of a Jewish child in the Nazi dictatorship based on the biography of Irene Grumach Shirun, written by Jill Levenfeld)
Bear, called “Bärchen”, is a teddy bear and is over 100 years old. His eyes have seen a lot. He was there in very good moments, but also in very bad ones, for example when the walls shook because of the bombs. Or when Irene’s grandmother was deported. So far, Bear has preferred to avoid these memories. Now he enters with us rooms that have been closed for a long time, in which important stages in his biography come to life again with shadow play and sound.
Short biography of Irene Grumach-Shirun
Irene Grumach-Shirun was born in Königsberg in March 1937 to a Jewish father and a Protestant mother and moved to Berlin with her parents in May. Her father accepted the call to the University of Jewish Sciences, where he taught until it was closed by the National Socialists in 1942. He was then forced to work as a forced laborer to manage the library in which the books stolen and confiscated from Jewish property were collected. Irene grew up in a Jewish environment in Berlin-Charlottenburg, where the family lived on Schlüterstrasse. Here she received the Steiff teddy bear from a family friend who fled Germany, which she was to call “Little Bear” and which accompanied her until the end of her life. The first years of her life were marred by omnipresent anti-Semitic discrimination and increasingly by the consequences of the war. Irene and her parents were able to escape the deportations; The grandmother Rika Grumach, who lived with the family, was taken to Theresienstadt by the Nazis in 1943 and murdered there. This experience and the constant fear for her father would have a lasting impact on her and leave traumatic traces. Irene was an inquisitive child and spent a lot of time with books; However, she was only able to attend school as an eight-year-old in the summer of 1945. She studied Egyptology at the Humboldt University in Berlin from 1954 and received her doctorate at the University of Basel in 1966. In 1969 she emigrated to Israel, where she continued to work as an Egyptologist and lived in Jerusalem until her death in 2021.
WHEN?
Fünf Exponate:
Friday May 3rd and Saturday May 4th, 2024, at 8:00 pm
Sunday, May 5, 2024, at 7:00 pm
THE FEELING IS MUTUAL:
Friday, May 17, 2024, premiering at 7:00 pm and 9:00 pm
Saturday, May 18, 2024, at 7:00 pm and 9:00 pm
Sunday, May 19, 2024, at 5:00 pm and 7:00 pm
IN SKILLS WE TRUST
Thursday, June 20, 2024, Berlin Premiere at 6:00 pm and 8:30 pm
Friday, June 21 and Saturday, June 22, 2024, at 6:00 pm and 8:30 pm
Sunday, June 23, 2024, at 5:00 pm and 7:30 pm
Bär. Ein Zeitzeuge erzählt
Thursday, June 27th and Friday, June 28th, 2024 at 10:00 am
Premieres Saturday, June 29, 2024 at 6:00 pm
Further performances:
Friday, September 13, 2024, at 10:00 am
Saturday, September 14th, at 6:00 pm with tactile tour and audio description
WHERE?
Schaubude Berlin
Greifswalder Straße 81-84
10405 Berlin
COSTS?
Fünf Exponate, THE FEELING IS MUTUAL and IN SKILLS WE TRUST:
Regular: 16,50 €
Reduced: 11,50 €
Bär. Ein Zeitzeuge erzählt
Regular: 10 €
Reduced: 9 €
Child: 7 €
Group with JKS-Schei: 5 €
Group without JKS-Schein: 5,50 €
