DISKURS
festival 2024

Be Water, My Friend.

Carmen Lee, Chung Shing Au, Greta Katharina Klein, Levin Eichert

"Be Water, My Friend" addresses the beauty of humanity experienced by protesters, including artists Carmen Lee and Chun Shing Roland Au, during the 2019 Hong Kong protests. The performance addresses the protesters' goals, strategies, internal struggles, and most importantly, their endurance and resistance. In the process, these become not only content but also form. Guided by the protest strategies, the artist:s develop the aesthetics for their performance. 

The audience is invited to a participatory walk through the city, exploring the material of water. In 2019, protesters used water to describe protest strategies. The metaphor of water in the Hong Kong protests was inspired by Bruce Lee, the Hong Kong martial artist and philosopher. 

„Be Water, My Friend. 
Empty your mind. 
Be formless, shapeless, like water. 
You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. 
You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. 
You put it into a teapot, it becomes the teapot. 
Now water can flow or it can crash. 
Be water, my friend.“ 

– Bruce Lee – 

 

The protesters adapted Bruce Lee's “Be Water”'s philosophy.

“Be Strong like Ice when confronting the police. 
Be fluid like water on the streets. 
Gather like dew when organizing protests. 
Scatter like mist to avoid arrest and be able to fight for another day.” 

- Protesters -

 

The performance not only invites the audience to re-imagine what happened in Hong Kong, but also connects these experiences to a broader context of protest.

meeting point 1: 10.30 Uhr beim Festivalzentrum oder 10.45 Uhr an der Haltestelle Gießen Oswaldsgarten 

meeting point 2: 13.30 Uhr beim Festivalzentrum oder 13.45 Uhr an der Haltestelle Gießen Oswaldsgarten 


ATTENTION:
The performance will take place outside. Rainproof clothing is recommended. 

All participants should install the Telegram app beforehand. Screens can also be shared in case of emergency. 

We will walk one hour by foot through the city.

If you need any kind of assistance for this please contact us: info@diskursfestival.de For this piece there will be a Buddy- System For more information on this click on HERE link.

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content note:no further information

Language: Ensglish, whisper translation possible

Time: 11 and 14 pm, duration aprox. 60 Minutes

Place: Die Veranstaltung findet im Stadtraum statt.

The After Talk to the production will take place on Sunday 16 October at 6pm in the Festival Centre.

Posthuman Performance Lab

TL Morrison

INFO: These events will not take place!

TL Morrison is part of our residency program this year. Throughout the festival she will be working on her own research topic in a scientific and artistic way. Her topic is Posthuman Performance Lab .

The Posthuman Perfomance Lab at Discourse 2022 will be an experimental and practical research work on the development of a posthuman performance practice. 

Posthuman theory is a generative tool to organise and navigate the posthuman condition - what it means to be human when to be human is to be capable and guilty of destruction. The posthuman condition is a qualitative recognition of the difficulties in subject construction as a result of the social and political forces of power in our advanced capitalist, hypertechnologised, globalised systems, alongside the paradigm shifts and unprecedented acceleration of change that have led to the Anthropocene. 

Applying a posthuman point of view to contemporary performance practice could be a means of exploring alternative tools and methods to deconstruct the hierarchical forms of contemporary practice. Contemporary applied theatre practices used in staging narratives of the 'other' often run the risk of reinforcing demarcations of the other as synonymous with the subordinate through repeated manifestations of structures of dominance - both on and off stage - which can lead to the reinforcement and perpetuation of exclusionary systems of hegemony. This collective laboratory and research space will ask why we should apply posthuman theory to performance practice, how we might do so, and what it would look like if we did. 

The first workshop will be devoted to sharing knowledge about posthuman theory and the rationale for its transfer to applied theatre practice, followed by a collective exploration of what a posthuman performance methodology might look like.ren as synonymous with reinforcing the subordinate, which can lead to the reinforcement and perpetuation of exclusionary systems of hegemony. This collective laboratory and research space will ask why we should apply posthuman theory to performance practice, how we might do so, and what it would look like if we did. 

In the second workshop, a collaborative creative space will be created to experiment with the suggested exercises and posthuman practice processes from the first workshop. 

The residency culminates in a mini-installation and performative intervention that documents the process and provides a space for the presentation, interrogation, and reflection of this proposed posthuman performance practice.

content note:discussion about abuse of power in the practice of theatre


Language: English

Place: The events take place in the Theater Lab/ Georg-Büchner-Saal. You will find information on accessibility HERE.

The After Talk to the residency programme will take place on Saturday 29 October at 5pm in the Festival Centre.

Action by Omission

Nora Sobbe, Paul Matyschok, Ronja Landtau

This is an installative performative discourse format.

Interact as part of the organism of an installation buzzer circuit. The setup makes it possible to intervene in the discourse space by omitting a buzzer push. The buzzers function as indicators of agreement or disagreement with the current formation of the discourse space and can be activated with the foot during two push phases. The activation is not done visually. If all the foot buzzers are activated, they light up and the room is updated as it is. If at least one person fails to push, the buzzers do not light up and reflective interim phases are initiated. These phases provide for reflection on conversation dynamics and can be used for exchange about modes of conversation. The installative structure is understood as an attempt to generate a place with as few speaking inhibitions as possible and at the same time a multitude of possibilities for participation - a discourse space that questions itself in a self-reflexive way in moments of inhibition.

Each performance/discussion focuses on a different topic.

Topic 1: Protest and Activism (English)

How do you (want to) protest? What possibilities, privileges and choices do people have? How was the first weekend smash?

Topic 2: Accessibility in cultural events (german)

What barriers are there and how can they be circumvented? For whom are rooms organized? What could spaces be like? Who is speaking and how is our festival actually doing? 

Topic 3: City Space Gießen (German)

What spaces are there? How do we want to live together? What room for change is there? What about gentrification in Giessen?

Topic 4: Pause and Productivity (English)

What does it mean to be productive? How do we set boundaries? Is that even possible in our system? Can we do nothing?

Topic 5: Work structures and worktopias (English)

How long do we want to work? Why do we have to choose between passion and safety? Which concepts of work do we want for the future?

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content note: with every topic different --> TBA
language: depends on request audience

Time: 22. October 12.00/14.30/17.00 pm //23. October 12.00/16.00 pm

Place: Performance Lab, Information on accessibility you can find HERE

The After Talk from the performance on Saturday will take place on the day at 19:00. The post performance discussion on Sunday will take place on the day at 18:30. Both at the Festival Centre.

Saturday, 22nd of October

Sunday, 23rd of October

Tere Mere Beech Mein

Juli Mahid Carly, Julian Moritz, Sar Adina Scheer

My voice belongs to over 200 characters in Bollywood. Actors who have come and gone over the years have appropriated my voice, but I have stayed and kept singing. My voice belongs to Britney Spears, but she doesn't know anything about it. My voice sounds like the whole of India. My voice survived last year when I died.

In this performance, Juli Mahid Carly works with the Indian singer Lata Mangeshkar, whose songs in famous Hindi films are also known and loved in the rest of the world. Juli puts herself in Lata's shoes and asks herself what it means to lend her voice to other faces and makes some surprising discoveries.

content note: No further information
Language: German and English, whisper translation possible

Time: 20.00 pm, duration aprox. 60 minutes

Place: Performance Lab, Informtion on accessibility you can find HERE

The After Talk to the production will take place directly afterwards at the Festival Centre. 

EN
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