DAVOR
A documentary music theatre project
Based on an idea by the journalist Bobby Rafiq and the composer Yoav Pasovsky, this project approaches the topic of everyday racism. Using staged interviews conducted by taz journalist Ebru Tasdemir, director Robert Lehniger, together with his designer Irina Schicketanz, dramaturg Marion Hirte and the composer, developed a walk-in installation. The scenes and situations that are developed from this thereby reflect daily moments of people with a migration history who were born and raised in Germany – scenes and situations in which they are denied their affiliation to this country time and again, in which they are stigmatized and marked as being different. For the physical attacks and assaults on refugee homes, Jewish cemeteries, and non-white people precede subtler forms of exclusion. In order to bring these experiences closer to a predominantly white, bourgeois audience and to let them share these experiences emotionally, this music theater project breaks the classical separation of stage and auditorium and lets the audience immerse themselves in a labyrinthine installation with live scenes and virtual reality via the appropriate headsets. The audience is thus directly involved in situations and scenes in which they can experience everyday racism as the targets of such racism. The musical composition also works with the documentary material and draws attention to a situation that those who are affected by it experience as a steadily worsening situation of upheaval. Being “in front.” Whether this “in front” can be a “point of NEW or NO return” is dependent upon our actions. For the composer Yoav Pasovsky the starting point was his own biography: born and raised in Israel, he emigrated to Berlin at the age of 23 and founded a family there. His great-grandparents on his father’s side fled from Munich to Palestine in 1935. In view of the political and social developments in recent years, he is increasingly asking himself whether Germany is still a safe country for him and his family. Until now he had never been able to completely understand how his great-grandparents must have felt at that time.
Language: German
Duration: ca. 70 minutes (Admission every 20 minutes for 9 people. Last admission 21:20)
The performance is recommended from the age of 13 years.
A production fo the Munich Biennale
In cooperation with the Otto Falckenberg Schule
Artists
Cast
With: Benita Sarah Bailey, Thu Trang Dong, Şiir Eloğlu, Ernest Allan Hausmann
Students of the Otto Falckenberg Schule: Conrad Ahrens, Bless Amada, Maditha Dolle, Jan Fassbender, Konstantin Gries, Daria von Loewenich, Jochanah Mahnke, Valentin Mirow, Marlina Adeodata Mitterhofer, Anna K. Seidel, Paul Wellenhof
The interlocutors: Benjamin Adjei (politician, member of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen), Dr. Chadi Bahouth (coach + lecturer), Sanchita Basu (founder of the victim counselling centre "Reach Out"), Idil Baydar (comedian), Tülay Bilgen (educational scientist), Ebow (musician), Nazanin Ghafouri (social pedagogue), Ilaaf Khalfalla (photographer), Armin Langer (author), David Mayomba (musician, presenter), Ario Mirzai (activist), Olimpio do Nascimento Petri (audio design student), Pantelis Pavlakidis (teacher), An Phan (student), Ülkü Schneider-Gürkan (interpreter), Ali Schwarzer (blogger), Phung Vu Tangh (economics student), Nomazulu Thata (member of the Feminist Party Bremen), Ali Naki Tutar (activist)
Partners and Sponsors
In cooperation with
XINFORMATION
Munich Biennale 2020/2021
“Point of NEW Return”
Many “NEW Returns” unfold faster than one thought: In every existential crisis, the arts were a (co-)decisive moment of renewal, of new thinking, reflection, departure, turning back, a NEW return – for every individual as well as for the community. Due to the effects of the Corona pandemic the Munich Biennale 2020 became for the first time in its history a dynamic festival – it became a metaphor for the necessary flexible handling of our present and a model for the mobility, topicality, and relevance of the arts.
World premieres that couldn’t be performed in Munich in May 2020 due to the pandemic have, in the meantime, celebrated their premieres elsewhere, or will be performed in Munich in the coming months. In April 2021 three productions are expected to be performed in Munich as part of the program: “Once to be realised” – six encounters with Jani Christou’s “Project Files” by Beat Furrer, Barblina Meierhans, Olga Neuwirth, Younghi Pagh-Paan, Samir Odeh-Tamimi, and Christian Wolff; “Große Reise in entgegengesetzter Richtung” – Expeditionen ins Archiv der Wirklichkeitsfabrik (“A Grand Journey in the Opposite Direction” – expeditions to the reality factory’s archive) by Yair Klartag, Anda Kryeziu, Christiane Pohle / Zahava Rodrigo, Tobias Eduard Schick / Katharina Vogt, and Ror Wolf; and “Transstimme” (“Transvoice”), an opera in two acts by Fabià Santcovsky.
The “Salon of Wondering and Views,” which is an extension of the theme and spirit of the Munich Biennale, will also continue to take place.