(ffm) Democratic structures are eroding rapidly, the exploitation of the planet is progressing inexorably, but the political forces operating so far do not want to succeed in turning the tide. Not only a young generation is protesting worldwide. With the festival "Unfuck My Future. How to Live Together in Europe" (30 August to 8 September), the Mousonturm, in view of the dynamics of the current political protests in Europe as well as their effects on social relations, is placing a scarcely dozen plays, performances and installative artistic works at the centre of its programme for the opening of the season, which critically reflect on the possibilities of living together from various political, social, economic and ecological points of view.
"The festival combines artistic questions and aesthetic expressions with formats of public discourse that are also dedicated to the common future in Europe and the world," said Head of Cultural Affairs Ina Hartwig at the opening of the festival and the new season. "The continuing rise of populism continues to be a serious phenomenon, especially in the cultural sphere, which we must confront. The arts can provide clues on how to learn to navigate within the complexity of these issues and questions about an uncertain future by pointedly presenting grievances or suggesting possibilities for alternative paths."
The occasion also marks the opening of two art installations: Anna Witt's impressive video work "The Radical Empathiachate" presents a performative future manifesto by Leipzig youths who thought about what kind of society they would like to live in and openly formulated their utopias. The resulting manifesto was translated by the group according to their own ideas into physical forms of expression and performative interventions in public space. Witt's video installations question the emergence of cultural stereotypes and the position of the individual within social systems. Her works take up the problem of subject formation in connection with political identity, collectivity and civil rights. Witt was born in Wasserburg and lives and works in Vienna. Her work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions across Europe.
Paul Norman (Birmingham) and Leander Ripchinsky (Frankfurt), on the other hand, in their installation "Trennungs-Songs of Togetherness", allow the audience to musically process Brexit by not simply accepting togetherness, song and separation without criticism, but gently, through play and composition, drawing out something suggestive of meaning. As an audience, we are asked to park all expectations outside and engage with rules, words, sounds, and various ways of making decisions.
The opening reception will be followed by a spectacular six-hour cooking performance by British-German performance collective Gob Squad, who also interrogate their own history and cultural identity in I Love You, Goodbye (Unfuck my Brexit Edition) in light of current developments. In this happening, as enjoyable as it is clairvoyant, the seven members of the group make a culinary return to their family provinces under the guidance of a "Speaker of the House" calling for order in the finest Parliamentary English, and prepare their food with such commitment that it is most certainly about more than just recipes.
On the first weekend of the festival, our neighbouring country Poland will be the focus of the programme: for the first time in Frankfurt, we will present the successful Polish director and border crosser between theatre and performance Michał Borczuch. His theatre performance "Cinema of Moral Anxiety", which premiered at Warsaw's Nowy Teatr, will be shown at the Mousonturm for the first time in a German-speaking country. The title refers to the politicization of Polish filmmakers (such as Andrzej Wajda and Krzysztof Kieślowski) in the late 1970s, shortly before the beginning of the Solidarność movement; and part of the performance also reconstructs Kieślowski's early work "The Film Amateur", in which a worker buys a Super 8 camera to film the birth of his child. When he begins to record factory meetings and functio-nary conversations as well, he discovers the manipulative, political explosive power of his camera. Borczuch and his famed actors and actresses time-travel &mdash in their fast-moving, focused performance; the film amateur also encounters dropout Henry David Thoreau and youthful flaneu-ren of today who find the latest Netflix series too apocalyptic. Hovering over all the action are questions — how to live a real life in a capitalist society and how, in 2019, gestures of civil disobedience can still succeed.
Further in Focus Poland this weekend at Frankfurt LAB is a punk-rock political guest performance by Berlin's Maxim Gorki Theater: "Moja Prywatna Apokalipsa" (My Private Apocalypse), by Krzysztof Minkowski with Warsaw's exceptional actress Marta Malikowska. In it, in an imagined national-conservative Europe in 2030, the new nucleus of the counter-movement is founded in the catacombs of the Warsaw Palace of Culture during a conspiratorial concert!
Also this weekend, the Arthur Romanowski Institution will screen "Red Beet Speeches," a talk format and Skype storm of unedited conversations Romanowski has with his Polish-German grandma about recipes and theater using texts by Alfred Jarry, Marta Kijowska, Stanislaw Jerzy Lec, Stanislaw Lem, Brygida Najdowska and more.
