FUTUR GERMANIA Call Out For Artists – Gift 2020

CALL OUT! Opportunity for a North East based performer to perform in the UK premiere of new performance work FUTUR GERMANIA by Oliver Zahn (Munich) at GIFT 2020.

This is a paid opportunity.

Commitment: You must be available for rehearsals 10am – 5pm on Friday 1st, Saturday 2nd and Sunday 3rd May 2020 with Oliver and his team – as well as for the performance itself on the evening of Sunday 3rd May at BALTIC.

How to Apply: If you are interested in being considered for this opportunity, please read all the information below, and send an email directly to Kate Craddock at giftfestival.kate@gmail.com with:

1) Either a short paragraph (max 200 words) outlining your interest in being involved in the project, OR a short (max 2 minute) video (talking to the camera) explaining your interest in being involved

2) Either a short biography/CV OR a short video (2 mins max) explaining your performance experiences to date

3) Any access requirements that you would like to share with us 4) Your contact details, phone number, email address

All applications will be shared directly with Oliver, who will then get in touch with performers he is potentially interested in working with for a follow up conversation/Skype in order to make a selection. If you have any questions, please contact Kate via email on giftfestival.kate@gmail.com

About the project FUTUR GERMANIA is a new performance by Oliver Zahn and a critical investigation of the history of nation-building and collective memory. In times of growing nationalism, proliferating populism, and flourishing fascism all throughout Europe, the concept of the nation-state and the narratives, fables, and symbols supporting it, have once more proven increasingly problematic. FUTUR GERMANIA uses the invented society “Germany” as an example to put these concepts up for debate. If “Germany” would be up for grabs, what would we want to keep from it? What of its history cannot be forgotten and what could be remembered otherwise? What would an alternative canon of “Germany” look like and how would that shape a prospective society of “Germany” differently? The performance addresses these questions through the creation of a virtual museum on stage that goes by the name FUTUR GERMANIA. This imagined museum houses the cultural canon for the prospective community FUTUR GERMANIA’s. In contrast to conventional museums, this space will also allow for ephemeral artefacts like gestures, dances, poses, songs, recitals, to be stored and exhibited.

Every night, another performer will take on the task of leading the audience through the virtual museum space FUTUR GERMANIA and of curating parts of the museum anew. Concretely this means that every performance of FUTUR GERMANIA will be recorded in video and audio and projected onto a screen for the next performance. Hence, each night the performer in question starts out with leading the audience through the imagined museum space of the previous performer in the recorded video. In the second part of the performance, the performer in question is asked to imagine their own FUTUR GERMANIA museum, to curate the existent collection anew, to change the canon under a couple of given parameters and constrictions live on stage. This second part will then again be recorded and function for the following performance night as the starting point of the performance. The next performer in question will base their next performance on that version of the museum and re-curate the latter. In that way, the canon of FUTUR GERMANIA is constantly evolving, changing, and in process.

We are looking for a performer, who is interested in the topic, maybe politically active, and most importantly open to improvise within a given dramaturgical structure. We are looking for someone with great performance skills, intriguing stage presence, and politically savvy. We are not looking for a perfectly executed stage performance, but rather for someone with a wild imagination. The performer in question would have a day or two to prepare the “artefacts” that they want to bring to the FUTUR GERMANIA museum. They are offered a script of the main structure of the evening and the video of the recorded performance from the night before.

About Oliver: OLIVER ZAHN (*1989) is a German theatre maker, working in various capacities both on stage and behind the scenes. Oliver Zahn’s performance essays circle around the ideas of nationalism, memory, history and corporeality. Based on extensive research made up of work in the field, in the archive and on stage, the resulting work is situated on the intersection of performance art and contemporary dance. Past works include SITUATION WITH OUTSTRETCHED ARM (on the history of the Nazi Salute), SITUATION WITH DOPPELGÄNGER (with Julian Warner, on cultural appropriation and minstrelsy) and SECOND ESSAY ON GYMNASTICS (with 7 collaborators on performing citizenship in the history of the German Gymnastics Movement). His last work IN PRAISE OF FORGETTING (about the meeting of two archives on stage, one ethnographic sound archive and a grandson of displaced persons) premiered in December 2019.