At the Kunstfest Weimar 2019, "mail from over there" was unpacked! Here is a short report
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"Theatre as an act of resistance - and hope:
Mail from Across There saw the Future 3 company set up a piece of social sculpture in a community youth club that looked at the strengths and weaknesses of reunification since the Berlin Wall fell. With a series of parcels passed from Dusseldorf in the west to Weimar in the east, a dozen totems designed to provoke discussion were handed out, with their accompanying messages read out by the audience. One of these was a CD of 1970s cosmic icons, Neu!, accompanied by a five Euro note and the instruction that it should be burnt. For the woman who sent it, both represented freedom."
The Herald Scotland (Neil Cooper)
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"How can one approach the present with distance and humour in a corner cluttered by history? The Kunstfest in Weimar takes a contemporary approach to this task and provides new perspectives on the best and the worst.
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The Kunstfest approaches the past literally by way of correspondence. The participatory performance of "Post von Drüben" picks up on a practice from before the fall of the Wall, when West Germans sent certain consumer goods to their East German relatives who had no access to them. The artists of Futur3 used this old tradition as a pretext for an exchange of parcels between two neighbourhoods in Düsseldorf and Weimar. In an old hall, the unpacking of the parcels becomes a performance without the help of artists. Inside are self-made things and found objects, accompanied by letters that are read aloud. Somewhere between a treasure hunt, a neighbourhood meeting and Christmas, the experience takes on meaning, triggers inner images and makes pure well-being not easy - just a few days after the far-right more than doubled their election results in two neighbouring federal states in eastern Germany. By directing this process only through letters and instructions, the artists of Futur3 trigger a lot: A woman from the neighbourhood complains that she is the only one here from the neighbourhood. And she refuses to burn a 10-euro note as a fun performance, which she was asked to do in a letter, and instead starts a collection for the local youth centre. Later in the evening, a political debate was led by a teenager, dividing the participants into two different camps on certain issues - a spontaneous dramatisation of democracy. Still later, a man made clear racist comments in response to a quote (...) in one of the letters - and was insulted by other participants. Whether knotting or unknotting - the weave of society is dealt with quite directly in "Post von Drüben"."
mouvements (Thomas Corlin)
Tags: germany