hello English so I am super thrilled to announce our next two speakers and I will start with Julia visit with her biography with aunt Helena Wreckers biography and the concept of this dialogue is actually that I will just lean back and these two are going to talk to each other and they will also contextualize this talking to each other in their conversation so Yulia visits studied directing at the University Mozart in Salzburg as well as drama with media arts at the University of Surrey she worked as assistant director in different cities and state theaters in Germany her first work experience outside the institution was insults book when she developed the performance zat's boga death dance for which she received the prize of the city of Salzburg her diploma thesis was an artistic investigation into structural racism on German speaking stages called Schwarz marked by black power white a critical analysis of the work conditions of black theatre makers and German speaking stages visit is also part of the German Namibian artists collective Collini a space for collaboration and exchange anta Helen Ithaca was born and grew up in unique she worked at the Berlin group theatre in the field of theatre and education before starting drama studies at the University of Hilda's Heim in 2011 from 2015-16 to the comma to the 2016 and 17th season she was a permanent director's assistant at the moon scene a commercial her works her works conceptual art in the form of theatrical performance and I think she will speak to that as well deal with the marking and non repetition of normativity and the question of how to construct a spatial experience for the audience that it would not otherwise enter in the current season at the marina commercially and will redirect the play metal I in the style of appropriation art with a cast of black actors which which was originally staged by Anna's OFI mala and invited to the belly in theater term in 2016 thank you so much for being here and now I would like to ask you to come up to the podium I under hi so first of all Thank You Nana for inviting talk I think now that my I can thank you I actually want to first of all say how Anton I met because Anton I actually never met before we were well we ran into each other in a theater once and were like hunter and Yulia and then we went our separate ways but this is actually the first time that we spent time with each other and have a conversation with each other about our work and we had to laugh a little when you spoke with you about your relationship with Yulia because it was very similar we had been in what's up and email and Skype contact but this is the first time that we have a chance to actually speak to each other and with each other so do you want yeah it's a why actually phenomena or a similar phenomena because we are both working in theatre we are both not white so apparently everyone who heard of the two of us and tells us that we need to meet you and meet each other and that obviously we are we must do the same thing more or less and them and it is a very for me it's a very schizophrenic thing because on one hand it's true that we should meet each other and that I also have to desire to meet every other black German artist that is around in a way but on the other hand the the motivation of people telling us that we that we need to meet each other is is tricky too because it obviously has to do with a lot of projection and a lot of making us the same just because we're not wide and yeah because when I first heard when I first heard that oh you have to meet anta I was intrigued and at the same time I was an annoyed because I worked in very classical traditional context and I was fascinated by what I heard often about you but on the other hand I was also annoyed to that point that I said to everyone at one point well if your white director then maybe you should meet these other white directors because it referred to this I felt it made something visible which is one of the problems which I think both of us were tackle in our work in a way this this idea that there's there's these two or three white black people and they all do the same art and they all have the same topic and they all work in the same way and I read about you which I found very interesting that you work on whiteness do you maybe want to say something to that what does that mean work on whiteness and yeah it's very hard to say I do I like to find out what that means and I try to find it out each and every time I do a new project but I try to elaborate on it maybe by explaining my most recent piece that is also the biggest one that I've made so far because I think most of the people here are not from the theater context and might not know anything about it so it's what I did I copied an existing piece that was staged in a in a traditional State Theatre in Munich on the biggest stage there and that was based on a novel that talks about German history after world war ii by by telling us the story of a family in a small Bavarian village so I copied that piece completely so I did everything in the same way the stage design the costume detects the time but I exchanged a white cast for black one and sometimes it's very hard to explain to friends there are not German how that is actually a concept so why is that something that becomes a thing that you ready so but I think it's it's it's a good way of entering the German discourse if you don't know it because it shows how strong the illusion of a white German identity is um that it's not so it's not so easy to tell it from just watching the piece but if you watch everything that evolves around it so the collateral damage that staging the piece does in all kinds of forums like newspapers TV appearances conversations the whole discourse discussions about it there you can really find out about where we stand right now in a critical discourse in Germany it in a way at least that is what I tried to do so um it was very hard for me to explain to to the press for example that it's not a piece there is about blackness or about black actors or about yeah but that it's a piece about whiteness and that I like try to do this exit of a of an all-white German historical narrative in order to to make it more experienceable that having an all-white cast telling and historical German story is also an exaggeration and and an illusion yeah in a way I was approached by a drama Turk who I'll be working with in a cup of years and he said he saw the piece and it was this strange experience because he saw black people speaking this German text and pretending to be Germans and it was a it was a I know I know it was this really weird moment because i sat there going well to me black and german as' isn't really that crazy so when I saw it I was like okay Nick it was really interesting that the reaction was so strong by the white audience and also the conversation now about it I feel is very shows it even deeper or makes this problem even more obvious because he didn't understand when I said well being black and German at the same time does exist and also not and that it me that it just reality and not like it was very strange moment yeah I mean there are two very dominant ways of perception with the pieces so the first one is that people are being very busy taking room in order to explain how this piece doesn't provoke them you know and how it's not irritating to them at all and that therefore it's it's pointless so this shows already that the implication that staging black German is is is automatically read as as something meant to be a provocation or a problem but I never said that and the second the second dominant thing is that it's perceived through the lens of comparing so it's all about what I able to produce this professional theater piece and are they as good or are they worse and can they handle singing classic music and like was of the people decided that they can't and and every review except one has at least one paragraph that deals with the question whether this is a professional theatre production or not you know in a good like in a positive or in a negative way but it was something that had to be discussed in the first place and like like I said like we can we can get out of get out a lot of things about how how perception works in the so called German intelligentsia as soon as a non-white non male expression is done in a in a in a in the center because if I had made a piece with an all-black cast about black topics or about migration or about something that is not reclaiming a prominent holy space it would it wouldn't be worth talking about it no yeah I was intrigued by this idea of working on whiteness because when I read it or heard it I can't remember and I had to think about it because I would say that in my approach to theater or performative arts I'd say that I would work on blackness whatever that means but in a sense of I was very happy about middle right because I thought aren't nice now I can actually work you know it's like and now I don't have to put myself in relation to whiteness in order to work because I don't I did that and under like gave me this jumping-off point and now I can just do text and and things and people and the performance I work with of color and black and they are just people or aliens or whatever they want to be because there is this new idea of the of the POC body being a reality like be the POC body on a German speaking stages just an offer to to tell stories or to investigate certain narratives however I was maybe - still - yeah maybe too optimistic because it's still when I when I started negotiating for the next two seasons everyone is I was also involved in trying to to cast an ensemble for theater and there were a lot of POC performance coming in and it was amazing and I got to work with them and it was like yeah blah blah blah great so we can hire them but there's still this idea but how are we going to cast them what are they going to play because it's like and I thought now that you did this we can move past it but still there's this idea of the POC body still and always being this body and nothing else there's no possibility of transformation and in my approach I thought that I did I investigated this for quite a long time and then I came to the point where I thought I cannot fight anymore and I can't have these arguments anymore so I I started to think about what would be a strategy to actually subvert this and now the strategy I'm using or I'm trying to implement is that I don't speak about the realities I want to create but rather I cast a team around me which defies an expectations but we never speak about it so we never say we work together because we have this experience of being marginalized in a german-speaking context bla bla bla this is why we work together but rather we come together as artists and we want to create together and we wanted these stories together and so when I saw the whiteness thing I was wondering if that already means working on blackness without actually speaking about it and then at the same time I was wondering why am I not allowed to speak about it because then it like it gets hijacked like you said then it has to be about refugees and why is this body on a stage and why is this body blah blah blah so I don't know my experience with that strategy is that you are actually you'd the possibility to define yourself it's not really there so you can't come together and not make blackness or migration a topic but people will write about it like that and see it like that anyway and it's really it's it's very tricky and that's why I that's why I'm I'm I'm much slower than you and I don't I think it's not possible to even think about like the next step like what would what how could we work if if like the racist structure were something that we could actually talk about or and that we could acknowledge as existence or something because we are really not there and so I I work about like how can I make it even a thing like how can I even get into the perception itself and and and somehow like make color blindness in in the in the in the in the referential system of a stage and it's the symbols moving in there how can I like disrupt it because I think there's really all I can do right now because everything else would be like three steps ahead and and I think it's a repetition of what already is and what has always been because the audience can read it in their white illusion gaze anyway because yeah Julia said I liked what you said when she said she creates scenes which are mind games and objects which are mind games and I wonder is it possible to create performative art and I completely agree with you where I love when people say oh we're in this post-racial Society and you look at a white person claiming this and you think obviously we're not like obviously we have far away from that thank you and it's it's we experience it every day and I assume that your experience is very similar especially in Munich but I still wonder is it possible to just to seduce an audience you know to to give clues and to codify performance in a way that you know what I'm talking about because you know the referencing system that I use and you can see that certain things like Melissa said you can see the black body even though the black body isn't present and I wonder if that strategy can work on a on a on a german-speaking stage so that if you come from that kind of audience you were speaking about then they'll see a interesting or entertaining or curious theatre evening and then they'll say oh it didn't provoke me because nothing happened to me I didn't it wasn't for me but if they're if you're not white you will get a chance to actually see think an experience which isn't spoken about in that kind of context then it's like it's a super privileged super well-funded context and I always think why should I not be represented why should my narrative not be told or why should why should my socialization or the experiences that I had not be spoken of just because everyone says well how can I relate to a black body which is the worst thing I could possibly hear but and I totally agree it's um maybe and I totally agree with what you say and this is why I think it only works in relation to what you do it's not faster I'm just actually trying to ride on your wave and like go you know to work what is the next step what is the next thing that would could happen or what would be the ideal amazing most positive thing to do which is it's interesting that you know like that we're now talking more about the audiences because also there's another black female theater maker in Germany that is called a Samoan data iev and then like I said like this because we are like we three very often like our names being dropped together and Olivia venture who's a writer and yeah can I just quickly and with Olivia it actually happened the other day that someone came up to me and said hey congratulations to your new text I'm like it literally happens to me at least once a month that people address me as hey Olivia how have you been it is really like yeah but what we even went to the same university and it happens there with our professors and but whatever and what I wanted to say is that because Simmons approach is since a couple of years as far as I understand it and she asks herself the question what happens to my to my work if I stop imagining white audiences but audiences of color and it is very interesting because I didn't do that but because luckily and I'm so happy it's so incredibly happy about it the piece that I did actually had the effect that the audience was much more diverse than I had seen ever before in this theater where I worked for two years more or less and I started to think about the question and also about because audiences of color they perceive the piece completely different obviously than and then white audience members and they have for them it has a completely different meaning and it's it's not a heady conceptual thing it's more it's just spectacular it's just like spectacular in an overwhelming way because they make the experience of going one of this into one of this holy palaces of national identity and actually not not and they are not the only person of color in there only that even before I enter the space where the performance actually happens you know and these kind of stagings that happen around the staging of the actual piece are so important to me and and it's also interesting that in the discourse about a piece in the public discussions and discussions like that even we only ever talk about the experience of the white audience but we never talk about what it is to non white spectators because it's a completely different thing but somehow it's also unless you do a lot of [Music] exhausting explanation work it is almost impossible to m2x to give to give a white audience a glimpse into what it what it is to look at it piece as a non-white person because you live in different ways like you don't you see completely different things when you look into this space of symbolism and yeah that's also um to come back to what you said earlier about Julia's work and how the black body is present in it without being there I find it hard to transfer this into performative arts because the body the actual body is is really the center of it and the body on stage is a symbol and the black body on stage is a completely different symbol and the white body on stage you you cannot change that for now it's like it's I think the only thing I can do is act to to make to try to make it become somatic instead a word yeah and fanatical how they are different symbols and why yeah please don't get me wrong it's not about it's not about the black body not being on stage obviously it's the center of the performance but rather I wonder this is why for example I'm very intrigued by artistic collaboration as form of political resistance this is why we came up with with the collective because I went in the maybe afore the first time after having seen three performances which dealt with German colonialism and in we both laugh because because from embarrassing it's it's an amazing and horrible because it's it's it claims to be universal and for universal audiences but when you're black you sit in the audience and you have to be exposed to a reproduction of racist stereotypes and racist language because if it's about racism and colonialism we have to produce reproduce this [ __ ] in order for people to understand that it's [ __ ] so after the third piece I saw I was out just because we have to protect artistic freedom oh yes artistic freedom it's always artistic freedom yeah that's right and after the third piece I saw I after two and a half minutes there were two and a half black people in the audience half because there was a baby present as well so it's a person but like a little person I felt that I'm again exposed to violence against black bodies and I left the audience wondering how could I as the as the representation of the colonizer and the colonized at the same time in the same bodywork about colonization without reproducing that kind of violence and so I thought it would be a good idea to actually go to the place where colonization German colonization happened and so I ended up in Namibia and wanted to have conversations with other artists about their work and how they how German colonization influences their practice and through that conversation this sort of collaboration started and we came to that point where we realized that we actually don't want to work about colonization because we rather just work with each other and this is this is I think what I mean with the the reference frame would be probably readable to you as well as any other German or or any oh my hope would be for the work that it would be readable for someone who is of color or black and and I found it interesting that we we created this collective in order to resist together and I found it very this is why it was great or it's great to meet you because this kind of networks and alliances are important to survive because I don't know about you but every I think three times a day I think I want to leave Germany so desperately and we spoke about this earlier with and about Yulia and Nana that there seems to be a generation of artists o generation would be too big a word but women before us who actually did leave and now we are here sort of mutilating ourselves in order to fight the good fight and how do you protect yourself how do you survive it's do you have that question also yes of course like I and yeah because obviously there's so much extra work in just getting a little bit closer to a framework in which your work is read that is the framework that you actually set for everything because it's dance people have very very poorly educated in Germany about a particular kind of knowledge no like really incredibly yeah how can i its until maybe two years ago you couldn't even call a white person white in germany without having the whole conversation only about that you know I just try to make you understand like why it's so obvious that black German artists don't work in Germany and but yeah I've lost track a bit but yeah it is it is it is a question for me yeah should I stay or should I go and especially with with the right hook like the right wing strongness of the last last two years and really you can really feel the change in public space as well you know it it gets shittier and shittier really and not only the public space with the so called and like working-class people but also the academic space and the universe yeah the artistic space which is basically just say more or less and but yeah and but strangely why do you stay because strangely by exploring the question of do I have to leave and I also stumble around this high much bigger if I'm at how can you translate it it's home yeah homeland and it's a very like prominent comes because of for within this right-wing discourse that takes place within the that took place in the last two years and it's but it's also it becomes very dominant for me yeah because this is the only context that I know as precisely as I know it and it's the only language in which I can express myself as precisely and it's very important to me to express myself precisely and also like Nana you were talking about this responsibility as a citizen and whether we should take this conference to the street and and I I really have a strong feeling for it I think that if we leave there it's it is really also a sign of hopelessness in a way because I really don't know who else could do the work that really should be done I wish I I wasn't in a position but that's just effect I mean white people who don't even know that they're white are not going to do the work you know [Laughter] yeah but I want to leave all the time and I do leave a lot as well and I and it's also interesting that you talk about your experience in Libya because I've been there for the first time as well this year and again of course I also ended up saying my telling myself I don't I'm actually I'm really not interested in making a theatre piece about German colonialism and which is basically a history lesson that should be done in school but isn't and but what I found very interesting there is how the meeting of the the strange unworldly German Asst of the so-called Namibian Germans and my strange unworldly German is and how we are both living an extraordinary variation of German s and how that is like contextualized within history and and I'm very interested in finding out about those two German SS meeting so again I I travel to Namibia and I want to be like in black context and I want to and somehow I also like I at some point I just need to go there because I'm a blank to him and I don't know why but I do and then in the end again I end up wanting to work about German - you know [Music] - the things we said which are so clear and unproblematic because there's no structural racism I have a question so you can think about yours yes of course because what I wonder what it is what is German asst because it pisses me off because where I come from like this has nothing to do with this German as' I come from a part of Germany which is basically French and Swiss and people eat melted cheese and the language is completely different and they don't drink beer they drink wine and I'm always I'm always surprised with the right-wing movement is being able to claim that the German narrative because I wonder what is this German narrative because the country is so young and there is no one thing there is no one German reality and what you describe with the German namibians and when I experienced a few of them I felt I went to tie into a time machine into 1948 where white people were allowed to beat their children and the language is very old and the the mindset is like 1948 and and I'm confronted with these with these constructions of a national narrative and identity and the way that that I would approach it oh I'm interested in approaching it is by working on the IFD list of German plays there was this list of German there were the right-wing party published a list of write German narratives which should be put on German stages and my approach to that because I was asked what I wanted to direct I told the drama talk that they can that we should look at this list and see what exactly is German asst and then I want to do an interpretation of this idea of Germany's with with my team and the the the performance that I work with because it would very quickly super cool because it becomes very quickly very clear that what what is it I don't know it's like yeah I'm you German yeah and you're totally right obviously there is no German list and it's also a bit as you say that I realize it's it's very actually I I don't want to like operate with concepts of Nations like because they are [ __ ] but again I think it's it's it's a it's a step that has to be done like before we can even come to a place where we say okay what about this concept of Nations and borders and it's evening together then you do the first part and I do the second German s amendment yeah yeah that was a great great question um I there is a question over there hmm I know that thank you for letting me ask my question first Nana because it relates so much to what was just said I [Music] followed through the different press articles around your piece metalized I had from the beginning I was really interested in the discourses which you know the public created around that around it I didn't have the chance to see the piece before the tiata travel like I saw it last week and I haven't seen the right like the original white edition of your colleague from the commercial Munich and I also haven't read the original novel of Joseph B of Islam and so I'm merely speculating now but I want to reflect together with you on this notion of German s because when I saw your piece last week I thought thank god I haven't seen this in the white a dish like the white class because I thought I would have left the theater because I think the material you choose you choose to work with this so heavy and really I mean I as I said I haven't read the novel but I imagined it to be a reactionary piece of work like a very much a high madwoman so this is my association and it was like just the script was getting on my nerves you know it was so annoying so I thought what you actually did was you rescued the piece you know you rescued the material from being complete crap like really low low-level German Asst yeah construct of Germany's and then this reminded me of a conversation I had with Peggy which we heard yesterday Peggy pichia we did a workshop together and in this workshop she said at one point you know you like white Germans recently especially left-wing people into intelligentsia starts to leave us alone as black Germans alone with the notion of German 'us the only people who still you know work on this are we do you understand what I mean yeah we're last ones were last ones Watson Deutsch in the starch sign meeting UNIX made suit in Holland you don't want to deal with Germany's like you wiped left-wing anti racist white conscious people you reject the notion of German Asst and leave it up to us to do something with it and I found that a very interesting he thought I don't know if I explain myself and when I saw your piece I thought yeah this is exactly what I mean Peggy's not he unfortunately no but I takes it to her like I'm just watching this piece and I think I understand perfectly what you mean because what I see he wouldn't be bearable but it wasn't not staged like was it not a black cast yeah it's I think I I see what she means because in the in the German left there's also a kind of colorblindness I mean they know all the all the are you say punch lines about anti-racist thinking or something but but a lot of people think they are automatically beyond it because they're activists or something and then it falls under the table and and yeah and I mean you see so many theatre makers who say oh yeah that's so cool what you did ingenious a little but if they only ever have any perform of color on stage it's when they talk about the refugee crisis or yeah not only that actually so um yeah I think yeah I think she's right and maybe that's a good moment for for me to ask my question because whilst listening to you I was thinking about your education and I was thinking about the obstacles that you may have encountered until you mentioned being mistaken for another black person in the school I mean that's like the micro-level right but then when we think about the macro in terms of the Curie column and what one is exposed to at universities whether you are studying theatre or if you are studying comparative literature yesterday when I was in conversation with Peggy she pointed so beautifully out how how racist shilla for instance like the wonderful great shilla that we all had to who were socialized in Germany read and school analyze over weeks and you know who was also a writer who was yeah part of the German theatre Canon you will find in every theater I think right now at least six Schiller plays in Germany at least right so I mean I wanted to point out or actually I want to hear a little bit about that kind of where did you because you did the work you did the extra work right like you educated yourself but that did not did not necessarily happen in school I suppose how did that come about and and then I asked something else I think the first time I realized that something was wrong with actually when I was in kindergarten and there was a play being put on the Duvall Fonda's even guys line the wolf and the seven gold baby I don't know the word like baby goat kid and the wolf knocks on the house and then he eats the babies and then the mother comes cuts him up and takes out the babies puts him full of makes him full of stones and throws him into the well no idea why I but it was a performance and I knew that I had to be one of the goats I knew it I was ready I was ready to play that role I was like and I wasn't allowed to because of the costumes because the lady said that the costumes are white costumes and it wouldn't go with my skin color and there wasn't really a conscious moment where I thought oh that's very racist but I knew something happened to my body I knew that Nick there's this moment of thank you shock which goes through your body and through that I learned very quickly to every toy I think that this helped too every time I wake up I put on a suit of armor and I go out into the world because I'm used to being exposed to that kind of microaggressions and racist insults maybe sometimes it's not even micro sometimes it's small but I think the moment there was certain moments when these when my armor was challenged because for example when I was in Harlem for the first time I took a tube to Harlem from Manhattan I think somewhere and it it became from white the like white just a white tube two more people of color and then it became very black and I was standing in the in the subway thinking I would why is why are these men looking at me and I kept turning around thinking like who are they looking at until I realized that like people were just looking at me and smiling and though just like nothing it was just because people were smiling but I realized that I'm so used to certain gays and a certain expectation onto my body that I'm not used to being just and it wasn't just men but people looking at me but what I wanted to say is that I think through these little moments when you get a chance to see this another world you come back home and you cannot you cannot perform whiteness anymore you go out and like my safe haven for example is Johannesburg when I went to Johannesburg for the first time it was like Chris I didn't even know what happened to me I came back with a suitcase full of books and like contacts and artists contact because I was so invigorated by this and then I landed in Germany and within two months it was this again but I think this constant going out and coming back helps to to continue the education and also to continue the discussion but in university when I wrote my thesis for example I didn't want to finish it because it was horrible I had a I had a teacher and I didn't in the first place I didn't want to write it and I only wrote it because of kaabah studio it's it's a directing Festival for young directors and every school sends one person to Kaba studio and I did an Epson play and afterwards everyone said you will have this she should go to maxim gorky theater which is Maxim Gorky Theatre is a theater which works on post my current perspectives so emphasizes POC narratives black narratives and I didn't understand how me directing Epson would lead to everyone assuming that I should go to Maxim Gorky theater and I was just denied to be a director and just be this very specific director and after that experience I thought maybe there are other people who are experiencing similar things in this kind of institution and I started the research and it was great to again meet people and exchange and see I'm not crazy I'm not the only one who thinks something is wrong but at the same time I was told off so many times by the university because of quotes that I used in the text there was a quote by Johann Zeman's who is a very famous director the head of the theater he worked at before Mattias lenient on and he said in an interview in Austria that as a child he had a piggy bank which was a black boy there must have been this piggy bank in the 60s or 70s which was very famous which was a black person with a cut on the head and every time he walked past it he put money in it and he knew that he would bring culture to black people and I used that quote in to make a reference that this kind of person is now the head of many theaters in Europe and that this kind of thinking doesn't just disappear because you say I'm not I don't want to perpetuate this kind of thinking anymore like there's this one black actor who sometimes plays at the former Fox Pune in Berlin and someone who attended like goodbye speech of honk a stove and at the Fox Pune said his last sentence was he was like talking from here to this this black actor in the audience and he said yeah and then I hope one day you call me and say let's go to Africa and I don't even know what that means but no but but this guy's really and he did this like piece that was also in theater craft and it's like the piece about post colonialism because he yeah I know I didn't even see it but I can imagine it know after having heard this and it's now he's the one putting post colonialism in the German Canon on the map and kind of yeah I have I don't know if it's a question I think it's more of a comment because there is I know that you know kind of in the university periphery there's also a lot of work done to what Peggy and I talked yesterday about in terms of the hidden histories or the histories of black performativity in Peggy's case it was a different context it was literature and we talked about oh yeah activism 1968 and we talked about a lot of things but I there's in the periphery also in theater studies a lot of work done like for instance as a - a vfe who's looking at the history of the veena festival er she did archival research there in order to emphasize that black performance was part I mean we're talking about the Austrian context now there but that someone like James Baldwin actually staged a play there they were black actors involved and she would only find like these little photographs etc and in order to reconstruct and to really create a full embodied history of theatre in in this in Vienna but I know that she's doing very similar things also in in Germany and then there's another but also interestingly another black researcher now leaving the German as to the black people here who is doing the same work on Opera no no then you know another one I'm blanking right now that the person joy yes no no it's not oh no I know exactly how that person looks like but yeah I'm blanking I just wanted to point out that there is a lot of work done yeah yeah so yes I just wanted to say that there is you know like there's a lot of work it just doesn't find that kind of recognition and sorry to interrupt because it's the cast of phenomenon like like the thing it's this thing where I'm always flabbergasted because you're standing in the corner going hey there's a topic hello can we work on it and then a white dude comes along just does the text and then everyone is like finally finally we can speak about post-colonialism and you're like it's this because there's this in germany this thing happening in my opinion where everyone is turning to the African continent looking for artists who can finally speak about black identity and it this I these identities are being like exists that is equal to black European experiences and so you just have to take artists from Johannesburg Cape Town Dhaka take them to Germany they create amazing art and it's we've spoken about it but that this kind of experience might also differ so even in the case of African artists or black American artists coming to Europe and like representing post-colonial discourse or something it's it's different from when Frank cast off does it because as soon as a non-white person works about it or talks about it they talk about it as a batana so what is a bit Hoffner in English if affected one or like and you can't get out of it it's like and but if Frank a stuff talks about it he just made a point that it's an important issue to talk about you know and it's also in the reception of my piece like I spent well I spent two hours with the journalists really really trying to explain to them what structural racism is and how my piece is not personal at all because it's about structural racism and whiteness in the end they still ask the question what is your personal experience with racism and it's the only thing that remains from the interviewer and it happens like all the time and yeah do you experience racism in Germany how does it feel what is it like but you're you're not really black you just think how are we even supposed to call these people onstage because they are not that black aren't they you know this kind of but you can't you can't say anything anymore because there's political correctness and anything wrong we're ranting it was just that I was thinking of the question and you kind of mentioned something that I feel like I wanted to ask I know a huge problem in the UK with performance work in theater work is that even when we get the collective and make the work the reviewers are still white and so what we've started to try and do is how do we cross over disciplines to make sure that it's not just about black folk making the theatre we then have black folk coming to see it and then black folk reviewing it and then black then you're coordinating with black critics I just wondered if what's the conversation like here or have you had your reviewed work reviewed by black folk how did that feel for you how can you imagine ways that it could continue yeah they're actually two reviews written by people of color and one just from last week and I think like we are on our way like it's I have a strong feeling about that in the last two years like there is this like this thing like that is positive and negative at the same time that we are we are connecting us and we we know about each other because we we are confronted with each other all the time even if we don't meet and also there's like slowly the understanding of having to break out of the isolation of being in an only white environment and also like seeing yourself from that perspective and I think because the the theory matching this understanding like now is present enough to to have this effect on on a lot of people and so that we realize it's it's systematical and it's good to systematically know each other in a way and but we are only starting it I think we're only starting it like for example us meeting for the first time now in front of hearing hi thank you so much for courageously sharing all of these experiences like I guess my question is what type of ally in germany do you envision help it yeah because I mean obviously you're very talented and you're very skilled and you can do the work on your own but it seems like you yeah so what kind of Ally would you like cuz I don't think that you guys should carry all this it's just oh yeah we've moved in ala what would what would an ally for you be party but in terms of your artistic and institutional desires no I sometimes like I got an email the other day from a theater who wants to work with me in the future and they they spoke about something bla bla bla and then they said and they also had this great idea for a youth project topic pocahontas so i spent days and days and days to speak with them about certain things and they are one of the I thought good ones and when I saw that email I felt I just said thanks for the email and didn't say anything to that anymore and I feel that institution wise also what you asked earlier I think there needs to be I am all about sanctions and change and funding I don't think you should just get 25 million euros because you're an institution I think you should it should be more similar to how it works in England you have to legitimize and be transparent why you're doing the art the way you why are you creating the way you're creating with the artists you're creating with and who is that who are the people who are working in your institution and there should I invite it would be amazing if other people could actually contextualize what I am doing because it's difficult for me to do because I cannot speak about it because I don't want the institution to know what I'm doing because it does it wouldn't work if I said well I'm bringing all my friends as soon as I get a job and I get a chance to give like give other people 10 jobs obviously I'm going to look for POC nonces non like gender anything people artists who would want to create with me and then try and get them into the institution so they get good pays and they get a chance to actually showcase their work but I cannot say that because if I said it then it would it would deny the idea so maybe contextualization Oh like and it's always good to have networks like to know like to be able to share with other people from in other social contexts and other artistic context and that actually gives me like it's for my for my heart to know that I'm not crazy for me also like obviously my gas station is like being with other people to whom I don't have to explain myself that is one part and I also sometimes like to keep that part in private but to answer the question like whom I want as an ally I think I would want anyone who's big enough to realize that they need to further educate themselves and do so and who are also not telling me that I that my that my expectation is too high or that I'm asking for too much while asking for just being treated like this white male director or getting paid in a certain way or accommodated in a certain way or not wanting to take public transport from the airport like people who don't discuss with me about these kind of things and who who go and educate themselves and then like you were talking about who you are performing for as one one key focal point of what comes out and you were bringing someone as an example I have the experience of staging stuff whether it is performance theater whatever since since 89 in Germany and I realized that in the first years like up to [Music] 95 the black community didn't have the capacity to appreciate art as a means of change so the creation of the audience was what's going on in the in that time in that time it was very easy for me to to function I was performing undocumented I was I was everywhere operas theater and stuff and then after after that I'd I staged a play called Lost Tribes of Africa which was a multimedia opera with like 20 black people performing and after that all of a sudden the white society knew who I was and that I was considering myself black and from that point on I couldn't get into anything anymore and that lasted until until the 2000s in mm I I realized that I first had to change society for both white and black in in in order for my art to to have a fruit I ground a growing ground or a ground of understanding of reception and so I did stuff outside of the artistic arenas like like organizing black media congresses and and I invented me a yem award which was a project with UNESCO that that lasted until like like three four years ago and and that's where were you you guys come in because now all of a sudden there's there's there's a large population within the community that is that is really up to up to the job it's say and and and doing doing the stuff that needs to be done not just in the political arena yes day has been has been doing that for time but but on all other fields and yeah and this is the point I guess where I hope hopefully my next pump will drop where we're doing a black Berlin peon a land office since 2012 which is neglected even though peon Allah invited us let 2016 and and told us the next time we would be part but luckily at least now we have a black curator curators and I just published the high stock Kafka in the remix which will be coming out soon thank you thank you for that contribution I think this kind of this is a good moment to close unless there's like someone who has a really really urgent question no thank you so so much I think so many of the quote not yet so many of the questions that I have a lot of questions and I know there's a lot that remains unresolved so I think we should digest that but we can reconvene with Johnathan around the critical reflection because what you two touched upon today here is really part of the larger conversation of this platform particularly the quest I mean I'm thinking about this question of responsibility that came up you know that was also part of of that it's a difficult one thank you so so much again really for your openness and for your insights and for your brilliance [Applause] [Music] [Applause] sorry Martin there was two two things to housekeeping things first if any of you finds a handy it may be ourselves