Britney X
Temple of Temptation
by and with DAMIEN THORN, ANNA SCHALL, jpeg.love, NORA AARON SCHERER, JANOUSHKA KAMIN, NATALIE ANANDA ASSMANN, ISU MIGNON MIGNONNE 異水 謎龍 未姩, FARIS CUCHI GEZAHEGN, Andreas Schneiders, Andras_2020, Elio
Photo: Winona Hudec
SAT 10 JUNE • 21.00 P.M.
Performance • 1h 30 min • Christuskirche
Registration
SAT 10 JUN 2023 • 21.00
All events are included in the ticket price. Due to limited seating capacity at some events, we kindly ask you to register in advance.
TEMPLE OF TEMPTATION celebrates new rituals of coming together and imagines radical future forms of gender, sexuality and care.
In the modernised space of the Protestant Christuskirche in Cologne's Neustadt, the artists break with patriarchal, dualistic worldviews and redefine traditional ritual practices such as washing or flogging from a queer-demonic perspective. What possibilities do we have to protect and care for our queer bodies from exploitability, male economies of need, stigmatisation and mechanisms of subjugation? What form of encounters outside of neoliberal functionality and self-optimisation does our community-centred spirit desire? And, how can care, desire, love, responsibility, lust and community be thought together? On three levels of the sacred building, the audience encounters various individual and collective desires of the temple in the course of the performance, not least to be thrown back on the question of the solution.
TEMPLE OF TEMPTATION is a collaboration of performance artists, sex workers, LGBTIQ activists, musicians and pro sex work activists from Berlin, Vienna and Cologne. The collective work is located at the intersection of theatrical intervention, activist education and queer club culture. TEMPLE OF TEMPTATION is the third collaboration of the collective.
In the modernised space of the Protestant Christuskirche in Cologne's Neustadt, the artists break with patriarchal, dualistic worldviews and redefine traditional ritual practices such as washing or flogging from a queer-demonic perspective. What possibilities do we have to protect and care for our queer bodies from exploitability, male economies of need, stigmatisation and mechanisms of subjugation? What form of encounters outside of neoliberal functionality and self-optimisation does our community-centred spirit desire? And, how can care, desire, love, responsibility, lust and community be thought together? On three levels of the sacred building, the audience encounters various individual and collective desires of the temple in the course of the performance, not least to be thrown back on the question of the solution.
TEMPLE OF TEMPTATION is a collaboration of performance artists, sex workers, LGBTIQ activists, musicians and pro sex work activists from Berlin, Vienna and Cologne. The collective work is located at the intersection of theatrical intervention, activist education and queer club culture. TEMPLE OF TEMPTATION is the third collaboration of the collective.
By & With
Damien Thorn
Damien Thorn is a Bosnian-born, Vienna-based dancer/performer and sexwork/HIV activist. Thorn's work on queer visibility moves between Austria, Germany, Belgium and Chexho Slovakia. Known and deeply connected to the LGBTIQ and art scene In Vienna, Thorn performs and dances in the context of a wide variety of events, festivals and happenings that focus on thematic complexes such as sex work and human rights. Thorn is also a member of the Red Edition board (Migrant Sexworker Group Vienna). His last projects were: ESWA Sexwork Conference Bruxelles, Red Rules (Sexwork Festival with »City of Whores« Performance by Natalie Assmann a.o.), Porn Film Festival Vienna, Wien Woche Festival, Festival of Sensations, Life Ball Vienna, Sexpositive Movement Gegen Berlin.
Janoushka Kamin
Born in a Fotofix automaton, Janoushka Kamin has been moving between autobiographical, multimedia, performative explorations and text since 2013. Kamin deals with questions of strangeness in one's own body, plastering and feeding wounds, responding to one's own voice, and the rage of the inner child. Sexuality, vulnerability and forms of brutality are also components of this process, which also flow into her text works. In addition to collective projects in Vienna and Leipzig, Kamin is/was featured in various productions such as Herr Puntila und das Riesen Ding in Mitte by Rene Pollesch, Halbtoter Salon by Lydia Haider and »Is Anybody Home? « by Gob Squad at the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz.
Anna Schall
Anna Schall (dey/deren/sie/ihr) is a visual artist:in with focus on performance and costume. Schall's work comes from a queer-feminist stance and seeks safe spaces within and outside the body. Anna works for and with artists, actors, and musicians theater, exhibition spaces, public spaces, stages, and non-stages of all kinds.
jpeg.love
Ary Nyx is a genderqueer, interdisciplinary artist and musician rooted in Berlin's underground electronic music scene. In the last two years they followed the instinctive call to evolve from club-oriented sound to performance and video art. Recently they, whose performance debut 'ptsd healing' performed as part of the exhibition »Menstrualities« at the Alte Münze and organized a porn and performance event titled »Make U C*M« at the Haus der Statistik. Ari Nyx transforms and crosses the boundaries between queer art, performance art and club culture.
Nora Aaron Scherer
Nora Aaron Scherer (no pronouns) are many. Multidisciplinary artist*, activist*, social worker*, bodyworker*. Aaron's interactive, immersive, and durational performance works create situations that allow for the exploration of social dynamics and conventions, contemporary forms of communication, intimacy, and sexuality. Aaron often collaborates with international artists or works as a performer for collectives such as SIGNA.
Natalie Ananda Assmann
Natalie Ananda Assmann (she/her) is a freelance artist, theatre maker, curator, director and performer. Her mostly collective works move at the intersection of theatrical intervention in public space, interdisciplinary performance formats and activist edutainment art. Growing up in theatre, Assmann is interested in forms of collective resistance, post-humanist concepts of intimate coexistence and queer, anti-capitalist futures within and beyond art production. From 2019 to 2020, she was part of the Artistic Direction Team of WIENWOCHE - Festival for Art & Activism in Vienna. There she started her collaboration with the collective Red Edition - Migrant Sexworker Group Vienna. Assmann's last collective collaboration "JUSTITIA!Identity Cases" will be shown at this year's Impulse Festival in Cologne, where she already curated the Academy II "Ar/ctivism - Art and Activism in Free Theatre" together with Gin Müller in 2021. SEX DRIVE was her last work at Stadtraum Köln. She lives with her partner Marlene Engel and her dog Loulou between Berlin and Vienna.
Isu Mignon Mignonne 異水 謎龍 未姩
Isu questions how itself* appears in the world, and twists it through various kinds of performance. Mignonne in its name doesn’t stand for »cute« in French, but for 미친년 Mi-Chin-Nyeon in Korean, which means »crazy b*tch«. While walking on the tight line between cuteness and madness, Isu creates performative situations that are a fluid mixture of drag, lecture, movements, spoken words and more.
FARIS CUCHI GEZAHEGN
Faris Cuchi Gezahegn (they/them/their/she) is an Ethiopian femme non-binary queer person based in Vienna, Austria. Their multifaceted human dignity work manifested through their advocacy/activism work that centers a reality of Queer Ethiopians in Ethiopia and diaspora spaces specifically in Austria, the UK, and the USA. They are a multidisciplinary artist, African queer culture, knowledge producers, space creator, holder, self-archivist, style activist, and radical softness advocate that center the lived experience of Black African and African descent Trans/NB/GNC bodies. They are co-founders; Co-Director and counter-narrative lead at the House of Guramayle, Chairperson of Türkis Rosa Lila TIPP, and Vice-Chairperson of Afro Rainbow Austria. Their artistic practice uses mediums such as poetry, and performance art (PCCC stand-up comedy, dance, song, and video-audio installation).
Andreas Schneiders
Andreas Schneiders (62) is an actor, performer and musician. He acts in front of an audience, whether on the theatre stage (e.g. Raketenclub, Cologne), in dance theatre (United Cowboys, Eindhoven, 687 Performance, Cologne) as a singer in the punk band »The Mad Mullahs« or as a berserk announcer in the ring at the »Rock'n'Roll Wrestling Bash«.
Elio
Elio (it/its) is a multidiciplinary performance artist and dancer currently reciding in Berlin. Through audio, movement and strange objects also known as friends its work explores topics of strangeness, play and the body with it's limits and what exists beyond it. As a Black, intersex and neurodivergent performer Elio is interested in reclaiming and challenging the way it is perceived in space.
Andras_2020
Andras_2020’s is a Brazilian multi-disciplinary artist, working in the fields of music production, singing and contemporary dance. After the release of their debut ep »Cuerpo Temperamental« – a depiction of their heavily Latin/Experimental-Pop influenced sound, unfiltered lyrics and complex knocking drums – Andras joined forces with 3D artist Lukas Becker and has performed across Europe in 2022 with their electric A/V show, the »Cuerpo Tour«.