Dear Guests,
“I want us to ask who benefits from our hopelessness, and to deny our oppressors the satisfaction of getting to see our pain,” wrote adrienne maree brown. The North American activist and author calls on us not to surrender in the face of catastrophe, but to stay engaged – with pleasure and joy. For brown, these are not a luxury; they are the very foundation of political resistance movements and revolutions. When a revolution becomes as captivating as our opening production IRRESISTIBLE REVOLUTION by Ayelen Parolin – weaving brown’s ideas together with Argentine carnival and protest choreography – we find ourselves a little closer to the future in dance and beyond. The second production in the grand hall, APRÈS MOI, LE DÉLUGE, by the Summer Festival’s all-time favorite trio (LA)HORDE and the Ballet national de Marseille, likewise confronts a world on the brink and the struggle for a better alternative. How human beings fight for life even in their darkest moments – without losing their sense of humor – is also at the heart of two further works: Jacob Jonas, a Los Angeles choreographer with a pop star career (see the Rosalía references in this program), presents the world premiere of a hyper-intense physical dance trilogy about his own experience of cancer and the RESTART that followed; while Melanie Jame Wolf pulls off a remarkable theatrical feat, transforming her own breast cancer diagnosis into a comedy evening complete with Shakespeare texts that will make you laugh and cry in equal measure.
hope! – that’s what it says on the cover, distilled from the program by our graphic duo Hanna Osen and Laurens Bauer, punctuated with an exclamation mark: an invitation to act. The philosopher Jonathan Lear coined the term “Radical Hope” for the stubborn, persistent work of building towards a future despite the doom of the present. Radical hoping means facing the horror of now with hope intact. That’s especially powerful when the horror is as brilliantly crafted as in BURNT TOAST by Norwegian trigger-warning theater company Susie Wang. Here too, in one of the most vampire-like moments in recent theater history, a very small being emerges – naturally named “Hope”! The classic of hope theory was written by philosopher Ernst Bloch in US exile during the Nazi terror: “The Principle of Hope”. For Bloch too, hoping is an active, combative act – one that points toward the radically new that the future makes possible. He would have delighted in Ania Nowak’s FUTURE TONGUEXXX, a work that explores the languages and bodies of the future.
What the future might hold for one widely misunderstood organ of the body is explored from two very different angles: by author Evan Hugo Tepest in his new book “Sind Penisse real?” (Are Penises Real? - one of six free readings on the Waldbühne in the Avant-Garten), and by the feminist nightclub DICKS by Sibylle Peters and the Heteraclub at Hamburg’s Kiez, this time also welcoming curious dick-bearers – including naked cleaning as an escape route from toxic masculinity. As James Baldwin said: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” Nowhere is this more true than in political activism – as demonstrated by Yulia Navalnaya, who carries forward her murdered husband’s fight for freedom through a look back at Russia’s recent past.
That the path to the future often runs through the past is compellingly shown by philosopher Rebecca Solnit in her book “Hope in the Dark”. Hope, she writes, concerns the future – but its foundations lie in the records and memories of the past. She quotes George Orwell: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” It is precisely this critical engagement with history that defines the art of the day-after-tomorrow at this festival: Pankaj Tiwari shows how the sustainable farming methods of his childhood in India were dismantled by globalization; Camissa Create and Liz Rech present the Baakenhafen – soon to be graced with a new opera house – as a site of colonial memory (one of two collaborations with city curator Joanna Warsza); Adam Seid Tahir uncovers utopian potential in ancient Nordic myths from a Black, queer perspective; Eszter Salamon stages a feminist spectacle of color in memory of the antifascist artist Valeska Gert; and Joana Tischkau, together with Jeremy Nedd, Sophie Yukiko and the Cuban Malpaso Dance Company, creates a piece about the legendary Tropicana revue theater and the images of tourism.
The future of tourism – and the history of seafaring – takes center stage in DAS SCHIFF (The Ship), by Summer Festival favorites Nesterval, aboard the MS Stubnitz in the harbor. Swiss filmmaker Jonas Meier takes us to some of the most thrilling (and sometimes most troubling) destinations of modern tourism in SOCIAL LANDSCAPES (one of six festival films at the Alabama Kino), with music by Tobias Preisig and Stefan Rusconi. The two musicians also present their new album as the duo LEVITATION at the place where it was made: St. Gertrud Church, where a small Summer Festival series offers contact with higher spheres of hope – including a performance by Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. The iconic songwriter of the century sings on his new album: “Broken and bleeding, bruised and accosted / We wonder if there’s hope of winning / And then hope of sleeping, we are so exhausted / And then hope of something beginning.” Bleeding on the ground, still refusing to give up on the possibility that something new can begin. Much like French movie star Vimala Pons, who is hurled across the stage by two wind cannons and through 300 emotional states – and plays on with ever-greater force.
To look reality in the face and not give up – but to keep going precisely because of it: few artists have embodied this more powerfully than Nan Goldin, whose THE BALLAD OF SEXUAL DEPENDENCY we present throughout the festival in collaboration with the Hamburger Kunsthalle – alongside a performance series there featuring works by Saâdane Afif and Xavier Le Roy. Raja Feather Kelly then takes over all six major venues of Hamburg’s Kunstmeile with DOOMERS, a piece about the endless scroll through negative news online; and at the MARKK, Cem A. stages a performance duel on the production of knowledge.
Finding “hope in the dark” – to invoke Rebecca Solnit’s term once more – is something art achieves precisely by looking toward the future. At Kampnagel, that future will literally be shaped by cranes: the renovation of the halls begins immediately after the Summer Festival, and this transition to something new calls, naturally, for a grand gala, directed by Christoph Marthaler with the Symphoniker Hamburg conducted by Sylvain Cambreling. The gala as a glance backwards and forwards – because the story of the avant-garde goes on, as witnessed in concerts by legendary Brazilian musician Arthur Verocai and the ageless krautrock pioneers FaUSt, just two of more than 30 parties and concerts in a festival that kicks off with Rio de Janeiro’s rising star Ana Frango Elétrico. Those who want to raise a glass with us to the old new times are most welcome to do so before, after – ok yes, sometimes during – performances in the Avant-Garten: the most hopeful place since festival gardens were invented, with a daily program on the Waldbühne, in the Migrantpolitan, and from the festival’s everneon-green crew JAJAJA. And after some 7,620 characters, we’ve barely scratched the surface. Dive into this program – the future is coming, and it’s happening above all due to a dedicated community of funders and supporters: thank you! Hope never dies.
See you soon,
András Siebold & the Summer Festival Team
