TENDER (Def.)
: delicate or soft in quality or tone
: easily chewed
: sensitive to touch or palpation
: having a soft or yielding texture
: showing care
In the performative installation TENDER (Def.) the public space of Gießen is transformed. Bodies will renegotiate, encounter and transform on the church square of Giessen. In an installation of about 4 hours, the church square, with various performative interactions, will be released from its cobblestone-hard straightness and can soften up and be tendered. Abstract bodies spread in soft adaptation over the edges and corners of their environment. The social pressure on bodies that move in society is exhibited in phases of tension and relaxation, and pushed to extremes until complete fatigue. The tenderness of the newly created soft area knows how to absorb this exhaustion and invites you to let yourself be touched. A project by: Ariana Battaglia, Judith Bethke, Johannes Demmler & Ruth Süpple.

10. Juli 2021 // 10 th of July 2021
Kirchenplatz Gießen 35390 // church square
10-14Uhr // 10-14 o‘clock

UMSTÄNDLICHKEITEN//complexities
object and material performance for a young audience

Hallo alle Dinge, die sich als andere Dinge verkleiden
Alle Dinge, die fühl'n, alle, die denken, alle, die schreiben
Alle, die wühl'n, lenken, schweben, leiden
Und alle Dinge, die schweigen.
[Käptn Peng- der Anfang ist nah]

In the exploratory object and material performance "Umständlichkeiten" three completely different beings meet in a fictional world. The question arises of how a mutual discovery, getting to know each other, and living in a community in a shared place can look. The beings are less reminiscent of human figures, but move, articulate and consciously shape themselves quite differently. Nonetheless, the three figures function as an analogy and reference point of internalized mechanisms that can occur when people who are framed as "different" meet: Scepticism, inhibitions, lack of understanding, withdrawal, repression, defiance, and protest behavior, projection, and aggression. The differentiation of a "self" from an "other" and how to deal with it as well as with possible alternative options for differentiation and action are at the center of the encounter on stage. Thus, in this investigation of a (fictitious) heterogeneous community, differences are to be made visible and not understood as a problem to be homogenized, but as a quality and possibility of togetherness.

The creatures and their costumes were created through improvisational material and movement research. This approach is oriented towards curiosity in search of new contexts, towards an exploratory behavior that is also characteristic of children and young people. In this way, the project engages with the realities of life of young audiences, creates poetic spaces, explores never-before-seen bodies of beings, and pursues their playfulness. In doing so, the project does not want to negate or assimilate difference, but rather to use it as an artistic surface of friction.

production ÷3
Judith Bethke, Maria Obermeier, Ruth Süpple
Technical support: Dana Maxim
Pictures: Talisa Frenschkowski
Ort//location: LAB Frankfurt
Premiere: August 2021
documentation: https://youtu.be/HBXTl0aaa3M

IDENTITÄTSSTIFTENDER RAUM//identity-creating space
A video work about repression politics and two-dimensional superficiality.

The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the >state of exception< in which we live is the rule. [Walter Benjamin] (p. 697 on the concept of historiography)

Downtown urban qualities for families | building typologies for different target groups such as: Families, seniors, students | most diverse living desires of today's society | most diverse neighborhood forms | private and semi-public green and open spaces | livability | identity-creating open space | publicly accessible neighborhood park | most diverse spectrum of qualities and forms of use possible | differentiated living models | innovative living concepts | community approach | private front gardens kept rather small in favor of public open spaces | low-car living.

Premiere: November 2020
Ort//location: Twitch livestrream

BEST BEFORE_Mindesterinnerungsdatum

a performance by the FREIWILLIG collective in the public space, on September 16, 17, and 18, 2021.

EVE (Exploring Past Memory Preservation, german: Erforschung vergangener Erinnerungskonservierung) is an institution that collects all kinds of time capsules, stores them and opens them again at the right time to release memories. The openings are carried out by scientists* under strict protective measures. The openings are commented on and documented by three commentators who describe the events, the objects, and the released memories from their perspective. In doing so, they hope to draw conclusions about memory culture and nostalgia.

http://freiwillig-kollektiv.de/projekte/tape.html

Premiere: 16.09.2021
Ort//location: public space Stuttgart
Mitwirkende//with:
Annbritt Haufel, Benjamin Zeeb, Cristiana Pinto Ribeiro, Carlotta Feil, Nele Schiller, Malte Jackisch, , Moritz Martin, Ruth Süpple

BILDVERBOT//picture ban

a staged party by FREIWILLIG collective. The guests enter a space, into a place that is supposed to convey a utopia through nature-bound music, slow flowing movements of the performers and a pleasant voice, in which cell phones are forbidden and no likenesses are to be created. When the utopia is broken, the evening develops into a frenzy in which making likenesses of oneself and others becomes the center of action and attention.

The FREIWILLIG collective poses questions around the theme of self-perception and the perception of others.

http://freiwillig-kollektiv.de/projekte/bildverbot.html

Ort//location: Theater Rampe, Stuttgart
Premiere: 15.06.2018
Mitwirkende//with:
Alexandra Ittner, Benjamin Zeeb, Carlotta Feil, Cristi Ribeiro, Felix Schulz, Klara Fritz, Lars von Kiedrowski, Lea Salemi, Malika Teßmann, Malte Jackisch, Moritz Martin, Ruth Süpple, Robert Liß

MIKROGRAMM//microgram

A train station, somewhere in Stuttgart in the near future. The fine dust pollution claimed so many victims that the automotive industry had to take the fall. But: what happens to a city and its society in which two thirds of the population were employed by this very industry?

Microgram takes place on an underground platform. The new center of a deeply divided city that seems to have lost its common denominator. It’s a place that is constantly marked by arrivals and departures, where the most diverse people meet each other.

In Microgram, we focus not only on the lives of those who have been employed by the automotive industry, but also on those who have been indirectly affected by such disintegration. The disruption of an industry that employs such a large number of people goes to many areas: What happens to the cultural landscape when it no longer receives subsidies due to a lack of tax dollars? Is there still the exchange of a smile on the train when a population recovers from a deep blow? Where should the journey go? Departure, arrival, departure to a new us.

MIKROGRAMM was performed as part of "Test Run with the Others" by the Citizen.Kane.Collective.
http://freiwillig-kollektiv.de/projekte/mikrogramm.html


Premiere: 07.12.2018
Ort//location: Rotenbergstraße, Stuttgart
Mitwirkende//with:
Benjamin Zeeb, Charlotte Goes, Cristi Ribeiro, Felix Schulz, Klara Fritz, Lars von Kiedrowski, Lea Salemi, Malika Teßmann, Malte Jackisch, Moritz Martin, Nele Schiller, Ruth Süpple

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Das Übersehen so sichtbar//the visible overlooking

You listen to: Harmony FM, birdsong, street traffic, conversations about displacement policy, street scene, chess, Monopoly, gardening, window cleaning, weatherproof cabinets and accessibility.

A mixture of small talk and shop talk about memories of the private and the public.
Duration: 35 minutes
Post-production and sound design: Jannis Wulle
Interviewer and editing: Ruth Süpple
Interview-partner: Ute Loh (social worker) Sarah Siodlazek (social worker) Gertrud Monninger-Wolff (social worker) Rainer and Jörg (residents of the Little Homes)

A production by Ruth Süpple, as part of the seminar "Topoideologies, site-specific performances and agonistic space" led by Andrej Mircev.
Many thanks to the interviewed social workers of the diaconal work die Brücke in Gießen.