Matt Copson, Sung Tieu
Public Guided Tour with German Sign Language
with Anjouna Novak

Information video on exhibition tours with German sign language. Concept, actors and editing: Projektbüro Andreas Döltgen, camera: Frank Sperling. Courtesy KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, 2023.

Sung Tieu
1992, 2025

As part of the recruitment agreement between the GDR and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, approximately 60,000 Vietnamese contract laborers migrated to the GDR in the 1980s. Drawing upon the works of artist Sung Tieu featured in the exhibition 1992, 2005, the tour examines the significant consequences the collapse of the GDR had on these individual’s lives. The political and social changes, as well as racist structures and discrimination prevalent at the time, influenced the identities, roles and social networks of the Vietnamese community in Germany and continue to persist into the day.

Matt Copson
Coming of Age. Age of Coming. Of Coming Age.

From a void, a baby emerges, guided by an anonymous hand. This baby is the protagonist of Matt Copson’s (b. 1992, UK) Coming of Age trilogy, a theatrical installation in which an infant embodies insatiable desire: he wants to grow, leave a legacy, be adored, entertain, and be entertained. He seeks self-betterment, yet remains unable to escape his inevitable self-destruction.

Copson’s animated bildungsroman is a 30-minute operatic work told through laser-projected drawings, staged in KW’s main hall, turned into a theatre. Each of the three walls features one act of the trilogy—Coming of Age, Age of Coming, and Of Coming Age. The Baby moves between them, leaving behind props that remain in place, anticipating his return. The work’s libretto, co-written with musician Caroline Polachek, is sung by a boy soprano.