12 May 23, 8pm

In English

Venue: KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Pogo Bar

Registration via pogobar@kw-berlin.de

Ania Nowak’s UNTITLED 3 evolves around a drag personification of Karl Marx—godfather and father-god of the communist revolution, in theory at least—to ask about what forms of labor are needed when working for social change today. Staged in various settings—from a classical black box to intimate spaces like a hotel room and KW’s Pogo Bar—the work explores the possibilities of detaching from prescribed categories and binary oppositions such as theory and practice, work and leisure, communism and capitalism, evolution and revolution.

Feminized labor of care work—traditionally omitted from history books and narratives of revolution—is juxtaposed with allusions to knowledge production and the distribution of power. Queered archetypes of father, mother, revolutionary and worker all overlap in the performers’ physical expression while the language spits crucial questions at the contemporary freelance worker. Who has time for a revolution today? And who has it for self-care? Who can actually change the world? And who will clean up the mess afterwards?

Choreography, performance: Ania Nowak

Creation, performance: Bully Fae Collins

Video: Aleksandra Osowicz

Costume: Grzegorz Matląg

Makeup: Antina Christ

Text references: Ania Nowak, Jayson Patterson, Kaitlyn Boulding, Ron Padgett, Charles Bukowski, Rumi, Jenny Holzer, Mary Oliver

Image: Michał Szymończyk

With her choreographic practice, Ania Nowak approaches vulnerability and desire as ways towards reimagining what bodies and language can and cannot do. She develops formats such as live and video performance, installation and text. Nowak engages with bodies in their nonlinear feeling and thinking capacity to tackle the difficulties of companionship and care in times of perpetual crisis. Nowak’s work attempts to reimagine the notions of disorder, pleasure, disease, intimacy, pain, sexuality, class and accessibility as sites of binary free living.

She collaborates with alternative educational programs in Eastern Europe, such as Kem School in Warsaw and the School of Kindness in Sofia. Her works were presented at HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlinische Galerie, Akademie der Künste and Sophiensæle in Berlin; Nowy Teatr Warsaw, La Casa Encendida Madrid, the Baltic Triennial at CAC Vilnius, Q21 Vienna and Kiasma Helsinki among others. Nowak’s first solo show in Berlin can currently be seen at Galerie Wedding.