Schwarze Leute – Reclaiming Memories

Description

English version below Performance
Festsaal
Approx. 1 h 10 min.
German The performance addresses racism and racist violence, including violence by authorities, within the school system, and in the form of psychological and verbal abuse. The archival material shown includes racist language, both written and spoken. Soon after the war, Afro-German children were born in postwar Germany: children of white German women and Black US soldiers. Public authorities declared these children a problem and made sure that many of them were placed in children’s homes or sent abroad. To this day, this part of German postwar history has barely been researched. Simone Dede Ayivi & Kompliz*innen investigate institutional racism in the early Federal Republic. How was such a thing possible after the end of National Socialism—and how do we find a language that spares those affected while sparing nothing in its reckoning with a largely indifferent society? Schwarze Leute asks how the history of bureaucratic violence is Concept, text, performance: Simone Dede Ayivi
Sound, music: Johannes Birlinger
Set design: Lani Tran-Duc
Costume design: Mariama Sow
Set & costume assistance: Luca Plauman
Video: Jones Seitz, Fine Freiberg
Dramaturgy: Jens Hillje
Outside eye: Bahar Meriç
Project assistance: Charlotte Rosengarth
Technical direction: Lui Marschewski
Lighting, special effects: Frieder Miller
Press: Sarah Rosenau
Production management: Anna Mareike Holtz & Sandra Klöss (ehrliche arbeit – freies Kulturbüro) A production by Simone Dede Ayivi & Kompliz*innen in co-production with Sophiensæle. Funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion and the Capital Cultural Fund (HKF).