no apocalypse not now – Ariel Efraim Ashbel and friends
In their new show no apocalypse not now, Ariel Efraim Ashbel and friends offer an exuberant, critical and to the extent - hopeful take on the question of the end of the world as we know it. Taking the original Greek meaning of the word apocalypse (ποκάλυψις) seriously – an unveiling, a reveal – the show investigates apocalyptic culture through a myriad of perspectives: from Judaeo-Christian scripture to apocalyptic cults and messianic theologies to Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now (1979) and the book it’s based on, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899). In what evolves, the show envisions and dwells in new worlds - unveiling the potentials and aesthetics of a world after man. Like the group’s previous works, which challenged Western canonical tendencies, no apocalypse not now, declines the temptation to work the apocalypse through the staging of nihilistic destruction: the narcissistic, self-absorbed (masked as self-loathing) trope through which millennial anxieties and desires are often explored. It also stays clear from the utopia/dystopia dialectic worldview. Instead, the show proposes a revelation: a revelation without coherency, it invites to be lost and found perpetually, to proclaim joy without nihilism, optimism without compliance, fun without irony. What happens when theater departs from conceptual constraints of humanistic world making, decentering the figure of a solitary, resilient (naturally male) genius of spirit and mind? Working through all these considerations, the work will deepen and continue Ashbel’s practice of formulating a theater which decentralises the human, asking how does the stage gain context through the ideas of the end of the world and how to performatively harvest the constructive potentials of the apocalypse.
Ariel Efraim Ashbel (1982, Tel Aviv) is a Berlin based artist and performance maker. He creates aesthetic spectacles weaving together a wide array of historical, political, theoretical, and pop-cultural references. Through composing and sampling, he collaborates with friends from all over the world, active in several fields of creative and scientific knowledge to compose interdisciplinary structures at the intersection of theater, visual art, dance, music, and installation. Graduate of the School of Visual Theater Jerusalem and Philosophy in Tel Aviv University, he contributed to projects in various venues and contexts such as HZT Berlin, the Berlin Biennale, Pornfilmfest, transmediale, HAU Hebbel am Ufer.
Jessica Gadani (performer) is a singer from New York, where she received a classical singing education at Ithaca College. She sang in many opera productions in the USA as mezzo-soprano and has worked as a freelance singer and performer in Berlin. She sings regularly in a cabaret, which she founded together with the performer Jack Woodhead. With Berlin based artists such as Santiago Blaum, Johannes Müller and Andreas Liebmann she sang, performed and moved around on the stages of the world. First collaboration with Ariel Efraim Ashbel was 2013 in ALL WHITE PEOPLE LOOK THE SAME TO ME (2013).
Cassie Augusta Jørgensen (performer) is a dancer, artist and choreographer living in Copenhagen/Denmark and joined Ariel Efraim Ashbel for DO THE RIGHT THING (2018). She has a background in ballet, as well as different styles of modern dance and has studied at the Alvin Ailey School of Modern Dance in New York City. After living in NYC for four years she moved back to Copenhagen to receive an MFA at the Royal Danish Art Academy working in the intersection of visual arts and the field of choreography and performative studies.
Sarah Thom (performer) Sarah was born in the North of England in 1962. After leaving school at the age of 16 with no qualifications and off the scale dyslexia, Sarah managed to convince her local touring theater to give her a job as a costume and set designer. With the back drop of Thatcher's Britain, political activism was a constant distraction. At the age of 30 with no formal education she applied to do an Interdisciplinary Arts degree. While still at university Sarah co-founded Gob Squad Arts Collective who have gained an international reputation for making experimental performance for the past 25 years. Led by the desire to develop her artistic practice Sarah is working for the first time with a director...
Petra Poelzl (Dramaturgy) Freelance curator, dramaturge, and researcher based in Berlin. Poelzl studied Sinology, Chinese language and theatre studies in Vienna, Beijing and Berlin. She was a dramaturge in the program department of steirischer herbst, Festival for New Art in Graz (2014–16) and since then keeps on working as a dramaturge and advisor for several artists. Since 2016, she has been working closely with Tianzhuo Chen on his stage performances. Poelzl is is part of the Berlin based curatorial collaboration Karma Ltd. Extended. Her texts have been published in the Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, as well as in several exhibition catalogues and magazines.
Eli Petel (Stage) is a visual artist and professor based in Tel Aviv. His work deals with social issues while posing formalistic questions in a wide range of art poses that rely on the status of the image in historical and artistic contexts. Since 2011 Head of the Art Department of Bezalel, Academy of Art and Design Jerusalem, Petel presented in a variety of major and marginal exhibition spaces in Israel and around the world since 2000, and published three books regarding his work.
Tatiana Saphir (performer) is an actress, a performance artist, model for plus size fashion, blogger, DJ and dancer based in Berlin and Buenos Aires. She performs in numerous Argentinian films, as well as on Berlin stages, i. e. with Gob Squad, Santiago Blaum, Franz Rogowski, Nir de Volff & Dirk Cieslak / Lubricat and Constanza Macras. She co-directed the performance A Brief History of Argentinian Punk at Dock 11. As a DJ Obstsalat she combines traditional and digital cumbia with South African kwaito, dancehall, dub and global bass in an electropical no-hits policy.
HACKLANDER \ HATAM (Music) Colin Hacklander is an avant-garde percussionist, drummer and composer, with a background in post-tonal theory and electronic music from the US. Born in Teheran, graduated in molecular biology, Farahnaz Hatam is a sound artist, composer and specialist DJ who works primarily with SuperCollider, a platform for audio synthesis and algorithmic composition. Both live and work in Berlin. Interested in the depth of radical material heteronomy and the self as highly constructible and therefore de-constructible, HACKLANDER \ HATAM create powerful and moving works based on sound. Among their recent commissioned compositions and performances are Basler Trommeln (with Isabel Lewis), Basilea, Art Basel; Berlin Atonal; transmediale, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Sharjah Biennial 14, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin.
Sandra Fink (Costumes) Is a Costume Designer born in Argentina, works in Buenos Aires and Berlin. While studying Textile Design and Combined Arts, she started to work in Costume Design for Film and Theater. She collaborated in more than 15 feature films, taking part in many award winning projects and also twice nominated for the Silver Condor Award. Her designs were seen in the main venues in Argentina like the Cervantes National Theatre and The Colon Opera Theatre as well as European venues like Theater und Opera Heidelberg, HAU, Uferstudios, Kampnagel, FFT, Muffatwerk in Germany and also in the Lubuski Theater (Poland) and Gesnerallee (Switzerland).
Joseph Wegmann (Light) is a Director and Designer born and raised in NYC and studied directing, lighting design, scenography as majors and Performance Studies as a minor at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. While studying, he developed his own work, as well as working as a production and directing assistant. He worked with Sarah Benson at Soho Rep Theater in New York and across the city in event lighting services at institutions such as the MOMA and Brooklyn Museum.
Romm Lewkowicz (Research and Concept) is a New York based anthropologist, migrant rights’ activist and a dramaturg. He is working on his doctoral dissertation titled "Documenting the undocumented: Experimenting the Future of Europe at the EU’s Biometric Refugee Archive". The research is an anthropological study, looking at how the refugee body has been serving as a laboratory for experimentation in biometric surveillance. Lewkowicz has held various research positions in migrant rights NGO’s around the world, including the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants and the African Refugee Development Center (Tel Aviv), Detention Action (London) and Asylos – Research for Asylum (Brussels). Since 2013, Lewkowicz has been collaborating with the Berlin based director Ariel Efraim Ashbel, supervising the research and conception for the shows ALL WHITE PEOPLE LOOK THE SAME TO ME (2013), The Empire Strikes Back (2015), and Do the Right Thing (2018).
Ariel Efraim Ashbel and friends
Director: Ariel Efraim Ashbel // Research and Concept: Romm Lewkowicz // By and with: Jessica Gadani, Cassie Augusta Jørgensen, Sarah Thom, Tatiana Saphir // Music: Hacklander/Hatam. Featuring: Daphna Keenan // Stage: Eli Petel // Costumes: Sandra Fink // Light: Joseph Wegmann // Dramaturgy: Petra Poelzl // Director’s Assistant: Katharina Joy Book // Design assistant: Klara Mand // Press: Wayra Schuebel // Production: björn & björn.
World premiere
28.+29.9.2019, 7 pm
Orpheum, steirischer herbst
Graz (Österreich)
German premiere
09.–12.10.2019, 8 pm
HAU1, Hebbel am Ufer
Berlin