© Dritte-Degeneration-Ost
It’s early summer. The team (Mathias, Frieda, Antonia as concentrated composition expertise; Frithjof and Romy from the desk corner) arrives in Kassel on Thursday night, travelling under the stars. Thanks to our co-operation with the RHO collective, we not only have a warehouse at our disposal, but also an empty office building, one of which is filled with beds, the other with stage and construction objects. RHO works for the production in the building used by the city as an interim space for documenta and other events. The approximate dimensions of the stage are marked in chalk on the floor. Rolling dogs, building materials and tools complete the situation. This is how the stage design team works: instead of on paper, ideas are realised directly in construction. For us, this is a welcome change from the dialogue- and head-heavy text and concept work.
Several objects, cubes on wheels, are presented by Laurenz and the RHO collective: Metal grids replaced the room walls and border walls. We are told that 90% of the German-German anti-fascist protective wall consisted of these same metal mesh fences. So nobody actually intended to build a wall. The anti-fascist garden fence. Next to it, a 70s West German cigarette machine. Is this the allegory of freedom?
The individual “sculptures” are given names. The “Dieter” sculpture and the “Otze” sculpture. A third one for state security. Thanks to the construction work, it is easy to talk about what we have seen. We exchange ideas. There are concerns about the modularity of the objects. Where do cables run? Which lights need to be placed where? Thanks to the spatial and technical decisions that we were able to make in this process, the work of the other trades is not only structured in terms of space, but also in terms of content. The desire to work “osmotically”, in which the positions and wishes of individuals can repeatedly answer questions and uncertainties elsewhere, seems to be taking hold.
The steel grids are miked and we are already in the music theatre. We climb an “AMPore”, place the sculptures around in all possible constellations, question the spaces that our hero will pass through: at home, at work, in a cage, in a pigsty. Long and tiring discussions in the team about the cigarette machine. In the end, there is a consensus: better to let him “die”.
