Since the horrific and on-going 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, there has been a lot of stage work in Germany about the events and what it all means. These works tend to be complicated in the politics of their production: performers, normally Ukrainian, find themselves interacting with new and unfamiliar institutions, in contexts they never expected to be in for reasons they are not necessarily in control or even aware of, and having to undertake cultural work even as half of their attention is on the front line or various attacks on civilian populations.
If not all work I have seen has been successful, the fault often lies not with artists - who are trying to articulate through the difficult circumstances they have been given. Rather: it's a problem of the amount and nature of the support. Inside Ukraine, the current role of culture seems split between "necessary to keep it on life support" and "well, those resources should really be dealing with more urgent needs". Outside Ukraine, the gestures from have been charitable and often conditional: "you will do this, in this way, and for this outcome". Artistic control, autonomy... those key ingredients for making art, are frequently missing from those frames, and the result is some hollow works that, even if they have the premise of being Ukrainian-led, often seem defined for the artists to an extent that this principle becomes meaningless, or sometimes abandoned completely.
Add to the terror of invasion, then, the new terror for the artist of tresspassing those conditions, of articulating something rude or shocking, of the urgent need for self-expression in this moment lying in contrast with the need to please conscious and unconscious masters, in a kind of invisible disciplining. Absent of real solidarity, these situations are, and have regularly been, exploitative, an outcome born of interpersonal micro-attacks. Without acting for meaningful change and more understanding, they will continue to be.
Threads is the first work I have seen that directly addresses the taboos of expressing anger in telling your own story. I rock up to the meeting point and the artist are there to meet me in the back garden of Bard College's "The Factory" in Pankow, hopping off the bike and walking with them around the corner to the performance space. Threads bills itself as an immersive and meditative experience, and the piece opens with an invitation for the audience to find space for themselves in the room where they feel comfortable. We are invited to "check in" with ourselves in a process that mirrors post-traumatic therapy techniques of mindfulness: "How do you feel physically? Inhale. Exhale." We touch fingers with a person beside us, preparing ourselves for a journey in which we are not alone.
