Situation mit Ausgestrecktem Arm deals with the (art-)history of a contaminated gesture: the saluto romano, the Olympic salute, the Bellamy-salute, the German salute, the Hitler salute.
This gesture – as a symbol that was invented in painting, popularized in theatre and again and again instrumentalised by nationalist movements – hovers constantly on the border of artistic and political action.
On this basis, the performance negotiates how we deal with the immaterial heritage of our collective pasts, the relation of power and staging as well as the choreographic disciplining of bodies. It is a duet for one performer and one voice, a study with footnotes on the politics of art and the art of politics.
The German theatre maker Oliver Zahn is part of the company HAUPTAKTION, which studies theatrical practices using ethnography, archive-based-research and embodiment. This results in an output of texts, theatre, lectures. For Situation mit Ausgestrecktem Arm, Zahn was nominated in 2015 as Best Emerging Artist in Theater Heute’s critics poll.
with: Sara Tamburini
voice: Helmut Becker
concept: Oliver Zahn
technical design: Jonaid Khodabakhshi/Dennis Kopp
a production by HAUPTAKTION with Bayerische Theaterakademie August Everding and Hochschule für Musik und Theater München.
