Situation for up to 50 participants

In the performance Demonstration with Money, we simulate a demonstration that does not (yet) exist. By demonstrating with money, we try to develop a disturbed relationship to money and to construct a demonstration that could radically question public order.

For this, we misappropriate the power accumulated in money to imagine a space and time different from reality. We use the power of abstraction that lies at the origin of money to simulate a new situation. We try to (re)appropriate the interactions, movements and desires stored in money and speculate on a different collective interest. The purchasing power of money turns into a power of  assembly, a medium of separation becomes a medium of coming together.

In a collective listening situation, banknotes become the material for an experience that turns the everyday use of money upside down. Two performers equipped with a megaphone organize the simulated assembly. In different tracks, the text guides the construction of the situation and spatializes processes of reflection, memory and imagination. The participants reposition themselves again and again, practice a gesture and rehearse the situation of a demonstration with money.

Dates

28/06/2024 Offline Berlin - The Theater Congress, Radical Playgrounds Berlin

26/06/2024 Collaborative Research Center CRC 1512 “Intervening Arts”, Berlin

18 + 20/05/2024 Theater Program Carnival of Cultures Berlin 

24/01/2024 24/01/2024 Federal Association of Theatre in Public Space, Short Cuts Dinslaken

25/05/2023 Ballhaus Ost Berlin

04/03/2023Maschinenhaus Essen (Lecture Performance)

01/05/2023 First of May, Berlin (Intervention)

12/11/2022 “Redistribution!”, Berlin (Intervention)

Demonstration with Money was supported by Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media within the program NEUSTART KULTUR #TakeHeart Residency Grant in cooperation with Theater im Ballsaal Bonn and Mousonturm Frankfurt. The performance and documentation of the Demonstration with Money in the intervention space of the project ‘Participation and Dissociation: Tensions of Political Theatre in the 20th Century and in the Present’ were supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG), the Collaborative Research Centre 1512 ‘Intervening Arts’ and the Freie Universität Berlin.

With the gesture of the "Demonstration with Money", we explore the misappropriation of money and the social synthesis through money. We asked how we could devalue and misuse money as a means of payment or exchange. Instead of taking our money to a store and exchanging it for goods, we take our money to the streets with the purpose to gather together. The gesture questions not only the feelings that everyone personally associates with money, but also our collectively repressed relationship to money. Demonstrating with money has a cathartic effect. The gesture hints at the power of money and how we could misappropriate this power to reorganize ourselves. Let’s misuse the force of money to reorganize ourselves!
In the gesture of demonstrating with money, the world appears to be turned upside down: Money is transformed from a medium of relations of commodity owners into a medium of revolt against the logic of capital. Demonstrating with money as a pre-enactment and as a gesture of de-subjugation.

Supported by Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media within the program NEUSTART KULTUR #TakeHeart Residency Grant in cooperation with Mousonturm Frankfurt.

Demonstration with Money (Lecture Performance)

In form of a lecture-performance we share the practice of demonstrating with money. Together with the public we explore the transition of the gesture of demonstration with money from public space into the theater. By gradually increasing the amount of money we demonstrate with, the small group tries to simulate an ever larger crowd.

Demonstration with Money took place in the frame of TakeMoreCare in Maschinenhaus Essen with support by PACT Zollverein. Supported by Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media within the program NEUSTART KULTUR #TakeHeart Residency Grant in cooperation with Theater im Ballsaal Bonn.