Festival

NORDWIND-Festival 2021

SOFT UTOPIA

December 1 – 13, 2021 Kampnagel Hamburg

Featuring Juli Apponen & Jon R. Skulberg, Duduzile Mathonsi, Vanasay Khamphommala, Carolin Jüngst, Ursina Tossi, Claire Cunningham, Sindri Runudde, Lars Werner Thomsen, Andreas Constantinou, Michael Turinsky, Ajayini Sathyan, Ewe Benbenek, Zamalisa Mdoda, Electa Behrens, Verena Brakonier, Dennis Seidel und Thomas Prestø. HAUS PARTY / VOGUING BALL mit Mable Preach & Friends.

The conceptual work on NORDWIND began in the middle of the post-pandemic period. A demand for accessibility, as well as the importance of solidarity, caution and consideration and the need for softness have accompanied and shaped the working process. For the first time, festival curator Ricarda Ciontos worked with an international team of artists, curators, activists and thinkers (Duduzile Mathonsi, Vanasay Khamphommala, Carolin Jüngst, Lars Werner Thomsen and Sindri Runudde) who have shaped the programme both with their own artistic stage productions, and with their respective expertise and perspectives and have turned it into a carefully composed overall concept that makes identity politics, awareness of the importance of alliances, and international solidarity a lived practice. The festival focuses on perspectives of Black and BIPoC, disabled and non-disabled people and those of representatives* of the LGBTQIA+ scene that challenge and transform the hegemonic view of performance. The title “Soft Utopia” stands on the one hand for demands for change in terms of interpretative sovereignties, power structures and structural intersectional discrimination, and on the other hand for the strategy of softness with which these changes are approached persistently and sustainably in the way that may be necessary.

5-15 December 2019, Kampnagel Dedicated to “Exploring Blankness”, the Nordwind Festival 2019 examines the effects and potentialities of the fourth wave of feminism for feminist history and praxis in Europe while critically re appraising the feminist movement of recent decades. “Fourthwave” feminism typically looks beyond physical and structural abuse to also engage in a critique of the consequences of capitalist and colonialist power structures. Central to this is a recognition that categoriessuch as “woman” are not sufficient to understand and critically challenge the complexity of oppression – when, for instance, considering women of colour, trans women or women with disabilities. Following Gayatri Spivak, the “blindness” that the western colonial gaze has towards its own precariously patriarchal and racist structures can be described as an “inaccessible blankness” – including within western feminism. The artists contributing to this edition of Nordwind grapple particularly with the reality of feminism in the Nordic countries – but also in the rest of Europe.

NORDWIND in Berlin from 7th of November 2017 until 13th of January 2018 and at the Kampnagel in Hamburg, 4th-18th December 2017

Songs of a melting iceberg – Displaced without moving will also take place from the 4th to the 18th of December at the Kampnagel in Hamburg. With artists from the arctic region and Nordic countries, as well as from the African continent, NORDWIND will present an interdisciplinary programme in cooperation with Kampnagel, which will switch between dance, performance and visual art including the following. The Norwegian national company for contemporary dance Carte Blanche will develop a dance piece in collaboration with the Moroccan choreographer Bouchra Ouizguen. Laurent Chétouane will work in cooperation with the Swedish dancer Mikael Marklund and cast a contemporary look at central questions about authentic and autonomous sens of identity in turbulent times and the reflection and examination of one’s own self in the other. The South African performer Athi-Patra Ruga and the Canadian musician Tanya Tagaq will also present a performance together. Tagaq was the recipient of the Polar Prize in 2015. In their collaborative piece, Qudus Onikeku from Nigeria and Arnbjörg María Danielsen from Iceland explore new forms of resistance and open community. The dancer and choreographer Serge Aimé Coulibaly from Burkina Faso will continue his cooperation with Kampnagel and, after having presented his energetic dance piece ‘Kalakuta Republik’ at the international summer festival, will perform his piece ‘Nuit blanche à Ouagadougou’ at NORDWIND. We look forward to an inspiring and exciting visit to the festival with you in Hamburg too at Kampnagel.