It was a regular summer afternoon… It was a day full of running errands… It was Lower Austria – zoom – Krems an der Donau – zoom – the old town – zoom – me on my way home from school… It was at an event called ‘Flüchtlingsball’ to celebrate ‘diversity in Austria’…  It was at the entrance of the club, me finishing my cigarette before my shift… It was autumn or maybe the end of winter, very gloomy, cold, and rainy… when suddenly… when suddenly… when suddenly…

As an act of resistance the performers take charge of retelling violent or traumatising experiences with new endings. Those new outcomes of what they went through let them take that feeling of ‘I should have…’ as a call to travel back into those situations and do what they were unable to do, when they froze in the moment: to react, to stun, to defend themselves with all – performative – means and to rewrite history. The artistic team surrounding Stefanie Sourial, Hyo Lee, Faris Cuchi Gezahegn, Patu, Janine Jembere and Sunanda Mesquita will call past events back to life and turn them into music, live drawing, and a performance full of power and humour.

Stefanie Sourial was born in 1981. She works as a performance artist and teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. In 2001/02 she gave theatre workshops for homeless youths in Cairo, Egypt. A graduate from the International Jacques Lecoq School for performance and directing in Paris, Sourial has been creating her own shows, including FREAK (2014/15), the performance trilogy Colonial Cocktail (2019), and her latest production City of Diaspora (2021) in co-production with brut Wien. Since 2012, Sourial has been working with the prize-winning company Theatre Ad Infinitum in the United Kingdom and since 2009, she has been collaborating with Vienna-based performance artists on a regular basis. For example, Sourial has been part of Vienna’s first queer-feminist burlesque collective Club Burlesque Brutal (2009–2015) and has had regular appearances at the PCCC* – Politically Correct Comedy Club, presenting anti-racist, queer stand-up skits. Her performances as such are likewise anti-racist, queer and full of social criticism, usually combining two types of narrative: a historical one and a personal one, both with a focus on the political.

https://www.stefaniesourial.com/

Faris Cuchi Gezahegn (they/them/she/her) is an intersectional LGBTQIA* advocate/activist, a performance artist, PCCC (Politically Correct Comedy Club) standup comedian, self-archivist, Ethiopian Queer knowledge and culture producer, and poet who uses different mediums such as style activism, writing, performance, and video/audio installations to bring social change and start a conversation that catalyzes change on issues they face while navigating day-to-day life as femme non-binary Ethiopian/African LGBTQIA* advocate with experience of asylum-seeking and refugee in Austria and also back to their homeland Ethiopia. They are co-founders and co-director and counter-narrative leaders at the House of Guramayle. House of Guramayle is a collaborative intersectional platform created by socially and politically marginalized Ethiopian activists worldwide. Through their work, they represented the Ethiopian Queer Community at Human Right Council in Geneva in Sept 2019 when their country Ethiopia was under the 33rd Universal Periodic Review session. They are co-founders of Celestial Poetic monthly QBIPoC open mic night at Freiräumchen at the historical queer community center Türkis Rosa TIPP aka Villa in Vienna. They are members and current vice-chair of Afro Rainbow Austria collective started by Queer African for Queer African in Austria by welcoming folks in their wholeness both as African/African decent queer bodies. They work with Queer Base on mental health that sculpts capacity centering the experience of Queer folks with knowledge of seeking asylum and refugee. Queer Base: an organization that welcomes queer folks that are seeking asylum by providing different services such as legal representation, social consulting, housing, and many more. 

Hyo Lee was born in Seoul, South Korea. She lives and works as an artist in Vienna. Hyo Lee studied photography and video installation at the University of Applied Art Vienna and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She performed in Colonial Cocktail – Volume 2: Spirits (2019)byStefanie Sourial and in Pomp (2020), Plum Circus (2019), Pfauenloch (2018), Pferdebusen (2017), Perlenmeere (2016), Powder Placenta (2015), Parole Rosette (2012) and Flaming Flamingos (2011) by Katrina Daschner.

Patu (@patuparia) is a cartoon artist and freelance illustrator based in Berlin. Patu’s works are focused on overlaps of personal and structural matters in every-day life from the perspective of queer and anti-racist empowerment. Patu has self-published comic zines and performed at various international comic and zine festivals since 2010. In 2015, they wrote and drew the non-fiction comic book A Brief History of Feminism, which was translated into five languages, followed by an issue of Homestories Comics by Vina Yun about the Korean diaspora in Vienna in 2017 and the comic book AQUARIUM addressing exclusion in the white-dominated comic industry in 2020. Patu is currently working on a BIPoC zine, a self-publishing platform, and a new comic book.

Janine Jembere is an artist, researcher, and cultural worker based in Vienna. She creates performances, installations, videos, sound, and educational programmes in various constellations with collaborators.  Her work circles around senses and bodies and challenges concepts of representation and translatability, ableism, race, and gender. She is interested in embodied knowledge and the concept of dissonance as tools to describe differences and concepts to live by.

Sunanda Mesquita is a transdisciplinary artist, dramaturge and ayurvedic wellness practitioner based in Vienna. Their artistic practice is focused on the possibilities of a radical, utopian, queer, feminist collectivity of BIPoCs and issues related to community, solidarity, and belonging.