On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense

In the light of infinity, the limited time a human being spends on this planet appears to be deplorable, even ridiculous. Knowing about the futility of his existence, man tries to comprehend life by means of language which locks him into the cage of concepts though and denies access to the actual life of matter. Searching for knowledge about the world, about truth, about himself, he gets lost in the woodwork of his own thinking. To put it casually: he becomes a blockhead, unable to see what is there. Taking away the foundation of the boards that mean the world to him: this is what it means to live.

’Without Nietzsche there wouldn’t be any contemporary thinking, and thus most likely no contemporary body.’ I jot these words down during a rehearsal in which dancers are busy bouncing off the floor and working out their muscles, keeping their ligaments flexible. This is what Nietzsche is doing. He writes against the gravity of thought and thus trains our mental muscles, he writes against the inertia of our minds and makes them move again. His words do and have matter.(Peter Stamer)

Peter Stamer (DE/A) is a theatre maker in the context of contemporary performing arts. In his projects, he is interested in exploring conditions for discursive and physical empowerment within given performative, social and narrative apparatuses. Beyond his theatre work and teaching activities in all of Europe, his performance and theatre projects have led him to China, the USA, Canada, Egypt or Israel. Next to the performative adaptation of Nietzsche’s essay On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense, among his recent works are to be found the international building/performance project A Future Archeology in Berlin, Vienna and Cairo (2012 – 2013), which provided the initial impulses for the book How to Collaborate? – Questioning Togetherness in the Performing Arts (Passagen Verlag) which was published in 2016, his performative installation and film 26 Letters to Deleuze (EMPAC New York) in 2014, or The Circus of Life A-Z (together with Yosi Wanunu) at Tanzquartier Vienna (2015). Currently, Peter is conceiving a theatrical and installative adaptation of Franz Kafka’s story In the Penal Colony.

Frank Willens (US/DE) is a dancer, choreographer, performer, interpreter, artist, actor, collaborator, tour manager, human, father, singer, beat-boxer, thinker, marathon-runner, train-traveller. He grew up in California and has lived and worked in Berlin since 2003 where he has had the privilege to work with a wide number of persons in a wide range of projects presented in a wide range of venues. His associates include Tino Sehgal, Meg Stuart, Falk Richter, Laurent Chétouane, Boris Charmatz, Tilman Hecker, Nico and the Navigators, and Peter Stamer, to name a few. His own projects include Gimme Shelter (2010), Schweigstück (2011), Towards Another Miraculous (2014), and a contribution to X-Firmen at Theater der Welt in Mannheim in 2014. Frank developed a project in collaboration with the Transform Festival in Leeds in 2015 and headed a residency/lab at the Kunstmuseum in Bonn in 2016. His new solo sixty minutes towards being here or what we can do until we do what we can do premiered in January 2017 at dock 11 in Berlin. On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense is his 5th collaboration with Peter Stamer.