Jannis Neumann – Neither Fish Nor Meat  

The title is a literal English translation of the German saying ‘weder Fisch noch Fleisch’ referring, often with a condescending undertone, to someone or something that is hard to classify: half-baked, immature. As a hybrid being between human and seal, Jannis Neumann attempts to learn more about this zone of vagueness, constantly looking for nuances, tensions, and different perspectives. In Neither Fish Nor Meat, he presents an embodied dialogue with his own physicality, identity, upbringing as a queer child, and society’s ideas of masculinity. Ancient myths of beautiful but terrible Tritons, luring siren songs and seal-like selkies who can shed their pelt are interwoven with stereotyping, queer narratives, and stories of petroleum as a post-modern prosthesis for virility, thus creating a loose fabric negotiating fins and genitals, social norms and sexuality.

Content Note: Explicit sexual content is shown in this performance.

Jannis Neumann lives in Vienna.His work combines performance, visual art, writing, and research. He studied Art & Science at the University of Applied Art Vienna, visual art at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and art education, biology, psychology, and educational sciences at the Universities of Gießen and Würzburg.

About Bears in the Park and the Huggy Bears Mentoring Programme:

Since 2016, Huggy Bears has been a pillar of innovative performance art, supporting emerging artists in Vienna. Each year, the mentoring programme provides three or four individuals or collectives with comprehensive support in areas from production to administration, equipment and dramaturgy. In a series of different presentation formats as well as regular feedback sessions within the group, the young artists’ projects develop into very special pieces. At the end of the nine-month programme, the mentees get to present their performance projects for the first time on a big stage in Vienna. This year, the Huggy Bears Days will be held as a co-operation between brut Wien and WUK performing arts.

The programme is operated by the initiative Bears in the Park based at Kempelenpark in Vienna’s 10^th district and run by Philippe Riéra and Charlotte Bastam. The initiative is dedicated to supporting the Vienna performance scene and helping it grow. To foster this goal, the Huggy Bears are offered not only reliable advisors but rehearsal spaces at Kempelenpark. Each autumn, Bears in the Park releases an open call for artists to submit their project proposals for the following year.