Relax, take it easy. Take a nap with us. Snooze, rest, stim, commune – it’s crip time.

In this three-day relaxed performance lab we want to delve deeper into our bodies and into the space that surrounds us. How can we make the cultural space of brut comfortable for neurodivergence? What can we construct to support our complex embodiment? What can brut Wien implement in their infrastructure to make access possible? What do we need in our bodies? How can we rest and ease sensory overstimulation?

We will be combining somatic exercises and collective design practices into a lab for our neuroqueer bodyminds. We invite you to participate in our three-day research into the specificities of neurodivergent accessibility in performance – be it for performers or audiences. We also invite you to join us at the relaxed drag performance by the disabled artists from Dragsau on Sat. 15.11. from 19:00 to 21:00.

Our aim is to explore, question, and collectively create a structure that can sustainably support neuroqueer, neurodivergent and autistic people interested in performance and theater. Spacing in: Relaxed Performance Lab desires to be a playful form of groundwork that uncovers the needs and means of accommodation in our community.

While collectively stimming and unmasking we will think about the question: What is neuroqueer culture and how can institutions support it?

To plan the three-day lab more precisely according to the participants’ experiences and expectations, there will be a kick-off meeting on Mon. 27.10. from 18:00 to 20:00 for a first get to know meeting.

Elena Lach (they/she) lives in Vienna and works as a performer, personal assistant and assistant director. They explore the queer use of public space in site-specific performance. Their participatory installation SPACE HOLDER, which aims to enable access to queer parties for neurodivergent people, has been featured at flucc and 4lthangrund. As part of the Careful Collisions Collective, they create queer-centred movement spaces for contact improvisation. Elena Lach loves questions, non-verbal communication, and practices social awkwardness as survival strategy and relational practice.

Ema Benčíková (she/they) is a Vienna based curator, theatre director and care worker. In their artistic research they focus on critical phenomenology of non-normative embodiment through methods of institutional constructivism and infrastructural analysis of mutual aid between the trans and crip communities. From 2019 to 2024, she was the director of a neurodivergent community theater Stopy Snov in Bratislava. In 2025, she curated exhibitions at ŠKUC Gallery in Ljubljana and at Kunsthalle Exnergasse in Vienna. Last year, she was a fellow of the intersectional organization kültüř gemma!.