MONSTER

"I am not a monster, I am a mother." (...) "You are not a monster," I said. But I was lying. What I actually wanted to say was that being a monster is not such a terrible thing. (...) To be a monster is to be a hybrid signal, a beacon: refuge and warning all at once. — from Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

A group of children wanders through a peculiar landscape. Figures tower before them like symbols from a hidden world. The unconscious serves as their vehicle; historical and instinctive fears act as their vanishing point.

How does one’s worldview form in childhood, and how do we find ourselves within it? MONSTER is interested in the early childhood process of becoming an "I" and in the relationship that crucially shapes it: the bond between mother and child. In this piece, a specific relational constellation takes center stage: the relationship between white mothers and non-white children within the German-speaking context. Public perception of this relationship is historically charged—from the colonial era to the post-war period in Germany with its so-called "Besatzungskinder" (children of white mothers and Black soldiers of the occupying armies), through to the present day. Even in Switzerland—which officially never held its own colonies but was entangled in the colonial project through missionary work and the private plantations of Swiss companies and institutions—the public discourse on white mothers and non-white children is historically rooted. MONSTER asks in what ways non-white children growing up in a white context are inevitably confronted with this norm and history during their self-formation.

Through "language horror," an uncanny placenta, and dreamlike movement, the new work by the artist trio Recke/Lehmann/Froelicher links universal subject psychology with individual self-actualization on a socio-political level.

Anta Helena Recke, Anna Froelicher, and Maxi Menja Lehmann shape space, time, and language into sensual yet political sequences of images on stage. With their collaborative work Die Kränkungen der Menschheit (The Affronts to Humanity), they previously garnered significant attention for their detailed gaze at seemingly universal themes and stories. In MONSTER, the trio now explores a relational structure that occupies us all from birth.