Tabori Prize 2021 Transcript
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Tabori Prize 2021 Transcript LIMOUSINE Yawns. What time is it? God, are we still here? Whose turn is it to make breakfast? Wait, let me check the list. Umm. It’s Sean’s turn. Hey? But it’s always my turn to make breakfast!! Sean, I'd like a toasted bagel with vegan cheese chia topping and a, maybe a Cremoso to go please. Excuse me. And you'll get what you're given, Kumpel. Oh man! According to my checklist, we just spent 365 days in this limousine. I’m not so great at math, but I think that means: a year has passed! Oh, one year. That means it's like a whole year since we - Gob Squad Arts Collective - won the Tabori Prize and got to live the life of glamour and glitz! Exactly! It was in May 2020 when the Fonds DaKu invited us to get into this limousine, raise a champagne toast and since then we have been living in here and never saw the light of day again. But, back to the beginning: Who am I? Sean, you are Sean founding member of Gob Squad Arts collective, you know, one of the groups of the free scene of Berlin. And who are you? I'm Simon. I've known you for 30 years. And then who's that lady over there? Sean. I am your oldest daughter Johanna’s godmother. I’m also a Gob Squad member. Are you just pretending to have forgotten everything so that you can draw attention away from you being up for making breakfast? But… Shit, where is my… Gob Squad…. …lipstick cap. …Arts Collective. What kind of a stupid name is that? I don’t get it: How someone could think that this name could be a path to success is beyond me. But collective? If so, then just the three of us. Mmh, yeah we had to separate because of social distance reasonings. Berit, Sarah, Bastian, Sharon, all ok up there? Social distancing. What’s that? Sean, why don’t you remember anything? Honestly, maybe you need to listen to Holger Bergmann from the Fonds Darstellende Künste. Ah, now I remember. I had to learn that at naturalization. The Federal Republic of Ger- many has three important organs: The Federal Chancellery with Mss. Merkel. Correct. The Ministry of Health with Mr. Spahn. Correct. And, most important, the Fonds Darstellende Künste with Holger Bergmann. Yes! Sean, you just won your German passport! Yes, and we represent the independent scene, so we are ever so free and flexible… He’s remembering something! We’re always ready for action. Wherever art, performing arts are needed, that’s where we are! And this Mr. Bergmann, he most likely has a few – well – orders for us. Sean, watch this and you’ll remember everything. Orders, Sean, are problematic. Let’s say we’re: „voluntarily ready for action“. Ok? HOLGER BERGMANN SPEECH Thank you Johanna, Sean and Simon, we haven’t come so far yet that the Fonds Darstellende Künste could be seen as the third most important organ next to the Federal Chancellery and the Ministry of Health, but a very special year with many challenges lies behind the Fonds’ team and the artists – and all of us as well. So all the more gratifying that we can now once again join in a special and beautiful event – albeit digital and decentral, but all the same – to award the most important prize in the independent performing arts. Every year, the Tabori Prize celebrates diversity among inde- pendent performing artists and stands for the importance of the scene and the art that it creates. It was also the goal of our support program #TakeThat to “sustain and stabilize variety in the independent performing arts”; we were able to infuse approximately 70 million EUR into the independently producing arts. Over the course of the last 14 months, we have not only been working on distributing funds, but also on continuing support measures for those for whom plan reliability in the federal independent performing arts will be the fo- cus. In the future, the Fonds will let another 60 million EURO from Neustart Kultur flow into artistic work within the follow-up program #TakeHeart. So much for the work; let’s get back to celebrating! Dear audience, dear colleagues, dear friends of the independent arts, dear prizewinners and award winners, I would like to welcome you to this year’s awards ceremony 2021, in which trophies will be passed on in a very special way for the second time running. Look forward to the reasoned decisions of the Tabori expert jury made up of Franziska Werner, Carena Schlewitt and Prof. Dr. Hans-Joachim Wagner as well as the greetings from Sabine Bangert and Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schneider, and especially the digital after-show party at the end, to which I would like to invite all of you with all of my heart. I would like to thank our funding body, the State Minister for Culture and the Media Prof. Monika Grütters, Mr. Mix, Mr. Eifler, Ms. Edelhoff, Ms. Seger and the entire BKM team without which no prize could be awarded today. In addition, I would like to thank everyone who has made this digital awards ceremony possible, above all Gob Squad, the prizewinners from last year who are taking us with them on a mobile awards ceremony and allowing us to take part in a Tabori prizewinner’s life. Dear Gob Squads, it is time for you to pass on the zepter – uhmm, the party limo – to 2021’s prizewinners… LIMOUSINE Oh, Sean, breakfast is almost ready. I always get a little carsick. I need something in my stomach. Thanks. Life here in the limousine – all that glitters is not gold – also has its dark sides. Wow, look at that! Nice! That’s not for us, Sean. Haven’t you heard? The time has come for us to pass on the scep- ter to the 2021 prizewinners. Hey, that’s funny, it’s so heavy when you hold it. Huh Sean, you’ll be saying there’s a golden envelope inside like there was in the 1970’s. Wait a minute. There is a golden envelope inside. Great. Let's open it and find out the winner and then we can deliver the honey pops corn flakes to whoever has won the award. Deliver? Well, we used to be freelance artists and now we’ve become a kind of Reliverdoo or Rieferdando? Well, these irregular hours, no paid vacation, totally depend on commis- sions. So who would agree to these working conditions? Certainly no one, right? So, before we announce the first award, we have to build up a little tension. Yes, let’s do a drum roll. Oh no, we haven’t got any drums. How are we gonna build ten- sion? Ah! munching The winner is - Flinn Works TRAILER Welcome to Aseveda and Flinn Works research institute. Thank you for participating in this research study on malaria. You would probably shoot me if you could, right? What are we doing? What are we doing? You would probably shoot me if you could, right? What are we doing? You would probably shoot me if you could, right? What are we doing? What are we doing? We. We are making a theater piece. About you. About women in the textile industry in Bangladesh. I imagine, there are like three strong women. On a completely empty stage. Maybe there are a few sewing machines, too. You stop buying these clothes only because of this komisch German guilt. The thousands and thousands of people will lose their job and they - and their children will starve! So stop this guilt! I want. I want.. A virus. A Virus. That hacks toxic masculinity. Being a feminist man, it’s gonna change your life. Why can’t you just pay for having kids? Why don’t we just pay for the work by women; then all women of the world would have FREEDOM! LAUDATIO The collective, which was founded in 1997, captivates audiences with its ethnographic in- vestigative research processes with which they research concrete cases and unfold in their productions. The artists work with a team of international protagonists on questions of globalization, capitalism, feminism and postcolonialism. As broad as these subjects are, it is equally important for the company to find a respec- tively adequate form to deal with them. Their settings are often organized as participative and immersive modules. Thus the audience is included in a special way, which allows the collective to open up thought spaces, enlighten and access common discursive spaces for their subjects. It is an approach with which they enrich and advance documentary theater. The expert jury of the Fonds Darstellende Künste awards the Tabori Award 2021, endowed with 10,000 EUR, to Flinn Works. It is thus honoring the unique signature of this documen- tary research theater. The collective’s artistic works trigger strong reactions from the realm of politics, but also from the press and audiences; they draw attention to problems and abuses on a national and international level. ACCEPTANCE SPEECH Thank you, for awarding us the Tabori Prize this year. We are very happy and we would be here with a lot more people, but because that isn’t possible in today’s day and age, we would like to thank our team and many collaborators. These would be Lisa Stepf Debarati Guha Lea Whitcher Andi Otto Jürgen Salzmann Susana Alonso Gijs Wisse Alexander Barta Tatjana Kautsch- The partner companies in Tanzania and Ruanda Isack Abeneko von Asedeva from Dar es Salam Wesley Ruzibiza and Louise Mutabazi of Amizero from Kigali Gabby Mzei Orio of the Old Moshi Cultural Tourism Our indefatigable assistants: Alice Harrison and Annekatrin Utke And the chairwoman of Flinn Works e.V.: Renate Stepf We would also like to thank our Indian colleagues, who are currently very much in our minds.