The (post-) colonial order assigns us places. And despite this, more specifically for this reason, we wander. Diasporic identities are subject to constant change that transcends time and space. We are here, there, we are part of an imaginary that is greater than the real space in which we live.

The city is our space. It influences our bodies, our DNA. We shape the city. The city wanders. And because it moves, we have moved here. We live in constant transformation. A challenge! And yet, it is precisely this that gives us energy, that allows us to enter into new relationships and movements, that enables us to form new realities. For us, these networked relationships are the places we live, the places we create and shape.

With Space Creators, director Jasco Viefhues is looking for these new relationships that move the neighbourhood around Naunyn­straße. The basis of the production are interviews with protagonists of the queer and post-migrant Kreuzberg movement of the 1980s. In correspondence with these voices, the ancestors of the neighbourhood, four Afrodiasporic actors are looking for the possibility of their own space on the stage. Belonging and yet being connected to much more than this place and its society – is that possible? Does society allow for this? To feel comfortable, protected, located in a fluid framework – what does the city offer for this? A community that doesn’t curtail identity – that’s the goal, the challenge, the performance.

After Complex Tensions, the much-noticed production of the 2020/21 season, Space Creators is Jasco Viefhues’s second directed work at Ballhaus Naunynstraße.