Michael Turinsky: Work Body

Performance: Work Body

Fri 24. & Sat 25.01., 19.30h, TQW Halle G, in English and Italian with English and German surtitle

Michael Turinsky, one of the most notable disabled choreographers in the German-speaking world, is back with a new piece. "Work Body" was inspired by Pier Paolo Pasolini’s poem "Gramsci’s Ashes", which he addressed to the mortal remains of communist thinker Antonio Gramsci, who was physically disabled, too. Turinsky conceives a critical-empathetic response to the masculinist shift to the right among workers, which is evident across national borders.

How do things stand with the "authentic core" of the proletarian experience, as emphasised by Gramsci? What about the wish to perceive oneself as autonomous and in contact with one’s peers? What about the erotic yet narcissistic undertones of camaraderie and brotherhood? And how does communist desire relate to sexual desire?

Building, singing, speaking and dancing, Turinsky not only undermines the separation between mental work and manual labour – he also subverts the boundaries between performative intervention, concert and political agitation. "Work Body" thus resonates between the "disabled" and the "working body" and puts the focus on physicalities that are otherwise pushed to the edges of representation.