I’m a girl you can hold IRL

2023
Costume, Stage Objects
@ Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin

I’m a girl you can hold IRL is a play about love in the 21st century, loneliness, narcissism, the singularity and emancipation (fembots have feelings too). It tells the story of Pygmalion, who is a lovesick roboticist instead of a sculptor in this story. Called Galatea, his creation is a robot instead of a statue, and he based her on a girlfriend who just left him. After Galatea comes to life, Pygmalion stands face-to-face with his fantasy turned into flesh-and-blood.

Text + Direction: Zelal Yesilyurt
With: Sofia Iordanskaya, Tim Freudensprung
Stage Design: Hyun Vin Kaspers
Music: Fee Aviv Dubois
Video: Luna Zscharnt
3D Animations: Berfin Kârakurt
Makeup Concept: Leana Ardeleanu
Nail Art: Polly Warns
Light Design: Christian Gierden
Dramaturgy: Murat Dikenci

Photos by Ute Langkafel

SHE HELD UP A MIRROR

2022
Costume

She Held up a Mirror explores society’s perception of women and their relationship with gender expectations and beauty standards. The film uses found footage, analog film, 3D animation, poetry and prosthetics to ask questions about gender performativity, monstrous women and the cult of youth.

Text: Sylvia Plath, Jemima Foxtrot
Direction, Concept : Jemima Foxtrot, Maja Zagórska
With: Madeline Shann
Soundtrack: Joe Ackroyd
Animation, Edit: Maja Zagórska
Prosthetics: Una Ryu
Camera: Charlotte Jacoby
1AD: Milena Bühring

exhibited at
Vierte Welle Film Festival @ Brotfabrik, Berlin 2022
Freiburger Film Forum 2023
Vertraeumt @ Kunstraum Potsdamer Straße, Berlin 2023
Queer Things Take Time @ Kunstraum Potsdamer Straße, Berlin 2023 (Berlin Art Week)

ECTORIDERS

2022
Costume w/ Tin Wang
Milena Bühring, Klara Kirsch, Lisa Kaschubat
@ fff-filmproductions, Berlin
The experimental short film "Ectoriders" revolves around Mimi, Kay and Yv, who find themselves in a futuristic game show. The encounters they make in parallel universes of the show raise questions about feminist solidarity and parenthood in a heteronormative, patriarchal and competitive society.

exhibited at
Rundgang @ UdK Berlin, 2022
48h Neukölln @ IL Kino, Berlin 2023
B3 Festival @ ASTOR Film Lounge, Frankfurt 2023
F

A RADICAL HEALING

2021
Performance @ Radial System, Berlin
Duration: 25 min

Concept, Set Design: Alexander Klaubert
Performance: Juan Felipe Amaya Gonzalez, Sophia Seiss, Deva Schubert
Light & Sound Engineer: Maxim Schmidthals
Costume & Make-Up: Elin Laut
Music: Alexander Klaubert
Support: Francis Kussatz, Jörg Deutschmann, Radial System Berlin

THE CUTEST CRITICISM
A LOOP

2021
Costume
Knit, jersey, modeling clay, glass beads
Collab w/ Almitra Pyritidis, jpeg.love

Exhibited at
“beyond over it” @ Napoleon Komplex Gallery, Berlin
Curated by Constantin Hartenstein, Jimmy Robert

“We are queer because we refuse to take a fixed form.” (Antke Engel).
The costume is entirely handmade, thematizing the process of production. Hand-knitted pieces show how a person felt while knitting: In a relaxed state, the stitches are loose and soft. Being physically tense creates a tight, rigid pattern. When we are daydreaming, small bumps or holes show. A knitted piece thus works like a diary of mental health. The details of the costume also feature nostalgic elements such as glass beads or Fimo, referring to childhood moments within the safer space of play. Costume, body and installation merge into one sculpture.

CRUISING
A QUEER GLIMPSE

2021
Costume collab w/ Jule Posadowsky, Louise-Fee Nitschke via critical.costume

Concept, Direction: Josefina Valdovinos, Elias Dehnen
With: Elliot Douglas, Lucas Ngo, Josefina Valdovinos, Luca Zimmer, Alexandros Popis, Anna Krieger, Nadja Moulin
Photos: Muriel Weinmann, Elin Laut

@ Schönholzer Heide Park, Berlin
(site-specific open-air performance)

Which relationship can a garment and a body enter into? Today's everyday clothing often functions like an elastic tube to which the body gives a specific shape. The garment adapts to the shape of the body. In our imagined utopia, queer bodies and garments should instead stand independently for themselves, coexist equally, and at points enter into a relationship of tension. Not allowing a clear allocation of gender or time, the costumes oscillate between sculpture and clothing, between futurism and historical references. In active contact with the body, reinforcing the wearer’s gestures.This overall ambiguity positions itself outside the binary system: The costumes create a space in which a queer utopia can be imagined without culturally defined boundaries of gender and sexuality.

dek

GLACIAL FLOW

2021
Costume

Choreography: Saida Makhmudzade
With: Clara Conza, Manon Greiner, Eddy Levin, Sabina Moe
Dramaturgy: Johann-Heinrich Rabe
Sound: Abel Kroon
Stage: Malte Knipping

@ bat studiotheater, Berlin

DEINE MACHT MIR NICHTS

2020
Costume

Text: Lena Reißner
With: Nina Bruns, Alina Fluck, Sarah Schmidt
Stage: Stella Lennert
Makeup: Sarah Seini
Sound: Ilkyaz Yagmur Ozkoroglu, Helena Niederstraßer

@ bat Studiotheater, Berlin

Virgin Mary appears in her typical robe, which usually covers her body and makes her silhouette appear childlike. Now, her naked body remains visible. We see human traits like pubic hair. This reverses the dehumanization of Virgin Mary originating from the idealization of the immaculate conception. The Mermaid’s claustrophobic confinement of her legs symbolizes the negation of feminine lust – which has been mystified as a male fantasy in the form of a fish tail. The latex refers to the fetishization of the missing vulva. Through typical fish features – gills, feelers, scales – this fetishization is taken to absurdity. Cassandra’s costume addresses objectification and agency: Reminiscent of a Greek statue, she is chained into her costume, which has the rigid form of a female-read body. Her face is frozen in white clay. In the course of the play, she breaks out of her costume – regaining agency over her formerly objectified body.

instaface

2020
Costume and makeup
Exploring instagrams beauty ideals

b my quarantine

2020
Experimental costume design
Covid-19 series

paradise game

2019
Costume and stage concept
For the play “Paradies Spielen” by Thomas Köck

The play’s characters represent groups of people who suffer the same fate, who are trapped in the same system. Visually, they are therefore not individualized, but uniformed. Each figure wears the same gender and age neutral wig, as well as a transparent mask, both faces are vivible at the same time. The costume surrounds the body like a shell, and the identity of the performers is blurred by the mask. Binary categorizations become irrelevant. The costumes are stylized to go with the artificiality and interchangability of the characters.

Betterøv
2019
Costume design
Artist: Betterøv

Ein Kind Unserer Zeit

2019
Costume
Directed by Max Schimmelpfennig, Tim Freudensprung
Photos by Elin Laut, Leo Wolters

All the play’s characters exist in memory fragments of the narrator. Each person is remembered by one characteristic garment. On stage, the remembered person’s garment becomes a luminous, transparent shell that surrounds the narrator. For the duration of a memory, they become part of the narrator – as he tells their story, interweaving it with his own. The underlying uniformity symbolizes the loss of visual identity in the military; It also makes the military itself ever present on stage. The uniform itself is stylized and not historically locatable, as the message of the play is not fixed in space or time and is equally relevant in today’s world.