Mazlum Nergiz

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Mazlum Nergiz

DAS Theatre

Graduation Project: DRIFT


Biography


Mazlum Nergiz is a writer, theatre and radioplay maker. He is of Kurdish descent and grew up in Germany.

In June 2021, Mazlum won the Hans-Gratzer Stipendium of Schauspielhaus Wien for his theatre piece "Coma". Also in June 2021, his latest theatre piece "1000 Eyes" was directed by Juan Miranda at Théâtre 13 in Paris. In May 2021, the collaborative video installation "Ein faszinierender Plan" was part of the opening ceremony of this year's Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen. This work was conceived and developed under the direction of Tanita Olbrich together with Enis Maci, Pascal Richmann, Marius Goldhorn and Mazlum Nergiz.


Mazlum studied Literature and Media Arts in Berlin and Weimar. Currently, Mazlum finishes the program DAS Theatre, a post-graduate scheme for theatre makers and curators within the Amsterdam University of the Arts.




Artistic Statement


In my work I am mainly concerned with unfolding performative ways and possible materializations of what a text can do beyond its page. Technically there is no uniform approach to this. Video essay, installation, environment, radio play, performance score, theatre piece — often those fields heavily intertwine with each other or one blends into the other.

Writing is a practice that enables me to create polyphonic platforms — yet, a text is for me just one part of the body I’m building in my work. It almost always is the starting point for any work but can also happily dissolve within the process, as happened in Paradise. Hence, my work, most often developed in strong collaboration with visual artists, seeks to create immersive spaces and psychological geographies where the experience of a singular, particular experience is destabilized and blurred — instead an unstable kaleidoscope of seeing and listening emerges, situations of strange and indefinite wildness may appear.

In recent times, projects such as "DRIFT" calibrate relationships between voyeurism, pain, desire and intimacy in a fusion of scenography and sonic performance. What is it that triggers or forces people to find moments of utmost anonymity and intimacy at the same time in practices such as cruising? To which extent are personal relationships damaged by forces of shame, erasion, repression and invisibility? Heavily grounded in sensual encounters between bodies that want to connect but constantly end up in acts of violence and harm-infliction, these stories materialize themselves in scenographies which invite audience to enter the spaces from within and dwell. 

DRIFT


DRIFT is a sensorial scenography of listening and writing. In a wave-like environment, a cosmos of cruising stories is being unfolded through words and live music.


Especially designed for this edition of be-CONNECTED, the radio play that was originally performed in the space at DAS Theatre will be broadcast and the accompanying poster designed by Leonie Ott and Christophe Armand will be shared with audience.


How much risk can a life, a body, bear? To which extent are queer relationships damaged by forces of shame, erasion, repression, and invisibility? Why does intimacy so quickly turn into violence? Which bodies are rendered invisible? Do words move us and how do they do it? Can a space become a text? Can a story be told through a space? A nameless narrator takes us on a lucid journey of wandering after smashing the architecture of control he constructed his life on. We follow him into ruins, abandoned buildings, night clubs — all spaces in which people meet to fuck, to look, to touch, to be with one another. Slowly but steadily, we are drawn into his inner depths and anonymous encounters revealing loneliness, self-hatred, and emotional homelessness.



DRIFT is a vulnerable terrain that performs disappearance as an experience — a sonic body of stories on belonging and non-belonging, isolation and community, pain and lust, gardens and wastelands. An invitation to float. 








Credits:


Concept, Direction & Text: Mazlum Nergiz

Scenography: Larissa Kramarek
Performance: Maria Magdalena Kozłowska, Pía Laborde-Noguez
Music: Maria Magdalena Kozłowska, Jan Tomza-Osiecki
Book, Illustrations: Leonie Ott, Christophe Armand
Light design: Grischa Runge
Objects: Oscar Olivo



Das Theatre