Antje Velsinger / new trouble

The interdisciplinary productions of Antje Velsinger / new trouble are dedicated to current socio-political challenges. Their productions are based on extensive research in which they initiate exchange with actors from other social and scientific fields. In the series BODIES OF CAPITALISM, Antje Velsinger and her artistic team met professional athletes and elderly people and investigated the relationship of these bodies to the performance system. Their current series FUTURE RELATIONS focuses on the search for sustainable relationships in the context of the climate crisis. The stage productions of Antje Velsinger / new trouble make the experiences of their intensive research poetically tangible. They design temporary escape strategies and fictional places of withdrawal and test alternative ways of dealing with the challenges of our time. Parallel to their large stage productions, Antje Velsinger / new trouble also initiate other artistic formats, such as performative dinners, sound video installations or research labs.

FUTURE RELATIONS
2023 - 2026

Image by Philipp Sonntag

FUTURE RELATIONS is an interdisciplinary, choreographic long-term project (2023 – 2026) in search of sustainable relationships in times of worsening climate catastrophes. Scientific approaches to solutions are available, decisions and transformations are necessary, but still, too little is happening. Over the next three years, Antje Velsinger /new trouble will therefore use artistic means to investigate various alternative relationships both to ecological resources and between generations. The goal is to create a transformation process together with young people and adults, looking for ways of dealing with and ways out of the crisis.

The whole conception for FUTURE RELATIONS is based on the following thesis: in order to find ways out of the ecological crisis, in order to enable a future that is worth living for future generations, we have to stop referring primarily to ourselves here and now. We need to search for and develop practices and strategies here and now that will enable us to engage in FUTURE RELATIONSHIPS.
In the 22/23 season, we will explore the relationship to the future from the perspective of parents in THEIR FUTURE. In the format of a stage play, we will stage the conflict between the parental need to protect and provide for their own children and the knowledge that the world into which we are releasing our children is not being adequately protected and increasingly destroyed by us adults. Premiere: 22 & 23 September 23 / Tanzhaus NRW, Düsseldorf.

In the durational performance GOODBYE/FAREWELL (2023/24), we will address the question of how we can transform feelings of powerlessness into new energy. What does it take for us to become capable of acting? How do we learn to let go of old habits and illusions and say goodbye?

Then we take a concrete look into the future. Together with young people aged 12 to 22, we design a research process: What do we need to practice and learn today in order to prepare a common future? What alliances do we form, what physical skills do we need? In training rooms we develop strategies that we want to bundle in the interactive installation with live performance OUR FUTURE (2024/2025). In the last part OUR FUTURE / ELSEWHERE AND OTHERWISE (2025/2026) we, in return, invite young people to join us in designing performative presentation formats for the stage, but also for other public analog and digital spaces.

We are excited to support the work through creative production and dissemination.