Vorhair/ Nachhair

In Vorhair/Nachhair, Hendrik Quast invites the audience to the first manifestation of an ongoing work process about the change of class from non-academic circumstances to the art world. A surgical (self-)hair thickening serves as the starting point for his ongoing search for comic forms of articulation of declassed and chronically ill bodies. In a one-man show, Hendrik Quast tells episodes of various experiences of foreignness and thus negotiates the struggle with the supposed arrival in the "higher" milieu and the speechlessness (with) one's own history of origin.

Vorhair/Nachhair is part of the work-in-progress for the performance Hairkunft, which will be premiered at Sophiensælen in October. Hairkunft questions the social implications of head hair and hair fashions: What does hair reveal about one's roots - in terms of socio-economic circumstances and milieu affiliation? What do they reveal about the health of the body that wears them? How can the invisible origin and culture of hair be recognised?

Language: German, no subtitles

Team

Concept, text, performance: Hendrik Quast
Artistic collaboration: Michel Wagenschütz
Stage: Jonas Droste
Costumes: Christina Neuss
Sound design: Toben Piel 
Light design: Maika Knoblich
Production management: Lisa Gehring

More informations about the artist here.

Info

Hendrik Quast's performances play with grotesque and faecal elements. Through the combination of live art, body art and entertainment culture, style-defining theatrical forms are created that are characterised by idiosyncratic comedy and undermine common ways of speaking, text forms and dramaturgies. Biographical references are fictionalised, theatrically exaggerated and alienated by borrowing from entertainment culture.