Tinkering with the monstrous. Snow on shit. A hospital musical.
Die Vorgeschichte: Im April des Jahres 1815 hing nach dem größten Vulkanausbruch, der je vom Menschen dokumentiert wurde, eine Aschewolke über der Welt. Die Starkwinde trugen nicht nur den Staub bis nach Europa, sondern verteilten auch 130 Megatonnen Schwefel in der Atmosphäre. Es folgten ungeheure Wetterphänomene, Naturkatastrophen, Missernten und Hungersnöte. Das Weltklima kühlte ab, unzählige Menschen erfroren, und 1816 wurde zum „Jahr ohne Sommer“ erklärt. All das führte zu einem Kanon gruseliger Kunstwerke, mit denen wir uns noch heute obsessiv beschäftigen. Am Genfer See trafen sich die jungen Literat*innen und schrieben ungehemmt Obskures. Unter ihnen Mary Shelley, die Tochter einer Feministin und eines Anarchisten, vor allem aber: die Autorin und Schöpferin von Frankenstein.
„What if this was a year without summer? What would we do?“ Eine Antwort wird lauten: „We would come together to feel warmer.“ Ich glaube nicht, dass jemals ein Stück von Florentina Holzinger so zärtlich begonnen hat. Ganz langsam erscheint eine Performerin* nach der anderen auf der Bühne. Ein Gutteil der 25 weiblich gelesenen Körper dieses diversen Casts befindet sich im fortgeschrittenen Lebensalter, manche im Rollstuhl oder mit
The backstory: in April of the year 1815, after the biggest volcanic eruption ever documented by mankind, a cloud of ash loomed over the world. Strong winds not only carried the dust as far as Europe, but also distributed 130 megatons of sulfur in the atmosphere. This was followed by enormous weather phenomena, natural disasters, crop failures and famine. World climate cooled down, innumerable people froze to death and 1816 was declared the “year without summer”. All this led to a canon of blood-curdling works of art we are still obsessively preoccupied with today. At Lake Geneva there was a group of young poets who wrote obscure things without restraint. Among them was Mary Shelley, daughter of a feminist mother and an anarchist father, but first of all: the author and creator of Frankenstein.
“What if this was a year without summer? What would we do?” One answer would be: “We would come together to feel warmer.” I do not think that any of Florentina Holzinger’s pieces ever began so tenderly. Very slowly, the performers one by one enter the stage. A good number of the 25 female-read bodies of this diverse cast are of advanced age, some in a wheelchair or with a rollator. While Skeeter Davis is singing in her melancholy hit of the 1960s: “Don’t they know it’s the end of the world”, they undress each other gently, support each other, link arms with each other, rock in embraces, caress their heads, give each other care and attention. It would be a kind of sapphic nursing home paradise – but there’s the break always lurking behind the next corner, and this time it comes in the shape of black, shining strap-ons.
A colossal air sculpture is pumped up on the stage, based on Gustave Courbet’s painting from the year 1866: The Origin of the World, however in giantess dimensions, spread legs, lots of pubic hair, a vulva fully frontal. Out of this, the performers are crawling in new dress: with doctor’s overalls and stethoscope, calling themselves Dr. Frankenstein, Freud, Mengele or Cuvier. We find ourselves in Florentina’s splatter musical with dystopian visions, “sweet caretaking”, and the central question of how much horror patriarchal medicine and its venerated scientists have caused until today. This facility is open and everybody is going to sing! As jazzdance and revue references, legs are flying into the air, dance formations are executed, punch lines delivered and laughter collected, while the history of medicine and its cruel relationship to the female body and the female psyche are being served, when the vaginal cavity mutates to a castrating set of teeth or the sexual organs of a Black enslaved woman are cut off, put in preserving jars and until 1974 exhibited in the museum. We don’t have to wait long for the reference to the present to come. The performers begin to talk about their own experiences with the health system, and it becomes clear that we have only just begun to talk about racism and sexism in medicine in our society, about what it means that most medicine is still exclusively being tested on men as normative humans, or that dermatology cannot even guarantee proper diagnoses because its knowledge is based on researching white skin, and symptoms as well as the course of diseases can be different with darker skin.
As can be expected by Florentina Holzinger, this is an excessively large show, entertainment up to the apex of absurdity with sickbeds, drip stands, a slimy laboratory for experiments, performers in nursing-staff and patient outfits, doctor’s shoes and hairnets. The doctors subject the female body and its reproductive organs to their fanatical control, promise rejuvenation in Frankenstein-like experiments, outsmarting nature and eventually death, too. Give free rein to your fantasies when you imagine what the ultimative facelifting might look like in such a scenario …
Did you see the episode of Black Mirror in which for 45 minutes the black iron robot dog tries to kill the female protagonist who is alone in a house beyond nowhere? They’re suddenly standing there, the dogs with eyes shimmering green, our assistants of the future, ready and creepy as fuck, so that we may ride the wave of angstlust. No idea how this was choreographed. They all seem to execute individual movements, appearing as independent creatures, even if with pack intelligence. They all want the same thing – something dangerous.
A Year without Summer operates on coexistence. Here, the monstrosity and brutalism in medicine and science, their discriminatory logics, megalomania and the suffering resulting from them. – There, mutual care, association, connection, tenderness, love, “I fuck”, laughter, indulging oneself to the max. For a musical this means piano harmonies, panic noise, violin solo, distorted electric guitar, happy voices, drones. Push! Push! Push! Lift! Lift! Lift! Shalalalala uhh ahh shalalalala, killi killi killi. There’s some things still to come before the onset of winter and it’s starting to snow. One hears Florentinas ice skates gliding over the frozen water and landing again after a jump. Naked Axel jump, Lutz, Rittberger in the never-ending cold.
Kristin Gruber works at the intersection of journalism, film, music, literature and performance. She has held aggressive healing masses with JazzWerkstatt Wien and has hosted the experimental talk show KEINE PANIK since 2020. Oh fuck is the working title for her literary collection of stories on the subject of sexuality. She is currently working with Elisabeth Scharang on the first global cinema documentary and podcast about femicide #HowToStopFemicide.