A CHILD HAS BEEN BEATEN

Between tender touches and dark joyous satisfactions the performers discover another logic of solitude and companionship

Visions Of Masochism »A Child Has Been Beaten« is both a performance series as well as a queer feminist practice that questions normative power relations in relationships families and society. In the performance »A Child Has Been Beaten« two bodies accompany each other to an insistent and monstrous path in a shared space of becoming a body that has lost its function. The title of the piece references Siegmund Freud’s essay A Child Has Been Beaten (1919) that is historically placed as a contribution to the study of the origin of sexual perversions. Through appropriating Freud’s writing the artists reclaim dominant male supremacy notions of masochism beyond the binary of submission and dominance. Two performers disrupt the dualism of dominance and submission, confronting their viewers with intimacy and their own responsibility as an audience.

pictured performers Suvi Kemppainen, Josefine Mühle

concept, choreography, performance Suvi Kemppainen, Josefine Mühle guest performance Camille Käse light, dideo, stage Suvi Kemppainen, Josefine Mühle, David Eckelmann sound Suvi Kemppainen, Josefine Mühle, Fjóla Gautadóttir

dramaturgical support Isabel Gatzke duration 45 minutes photos Gerard F. Ludwig

A production by Suvi Kemppainen + Josefine Mühle in co-production with SOPHIENSÆLE. The 29.th Tanztage Berlin are produced by SOPHIENSÆLE. Funded by Senate Department for Culture and Europe. Supportet by Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Bangalore, mapping dance and Tanzfabrik Berlin e.V. Media partners: taz.die tageszeitung, Zitty, ExBerliner.