2025 TAF: ANGELA (a strange loop)

7.7 (Mon) 12:00 TPAC Member pre-sale
7.14 (Mon) 12:00 Tickets can be purchased

“What makes ANGELA, ANGELA?” Director Susanne Kennedy and multimedia artist Markus Selg want to know. Using the collective experience of individual vulnerability from the last several years as a backdrop, they zoom in on ANGELA's life in search of possible answers, following her from birth to death and beyond. “ANGELA (a strange loop)” is a case study in what it means to be human today: What marks do history, personal bonds and society leave on us? It is a close-up of a woman's life, a meditation on illness and belonging. The journey accompanies ANGELA through everyday situations: waking and sleeping, being born and giving birth, aging and death. And finally, we see her fall ill. Are ANGELA's mysterious symptoms transforming her, or are they simply changing the way she looks at her life so far? ANGELA is made up of millions of experiences, some of which were told to her by others. Ultimately, she might be nothing but a strange loop, an endless sequence. What becomes visible as we zoom further and further in on ANGELA's life? All social states and digital worlds are connected by her perception. Everything she dreams, hears and thinks, everything unfinished, unspoken, and unprocessed manifests itself in space and becomes a reflection of her inner turmoil, like a state of constant inflammation. Just as the world appears to be in endless turmoil, with open burning wounds and nonstop agitation, reigniting itself on its own feedback loops. Hyperinflammation becomes an all-encompassing condition. ANGELA's head and body are the setting, the landscape, the stage. As her dreams take shape, she is forced to face them. In their artistic practice, Susanne Kennedy and Markus Selg explore the potential that exists between bodies, technology, art and rituals. Pursuing a post-humanist aesthetic and taking a multimedia approach, “ANGELA (a strange loop)” takes us on a deep dive into the fundamental questions of existence, identity, consciousness and the nature of reality. It is a poetic, social analysis through the lens of the diseased rather than the healthy. How can a community deal with the individual's experience of illness. How do we live and how do we die together? How do we care for each other, when life comes to an end?

photo by Julian Röder

【Artist Profile】

Susanne Kennedy | Germany
Susanne Kennedy (1977) is one of the most distinctive voices in European theatre. Her pieces are a radical invitation to act out the real. She explores the blurry line between actor and machine. In her theatre work, performers wear masks and speak with pre-recorded voices. Through perceptual shifts and the constant blurring of hypnotic images, Kennedy interrogates the stable representation of reality. She pushes the limits of theatre and turns to the medium’s archaic ritual roots in order to ask deep and at times confrontational questions: Who are we? What is our reason for existing in this world? How do we relate to our own demons? Kennedy studied theatre studies in Germany and France. In 2005, she completed a directing degree in Amsterdam. Together with visual artist Markus Selg, she designs spaces that resemble virtual corridors in videogames or colourful psychedelic hallucinations.

Markus Selg | Germany
Multidisciplinary artist. His scenographic installations condense video, sculpture, architecture and performance into immersive spaces. Ritualistic stages that create a new dynamic between archaic myths and digital technologies. 2009 he staged the exhibition course "Spuren der Sonne" with Werner Herzog and Jannis Kounellis. His feature film "Das Ewige Antlitz" premiered 2012 in Prague. 2015 Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem showed his retrospective exhibition "Primitive Data". His works are in collections of the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Sammlung Goetz, Munich and the Saatchi Collection, London. Since 2015 he works closely with theatre director Susanne Kennedy. For example „Coming Society” and “Ultraworld” 2019/2020 at Volksbühne Berlin. For “Ultraworld” Selg received the Faust Award 2020 for best stage design. 2020 I AM (VR) their joint Virtual Reality Experience premiered at Theater Commons Tokyo, 2022 they staged the opera „Einstein on the Beach“ by Philip Glass at Theater Basel.