Swoosh Lieu (Germany) on A Room of Our Own with Frank

SWOOSH LIEU (Johanna Castell, Katharina Pelosi and Rosa Wernecke) was founded in 2009 at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Giessen and has since worked continuously in various constellations and different forms of cooperation.

From 2016 to 2018 they worked with their team at Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm on the trilogy What is the Plural of Crisis – ein Krisenbericht in verteilten Rollen, in which they dealt in various formats with the effects of the financial crisis from a queer-feminist perspective. The first part Who Cares?! – eine vielstimmige Personalversammlung der Sorgetragenden is about care work and role models based on interview material. In 2017, it was invited to the Stückemarkt of the Berlin Theatertreffen and the Impulse Festival. The second part Who Moves?! – eine performative Montage der Beweggründe was created at the Frankfurt LAB in late 2017. Swoosh Lieu again used interviews to address the production of images in connection with migration. In 2018, the piece was invited to the “Politik im freien Theater” festival at the Kammerspiele in Munich and then toured to Kampnagel/Hamburg, the Sophiensaele/Berlin and the Theater Rampe/Stuttgart. The third part Who Reclaims?! – ein collagierter Streifzug durch die Raumfrage premiered in September 2018 as a performative walk with the audience through the city of Frankfurt and through feminist spatial politics. Who Cares?! (2018) and Who Moves?! (2019) were also produced as radio plays in cooperation with NDR, Who Cares?! was nominated for the Juliane Bartel Media Prize in 2018.

Due to the pandemic they produced their first video work A Room of Our Own in the beginning of 2021 in coproduction with the Digital Mousonturm Frankfurt, which was invited to the Hessische Theatertage, the Heidelberger Stückemarkt and was screened at nachtkritik.de and Kampnagel Hamburg among others. In december 2021 their performance Dea Ex Machina about gender, technology, witches and glitches was premiered at Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt.

Swoosh Lieu spent 2018 as artists in residence at the Villa Kamogawa/Goethe-Institut Kyoto/Japan. While there, they began working on their project A Feminist Guide to Nerdom, which aims to feature international female media artists and build a network among them. A Feminist Guide to Nerdom was presented as an installation at Künstler*innhaus Mousonturm and Tanzhaus NRW in 2019. 2020/21, Swoosh Lieu continue working on this project as artists in residence at the Cultural Academy Tarabya/Goethe-Institut Istanbul/Turkey.The Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) is produced by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center under the Graduate Centre at the City Univerity of New York (CUNY), Executive Director Frank Hentschker

Co- Curated by Frank Hentschker, Andie Lerner, and Tanvi Shah.

Festival Coordination by Bukola John Omokore

Web Design by Gaurav Singh Nijjer

Digital Marketing by Cactus Juice

Intro/Outro Theme credit: Second Sight (India) courtesy Anusha Ramasubramoney and Pushkar Srivatsal.