FEMPOEM

Romina Achatz
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The Austrian Podcast Fem Poem (gr. poiēma, „The process of making; production, creation; creativity“, poiēo „I do/ I make“) holds space for the beauty of literature, activism, body politics, queerness and feminism. A show to affect and inspire each other- produced by Romina Achatz. #lyricsmatters Voices of international writers, poets, philosophers, artists, rappers, thinkers. Interviews, Gedichte, Philosophie, Diskurs, Theorie, themenspezifischer Erfahrungsaustausch, persönliche Erzählungen. Eine Sendung zum Austausch, lustvollen, gemeinsamen Denken, reflektieren, affizieren, inspirieren.

  1. 4d ago

    Invisible People: an exploratory, experimental film on Butoh

    Berger spent four years living in Japan, moving within communities of dancers, filmmakers, and musicians. What began as informal, narration-free filming — including weekly visits to Yoshito Ohno’s studio — slowly unfolded into a long-term cinematic attention to Butoh as it continues to exist today. Invisible People follows dancers who hover between visibility and invisibility, between appearing and disappearing and memory. Rather than explaining or historicizing, the film stays close to bodies, gestures, atmospheres — allowing presence to emerge, waver, recede, and return. It’s also a film about fathers- her own and the final „father figure“ Yoshito Ohno. It is attentive to what flickers at the edge of perception. In conversation, Achatz and Berger explore artistic collaborations, alliances,  the contemporary Butoh dance scene in Japan and how Butoh inhabits thresholds between life and death, presence and absence. An episode for listeners drawn to dance, Japan, experimental cinema.

    Invisible People: an exploratory, experimental film on Butoh

  2. 4d ago

    An exploratory cultural and theoretical history of mermaids

    In this radio essay, Romina Achatz explores the cultural, philosophical, and literary history of mermaids, undines, and sirens. Beginning with ancient and medieval myths, including the writings of Paracelsus, she traces how water-bound, feminine-coded figures were once understood as embodiments of nature, transformation, and the emergence of the soul. The essay then examines how, within European traditions, these figures gradually become tied to narratives of love, possession, and projection. Through literary works such as Undine geht by Ingeborg Bachmann, Achatz reflects on the loss of voice, autonomy, and subjectivity, showing how the transition from water to land marks a shift into silence, dependency, and objectification. At the same time, the radio essay opens a queer-feminist and poststructuralist perspective: returning to the water becomes an act of resistance and self-assertion. Underwater, identity dissolves into multiplicity, fluidity, and affect — a space beyond fixed roles and normative concepts of love. Drawing on thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze, Maurice Blanchot, and Franz Kafka, sirens are reimagined not as seductive figures, but as forces, events, and interruptions that destabilize language and meaning. The essay also connects these ideas to global mythologies, including Mami Wata and Oshun, where water beings appear as powerful, sovereign entities rather than passive objects. In dialogue with voices such as Anaïs Nin and Audre Lorde and bell hooks the essay situates these figures within broader questions of creativity, voice, and resistance. Finally, Achatz reflects on the ecological and political urgency of these myths today. In the context of climate crisis, displacement, and ongoing violence, the figure of the mermaid becomes an allegory for the fragile relationship between humans and nature — and a call to return to depth, to imagination, and to forms of life that resist domination. The radio essay unfolds as a poetic and analytical journey into the oceanic — an invitation to listen differently, to embrace uncertainty, and to rediscover the creative forces that lie beneath the surface.

    An exploratory cultural and theoretical history of mermaids

  3. 4d ago

    Butoh histories: Seminal and forgotten figures of 1950&1960s Japan

    In this episode, Romina Achatz speaks with writer Stephen Barber, author of Films Ghost: Tatsumi Hijikata and the Transmutation of 1960s Japan, about seminal and forgotten figures who shaped the Japanese avant-garde of the 1960s. The conversation focuses especially on filmmakers and the remarkable collaborations between Butoh dancers, photographers, writers, philosophers, and choreographers surrounding Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno. Drawing on his personal encounters, Stephen Barber reflects on meeting many of these extraordinary artists while they were still alive. All of them have since passed away, making his memories a rare first-hand testimony to a generation that profoundly transformed postwar Japanese culture. The episode explores figures including Akiko Motofuji, Hironobu Oikawa, Eikoh Hosoe, Donald Richie, Takahiko Iimura, and Nobuo Ikemiya, as well as key works such as Rose-Coloured Dance, Anma the Masseur, Hiroshi Nakamura’s Super 8 film Revolt of the Body, Donald Richie’s Sacrifice and War Games, and Eikoh Hosoe’s Navel and A-Bombs. The conversation also revisits the Osaka Expo film Birth, filmed on the volcanic landscape of Mount Io in Hokkaido. The episode concludes with a conversation about the importance of archives in preserving the history of Butoh, as Stephen Barber asks Romina Achatz about her own experience visiting the extraordinary private archive and dance studio of the famous choreographer Nakao Ikemiya, the son of Nobuo Ikemiya, who worked with Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno during their recent research in Japan.

    Butoh histories: Seminal and forgotten figures of 1950&1960s Japan

  4. 11/08/2025

    Stephen Barber on Zoo Hotel Delirium

    FEM POEM – Romina Achatz in conversation with Stephen Barber: The Death Zone, Sepsis, and the Return from Hades In this episode of FEM POEM, Romina Achatz speaks with author Stephen Barber about his haunting and hallucinatory book „Zoo- Hotel Delirium“, a descent into the borderlands between life and death, written in the aftermath of a near-fatal sepsis.  The book will be published next year in May 2026 by Infinity land press, London. The conversation begins with the body: with sepsis as both biological catastrophe and metaphysical rupture. Stephen Barber describes the moment when the body becomes inhabited by death — when tissue turns necrotic, when consciousness begins to fracture, and yet the mind persists in dreaming. Together, they explore how this “death zone” became a geography of its own — a space where the author’s feverish visions unfolded: a brutalist tower in the northern forests, a cursed city, the volcanic mountains of Japan, and a Butoh dancer entering death’s stream. Romina Achatz and Stephen Barber move between medicine, philosophy, and art — tracing how the capacity to dream intensely after sepsis can open another kind of perception, where hallucination becomes revelation. Remarkably, both Romina Achatz and Stephen Barber survived sepsis at the same time in their lives- and therefore founded „The Sepsis dreamers club“. Now, they share not only an experience of physical vulnerability at a moment in life but a heightened sense of dreaming, a sharpened sensitivity to presence, and a deeper resilience than before. Their dialogue touches on Deleuze’s notion that the artist must descend to Hades and return bearing something of that underworld — as well as on the contemporary machinery of death, the politics of dying, and the persistence of life even inside collapse. What unfolds is less an interview than a shared passage — an intimate mapping of the line where death begins, and happiness, creativity, and art continue.

    Stephen Barber on Zoo Hotel Delirium

  5. 09/22/2025

    Butoh, Film, Archives, Memories

    In this episode, Stephen Barber, writer and cultural researcher, shares his profound experiences with Butoh and the Japanese experimental art scene. The dialogue between Romina Achatz and Stephen Barber weaves between history, memory, and artistic practice, offering rare insights into archival discoveries, the contemporary preservation of Butoh, and its living legacy today. An expert on Antonin Artaud, Stephen explores Artaud’s and Genet’s influence on the Japanese avant-garde and Butoh in the 1950s and 1960s and 80s. He reflects on the legendary Asbestos-kan studio, a meeting point for artists and writers including Yukio Mishima, and discusses Hijikata’s collaborations with filmmakers such as Donald Richie and Eikoh Hosoe, as well as dancers Yoshito and Kazuo Ohno. Iconic works like the photobook Kamaitachi and the film Naval and A-Bomb, (Heso to genbaku), a short film directed by Eikoh Hosoe and Tatsumi Hijikat are explored, alongside insights into Hijikata’s involvement in erotic and horror films and his experimental approach to performance. The show also weaves in personal stories and encounters, including Stephen’s experience with Akiko Motofuji, who asked him to sit in utter darkness through the night to await an encounter with the spirit of Hijikata. Romina and Stephen reflect on their personal sensory experiences in Tokyo, late-night walks through the city, and encounters with the avant-garde performance scene. They also discuss Hijikata’s cinematic involvement, his performance at the Osaka Expo, and the philosophical resonance of Antonin Artaud within Butoh, revealing the rich texture of Japan’s cultural world. Romina briefly shares how her early exploration of Japan through her Super 8 and Leica cameras shaped her perception of the landscape and cultivated an observational “eye” that later became a bridge to film dancers such as Murobushi and others. She also recounts filming at the harbour in Le Havre, France, and discusses her ongoing research and her upcoming book. FEMPOEM is a radio space for literature, art, and politics — and in this nearly three-hour conversation, which was cut down to almost 1,5 h, the dialogue itself becomes a living archive: a testimony to the power of art, memory, imagination and even the ghostly presence of the past. It offers insights into archival discoveries, the contemporary preservation of Butoh, and its ongoing influence today.

    Butoh, Film, Archives, Memories

  6. 09/20/2025

    Imagination und Bewegung in Butoh

    Die Sendung beginnt mit einem Essay von Romina Achatz über das schöpferische Potenzial von Imagination und Bewegung. Anschließend folgt eine etymologische Betrachtung der Begriffe Imagination, Bewegung und Butoh. Von dort öffnet sich der Weg zu Yoshito Ohno, der den Körper einst mit Bambus verglich – hohl, durchlässig und leer. Daraus entspinnt sich die Auseinandersetzung mit dem japanischen Zeichen Mu, das zugleich für Leere und für Tänzer steht. Daraufhin wendet sich FEM POEM dem Butoh-Fu von Tatsumi Hijikata zu, erforscht poetische Bewegungsanweisungen und imaginationsbasierte Transformationen, und führt weiter zu Übungen von Yoshito Ohno sowie zu zeitgenössischen Ansätzen der Choreografin Minako Seki. Abgerundet wird die Sendung mit einem poetischen Epilog über die Kraft der Imagination – als Quelle von Empathie, Verwandlung und radikaler Lebendigkeit.

    Imagination und Bewegung in Butoh

  7. 05/16/2025

    Tatsumi Hijikata: Entstehungsgeschichte des Butoh

    Romina Achatz liest selbst verfasste Texte über die Entstehungsgeschichte von Butoh.       Gelesen aus: Romina Achatz, Der Atem des Unpersönlichen: Ent-Subjektivierung und das Denken des Außen im Tanz von Kō Murobushi, Dissertation, Universität für künstlerische und industrielle Gestaltung, Linz 2018 Romina Achatz, Butoh und Imagination (Unveröffentlicht), 2025

    Tatsumi Hijikata: Entstehungsgeschichte des Butoh

  8. 02/04/2025

    Vom Datenkapitalismus zum Tech-Faschismus

    Zu Gast in der Sendung ist Programmierer, Forscher, Publizist, Lektor, Erwachsenenbildner, Netzaktivist, Soziologe und Leiter von Cracked Labs, Wolfie Christl. Er beschäftigt sich seit vielen Jahren mit den gesellschaftlichen Auswirkungen neuer Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien. Er denkt, schreibt und spricht über freie Medien, kritische Netzkultur, Big Data, Privacy, Überwachung, Copyright, Open Source, digitaler Überwachung, Kontrolle am Arbeitsplatz und erforscht seit einigen Jahren die Macht der Online-Plattformen, algorithmische Entscheidungssysteme und die Ökonomie der persönlichen Daten im digitalen Zeitalter. Wolfie Christl und seine Projekte wurden u.a. zitiert in der New York Times, Washington Post, New Yorker, Wired, Forbes, Financial Times, Guardian ecc. In dem Interview für FEMPOEM sprechen Romina Achatz und Wolfie Christl vom Datenkapitalismus bis zum Thema Tech-Faschismus. Wie werden unsere Daten missbraucht und warum werden diese weiterverkauft ohne unsere Zustimmung- und von wem? Welche Nutzer- Listen werden erstellt und wie werden diese gehandelt? Wie legal ist der Verkauf dieser Daten? Wolfie Christl hat in verschiedenen Forschungsprojekten die Machenschaften sehr bekannter Firmen aufgedeckt- die daher teilweise auch hohe Strafen zahlen mussten. Das Gespräch mündet im Thema „Tech- Faschismus“, das nun im Jänner 2025, in Verbindung mit den Wahlen von Trump aktueller denn je die Welt erschütterte. Die Erzählungen über die Hintergründer so einiger Sillcon Valley Bros und ihre Vorstellungen und (U)Topien klingen wie aus einem schlechten Horrorfilm. Wie können NutzerInnen ihrer eigenen Datensouveränität etwas näher kommen? Welche Gesetzte und Rechte gibt es, auch für KonsumentInnen, Unternehmen und ArbeitsnehmerInnen? Und was ist eigentlich die AI oder KI und welche dystopische Erzählungen gibt es über sie- und wie mächtig oder „gefährlich“ ist diese wirklich? Nähere Informationen zu Wolfie Christl: https://wolfie.crackedlabs.org/ 2017 wurde seine international vieldiskutierte Studie Corporate Surveillance in Everyday Lifeveröffentlicht, die auf Basis langjähriger Recherchen dokumentiert, zusammenfasst und erklärt, wie Unternehmen heute Daten über Milliarden von Menschen sammeln, verknüpfen, analysieren, handeln und für ihre Zwecke einsetzen. Das ebenfalls 2017 veröffentlichte Arbeitspapier How Companies Use Personal Data Against People befasst sich mit den Auswirkungen des zeitgenössischen Überwachungskapitalismus auf Individuen und Gesellschaft, mit Schwerpunkt auf automatisierte Entscheidungen über Menschen, personalisierte Diskriminierung und datenbasierte Verhaltensmanipulation. Sein 2016 gemeinsam mit Sarah Spiekermann veröffentlichtes Buch Networks of Control gilt als „Atlas der Überwachungsgesellschaft“ (netzpolitik.org) und als „must-read for anyone who is interested in today’s data-driven world“ (Paul Nemitz, Direktor für Grundrechte, Generaldirektion Justiz der Europäischen Kommission). Auch die 2014 veröffentlichte deutschsprachige Studie zum Thema wurde breit diskutiertund im Europäischen Parlament präsentiert. Darüber hinaus schreibt er unregelmäßig für Medien wie die FAZ über Facebook oder datenbasierten Wahlkampf und ist regelmäßig als Trainer für digitale Sicherheit und betrieblichen Datenschutz für diverse Gewerkschaften aktiv.

    Vom Datenkapitalismus zum Tech-Faschismus
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About

The Austrian Podcast Fem Poem (gr. poiēma, „The process of making; production, creation; creativity“, poiēo „I do/ I make“) holds space for the beauty of literature, activism, body politics, queerness and feminism. A show to affect and inspire each other- produced by Romina Achatz. #lyricsmatters Voices of international writers, poets, philosophers, artists, rappers, thinkers. Interviews, Gedichte, Philosophie, Diskurs, Theorie, themenspezifischer Erfahrungsaustausch, persönliche Erzählungen. Eine Sendung zum Austausch, lustvollen, gemeinsamen Denken, reflektieren, affizieren, inspirieren.

Information

  • Creator
    Romina Achatz
  • Years Active
    2019 - 2026
  • Episodes
    41
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Romina Achatz
  • Show Website
    FEMPOEM

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