A residency dedicated to the sense of touch as potential channel for experience in opera, music theater and performance. Labor was the seed to create The Island – Die Insel – to premiere on March 13th, 2024 at Kampnagel – Zentrum für schönere Künste, Hamburg.

[in]operabilities is an agreement made in 2021 by a group of Hamburg-based artists for joint artistic research and it links the art form of opera with the question of its accessibility, the possibilities of inclusive work and the usefulness of “opera-abilities” for living together. This season of [in]operabilities is dedicated to “touchabilities.” In an intensive work phase, international artists from the fields of music and the performing arts has come together between February 13th and 24th, 2023, at Kampnagel. On February 23rd, we opened the doors of the laboratory for the public and shared our experiment.

Labor [in]operabilities 2, Kampnagel, Hamburg, February 2023. Photos by Ludmila Rodrigues

[in]operabilities questions who creates and who gets access to theater, opera and dance experience. It dives into how bodies perform and how bodies perceive poetry across sensory modalities. How the “other senses” can be vehicle for imagination and other bodies can be involved in the making of a music theater piece? Beyond “abilities” and “disabilities” this joint artistic research takes tactility as a point of departure for exploring new theater forms.

Labor, February 2023, photos by Jens Seemann

Labor, February 2023: With Franziska Henschel, Leo Hofmann, Carolin Jüngst, Emil Leske, Sophia Neises, Marie-Sophie Richter, Ludmila Rodrigues, Naomi Sanfo, Susanne Tod, Benjamin van Bebber, Jeanne Charlotte Vogt, Ladislav Zajac, Caroline Sophie Pilling, Michael Turinsky, Gunda Schröder, Sarah Wendt & Pascal Dufaux.

Read more on [in]operabilities.de

Interviews with workshops participants and artists, Kampnagel, Hamburg – December 2022:

[in]operabilities’ partners:
Kampnagel (Hamburg) Radialsystem (Berlin) Gare du Nord (Basel)