Hendrik Quast © Phoung Tran Minh
Hendrik Quast
Performancekünstler
Performance artist – Berlin, Germany
Participant International Forum 2021/2022
Hendrik Quast is a queer performance artist. He graduated from the Institute for Applied Theater Studies in Giessen. He works as a solo artist and is part of the performance duo Quast & Knoblich. With a procedural concept of art, he dedicates himself to everyday practices and cultural techniques such as taxidermy, funeral floristry or nail design. He is interested in the acquisition of performing techniques bordering entertainment culture such as pantomime or musical singing. In his elaborated research, he precisely documents the rhetoric ways of speaking about these cultural techniques. When translating his research into the field of art, grotesquely comic worlds emerge, where Quast’s grotesque alter ego follows his own language, logics and needs for action. This subversive comedy challenges the audience to deal with topics such as nature and art, the relationship between art and craft as well as social backgrounds and (precarious) forms of work.
His performances have been realised with institutions such as Künstlerhaus Mousonturm (Frankfurt/Main), Gessnerallee (Zurich), FFT Düsseldorf, Theater Rampe (Stuttgart), Sophiensæle (Berlin) and Kampnagel (Hamburg). His works have been shown at international performance and art festivals such as Impulse Theater Festival, steirischer herbst, Festival a/d Werf (Utrecht) and International Summer Festival Kampnagel (Hamburg). He adapted several theatre works as radio plays for WDR Köl (including “Nagelneu”, 2021, Radio Play of the Month Year 2021 German Academy for the Performing Arts). In 2022 he is a fellow at Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart and at Villa Komagawa in Tokyo, Japan.