Marten Flegel

Performer, theatre maker, dramaturg – Leipzig, Germany
Participant International Forum 2020/2021

Marten Flegel, born 1991 in Jena, studied Applied Cultural Studies and Theatre in Hildesheim and Visual Arts in Brussels. At the moment, Marten lives and works as an independent theatre maker, performer and dramaturg in Leipzig. He is part of the performance collective DIE SOZIALE FIKTION, a group of DIY artists/curators/friends/minds who share a preference for small gestures and images with a resolution lower than 300 dpi. Together they create performances that combine an auto-biographical approach with a critical analysis of the society they live in. Their work often draws on their own personal experiences, feelings and cognitive dissonances, using them as their main material to reflect on the relations between the personal and the political and to understand the functioning of the ruling conditions – the bigger picture. Most recently they worked on masculinity and the notion of shame (“Goodbye Norm. Ein peinlicher Auftritt”) and explored anxiety as a dominant emotional state of late capitalism (“Render Ghosts”). Currently Marten Flegel is concerned with the structural and personal upheavals of the 1990s post-reunification era in East Germany.