Performative Walk
Exile Promenade
Ada Mukhina
World Premiere
Exile Promenade © Design: Nikoleta Markovic, Photo: Mathias Drücker
As part of “Performing Exiles”, the performative walk leads to places of historical and current exile in Berlin, which interweave with the exile biographies of the three protagonists and with different eras of migration.
Three guides will take the audience on the performative walk through the streets of Berlin, to places of historical and contemporary exile from Russia. Alla Gutnikova, who recently fled Moscow after one year of house arrest, leads you through experiences of political prisoners and Feminist Antiwar Resistance. Grégoire Lopoukhine revisits the memoirs of his aristocratic family who escaped from the Russian empire to Paris after the October revolution a century ago. Ziliä Qansurá, native to Bashkortostan, traces the steps of the anticolonial resistance that is growing among ethnic minorities in republics of Russia against the backdrop of its war in Ukraine.
“Exile Promenade” critically reflects on the Russian history of exile from today’s standpoint, performatively investigates deserted places, broken ties, and lost identities and asks: What is the task of artists in the face of catastrophe such as war? Could we find the right words in times of numbness and horror? And what if you come from the country of the aggressor?
With
Alla Gutnikova, Grègoire Lopoukhine, Ziliä Qansurá – Protagonists
Ada Mukhina – Concept and director
Ada Mukhina & protagonists – Text
Andrej Mirčev – Dramaturgy
Ziliä Qansurá – Stage & costume designer
Alina Anufrienko – Composition and Sound design
Saskia Mommertz – Assistant director, production manager
Claudia Peters – Production manager (Berliner Festspiele)
Maria Kusche – Technical Director (Berliner Festspiele)
Jesko Braun – Sound (Berliner Festspiele)
The team thanks Matthias Lilienthal, Matthias Hardenberger, Daria Iuriickuk, Martin Kruse, Natasha Tyshkevich, and all the test audience for their support in the creation of the walk.
“Exile Promenade” was part of the festival “Performing Exiles” by Berliner Festspiele. A first creative research of the theme was done in 2016/2017 together with Natasha Borenko and Maria Kolosova in the framework of the project “Double Eagle. A workshop for Russian emigrants”. Supported by Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media within the program NEUSTART KULTUR.