Backstage with Thaddäus Maria Jungmann

Thaddäus, to me, your work is distinguished by the wide range of different fields of activity and functions that you take on. You work choreographically and as a dancer and performer – currently in the programme of the tanz nrw festival as well as, most recently, at Now&Next at tanzhaus – as a dramaturge, audio description writer, and journalist. How does all this cross-fertilise; how does it relate to you?

To me, jumping between the fields feels very organic. Sometimes the cute musical show mouse, then the poetic audio writer and, suddenly, a matter-of-fact journalist. For me, these different roles are not contradictory but rather engaged in a vivid exchange. I understand them as different perspectives on a common concern: namely, the question of how body, perception, and power correlate – on stage, in texts, in language, in description, in the way in which something is made accessible. As a performer, I negotiate the perception of my own body, as a dramaturge, I think about structure, context, and meaning. For me, artistic audio description is a poetic-political practice that shifts awareness: it simultaneously demands both precision and imagination. And writing, that is, journalistic or essayistic work, allows me to reflect on these experiences, to think further, sometimes even to sort them out. All these activities nourish each other. I think my artistic gaze is sharpened by writing, my writing by performing, and my practice as a whole by constantly changing perspectives. It is about opening up spaces for me – aesthetically, but also socially. And I do not see anything overwhelming in this polyphony but rather an opportunity: for complexity, for connection, for other ways of listening and of providing visibility.

This mobility between fields, genres, and institutions imparts knowledge and provides an opportunity to bring other points into the work. You once described how working as an artist prevented you from doing journalistic work because you were obviously not trusted with an 'outside view', whatever that means. That means it holds a certain richness, but at the same time, limitations appear, or do they?

That is right: Especially in journalism, which often still follows an ideal of neutrality or supposed objectivity, I keep asking myself more and more frequently: Which voices are actually audible – and from what position is the writing done? Who is imbued with the authority to express observations? I do believe, let us not delude ourselves, that so-called outside views are rarely neutral, but have a lot to do with power and belonging.
I myself move almost exclusively in the field of the performing arts. And yet, following a conversation with PACT’s Stefan Hilterhaus, I have been pondering the question: Who can actually still write about our art? His remark made me think – whether it would not be exciting, or downright necessary regarding the current developments in the arts, to bring other expertise than exclusively that from the cultural sector to the table. Perhaps it is precisely this translation between worlds that is absent – or that we could have even more confidence. I love journalistic work very much, precisely because it is also a form of field research for my own artistic practice.

Research is a fine cue. At tanzhaus nrw, you are actively involved in artistic research projects. You were part of our Community of Practice: Performative & Choreographic Practices of Intimate Physicality and are a member of the Laboratory for Creative Audio Description for Dance by Fia Neises and Zwoisy Mears-Clarke. What does this work at tanzhaus nrw mean to you?

For me, tanzhaus nrw is a central place at which to engage with other aesthetics and different contexts as well as discourses. I can see the work of international artists here and work with them – in the Community of Practice with Dan Daw or Tiran Willemse, for example. For me, tanzhaus is a good place to exchange ideas with other artists, to get to know different artistic practices, and to inspire each other. tanzhaus is an important social place, a meeting place. And – very importantly – a place of further education.

Let us talk about the performance JUNGMANN//JUNGKLAUS, which received an invitation to tanz nrw and will be presented at tanzhaus nrw on the festival’s opening day. I was very fascinated by the title and have been wondering, who is Jungklaus?

I actually worked as a forklift driver for quite some time – with a model made by German company Jungheinrich. The planned original title of the piece was, therefore, JUNGMANN//JUNGHEINRICH. We were in contact with the company and hoped to receive support from Jungheinrich. The feedback sounded promising at first; we were confident. But we were subsequently turned down: no funding, and we were also barred from using the name. That was disappointing – because the piece is exactly about the relationship between me and the forklift. Two bodies in encounter. We wanted to give space to this machine with which I had such a beautiful, almost tender, relationship. Right before the premiere, we were faced with the question of how to get out of this fix. And, I will phrase this bluntly, we needed a stupid German male name. That is how we settled on Klaus. This company was somehow also a 'Klaus' in its refusal. Perhaps the piece would not have been a big promotional gain for them, but it would have been a beautiful, touching story. I just thought to myself: Oh Jungheinrich – they are such Klaus.

I did not know about the company previously. They are international market leaders in the forklift sector. For me, the pun on names arises. Masculinity thus comes into focus, even before I acknowledged the forklift, the machine, as an actor.

My colleague Daniela Riebesam, the piece’s dramaturge, and I deemed it important to name this machine – to endow it with a kind of subject status. The piece is also about the emasculation of the machine and the entire structure in which it works: this patriarchal system of shift work, efficiency, and functionality. We questioned, deconstructed, queered this order – and thus tried to make new relationships between humans and machines visible.

What does queering entail as an artistic practice in JUNGMANN//JUNGKLAUS?

For JUNGMANN//JUNGKLAUS, queering means, first and foremost, to shift existing order. It is about breaking up ascriptions – who or what is deemed ‘useful’, ‘productive’, ‘masculine’, ‘powerful’ or ‘technical’ – and instead to come up with new, unexpected relations.
The forklift in our piece is not simply a machine, but rather a partner, a body, a character with a life of its own. This relationship also rearranges my own position: I am not merely a driver, but I am touched, guided, challenged. Queering shows itself here as both an aesthetic strategy as well as an attitude. We deprive the machine of its typical masculine charge and open spaces for intimacy, tenderness, ambivalence. Additionally, the setting of shift work – strictly regulated, functional, and standardised otherwise – falls under new scrutiny. We create alternative structures: Spaces of regeneration and of reproduction that are hardly, if at all, present within a working environment – even more so at the spaces where I myself worked with a forklift. I perceive queerness as a practice critiquing dominance – not confined to questions of gender identity or sexuality but rather as a consistent deconstruction of norms. It is carried by questions of responsibility, care, and the malleability of structures. And while queer perspectives gain more and more visibility, they remain marginalised.

To me, you are not only deconstructing in the sense of breaking up norms or ideas of masculinity and the machine in JUNGMANN//JUNGKLAUS, but I detect something new, something different. Something that is more affirmative than it is subversive-critical. A new vision of a relationship with each other. For me, this has to do with pleasure, with tenderness.

Absolutely, it is a tender provocation. It can be provocative, but it is not in your face like that. I do not simply criticise the situation as it is, I would rather offer solutions. Sometimes I wish I could muster the courage to be more radical. This is a vision of myself, for the future.

The piece is based on biographical observation and experiences – these may be fiction, I have no way of knowing that as a reader of the announcement text or as a recipient, but this exposes you as a performer, you become vulnerable. In addition, it is a staging in public space where all kinds of people could spontaneously encounter the performance. For me, that holds a lot of radicalism. How does tender provocation work in urban space?

JUNGMANN//JUNGKLAUS is a co-production with the Osnabrück Puppet Theatre. Interacting with object theatre proved to be especially rewarding for Daniela and myself, artistically – even more so because we had previously dealt intensively with New Materialism and found the examination of objects as actors on stage to be exciting. The then-current theatre season was themed for Mensch, Natur, Maschine (Human, Nature, Machine) – which proved a perfect fit. This also led to the decision to show the performance outside of the theatre space. I would preferably have presented the piece on a meadow – a hall or hangar would have been too close to the actual working conditions for me. We did not want to show the toughness of the factory but instead focus on the tender relationship between me and the machine.
It was important to us to bring queer stories into an open, public space – precisely because it is characterised by inclusion and exclusion. We had many conversations with passers-by already during the outdoor rehearsal phase. Some of those people spontaneously invited us to perform on their premises. Some were simply fascinated by the forklift; others found the scene so bizarre that they subsequently went to see the performance. Once, someone even wanted to call the police – out of safety concerns arising while vulnerable meat is driving around on such a massive device. Cars slowed down; people stopped in their tracks. The street became a stage.

On the recording of the performance I watched, the sun is setting, the machine lights turn on. You work with a natural, slimy material, these vegan, gelatinous chunks. For me, the performance progressively develops a ritual character. I follow an inscrutable, ambiguous ritual.

I love agar-agar as an element – it is a real highlight. Everything else is so clear: vulnerable flesh, machine, waiting, driving, movement. But with this agar-agar, a secret enters the piece that might mean a lot or nothing at all. It is simply there and opens a new space. Some viewers might feel overwhelmed by this, or they may be fixated on understanding exactly what it represents. Children in the audience do not question the meaning of the material; they want to touch it immediately after the performance, they want to play with it. This ambiguity that agar-agar brings with it fits well into the overall feeling of the performance that I wish for. I hope we can invite visitors into a relaxed atmosphere where time flies and where they refrain from constantly considering where they are. The performance is, to a certain extent, about mortality, fragility, and the vulnerability of the flesh – this feeling the machine could crush you. Even if we do not develop a horror-thriller dramaturgy from this, that perception plays an important role in the piece.

The performance is clearly divided into several parts. The dramaturgy, like the movement material, makes various references –

The structure initially follows a classical pas de deux, with entrée, adagio, and a clear reference to ballet. This constitutes the first part of the performance about an approximation of the different movement qualities, about elucidating how this other body works. The forklift’s mechanicality and the flexibility, the fluidity of my body, which is less powerful and strong in contrast. My physicality has changed through the use of the machine. That was the original motivation for me in doing this piece. When I began working as a forklift driver, my physicality was radically different from this context, the way I moved, flowing, soft, tender, totally diverging from this environment. But as soon as I sat down behind the wheel and started moving with the forklift, this was no longer called into question. From the moment I operated the machine, I was greeted like everyone else. From the moment, I gained the ability to drive this machine, I became part of this company. I found this transition, which manifested itself physically and in movement, exciting. That was the spark that ignited this research, to find out what my skills and the capabilities of the forklift were, as well. And where do we meet. It is an almost romantic tale. After this rapprochement of the two bodies, the focus lies on work processes and the temporality of work. We show capitalist structures, this piling on top of each other, which then becomes a very wobbly affair. Something is first stacked and then it simply melts away, so that capitalist labour ultimately takes on an air of irrelevance. Suddenly, this reality breaks through, the moment when we have a barbecue together, taking a break. Meat is eaten. For us, it is not meat, but it refers to this context. This is another fracture. And it becomes erotic after that. This cleansing, and being there for each other, and this final merging. I am relieved from this earth, so to speak, and driven up, new perspectives opening – queer temporality in the opposite sense of these hard work structures.

The choreography develops a complexity of the relationship between the forklift and yourself; there are so many little details. These aerial lifting figures, this driving up and driving down, and I remember a moment when you slightly slap the machine, or you turn it around, abruptly.

This is a testing and, at the same time, a questioning of leading and of following. And then the third player, the small forklift truck, actually enters. The small forklift can easily be perceived as a child. Yet that is not necessarily what is meant. We wanted to show the miniature of this colossus; it is simply cute while it features the same stacking and driving abilities. I was inspired by the film Titane (2021). In it, the protagonist has sex with cars - and subsequently becomes pregnant. I am interested in such visions of the human-machine relationship. It is very exciting to think about what kind of connection we have to our terminal devices, to our laptop, to our mobile phone, to many machines. It may also enter a mode of fetishisation, when people spend €3,000 on a coffee machine.

JUNGMANN//JUNGKLAUS is a collective work by Daniela Riebesam and yourself. Is this your first shared work as Jungmann & Riebesam?

Yes. I originally asked Daniela to be a dramaturge on JUNGMANN//JUNGKLAUS. Over the course of the collaboration, it became evident that this piece is our common, shared work. From concept to performance. Therefore, it would be wrong if only my name was up there, because it is not only about my ideas and decisions. We share similar conceptions of aesthetics and of work modes, so we set up the collective. So far, I have performed many solo works and feel a great longing to work out structures for myself and for us and to think further ahead together. Especially in the independent scene, it is difficult to create new contexts on your own and to look for new people to work with. By the way, it was a coincidence that Daniela and I both ended up in the field of audio description. For us, this is an aesthetic means that should also appear in our art in the future.

And for JUNGMANN//JUNGKLAUS, you are currently, as part of tanz nrw, in the development phase of an accompanying audio description in collaboration with blind audio descriptor and dramaturge Sabine Kuxdorf.

Exactly. We are very happy that this has been working out. So far, the plan is for the three of us to develop the concept and also do the writing together. Daniela is going to speak the audio description.

We will return to audio description and collaborative work later. Right now, I would like to talk about your solo entitled 🔥 🔥 🔥 – three fire emojis – which is about hotness and you, as a character on stage, also claim to be hot for yourself. It was shown at tanzhaus nrw as part of the Now&Next platform in June 2024. This performance could also be understood as a tender provocation in the sense of a subversive affirmation, right?

As is the case with JUNGMANN//JUNGKLAUS, this work also broaches the issue of vulnerability – about a longing to be seen the way I want to be seen, while simultaneously exposing myself to the situation in the hope of actually being perceived in just this way. In 🔥 🔥 🔥, I have observed that parts of the audience often only begin to grasp the ironic stance the performance adopts during its second half. Much of what I utter is initially being taken very seriously. That is exactly the point with which I am playing – until the twist arrives at a certain stage: “Ah, this person exaggerates in the extreme.”
I like humour on stage. In my work, I utilise it intuitively rather than strategically. These are overblown moments with which I make something visible, uncovering something at the same instant: When pieces deal with global warming, the topic is often staged very seriously and heavily – which is understandable because it taking on an urgent and highly critical topic. Still, I find it exciting to try a different approach, beyond a gesture implying “the world is ending”. Because: It is certain anyway that it will go down as long as we are here.

This deliberate artistic setting of transferring something from one context to another opens new scope, or an opportunity to acknowledge the seriousness of the situation from a distance. Yet the claiming of hotness also plays an empowering role in the piece, does it not?

Yes, absolutely! The piece is based on personal experiences: Again and again, I was cast in musicals to perform unattractive characters with a comedic role profile. To me, the performance is a self-determined act of being hot on stage. During the rehearsals and the examination of the actual meaning of 'hot', something dawned on me: Hotness is often like a mirage. From a distance, "wow!" – but the closer you get, the more it turns out to be a blank screen to project onto that dissolves in the light. At the end of the performance, I hand out popsicles, coming into contact with the audience – I leave the mirage and introduce a different, softer perspective on the question: What is hotness? The performance lines up different answers without committing itself to just one. For me personally, a cutesy mouse, a person with care, is the new 🔥.

During the performance, a very real, physically present hotness emanates from the radiant heaters. Is this again technology or, respectively, the machine as an actor?

In this performance, the radiant heaters are not given any advocacy of their own, but at first help to generate a pleasant warmth which yet gradually turns into threatening heat. Hotness is not only conveyed visually but may also be experienced physically – because of the noticeable change in room temperature. I decide when to switch them on or off in the live setting – this is the beginning of a power play. It is an ironic approach that establishes a connection between an obsessive desire for standardised, perfect bodies, and global warming.

In 🔥 🔥 🔥, you employ language. How do you, coming from dance, the performing arts, work with text? As an artist, do you have a special affinity for text?

During the development of the 🔥 🔥 🔥 piece, I did not have any rehearsal spaces at my disposal at first. Out of necessity, my colleague Nico Hartwig and I inserted a writing week into our work schedule – the textual level grew from there, and it swiftly became a central element within the performance. I once interviewed Elsa Artmann and Samuel Duvoisin for a report. Back then, Elsa told me: “It is not like dance starts where language fails – everything runs in parallel.” This statement gave me very valuable insight. Nowadays, I believe this: Everything is language – even when I dance. However, as an audio describer, I keep stumbling upon the difficulty of putting dance into words: Dance is ephemeral – it is gone in an instant; you cannot keep up with a description.

Now you have brought up audio description again. As mentioned before, you are part of the Labor für kreative Audiodeskription für Tanz (the Laboratory for Creative Audio Description for Dance). Together with Sabine Kuxdorf, you developed the first artistic-creative audio description at tanzhaus nrw, for Yeliz Pazar’s piece POINT OF NO RETURN.

First of all, I would like to emphasise the importance of the laboratory as a meeting place for me. Originally, to get in touch with the field and key actors as well as users of audio descriptions. To learn that there are different methods and styles of audio description. The most important thing I took away from the workshops hosted by Fia Neises and Zwoisy Mears-Clarke is the conviction that it should not be concerned with a literal translation of what happens on stage but about using audio description as an aesthetic device in its own right, pursuing its own dramaturgy while not being identical with the performance – because that cannot exist anyway. All the people in any given room will perceive a performance differently. It cannot and does not have to be the same experience. The audio description is intended to create a multi-sensory experience for me.

I would like to draw the readers' attention to the audio feature Forschungsfeld Audiodeskription – Tanz für alle erlebbar machen (Research Field Audio Description – Making Dance Tangible for All). In this feature, Amy Zayed talks to Sabine Kuxdorf and yourself about your work together in detail. Collective or collaborative work structures seem to be important to you. In these challenging times, do you have a vision for the future beyond the concrete plans mentioned?

Collaborative work is definitely very important to me. I think of formats like takemorecare by Lili M. Rampre and Valerie Wehrens – a monthly meeting where participants exchange ideas about scientific and artistic processes. Such initiatives provide tremendous support because they make you feel: I am not alone. This experience of community is incredibly empowering. What I would like to see for the cultural landscape of North Rhine-Westphalia in the future are more sustainable and long-term funding structures – for example, funding coverage over the duration of three years. This also applies to areas such as the creation of audio descriptions, which involve an enormous amount of additional communicative and bureaucratic work that has not yet been considered or paid for. Collaborative working methods in particular require more time – for exchange, research, and mutual involvement. The current cuts constitute a threat to these processes precisely.

On that note: Thank you for your time and for sharing your thoughts!

Thaddäus Maria Jungmann lives as a freelance performer in Cologne. In her own artistic practice, she deals with the agency of objects in relation to her own queer body. As a journalist, she came to audio description through writing about dance. She is currently conducting research in the field of artistic audio description in the Master's Programme in Dance Studies at the Cologne University of Music and Dance.

The interview was conducted by Lucie Ortmann, dramaturge at tanzhaus nrw.