Baby, I’m Sick Tonight is a One-Wo/man show about chronic illnesses of FLINTAS*. From the perspective of a queer woman of color with chronic illnesses, Olivia Hyunsin Kim experiments with the format of stand-up comedy. In collaboration with other chronically ill artists, she is looking for forms of self-empowering humor.

Current discourses critical of capitalism often depict people with chronic illnesses in a romanticized or simplified way. They are read as resistant bodies that counteract capitalism – for example through different temporalities or failure of expected productivity – while aspects such as constant pain or the necessity of crip time, for example, are ignored.

Together with her team, Olivia Hyunsin Kim uses dance and narrative to counter stigmatization and prejudice against artists with invisible disabilities or people who are falsely read as healthy. The artists use the means of stand-up, pop and performance in a radically unruly and humorous way to connect the cultural history of hysteria, today’s treatment of sick FLINTA*s and the body images of the contemporary dance scene, among other things.
Baby, I’m Sick Tonight is a performance of the radical kind of care that sees illness not as an individual problem, but as a collective one: How can we counteract the isolation of people with chronic illnesses or disabilities, but at the same time maintain freedom of expression and choice for this heterogeneous group? How can we help shape a society that enables the widest possible range of different people to live together, especially those who are marginalized because of their visible or invisible disabilities?

Olivia Hyunsin Kim/ddanddarakim work collectively on choreographic works with a queerfeminist and postcolonial focus. Through fiction, they renegotiate power relations and offer empowering alternatives to the present. Their works have been shown at Sophiensæle, Art Sonje Center, Staatsoper Hannover and Museo Universitario del Chopo, among others. The permanent team consists of Kristin Gerwien, Olivia Hyunsin Kim and Jones Seitz. Gerwien makes costumes and objects for performances and explores songwriting and karaoke as a singer. She also curates exciting music with Juckpulver as co-director at TNT Marburg. Olivia Hyunsin Kim works as a choreographer and curator. She was a scholarship holder of danceweb, the Tarabya Cultural Academy, Vila Sul Bahia and won 1st place in the Amadeu Antonio Art Prize in 2019. Jones Seitz develops the lighting and video design for their own installations and performance projects and is a founding member of the FLINTA+ network Gefährliche Arbeit e.V.
ddanddarakim.net

Marielle Schavan studied Creative Writing and Cultural Journalism as well as The Production of the Arts and Media at the University of Hildesheim. She conducts artistic research on topics such as self-presentation on the Internet and the media and social representation of menstrual pain. She is a founding member of the theater collective Henrike Iglesias, with whom she has developed numerous performances since 2012 and has shown them both nationally and internationally. Schavan works in various group constellations as an author, performer, dramaturge and curator on independent theater projects and discourse formats.

ehrliche arbeit – freies Kulturbüro has been a production office for the independent performing arts since 2006. ehrliche arbeit – freies Kulturbüro is a platform and infrastructure for independent projects, combining concept and project development with project management and production management, dramaturgy, press and public relations work, curation, editing, text work and translations. It works in Berlin and internationally with individual artists, temporary project groups, permanent ensembles, collectives, institutions, festivals and program series. ehrliche arbeit – freies Kulturbüro is a collective without hierarchies and salary levels.

[Source: PR-Info]

TFB Nr. 1876