I want to live in a world that is collaborative
A world that is emotionally intelligent
A world in which we are linked and not ranked!
“The Future is Female”, Madame Gandhi

IN THE BEGINNING, “COMPUTERS” WORE SKIRTS: Womxn, often Womxn of Color, were the leaders of computer science. They were the code decryptors, the telecommunication agents, the calculators of NASA. The names of these leaders became their workplace or their employer, e.g. Dilly’s girls. When digital technologies became more profitable, the field became more male dominated. The now male-led technologization of care work, for example, expanded to include willing sex robots in female forms and voice assistants with female voices. Where there has not yet been a technological “update”, care work continues to be done by womxn – most of them migrant workers under precarious, violently exploitative conditions. This form of working is called 3D work: dirty, dangerous and demeaning.

In the 60’s & 70’s, THE KOREAN WOMENS’ GROUP fought for more rights for the approx. 11,000 Korean nurses who compensated the lack of personnel in Germany’s medical system. Through acts of solidarity and public protest, they were the first group of migrants to get concessions from their “host” country. Their achievements are hardly inscribed into German history. SAY THEIR NAME.

In 1982, 25-year-old SEMRA ERTAN set herself on fire in public in Hamburg. She protested the hostility towards people considered foreigners and the working conditions of migrant workers. She wanted attentiveness towards these working bodies. She wanted to literally burn the need to fight against racism into the minds of people living in Germany. But nowadays only a few remember her. SAY HER NAME.

What do women, migrant workers, learning machines, robots and genderqueer organisms have in common? SAY MY NAME, SAY MY NAME creates uncanny links between seemingly unconnected bodies, species, modes of being and realities of life. How do we co-exist with multiplicities? How can we contest other bodies and modes of being, being made invisible?

OLIVIA HYUNSIN KIM graduated with distinction from the Institut für Angewandte Theaterwissenschaft Gießen and the HfMDK Frankfurt with a master’s degree in choreography and performance. As ddanddarakim she collaborates with various artists. Her MeMe series she came, she saw, she said:meme (part 1), MeMe – I see. Ah! (Part 2) and Miss Yellow and Me – I wanna be a musical (Part 3) toured internationally and dealt with exoticism in relation to non-white, “other” bodies. At Sophiensæle she showed most recently her performance Yellow Banana (2019). She has received scholarships from the DAAD, the Berlin Senate, the Rebecca Skelton Fund, Erasmus and the Seoul National University.
ddanddarakim.net

[Source: play bill]

TFB Nr. 1365