Jim Spastics & Hans Gender:

Cindy kauft sich ein Kleid bei H&M und zieht ins West Germany

Okay, our identity develops through claims and attributions. But the question is: can I order seven coffees at the bakery with these things? Am I my own collective? What is the opposite of memorability and how can I move within it? How can I tell my own story without the process of elimination, but rather through an expansion of a never ending repertoire? Can I wear all these images on top of each other, like an onion?

On index cards, seven women create a new identity: Cindy, this is me. Card by card we fill out a curriculum vita, with our basic parameters, how you dress, looks from the subway, childhood photos, poses, fragments of interviews and film scenes from Kottbusser Tor. Suddenly, a new identity is at hand, is lying in front of us on the tiles. We won´t use this CV for any particular purpose, but rather allow the wind from the industrial fans to decide who we are today. Maybe the way I move when cleaning an old doctors surgery reveals more about myself than the town in which I was born?

On the balcony, under sleeping sattelite dishes, you might recognise us: Ulla, Eva, Hannah, Greta, Maritta, Iris, Mathilde.

The changing room becomes our place of transit, from which we enter the inside, the room without walls. There, little by little, we become Cindy. Even if the wig hangs lopsided and we stand in your shoes: this is me.

Concept, direction and performance by: Jim Spastics & Hans Gender

Jim Spastics & Hans Gender is an interdisciplinary performance collective, founded in 2008 in Berlin, that works together in different constellations. Ulla Bernhard, Eva Burghardt, Hannah Georgi, Greta Granderath, Maritta Horwarth, Iris Kleinschmidt and Mathilde Walter are dancers, actors, performers, visual artists, writers, theater scientists and technicians. All significant decisions are made democratically. Presently, their basecamp is in the virtual world, as well as Berlin, Hamburg, Innsbruck and Köln.

Camera: Arne Strackholder

West Germany – Büro für Postmoderne Kommunikation, Hebbel am Ufer 2, 100° Festival Berlin

Berlin / 2009

Photos: Barbara Günther-Burghardt