No Woman's Land (paper)

This project continues Zoo Indigo’s exploration of the performance of motherhood and authenticity in performance through the inclusion of real histories and the “authentic” experience of the walk. The physical experience of walking the same distance as the grandmother will produce a change of the performers’ bodies, an “authentic” physicality, marked by exhaustion and the bodies’ memory of the many steps taken. The project furthermore investigates psychogeography, ethno-mimesis, the politics of home and displacement and walking as a performative practice.

Walking through the united and borderless Europe was an empowering experience, and we found the notion of post-nationalism to be true, particularly at the borders of Poland and Germany. Once separated by barbed wire and a wound of no-man’s-land, this area now runs joint cultural projects and connects the communities, has opened German-Polish Kindergartens and built many actual and symbolic bridges. Whilst we were walking, the refugee crises escalated, and elsewhere borders and fences were erected, in Hungary and Calais. Our performance will deal with these urgent issues, calling for a borderless post-national world, for a humankind with more humanity.