Austerlitz

Artistic scenography for a ""Station-Drama"" based on W. G. Sebald’s novel “Austerlitz”. Four installations by Irena Wolf, Michael König, Luis Negrón van Grieken & Chih Ming Fan. W. G. Sebald’s novel Austerlitz tracks the journey of self-discovery, a search for both identity and memories, undertaken by Jacques Austerlitz. As a small boy he escapes the anti-Semitic terror and the threat of extermination posed by the National Socialists in Prague aboard a so-called Kindertransport train to England. He survives the Holocaust physically, yet suffers from the consequences of this trauma for the rest of his life. Austerlitz’s life journey and search for identity is implemented dramaturgically as a Stationendrama (station drama) of the nine most important places in his self-discovery. The theatre director Julia Afifi originally conceived the piece for nine shipping containers installed in a public square. An intermedia staging of the play is currently being created that will develop a new theatrical form somewhere between performance and theatre, artistic installation, video art, and experimental sound. Within this, a narrator represents the principal guiding force, leading the audience chronologically through the action. The dramaturgic sequence is like a journey through the landscape of Austerlitz’s soul.