Future Tongues  2018
Play Video
Future Tongues parts from the biblical story of the tower of Babel to speculate about the future of human communication. The work also references the 1982 science fction porn flm Cafe Flesh where, in the aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse, the majority of people lose their sex drive, while a sex positive minority engages in acts of sexual theatre in front of fascinated audiences. Understanding language as a constant practice of negotiating difference, Future Tongues approaches analogue communication technologies, like speech and touch. Intimacy –both pleasure and discomfort brought on by closeness –is preserved and exposed here like an extinct language or a relic of the past in this fast-developing digital culture. What forms of embodied communication do we need today? Who has the right to speak their own language? Can we trust our collective intuition before we obey the authority of knowledge and power?
[T]he choreographer intercepts words, transforming and regrouping them to test the ways their originally assigned sense can shift. They dismantle the cultural, national, and sexual identities artificially attached to language and speech. Here, sexuality is an empathic and vital force. Likewise choreography, which becomes one and the same with tenderness and empathy – equally on the level of the produced material and the production process.
Anka Herbut Polish Theatre Journal
In recent years, queer has stopped being primarily concerned with critiquing normative identities or models of sexuality. Artists have begun to consider how to queer time and space, institutions, phenomena and systems. By queering language, Nowak initiates the production of new communication. This work seems interesting to me also because it explores the emancipatory potential of choreography, using queer strategies among others.
Kamila Wojtkiewicz
Vogue Poland
Idea, text, choreography, performance Ania Nowak
Creation, performance Oskar Malinowski, Aleksandra Osowicz, Rafał Pierzyński, Jaśmina Polak
Dramaturgy Mateusz Szyman
ówka
Sound design Justyna Stasiowska
Light design Jędrzej Jęcikowski
Set design “Mother Tongues Father Throats” by Slavs and Tatars
Costume Grzegorz Matląg/ Wsiura
Production Nowy Teatr
Photos Maurycy Stankiewicza