Tickets can be purchased online here or at the Kampnagel Summer Festival ticket desk.
Special ticket options for BIPoC communities
(link can be received via email to notcommonground@protonmail.com)

Dates & Time

Thursday, 13.8., 7 pm:
Performance Walk (Premiere)

Friday, 14.8., 7 pm:
Performance Walk. Followed by an artist talk with Joanna Warsza at 9:15 pm (in English)

Saturday, 15.8., 5 pm:
Performance Walk

Sunday, 16.8., 4 pm:
Performance Walk

Meeting point: KreaTiefgeschoss, Versmannstraße 32, 20457 Hamburg
Duration: approx.2 hours
Language: English & German

Content Notes: Reproduction and critical reworking of colonial content (such as binary gender roles, quotations, body language etc.), racism, genocide, slavery, nationalism, (local) patriotism, militarism, human bones and ancestral remains.
Sensory stimuli: smoke, fire, a real horse
Acoustic stimuli: increased volume due to the use of brass instruments, classism
The project has developed an accompanying framework on awareness, accessibility, and anti-discrimination. You can find detailed information here.

Childcare: free of charge nature experience program for children and young adults will take place during the performance in the immediate vicinity to enable people with care responsibilities to attend without complications.

Plants Travel—as seeds carried aboard ships, as trade goods, as traces of distant lands. Colonialism has shaped the plant world worldwide, and evidence of this history can still be found today around Baakenhafen. Together with the children, we’ll set out to uncover these traces: What plants grow here? Where do they come from? And what stories do they tell?
Saturday 16:45 – 19:15 | Ages 9 – 13
Sunday 15:45 – 18:15 | Ages 4–8
Meeting point: Versmannstraße 60 (down by the water)
Please register at hafencity@loki-schmidt-stiftung.de
A free program offered by the Loki Schmidt Stiftung.
Educational guidance: Megan Auer & Rieke Lenz

The Namibian-South African-German co-production (NOT A) COMMON GROUND / IF THE BONES COULD SPEAK deals with Hamburg's Baakenhafen as an important post-colonial memorial site. Contradictory collective memories are shared and comment on one another. (Partial) re-enactments, installations and performative interventions bring colonial history to light and form a temporary performative monument that opens different perspectives on this site of remembrance. A particular focus is placed on the political staging and colonial “event culture” that accompanied the dispatch of the so-called “Schutztruppen” ("protection troops") from Baakenhafen. 1904–07, under the command of Lothar von Trotha, these troops committed genocide against the Herero and Nama peoples in present-day Namibia. The project is intended as a performative contribution to a discourse, which is currently shaping the discussion of cultural and memory politics in Hamburg. The project is realised in collaboration with numerous local initiatives and the community around Baakenhafen. 

As part of a joint artistic research, Liz Rech and (NOT A) COMMON GROUND collaborate with the multidisciplinary performance project IF THE BONES COULD SPEAK, a South African-Namibian co-production by Camissa Create, directed by Luke De Kock. IF THE BONES COULD SPEAK traces the journey of the human remains of ancestors who were deported from southern Africa during the German colonial period and the subsequent apartheid era, many of whom are still kept in European and South African institutions. Through performance and sound installation by combining historical research, oral history, and community engagement, the project challenges hegemonic narratives around restitution and centers the perspectives of the communities directly affected. 

The audience moves through various sites around Baakenhafen during the performative walk of (NOT A) COMMON GROUND / IF THE BONES COULD SPEAK, invited to imagine new forms of transnational remembrance and reconciliation. The walk is of approximately two hours and guided in English and German. The project integrates unsettling legacies and intimate histories into the public memory of the city, creating a space of uneasy togetherness. 

(NOT A) COMMON GROUND / IF THE BONES COULD SPEAK is part of the City Curator Hamburg Counter-Monuments series. At the core of the invited projects lies the question of how to critically, sensitively and timely engage with the public sphere in which many different voices and experiences can be seen and heard in a multidirectional manner in a post-migrant society. A series of performative intervention are accompanied by the work of care and maintenance of the sites together with the Ministry of Culture and Media Hamburg. 

As a group, we have agreed on a Code of Conduct as part of our safety concept. The performance team is committed to creating a temporary performance space at Baakenhafen that is as non-discriminatory, safer, and non-violent as possible. We strive to foster an environment where everyone is treated with fairness, care, appreciation, and respect.

We take a clear and uncompromising stance against any form of discrimination, including:
Queer- and transphobia
Racism
Antisemitism
Classism
Ableism
Sexism
Body shaming and body-based discrimination
and many more

as well as all intersecting and mutually reinforcing forms of discrimination and exclusion.

Note:
The examples above are not listed in order of importance. They should be understood as interconnected and intersectional.