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Back in Basel after a long time, Julian Warner—known as Fehler Kuti, anti-racist activist, artist, curator, and director of the Brecht Festival in Augsburg—dedicates his new solo show to the 100th birthday of an icon of Black resistance: Frantz Fanon.
Whether in politics, economics, or war, the figure of the soldier has become a symbol of our time, and military thinking increasingly shapes our actions. This always raises the question of the necessity and justification of violence.
Hardly anyone has analyzed the role of violence in a torn world as clearly as Frantz Fanon, the psychiatrist and Marxist from Martinique. He was convinced that the dehumanization caused by European colonialism could not be ended through talks or concessions, but only by smashing the colonial system itself. His defense of anti-colonial violence was taken up by left-wing movements around the world—from the Black Panthers in the US to the RAF in Germany—and continues to spark debate to this day.
When is it necessary to use violence or to organize against it? A body enters the stage – it becomes a soldier. To the beat of the percussion, at the mercy of physical drill, it questions history and searches for its own relationship to violence.
Experiences of racism are addressed in the performance. It also includes racist remarks.
Aftertalk on October, 3
Biography
Julian Warner (Concept, Text, Performance) is a German-British artist and curator. He is artistic director of the Brecht Festival Augsburg 2023-25 and publishes pop music and performances under the alias Fehler Kuti. He has co-curated performing arts festivals for the Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm, the Münchner Kammerspiele, and the Sophiensaele in Berlin. In 2021, he designed a large-scale project in public space for the international theater festival Spielart on contemporary discourses of fear ("Global Angst: Parlament. Parade. Ritual.“ In 2022, he was artistic director of the Stuttgart Culture Region Festival ”Über:Morgen." He is the editor of an anthology on problems of postcolonial criticism in Germany: After Europe. Contributions to Decolonial Criticism (Verbrecher Verlag, 2021) and was a visiting professor of dramaturgy at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design in 2022-23.
Markus Acher (Percussion) is a singer, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and music curator. Since 1990, he has played in the indie band “The Notwist,” with whom he has released international albums and toured, as well as in numerous other bands, such as the acoustic instrumental combo Hochzeitskapelle and the international collaboration band Spirit Fest.
He has been curating the Alien Disko Festival in Munich since 2016 and runs the label Alien Transistor. As a band member and solo artist, he has composed and recorded music for numerous theater plays, radio plays, and films. In 2010, he won the German Film Award in Gold for Best Film Music with The Notwist for “Sturm” (Hans Christian Schmid) and in 2019 with Hochzeitskapelle for “Wackersdorf” (Oliver Haffner).
Credits
Concept, performance, music: Julian Warner
Music and live percussion: Markus Acher
Video-Performance: Jelena Kuljić
Voice: Veronica Burnuthian
Dramaturgy: Veronika Maurer
Light & Technology: Dennis Dita Kopp
Artistic production management: Sabine Klötzer
Translations: Veronica Burnuthian, Anna McCarthy
A production by Studio Julian Warner.
Co-production: Belluard Bollwerk, Kaserne Basel, Donaufestival Krems, Burg Hülshoff – Center for Literature, Theater Rampe, Münchner Kammerspiele, studiobühneköln
Support: Kulturförderbeitrags des Kantons Freiburg
