The Hat 2025 (Tokyo-Königshof)
Performance with Sarah Fatma Cicek
In Momentum in Four Acts, operatic clichés, myths, and volkish narratives are not simply questioned, but cited, commented on, and amplified. The performance explores “growing to the sky,” the supposedly “divinely” legitimized rise, classism, and the legacy of stories in which power is granted by divine selection. Growth is presented as an ambivalent motif – magical and alluring, yet intertwined with decay and death.
The four acts unfold as small scenes in a private garden in Königshof, surrounded by plants, sculptures, ponds, and animals. Drawing on motifs from operettas, popular theater, and tales of femininity and innocence – bathing naked in a stream, sexualized violence in the forest, the naive girl overwhelmed by the “sublime,” masculine forces – the images are exaggerated, ironized, and exposed in their theatricality. “Bad theater” – the imperfect, the exaggerated, the half-hearted – becomes a strategy, highlighting the constructed nature of emotion and pathos.
Following the exhibition, bean seeds were planted around the hat in Königshof, where it had served as both decoration and climbing support. Months later, the same hat was pulled from its familiar function, set on the head, and brought into motion again, carrying the traces of soil, growth, and time – a living archive of transformation, materiality, and memory.
