JOANA TISCHKAU (Germany)

COLONASTICS

SHORT FILMS & WORKOUT
21-25 May 2021 on demand

ACCESS: The films will be captioned.

Colonastics is a fitness workout that doubles up as a critical whiteness lecture. The concept emerged years ago, before the violent killing of George Floyd and the now famous Central Park incident that captures white embodiment so perfectly, both reminding us that even though the last year might have felt like a pause, the white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy doesn’t grant us a rest day.

In today’s world, as sofas and kitchen tables are pushed aside to make space for yoga mats, at the core of this new-found life is the very present idea that you can re-emerge as a stronger, fitter and better version of yourself. Even through this crisis we must believe in the modernist myth of unlimited and constant progress. Whether practised in the safe environment of your newly created home gym or in the studio, what Yoga, Zumba, Pole Dancing etc have in common is that their vocabulary feeds off an imaginary esoteric and exotic space and bodies that are constructed as the ‘other’. 

Colonastics invites you to clear your surroundings for a sweaty workout that decolonises your body, mind and spirit. Take part in a physical practice that developed out of the unmarked embodiment of whiteness and which carves out a blueprint of white masculine embodiment, shedding light onto the colonial and neo-colonial practices of the fitness industry.

Because, at last, maybe you can have it all; the rationality of a straight white man paired with the physicality and corporeality of a black woman - let’s get physical!!

JOANA TISCHKAU, born 1983 in Göttingen, GER is a choreographer and performer. Her first dancing memory goes back to Kaoma’s 1989 hit Lambada at a children’s birthday party, which led her to enroll at her neighborhood dance school for training in Jazz dance, videoclip dancing and Hip Hop. Looking old enough to get in, she continued her movement practice in Clubs, Discos and at urban dance battles, winning twerking competitions before it was even a thing. In 2010 she decided to make it official, left Germany for the UK, to study Contemporary Dance and Theatre at Coventry University, mastering the art of accessing somatic experiences while rolling on the floor and across bodies. She went on to pursue her MA in Choreography at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Giessen, developing her artistic practice into a hybrid mash-up where the the writings of bell hooks meet beatboxing, whiteness is turned into a workout, youtube tutorials become her only source material and Roberto Blanco is hailed as an Afro-German Hero, subversively distorting cultural practices, codes and meaning inscribed onto bodies of Colour within the context of western art and dance history. She works as a freelance choreographer, dancer, community dance artist and movement facilitator and has performed her works at the Tanzplattform Deutschland 2020, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Danshallerne Copenhagen and Hebbel am Ufer Theater Berlin.

Joana lives and works in Frankfurt/Main and Berlin.

Colonastics is a production by Joana Tischkau
Concept & Choreography: Joana Tischkau
Artistic Collaboration: Elisabeth Hampe
Sound Design: Frieder Blume
Camera & Cut: Malu Blume
Graphic Design & Animation: Justus Gelberg
Production Management: Lisa Gehring

Commissioned by the Goethe Institut as part of Latitude Digital Festival 2020.