State of Being

performance

In four parts, the performance combines the socio-critical content and interaction patterns of Goethe's Faust with the unique structure of the Bauhaus Museum.

The three artists Thai Tai Pham (video and performance artist), Maya Nathalie Gomez (dancer, choreographer and performance artist) and Patrick Föllmer alias Lilabungalow (musician and performance artist) create a synaesthetic experience that takes up the space with the exhibits and entices the audience to interact.

The levels of the museum are both a thematic stimulus and a stage. All levels are linked by the motif of seduction and Faust's quest for fulfilment. To this end, the artists incorporate ropes, marbles and dice into the interaction with the audience.

‘Was bleibt’ - 3rd floor

What remains is the silence and the game that arises from it. The audience determines the course of the performance by rolling the dice and picking up, stopping or letting the marbles through. Naive childlike curiosity leads to manipulation.

‘The Modern Life’ - 2nd floor

The performance leads from silence to various forms of communication and finally to connection. The sound space of a conversation with a mailbox leads to a tea ceremony with the audience.

‘Der Neue Mensch’ - 1st floor

Faust's quest for knowledge and individual freedom is reflected on this level in the guise of the industrialised everyday world. The protagonists are deformed, drilled, recognise, strive for the place of longing and end in death-like exhaustion.

‘Was ist’ - Project space A

The final performance addresses the basic need for connection in the field of tension between everyday compensation and distraction. Individual freedom and responsibility for the other meet in the play of the actors. Impulses fluctuate between intimacy and human dominoes.

The performance invites the audience to playfully and critically scrutinise the pursuit of individual freedom and the temptations of life. It combines the Faustian dilemma with the Bauhaus view of the human condition. It emphasises the responsibility of the individual within a community: which decisions lead to liberation, which to entrapment?

composition: Patrick Föllmer alias Lilabungalow

choreography: Maya Gomez

May 2025 >>> Bauhaus Museum Weimar - Klassik Stiftung

photo credits: Peechana Chayochaichana, Klassik Stiftung Weimar - Henry Sowinski

May 2025