Public Story
Kaffee mit Zucker?
Kaffee mit Zucker?
The two materials coffee and sugar determine the stage in their most different aggregate states. Starting from them, German immigration history in Central America and its colonial continuities, which live on to the present day, are negotiated, but also the unbroken consumption of two products that are indispensable to our attitude to life and our everyday life in Berlin.
The performer Laia RiCa grew up in El Salvador and Germany. At the German school in San Salvador, she was able to experience for herself how enduring the colonial habitus remains into the present. She brings this biographical experience into the piece, as well as her expertise in being in-between: The struggle with two worlds, the constant suspicion of betrayal of "roots," the questioning of feelings of inferiority and superiority, and the open question of what one does with knowledge of global injustice.
The original colonial tone is brought into the piece by fragments of the documentary film "Die Zivilisationsbringer" (1998): Uli Stelzner gathers here voices and perspectives of German immigrant families, coffee barons and industry representatives.
From coffee beans and cotton candy, from biographical material and historical sources, from olfactory impressions, video fragments and live music, a visually powerful, content-dense and sensual production emerges.
