SALONFÄHIG?

A PERFORMATIVE SIMULATION GAME ABOUT POWER, IDENTITY AND TENDERNESS

SALONFÄHIG? is an interactive performance by the SWANZ collective. The audience becomes part of a fictitious situation in a dog salon that becomes a meeting space. Visitors with and without dogs are welcome. Everyone draws a number and receives a service catalog: Cutting, washing, blow-drying, massage. What exactly is treated remains open. The setting seems familiar, the rules seem clear. But in the game, meanings shift. A television is playing in the waiting area and noises can be heard from an adjacent room. Visitors are called individually and meet the salon staff - just like at an appointment in a dog grooming salon. What happens there remains uncertain. One thing is certain: the usual order may be shaken.

Who is leading whom? Who is watching? Who is being watched?

The dog salon becomes a playing field, and the audience helps decide how the game goes. SALONFÄHIG? uses the format of the simulation game to make social dynamics tangible. The work builds on earlier performances by the collective and responds to a time in which discriminatory language is once again becoming socially acceptable and the visibility of queer, migrant, non-normative people is being called into question.

SALONFÄHIG? is a performative invitation to play along - and to renegotiate rules. A space for encounters, friction and tenderness.

In German spoken language.