/// How To End Your Wealth. A Participatory Performance
How To End Your Wealth puts preconceived perceptions and everyday uses of money through the shredder. As money is stripped of its value and returned to its source material – paper – the performance attempts to bring forth other meanings and explores the value of "worth". During this participatory performance, audiences are guided through a process that invites them to radically reconsider the relationship with wealth – their own and that of others. How To End Your Wealth is part play and part craft, which brings mapping, speculation, and storytelling into the fold. Participants experience how wealth turns into nothing, into paper pulp – for the undescribed beginning of a speculative future. How To End Your Wealth penetrates through your bank accounts into your hearts and minds, forging connections and tracing interdependencies in the global capitalist machinery. In doing so, it seeks to unravel larger questions and provoke reflection about the notions of ownership, the principles of give and take, and privilege and aid...
LEAD ARTIST Abhishek Thapar CO-THINKER Noah Voelker DRAMATURGICAL SUPPORT Maria Rößler RECORDING, SOUND DESIGN, COMPOSITION Andi Otto EDIT, CO-COMPOSITION Jonathan Nagel VOICE CONTRIBUTION Mohamadou Kamara
ABHISHEK THAPAR “Let's say there are two sides within me that attempt to deal with problems of being labelled an 'Indian' or 'other' or 'exotic' in Europe, in relation to funding structures or the art market. One side is the desire to complicate and share a complex understanding of the world through my artistic practice but this always comes with limited support from institutions/funding bodies, as it might not fit their frameworks/policies or ideologies. Hence the nature of the work is mostly self-curated, independent and minimal. On the other side is the actuality of sustainability, which in a way resorts to sometimes simplification or exoticizing oneself in order to survive. I would prefer to work on an art project that requires me to fit these labels in order to pay my bills over working as food delivery guy. Once such incident happened at a cultural center in Bochum, Germany where they wanted me to perform an Indian dance improvisation with some German musicians attempting to play gong, flute and electric bass guitar. They offered me 800 bucks. I closed my eyes and did my best and I could pay two months of rent.”
ABHISHEK THAPAR (Director and Performer, Moga/India and Amsterdam/Netherlands) first studied business and then decided to turn his passion into a profession. He holds a Diploma in Physical Theater from the London International School of Performing Arts and a Master's in theatre from DAS Theater, Amsterdam. His performance My home at the Intersection was invited to the Zürcher Theaterspektakel and Spielart München, his new piece Cow is a Cow is a Cow was shown at the Ruhrfestspiele and at the auawirleben Theaterfestival Bern. In the summer of 2021, he was artist-in-residence at Kampnagel. For several years, he has been developing an artistic research and practice based on postcolonial epistemologies, historical metafiction and storytelling.
