Oliver Zahn: Great Acceleration

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In the fall of 2024, a large-scale, state-organized earthquake drill took place in southern Germany. Experts from across Europe demonstrated, for an audience of journalists and politicians, how to respond to a tectonic disaster.

The performance Great Acceleration by Oliver Zahn takes this multi-day exercise as its point of departure for a journey: it moves along linguistic pathways through devastated infrastructure and human-made tragedies, slipping through the cracks in the fault lines of state security promises. It finds itself in an unstable landscape where the temporalities of unstoppable geological processes prevail – processes that make belief in civilizational progress and technological acceleration appear as desperate attempts to escape one’s own future.

The performer Toni Jessen reenacts this movement as a performative traversal of the stage – an attempt to bring the human body into proximity with inhuman temporal horizons.

INFORMATION ON ACCESSIBILITY

With: Toni JessenConcept, research, text, direction, Set: Oliver ZahnDramaturgy: Jutta WangemannArtistic production management: Martina NeuPress and Public Relations: Kerstin Böttcher

A production by Oliver Zahn in co-production with Sophiensæle and HochX Munich. Funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion and the City of Munich – Department of Cultural Affairs. Media partners: Missy Magazine, Siegessäule, taz.

Next date:

• Date Thursday, 28/May/2026 21:00 (3 more dates)
• Venue Sophiensaele - Hochzeitssaal
• Address Sophienstraße 18, 10178 Berlin-Mitte
• Price from €25.00

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