Casting Freischütz / PPtv
paranoidprepper #protectyourhome #survivalist #backyard #mansplained
Casting Freischütz (from German: “The Freeshooter” or “The Marksman”) is a shooting training on stage. Hendrik Quast and Maika Knoblich developed new alter egos, two buddies who meet in the backyard to bestow the title “Freischütz” upon the best firearm from their gun collection. They zero on every scrap the DIY universe can offer to test the potential of their weapons: cartwheel, blood bombs, foam pigeon, sheep made of expanding foam and eventually themselves. The artists question the everyday culture of hunting and shooting clubs as bastion of male self-dramatisation and translate the rich repertoire of mansplaining into performance theatre. They adapt hunter’s jargon with its specific terminology to illustrate the power of language and its selective and structural effect. The two experts address every detail of gun casting, undermining the obvious with the self-evident and vice versa. They talk shop about guns, ammunition, the best targets and about what is more important to accomplish the perfect shot, the gun or the skills of the human behind it?
PPtv is the further development of the performance in video form as fictional advice programme designed for the tv channel Paranoia TV of the steirischer Herbst Festival. Hendrik Quast & Maika Knoblich disguise themselves as passionate preppers difficult to tell apart after years of joint preparation for the apocalypse. Storing up cat food, setting up traps for car burglars, using hot sauce as weapon for self-defense – the post-apocalyptic routine in the DIY basement. The artist duo brutely approaches the specific jargon and masculinity staging of fearful warriors fighting on their own. They dissect them in a playful manner, without ridiculing them.
PPtv auf Paranoia TV im Browser und der App streamen
Concept, text, performance Hendrik Quast, Maika Knoblich
Costumes Christina Neuss
Scenery Hendrik Quast
Light Maika Knoblich, Johanna Seitz
Co-production Gessnerallee Zürich, SOPHIENSAELE, Quast & Knoblich
Funded by Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa, Fonds Darstellende Künste e.V.
PPtv was commissioned by steirischer herbst ’20
Realised with the support of Kulturstiftung des Bundes (Reload. Stipendienprogramm)
Premiere Casting Freischütz 28.02.2019
Premiere PPtv am 29.9.2020
Fotos Gerhard F. Ludwig