30 Years of the Center for Interdisciplinary Women’s and Gender Studies (TU Berlin)
The Center for Interdisciplinary Women’s and Gender Studies (ZIFG) at TU Berlin celebrates its 30th anniversary. On this occasion, the ZIFG brings the text cycle “In the Shadow of Presence” to the stage – a polyphonic, poetic project about the invisible, the disruptive, and the resistant. A work that asks: Who gets to speak, who remains in the shadows, and where does presence emerge precisely where it is least expected?
Students from the Master’s program Stage Design_Scenic Space at TU Berlin developed the stage design and costumes in a co-creative process and take on speaking roles in the performance.
Performance:
Friday, February 13, 2026, at 7:00 PM
HAU Hebbel am Ufer, HAU1
Stresemannstraße 29, 10963 Berlin
Event link and tickets (15 € / reduced 9 €):
https://www.hebbel-am-ufer.de/programm/pdetail/30-jahre-zentrum-fuer-interdisziplinaere-frauen-und-geschlechterforschung-tu-berlin-im-schatten-der-praesenz-ein-konzert-der-stimmen
Eight voices and a double bass explore how memory, care, and democratic coexistence can be experienced within the tensions of law, power, and social norms. The stories speak of disenfranchisement, divergence, and survival. They recall the shadows of bureaucracy, the dignity of the human being, care as resistance, and tenderness as a political practice – always where presence appears only in the in-between spaces.
This project is not a linear narrative; it is a space of resonance: a choir of the unchosen, a music of interruption, an invitation to listen — even in the intervals, in the unseen. Where language fractures, presence becomes tangible; where the visible is absent, resistance emerges.
The texts are based on Sabine_ Hark’s book “Gemeinschaft der Ungewählten. Umrisse eines politischen Ethos der Kohabitation” (2021). They translate theory into aesthetic, musical, and performative forms. “In the Shadow of Presence” makes visible what often remains unseen and gives voice to those who must be heard.
Team
Text: Sabine_ Hark
Music: Lisa Hoppe
Artistic consulting, Stage design: Gertrud Schrader
Performers: Julian Bender, Noah Ebert Gómez, Christian Find, Petra Goldkuhle, Hanna Hacker,
Marion Henkelmann, Sasha Lurje, Mila Thoma, Lor Willkomm
Stage design and costumes by students of the Master’s program Stage Design_Scenic Space, TU Berlin:
Fan Ye, Katya Tiniakova, Kristina Mai, Julie Savery, Lorenz Willkomm, Luise Koerber, Luise Knoppan, Mila Thoma, Runzhi Ye, Sabrina Podemski
Production:
Center for Interdisciplinary Women’s and Gender Studies (ZIFG), TU Berlin
In cooperation with HAU Hebbel am Ufer