Dhaka: Id-Clash, an international performance art and installation show has begun at the plaza premises of the exhibition building in Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy (BSA).

Organised by Goethe-Institut Bangladesh, in cooperation with the BSA, the three-day-long show began on 5 November.

The show has featured the lifestyle of transgender people. Performance artists from Germany and Bangladesh are taking part in the performances.

The participating artists are Anonnya (Bangladesh), Katha (Bangladesh), Michelle Niwicho (Germany), Burkhart (Germany), Melissa Marie Garcia Noriega (Cuba/Germany), and Greta Pimenta, performer (Germany/Brazil)

Male? Female? Other?

Transgender people do not conform to the expectations of the gender role assigned to them at birth because they cannot relate to it. They feel they are in the ‘wrong body’ and often experience a sense of dislocation. While their subjective sense of their own gender identity often provokes confusion in society, it is gaining increasing acceptance.

ID-clash throws the exclusive nature of the gender binary into question. As soon as one moves away from a strictly binary system of gender, countless possibilities and models of gender self-definition present themselves. The project focuses on the male-to-female trans-identity and draws attention to different concepts for living and stages of transformation.

In ID-clash transgender performers from Europe come together with representatives of the ‘third gender’, the hijra culture from Bangladesh.

The lifestyle of the Hijras in South Asia follows a centuries-old mythological tradition. Genetically speaking, Hijras are men or intersex who have the outward appearance of women but who do not feel as if they belong to either of the two sexes. They call themselves the ‘third gender’.

In Europe, the individual lifestyles of transgender people are shaped with opposing social attitudes that range from tolerance to rejection, tabooisation and prejudice. In the course of the public debate about equality and social acceptance, niches and safe havens have emerged.

Four very different biographies form the basis for the artistic realisation of ID-clash. Narration and writing, video projections and singing, performative and visual work – together they emerge as a walk-in installation.

In ID-clash, the audience encounters with people who do not identify with gender-role standards.

Project roots

The first encounter of Angie Hiesl + Roland Kaiser with members of the hijra community dates back to the year 2010, when the two performance artists conducted a workshop on gender identity and sexual diversity in Dhaka on the invitation of Goethe-Institut. Deeply moved by this encounter, they elaborated the idea for an intercultural project with transgender performers from Bangladesh and Europe in the following years.

In February 2013, Angie Hiesl and Roland Kaiser finally returned to Dhaka for a second, more intensive workshop with members of the hijra community, concluding with a public performance. During this workshop, the two Bangladeshi performers Anonnya and Katha were selected for ID-clash. In September 2013 they travelled to Cologne to start rehearsing.

ID-clash had its world premiere in Cologne in October 2013 and got nominated for two awards: the ‘Cologne Dance Theatre Prize 2013’ and the ‘Kurt Hackenberg Prize for Political Theatre’ 2013.

Direction

From the 1980s onwards, the director, choreographer, performance and installation artist Angie Hiesl has been presenting her interdisciplinary works. She is one of the first choreographers in Germany to exclusively develop site-specific choreographies. Roland Kaiser studied experimental theatrical forms and dance. He is director, choreographer, performance and fine artist. Under the label Angie Hiesl Produktion, Angie Hiesl and Roland Kaiser present their interdisciplinary projects at locales distant to art in urban spaces. The site-specific works temporarily transform public and private spaces in art venues. Their original aesthetic means of expression as well as their concepts turn out to be sensual provocations – an invitation to the audience and to passers-by alike to take a new look at something we believed was familiar, a re-arrangement of reality. The multi-award winning works are being shown globally.