Through its residency programmes, the Goethe-Institut seeks to provide a space for new perspectives. Particularly in the age of globalisation, it is especially inspiring for artists and culture producers to ground their works in specific, real places and to pursue their projects for a while, free from economic considerations and to build up or deepen lasting professional contacts. Artists will be nominated. Applications are not possible. Each year, with its residency programmes and their variety of focuses, the Goethe-Institut New Zealand offers artists and other culture creator’s opportunities to live and work in Wellington or Christchurch for a period of time. The residency programme’s focus is not on one-time presentations. Instead, the projects’ success and significance become evident in long-term exchange and lasting co-operation between the artists.
Residency artist 2020: Anna Peschke
Anna Peschke works as a director and visual artist in Europe and Asia. Her work creates new forms of expression connecting performance, Peking Opera, Installation and New Music. Since 2012 Peschke has been staging Peking Opera. She is particularly interested in the tradition of this theatrical form, its rules of presentation and use of exaggeration.
After producing “Woyzeck” as a solo performance with elements of Peking Opera she created in 2015 “Faust – eine Recherche durch die Sprache der Peking-Oper” as a co-operation between the Italian theatre-foundation ERT and the China National Peking Opera Company (CNPOC). The German newspaper Tagesspiegel praised her for breaking new ground artistically in China. In 2017 her production was granted an award for being a national flagship project for excellent theatre by the People's Republic of China’s ministry of culture and the cultural department of Peking.
In December 2019 her work “Der Ring des Nibelungen – Peking-Oper trifft Musiktheater“ celebrated its debut in Berlin. In 2015 Anna Peschke was granted the dance and theatre award of the German city of Stuttgart and of the state of Baden-Württemberg, as well as Berlin’s opera award in 2011.
Alongside her theatre work, Peschke is engaged in space installation, collages and stage design. She is especially interested in climate change, rituals and the employment of objects.
During her 2 month residency in Wellington, Anna Peschke will realise an interdisciplinary performance-project “The Quiet Living of Lost Things” – a collaboration of international artists, who will stage a multi-disciplinary and genre-spanning performance telling the story of a one-armed 15-year-old-girl on a fantastical journey. Combining site-specific performance, installation, live radio play and object theatre, it will be an intense and memorable artistic experience. Or talking with the words of this new artists’ collective: It will be deep, dark, risky and beautiful.
