On the Discomfort of Living (UA)
"In my family," it says right at the beginning, "there's an incredible amount of talking. And yet it's characterized by silence." And suddenly you're talking, chatting, remembering, right in the middle of the performance."
Christoph Schütte: “Collected Silence,” FAZ, December 3, 2023
"'On the Discomfort of Living' is a tentative performance, a touching one. Some things you recognize from your own family, others sound pretty wild. Would you want to have experienced it? Better, perhaps, to just be told about it."
Sylvia Staude: “What a family prefers not to talk about,” Frankfurter Rundschau, December 4, 2023
"For almost ten years, Herder collected, researched in private and public archives, and compiled a total of 200 documents, which she presented to the visitors of the lecture performance "On the Discomfort of Living" in a slide show."
Sina Claßen: “On the discomfort of living – with tea and a slide show into the past,” Journal Frankfurt, 27.11.2023
After Democracy
"After Democracy seems, more than anything else, a plea for the theater. Not only as a civic institution and temple of culture, but above all as a social space where, night after night, season after season, the question of coexistence is renegotiated."
Christoph Schütte: “Theater in the City Parliament: “After Democracy” leads through the Römer”, FAZ , 28.07.2023
"The humor in the deliberately chaotic Walk certainly works. But the background is serious. [...] The play is a welcome and, above all, successful reminder that democracy can never be taken for granted."
Baha Kirlidokme: “Democracy as Memory,” Frankfurter Rundschau, July 31, 2023
“In the performance After Democracy andpartersincrime dare to attempt a rather grim thought experiment, because democracy has already failed here. Contemporary witnesses speak, and symbols of power in Roman architecture are examined in more detail. What was representative democracy, and how did it work?
Selina Stefaniak, Schirn Magazine, May 10, 2023
Empty City (UA)
What is fascinating is that the “Investigative Performance” deals solely with specific construction projects in Kassel, including the plans of the Berlin company Sector 7 for the Henschel site in the Rothenditmold district.
Mark-Christian von Busse: “Capital is a beast,” Hessische/Niedersächsische Allgemeine, May 22, 2023
The media and performance group andpartnersincrime wants to contrast Kassel's empty houses with the stories of those who no longer live there.
Bettina Fraschke: “Theater seeks stories about eviction", : Hessian/Lower Saxony General, 09.03.2023
What's actually behind the vacant properties in Kassel? This play explores this and tells the stories of 10 people affected.
HR Hessenschau: "Theater play addresses homelessness", May 20, 2022, min. 00:00:56
Arrived in the in-between?
“The installation Arrived in the in-between? at the Jewish Community Center in Frankfurt takes visitors on a journey through time. Even bitter memories are awakened.
Theresa Weiss: “Time travel at the dacha”, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 11.05.2022
"If you want to hear the stories, you should bring plenty of time. It's worth it."
Nina Michalk: “Understanding life stories with tea and newspapers,” Hessischer Rundfunk, May 10, 2022
"The interviews reveal many nuances and in-between worlds. The stories oscillate between hope and disappointment, homelessness and yet a sense of having arrived."
Laura Vollmers: “Memory in the In-Between,” Jüdische Allgemeine, May 16, 2022
After the end of the meeting I -III
The Academy
"The Academy of Assembly is intended to use the space between as a phase of discovery before something new emerges. This also includes testing coexistence, i.e., exploring forms of assembly."
Yasmin M'Barek: “At eye level – Ada canteen meets anarchist discourses”, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 29.08.2020
"Andpartnersincrime has always brought together art, politics, current debates, and issues—but never as intensively as at the 'Ada-Kantine': both are interdependent."
Eva-Maria Magel: “Food for everyone like in a restaurant,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 3, 2020
The Parliament
"Despite its technically crude aesthetic, this carefully crafted piece is intellectually stimulating and entertaining. Interesting connections are developed from the fragments of material."
Stefan Michalzik: “When Frankfurt no longer needed a Roman,” Frankfurter Rundschau, November 20, 2020
The theater
"'After the End of the Meeting' was initially a failure on stage. What andpartnersincrime have made of it, however, is more than just making a virtue out of necessity; it's committed political theater in the best sense."
Christoph Schütte: “In tune with the times,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, January 27, 2021
Autonomy. A story about independent movement.
"As a documentary theater piece, it also shows intersections with the private lives of the three artists. All three live in Germany but grew up in Macedonia, Eastern Ukraine, or Catalonia. This reveals how global politics is increasingly affecting their personal lives."
SWR2 Journal am Mittag: “The Spectre of Autonomy: A Performance Project in Frankfurt,” 02.09.2019, 12:33h
"The Frankfurt theater makers don't take sides. But they have brought together many opinions, historical facts, and absurdities. It's a relaxed, but also educational evening."
Sylvia Staude: “Strolling through Poland, traveling to Catalonia,” Frankfurt Rundschau, 4 September 2019
"A history laboratory is set up on stage, in which the four performers open files, retrieve objects, and project photographs and videos. They present the work on history as an unfinished process, just like history itself. A central part of the material presented consists of successful video interviews that they themselves conducted with people involved in North Macedonia and Catalonia."
David Rittershaus: “Searching for Direction,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 6 September 2019
Boundaries: An archive of future discoveries
It's all extremely well done and carefully crafted, with ingenuity and wit in every detail. And that's what makes it so appealing: it's a pleasure to watch.
Stefan Michalzik: “Searching for clues in the rubble of the earth,” Offenbacher Post, June 30, 2018
It's not without subtle irony that Eleonora Herder and the performers of andpartnersincrime chose the Weltkulturen Museum for "Boundaries," a piece that could be called an installation, thought experiment, theater, or video performance.
Christian Schütte: “Future Finds,” FAZ, June 30, 2018
Boundaries is a production that explores its subject in many different ways. It quotes Rousseau and reflects on the passport as a kind of cell. One could call "Boundaries" instructive without feeling intrusively admonished.
Sylvia Staude: “What is the goose doing over New York?”, Frankfurter Rundschau, Feuilleton, July 2, 2018
Many thoughts, images, and ideas on the topics of fences, walls, and cells, and the stories that go with them. (…) They truly managed to cast a strange and astonished glance at our present. And finally: walls always contain the possibility of being overcome, even if only in the imagination.
Mario Scalla: “The year is 2130” Hessischer Rundfunk – Early Review, 29.06.2018
Jump the fence
Will Nidda become a world city, theatrum mundi? Is there really an art space in the heart of the city, at Mühlstraße 1, open until the end of April, with such open offerings that the motto "Jump the fence" can be experienced by all citizens?
Upper Hessian District Gazette, March 3, 2018
So they painted and glued, cut and folded, tried on clothes, and applied makeup. Music from other countries was also added. An intense workshop atmosphere developed, and a song was written and composed. Many beautiful things emerged.
Upper Hessian District Gazette, April 10, 2018
The idea of the global citizenship passport emerged shortly after the Second World War. Instead of becoming entangled in nationalism and friend-enemy thinking, people were invited to see themselves as citizens of one world.
Upper Hessian District Gazette, April 10, 2018
Are you there
An intricate and multi-layered little production... Are You There gives a voice to those who can no longer bear their country in an atmospherically dense production.
Sylvia Staude: “Who plays, who loses,” Frankfurter Rundschau, March 18, 2017
The performance aims to negotiate the question of whether the Iranian “labeled as a refugee” will at some point become the person Saeed again in the general perception or whether he will always carry the border he had to cross with him.
Marie-Sophie Adeoso. "Narrated Reality of Refugee," Frankfurter Rundschau, March 15, 2017
Real events and fictional additions interpenetrate each other; in the constant alternation between spoken passages, superimposed maps and videos, the very credible and intensely tangible document of an escape emerges, despite all its questionable nature.
Matthias Bischoff: “Through the slow tunnel of the Balkan route,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 21.03.2017
The brilliant technical realization of the everyday, bizarre, ambiguous story is impressive... High praise for Jan Mech's sound design of the street, ride, and bazaar scenes.
Marcus Hladek: “Bizarre Escape from Therean,” Frankfurter Neue Presse, March 24, 2017
"Are you there?" is the accompanying and guiding question to travelers that repeatedly resonates through digital communication media.
Lea Balzer, Journal Frankfurt, No. 7 March 2017
Where do you stand?
What does "City for All" mean? Is it permissible to occupy long-vacant buildings owned by the city? Can the city have them evicted by the police?
Janette Faure, Bornheimer Wochenblatt, August 24, 2015
It's a shame that the city guide is quite blind in his left eye. Overall, however, this exciting experiment is a great success. The book is peppered with wise quotes from Alexander Kluge, Theodor Adorno, and Roland Barthes. The reader truly gets to know his city with different eyes and from a different perspective.
Rainer Schulze, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 19, 2016
For all those who want to see Frankfurt from a completely new perspective.
Frankfurter Rundschau, August 14, 2016
The book guides the reader along secret paths through the city and at the same time encourages them to create a different Frankfurt step by step in the spirit of activist tourism.
Esther Boldt, Journal Frankfurt No. 20/16
The new Wiesbaden
Frankfurt artist Eleonora Herder, stage designer Sabine Born, programmer Alla Popperini, and a team of social workers from the Schelmengraben Bunt cultural initiative have adapted this exhibition, which has already been seen in other cities, to local conditions. The effect is astonishing, but it requires time and concentration.
Anja Baumgart Pietsch, Wiesbadener Kurier, November 16, 2016
Most Wiesbaden residents probably don't even know what a Zwofadolei is. The famous architect Ernst May designed the "two-family house with double ducts," or "Zwofadolei," in the 1920s. The fact that they exist not only in "New Frankfurt," but also in Wiesbaden, far from the historic center, on Schelmengraben in Dotzheim, inspired Eleonora Herder, Maria Isabel Hagen, and Sabine Born to create a performance in which they bring together residents of what is now Schelmengraben, May's theories, and the audience in front of a beautiful model of a semi-detached house.
Eva Maria Magel, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 20, 2015
Poranny Spacer
Herder and Wróblewski have managed to repeat the journalistic gesture of the great reporter Kapuścisnki, to set the machine of memory in motion once again and at the same time to lead us back into the past on very unique tracks.
Roman Pawlowski, Gazeta Wyborcza, Warsaw, September 25, 2015
Site of fiction
The project “Site of Fiction” disrupts the audience’s expectations through the ingenious form of its audience participation.
Lukáš Jiřička, A2 Magazine, Prague, July 17, 2013
And the fact that I feel like I'm being observed by others also leads to a self-observation of my actions, in which they suddenly seem like staged actions. That is, in a certain sense, I'm watching myself play a role in front of unknown spectators—which simultaneously raises the question of whether I might not also somehow always be doing this in an ordinary room, supposedly unobserved.
André Eiermann, July 2013
A unique theater experience.
Vera Zimmermann, Oberhessische Presse, June 25, 2013
Ola Nocturna
As individual musicians moved through the space, they gained a threefold presence: as lovers, as shadows in the spotlight, and additionally as a cinematic projection.
Elisabeth Risch, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Vasquéz's piece cleverly uses projections, videos and confusion effects (Eleonora Herder, Arne Köhler) and explores the theme of disappearance in time with clever use of technology.
Hans Jürgen Linke, Frankfurter Rundschau, February 8, 2011
LULU. To all our lovers
The play not only has a unique quality, but is also brimming with a multitude of ideas, creativity, and technical sensitivity for the successful realization of the elaborate production. The setting of the performance is certainly a phenomenon. The audience is not in the same room as the actors. They are not even in the same building.
Gießner General Newspaper, July 25, 2011
Directed by Eleonora Herder and Falk Rößler, this drama features an absent protagonist. They interpret the character of Lulu as a postmodern state of a society that has given up on being a community. Rather, it's about staging oneself in such a way that the gazes and judgments of others define one's own personality. The gaze of others defines us; constant observation is what creates personality.
Fiona Sara Schmidt, Gießner Zeitung, July 25, 2011