Future Tongues takes its starting point from the biblical narrative of the Tower of Babel to reflect on the future of human communication. The work also references the science fiction porn film Café Flesh (1982), in which, after a nuclear apocalypse, the majority of humans lose their libido, while a sex-positive minority performs acts of sexual theater before a captivated audience. Language is understood here as a constant process of negotiating difference.
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Ania Nowak: Future Tongues
Ania Nowak: Future Tongues
Ania Nowak: Future Tongues
Future Tongues addresses analog communication technologies such as speech and touch. Intimacy—both the pleasure and discomfort that proximity can bring—is preserved and simultaneously exhibited like an extinct language or a relic of the past in our accelerated digital culture.
- What forms of embodied communication do people need today?
- Who has the right to speak their own language?
- Can people trust their collective intuition before bowing to the authority of knowledge and power?
Future Tongues is performed by Ania Nowak with a group of dancers and actors on a replica of the artwork Mother Tongues and Father Throats by Slavs and Tatars. Since the end of 2018, the work has been part of the repertoire of the Nowy Teatr in Warsaw.
What began as a commission to imagine theater in 100 years has evolved into a voice of resistance against symbolic and real violence against migrants and the queer community in Poland, which is plagued by nationalist fantasies and the conservative-right fixation on tradition, origin, and a sterile national identity.
- Duration: 1 hour
- German premiere
- English, Polish, Latin
Additional information
Idea, text, choreography, performance: Ania NowakCreation, performance: Oskar Malinowski, Aleksandra Osowicz, Rafał Pierzyński, Jaśmina PolakDramaturgy: Mateusz SzymanówkaSound design: Justyna StasiowskaLight design: Jędrzej JęcikowskiSet design Mother Tongues Father Throats: Slavs and TatarsCostume: Grzegorz Matląg/Wsiura
A production by Ania Nowak and Nowy Teatr. The guest performance is co-organized by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute as part of the international cultural program of the Polish Presidency of the Council of the European Union 2025, co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage as well as funded by the Foundation for German-Polish Cooperation. The guest performance takes place as part of Making Life in the Ruins, a festival by Sophiensæle, funded by the Capital Cultural Fund (HKF). Media partners: Missy Magazine, Siegessäule, taz.
A production by Ania Nowak and Nowy Teatr. The guest performance is co-organized by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute as part of the international cultural program of the Polish Presidency of the Council of the European Union 2025, co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage as well as funded by the Foundation for German-Polish Cooperation. The guest performance takes place as part of Making Life in the Ruins, a festival by Sophiensæle, funded by the Capital Cultural Fund (HKF). Media partners: Missy Magazine, Siegessäule, taz.
Dates
May 2025
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