B6112 is an anti-capitalist, queer-feminist, anti-racist, transmedial theatre production by the artist collective Staub zu Glitzer (dust to glitter). It was established on September 22nd 2017 with the occupation of the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz in Berlin and is not over yet.
With and within this artwork, specific demands are made on theatres as institutions: overcoming bourgeois exclusivity, the radical opening of space for a self-organization process and the collective, participatory development of a new city- or state theatre model. It is not enough to designate a small group of people as collective directorships and to appoint them to managerial positions. In addition to egalitarian wage policies, there has to be a fundamental discussion about who is entitled to a theatre stage and who the final decision maker should be in this respect. Berlin’s free space and project-room culture is dying out and one approach is to demand tax-financed institutions for self-organization, although and precisely because this does not correspond to the self-image of these elitist cultural areas. As a place founded by organized workers, the Volksbühne should play a pioneering role in the discourse of participation, anarchist organization, and anti-fascist engagement.
Part of Episode IX: “Reassembling Institutions”
With Ahmed Al-Nawas, Nora Sternfeld, Sarah Waterfeld / Staub zu Glitzer & Florian Malzacher
30. October 2021 – BIT Teatergarasjen Bergen / Norway
Biography
Sarah Waterfeld is an author and scholar of literature. She has taught classes on „Transmedial strategies of political intervention“ at the University of Potsdam. Her transmedial two novel series Sex mit Gysi (2015) and Was vom Hummer übrig blieb (2016) were byproducts of her 2012 candidacy as the head of the German party Die Linke. She co-initiated B6112 and is spokesperson for the collective Staub zu Glitzer.
The Berlin collective Staub zu Glitzer ist best known for their occupation/transmedia performance B6112 at Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz in Berlin (2017). Since then they have participated in the 4-month occupation of the Freibeuter ship at the Rummelsburger Bucht in Berlin (2018/19), organized the alternative Volksbühne summit Beware of glitter! ***, and the Kein-Haus-Weniger (Not a single building less) Gala to preserve free spaces of the radical left. Together with the squatting community Liebig34 and with support from Donna Haraway they intervened at Deutsches Theater and initiated counter-protests against the right-wing demonstrations against coronavirus hygiene rules at the beginning of the pandemic. They organized an alliance of residents, local tradespeople, and six theatres against a neo-Nazi haunt in Berlin Charlottenburg. In October 2021 the collective brought the strike of the nursing staff and hospital employees to the Berliner Volksbühne.
