Performance / Writing / Collective Connections
Lina Krüger works across performance and writing, engaging with somatic practices, ritual forms and collective processes. Her artistic work explores how spiritual experience can be articulated through performative structures, moving between intimacy and shared attention. In recent projects, her focus has shifted toward questions of collectivity and collective development, investigating how connective practices and contemporary rituals can enable collective sensing, thinking and transformation.
Waves of Becoming – Research Project
“Waves of Becoming” is a research project developed in 2024 and 2025, accompanied by a short film scheduled to premiere in autumn 2026. The project unfolds as a multimedia practice between somatic work, choreography, and video art. Against a backdrop of increasing isolation and dominant capitalist modes of thinking, the work approaches collective ritual as a shared space for care and intimacy beyond private relationships. Physical and spiritual dimensions of closeness are explored through improvisational practices that soften the boundaries of individuality, question autonomy and self-determination, and allow experiences of selflessness to surface through collective movement and expanded perception. Water functions as a central aesthetic reference, evoking transformation, movement, vitality, and unity.
“Movement is the language of the body, and listening is its deepest form.” Emiliy Conrad (founder of Continuum)
Project by: Lina Krüger, Perfromers: Borys Slowlikovski, Ika Mokovska, Manuel Lindner, Mathilde Mensink, Video / Photos: Finnja Willner
November 2024- April 2025
“Echo sagt Bodensatz – Tohubassbuuh” Installation / Performance
“The built environment is a reference to the memory of a city. It is intended to convey an orderly, idealized narrative, a certain image of society. Beneath it, in the semi-darkness of the built environment, where orderly narratives dissolve and repressed and collective structures of meaning continue to exist, the world is still full of violence. Fragments of our collective memory are twisted, turned, and reinterpreted until anti-democratic and misanthropic narratives take hold. Conspiracy theories, resentment, and fear gain power through algorithmic ghosts that occupy the public discourse space, connected immediately, globally, and endlessly. A world inhabited by perverts, madmen, shameless people, Satanists, Nazis – we are coming!
This performance is part of the artwork Echo sagt Bodensatz, installation and performance with oversized heads and objects, bankleer 2013-25.”
(text excerpts from: Echo sagt Bodensatz | Tohubassbuuh , source: Maxim Gorki Webpage)
Project by bankleer and Patric Catani, Performance: Lina Krüger
Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin, November/Dezember 2025
“Stauung im Steinbruch” Performance
“For the work Stauung im Steinbruch, we enter into the midst of the problematic group of figures from German history who now, in their second life, collectively inhabit the provisions magazine of the Zitadelle Spandau, Berlin.
Despite their missing noses, severed heads and lost limbs, their problematic and sometimes threatening memories make them energetic mediators and persistent transmitters of memories, forgotten history and time gaps.After demolition, storage, description and reconstruction, they have now arrived on the ground – without a leading role. Beyond our limited perception, their substance is a transporter across non-human time spans. Along this fractured perspective, we undertake performative forays through our collective, inhabited by human and non-human actors.”
(excerpt from: Stauung im Steinbruch, Website www.bankler.com)
Performance by bankleer and Lina Krüger
within the framework of Mitkunstzentrale, Enthüllt/Zitadelle Spandau
date: 20.6.2024
“Neophyt – Wanderungen” Performance
Louis A. Krüger works at the intersection of speculative design and botany. In her performance Neophyt Wanderungen, she uses living and organically growing garments to investigate the interactions of cross-species aesthetics that defy a linear and dualistic thinking and thereby renegotiate the relationship between human and nature, subject and object, activity and passivity. Together with the artists, performers and musicians Lina Krüger, Jonas Mahari and Jolle Orso, Louis A Krüger creates an installative sound performance that draws a »dialogical design« as a posthuman utopia in which garments are created as a communal act, ritual and ceremony, as a laboratory and sacred site.
Project by: Louis A. Krüger, Performance: Jolle Orso, Jonas Mahari, Lina Krüger, Louis Krüger
Opening: 14. August 15:00 at Schinkel Pavillion Berlin
“Als Nonne und als Verletzter” Part 1, Performance by Lina Krüger
Als Nonne und als Verletzter (As a Nun and as the Wounded) marks L Krüger’s solo debut as a performance artist, first premiered at Ballhaus Ost Berlin in 2017. The work unfolds as a hybrid of concert, diary like recitations, engagements with poems by Western mystics and video installation. Rather than following a fixed concept, the performance emerges through associative processes that link spirituality, everyday experience and artistic practice.
At its core, the work reflects on what it means to cultivate a spiritual life within postmodern civilization, approached from a feminist perspective. Questions of productive solitude, inner transformation and withdrawal are explored not as romantic ideals, but as lived and contested realities. How necessary is solitude for individual change, how contemporary is this longing, and how fulfilling can it truly be today? Moving between intimacy and exposure, contemplation and disturbance, the performance navigates these tensions as an open, searching practice.
Gefördert durch die Einstiegsförderung der Berliner Senatskanzlei für Kultur und Europa.
Performance by Lina Krüger, Outside-Eye Anja Kerschkewicz | Jonas Grawert, costume design by Louisa Krüger
Ballhaus Ost, Berlin
“Als Nonne und als Verletzter” Part 2, Performance
Als Nonne und als Verletzter (As a Nun and as the Wounded) unfolds in a second part as a labyrinthine miniature situated between concert, installation and performance. Songs and spoken texts deepen the tensions introduced earlier, as contemplative perceptions of nature intersect with cyborg aesthetics, and paradoxical formulations reminiscent of Zen writings collide with the bleak poetry of spam folders and the constant noise of nearby construction sites.
The nun and the wounded figure now emerge more sharply as embodiments of inner emotional states and conflicting longings. Faustian quests for meaning confront social engagement, desires for retreat clash with the urge to intervene, decadent aestheticism stands alongside gestures of maternal self sacrifice. Oscillating between despair and devotion, the performer attempts to navigate and mediate between these opposing forces, intensifying the search for balance initiated in the first part.
Performance by Lina Krüger
Outside-Eye Anja Kerschkewicz | Jonas Grawert, costume design: Louisa Krüger, sound: Bridget Ferill
Vierte Welt Berlin / 20.05.2018
“dung dung”, Performance
“With our work Dung Dung (decomposition), we reflect on the social current of utopians, nerds and sectarians that emerged at the end of the 19th century, when settlements, rural communities and colonies have started to be established. Motivated by rejection of capitalism and the longing for a new world, a multitude of different settlements also arose around Berlin such as Gildenhall, Wolterdorf, Marienhöhe, Eden, Motzener See, Tiefensee or Bornim. Common to all is the attempt to combine existential, cooperative and ideal values, which mostly failed due to the harsh reality. We are interested in the substances / wastes left over from these failed models of existence, abandoned to the formless and without need for authority – decay in the half-light. In the gaps between the past and future of these movements, we look for slumbering remains that are worth illuminating.” (excerpt from: dung dung, Website www.bankler.com)
Installation by bankleer, Dellbrügge & de Moll, Folke Koberling, Martin Kaltwasser, David Moises
Performance by Lina Krüger
Studio im Hochhaus
June 13 – August 23, 2017
“Save me Not”, Performance
“(save me) not confronts with humor the myth that women are naturally the weaker sex. Based on interviews with (combat) athletes, self defense instructors, social workers and many other strong women from Oberhausen and across Germany who have experienced and overcome violence, the work develops a story about empowered and resistant action. The “damsel in distress” becomes the final boss in a feminist confrontation with violence and with victim and perpetrator roles, from which a heroine emerges.” (translated excerpt from: www.frauenundfiktion.de)
Project by: Frauen und Fiktion, Performers: Shari Asha Crosson, Elisabeth Hoppe, Philipp Joy Reinhardt
Stage design: Luisa Wandschneide, Music: Lina Krüger, Jonas Mahari, Dramaturgie: Hannah Saar
Theater Oberhausen, 2020
“Care 3.0”, Performance
“Frauen und Fiktion invite audiences to a glamorous care contest. In a ballroom of a special kind, caring figures beyond clearly defined gender roles compete with one another. They battle in acts of nourishment, caregiving, offering comfort, saying no, listening, and practicing patience. Who becomes the ultimate bearer of care?
Drawing on interviews, the performance negotiates the lived experiences of people engaged in care work. Who predominantly carries care labor in our society, and what value should it hold? The audience is invited to cheer for their favorites. Cleaning and dancing unfold alongside birth, death and celebration. We care to shine!
Performance by: Frauen und Fiktion, Anja Kerschkewicz, Felina Levits, Paula Reissig, Eva Kessler
Perfromance: Jonas Mahari, Lina Krüger, Arnis Levits, Laetitia Reymond, Gregor Schuster, Marilyn Nova White, Kathrin Brogli, Photos: Falvio Karrer
Theater Roxy Basel / coproduction with Treibstoff Festival Basel // founded by: Recherchestipendium Berliner Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa
“Care 3.0”, Performance
In YOU ARE A WEAPON!, Frauen und Fiktion portray female attackers. Their physically demanding confrontation is based on biographical interviews with experts such as a self defense trainer, a bar owner, an anti aggression trainer, an MMA fighter and others. Together with three of them and the musician L. Krüger, Frauen und Fiktion negotiate perspectives that emerge through bodily empowerment.
The performers speak about experiences of powerlessness, role models and self empowerment through training. As they dance violence, the stage transforms from an unpredictable battlefield into a protected training space. Through stories of resilient and defensive action, alternative images of femininity begin to emerge.
Performance by: Frauen und Fiktion: Anja Kerschkewicz / Eva Kessler / Felina Levits / Paula Reissig ) / L. Krüger / Idalia Nwaimo / Birgit Schley / Lenza Severin // Musik: Lina Krüger // Bühne und Kostüme: Felina Levits // Assistenz: Florence Fausch // Licht/Technik: Stephan Mäusel // Beratung Produktion: Zwei Eulen // Outside Eye: Helen Schröder / Anne Brammen // Fotos: Brygida Kowalska // Produktion: Frauen und Fiktion /
Coproduction with Theaterdiscounter Berlin
“SEX” Performance
“Mystery, Juggler, Bad Boy, Real Social Dynamics – behind these names are lurking some successful players of the worldwide growing “Seduction Community”. These are men who – in groups or as individuals – perceive themselves as “pick-up artists” and seduce women as if it were a sport. Their message: Those who have accumulated sufficient masculinity and know the rules of the game can score as much profit as possible in the form of fucks with minimum investment of their own market value.
In the naturalistic setting of a hotel conference room the Berlin theater group Talking Straight simulates a great “pick-up” event. Performers and spectators form a community of coaches, would-be Casanovas and alpha gamers. Regardless of their actual gender identification all participants are perceived as men who need to learn and who attend fee-based workshops where professional trainers impart their expert knowledge. Re-enactment is turned into a ritual of exorcism.” (excerpt from: https://talkingstraight.de/sex)
Performance by: Talking Straight : Alicia Agustín, Daniel Cremer, Lina Krüger, houaïda, Antje Prust
JULY 2016, Body Talk Festival / MÜNCHNER KAMMERSPIELE
“Entertainment” Performance
Almost everyone knows TALKING STRAIGHT or has played with them at some point. Great. But now it becomes personal. With ENTERTAINMENT, TALKING STRAIGHT invite audiences into a better world: being creative, having fun, and shaping an entire life along the way, who wouldn’t dream of that? TALKING STRAIGHT demonstrate how we can become unique performers of our own lives. The task is to explore a completely open world, pursuing short term and long term goals in order to receive rewards.
A journey of discovery through an exciting cosmos of possibilities, entirely in a “foreign language”. ENTERTAINMENT is a life simulation game and an exhilarating lesson in capitalism that concerns us all.
February 2016 at Studio Я, Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin, and May 2016 as part of Stückemarkt, Theatertreffen 2016
June 2016 at Theater Neumarkt, Zurich
A simulation by and with: Alicia Agustín, Daniel Cremer, houaïda, Lina Krüger, René Michaelsen, Antje Prust
Stage design: Romy Kießling, Video design: Marlene Denningmann, Dramaturgy: Ludwig Haugk, Necati Öziri, Artistic collaboration: Michael Ebbing
More informations about the TALKING STRAIGHT: https://talkingstraight.de/statement/
“Aussöhnen mit Deutschland 2” Performance
Aussöhnen mit Deutschland (Reconciliation with Germany): under this title, a conference in early 2014 promised the final healing of the German soul from the horrors of the past, “in the harmony of science, art and spirituality.” Swiss Zen masters, esoteric success coaches and Protestant members of major political parties met a population in search of healing. One World Cup victory and several PEGIDA marches later, we resurrect this conference as a national religious ghost train, using original texts only.
In Aussöhnen mit Deutschland II, the desire for national unity and a healthy national body haunts the proceedings like a familiar undead presence, alongside David Lynch and the Raja of Germany. And while the conference sets out toward a new German greatness, Tucké Royale repaints his Peasants’ War panorama one more time.
October 2014 and 2015 at Studio Я, Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin
A co production by TALKING STRAIGHT and Studio Я
By and with: Alicia Agustín, Daniel Cremer, Lina Krüger, René Michaelsen, Antje Prust, Tucké Royale
Music: houaïda, Video and animation: Declan Hurley, Assistant director and camera: Michael Ebbing
Pictures: Ute Langkafel
More informations about the TALKING STRAIGHT: https://talkingstraight.de/statement/
“TALKING STRAIGHT WILL SET US FREE” Performance
“You can also just like something for once. Not always be so critical critical in theater. We’re doing fine. We live in freedom. You can just celebrate that. A festival of freedom to which everyone is invited. Even those who haven’t yet managed to free themselves.”
Since the “peaceful revolution” of 1989, official commemorative events have been held annually to celebrate the birth of a new German identity as a united and free people. Talking Straight Will Set Us Free simulates such a state ceremony. What is genuine self determination, what is merely neoliberal propaganda, and whose freedom is actually being celebrated?
October 2015 and 2016 at Studio Я, Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin
By and with: Alicia Agustín, Daniel Cremer, Lina Krüger, René Michaelsen, Antje Prust
Music: houaïda
Artistic collaboration: Michael Ebbing
Pictures: Ute Langkafel MAIFOTO
More informations about the TALKING STRAIGHT: https://talkingstraight.de/statement/
“TALKING STRAIGHT Festival” Performance
The TALKING STRAIGHT Festival is a theater festival in a “foreign language”, an invented language. It presents the theater of white people in Central Europe as a fascinating exotic rediscovery. For one day, a parallel world of a theater festival is created, complete with guest performances, artist talks, concerts, a festival lounge, sponsors and a “patron”, from accreditation to the Twitter wall, all conducted in the “foreign language”.
“Talking Straight is absurd, profound and irresistibly funny, a truly new theatrical format.” (rbb Kulturradio)
“Egsbar hen Super Fun.” (Nachtkritik)
“… over the course of the evening, you begin to understand more and more without understanding a single word. It is hard to imagine a more beautiful way of grasping art, communication and life.” (SWR 2 Radio)
“Talking Straight expose everyday language like ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’, forcing the audience to look and listen more closely.” (Deutschlandradio Kultur)
“Talking Straight reveal patterns of human behavior and, by unsettling them, initiate a playful departure into the unknown.” (Jury of the Frankfurter Autorenstiftung)
“The creative energy this requires, from the performers as well as the participating audience, is highly contagious.” (…) “in a productive transit between insight and despair.” (Berliner Zeitung)
“The established signs are reversed, prompting reflection on the self, the other and the boundary between them. The major political questions remain unresolved. Yet theater has rarely laughed at itself so intelligently and charmingly.” (Süddeutsche Zeitung)
Premiere: January 30, 2014 at Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin
Stückemarkt Berlin Theater
Concept: Daniel Cremer / TALKING STRAIGHT
Set and costume design: Daniel Cremer and Romy Kiessling
With artworks by Heike Karin Föll and Sadie Weis
By and with: Alicia Agustín, Daniel Cremer, Lisa Heinrici, Anja Herden, Sébastien Jacobi, Romy Kiessling, Lina Krüger, Nils Amadeus Lange, René Michaelsen, Tamer Fahri Özgönenc, Antje Prust, Fabian Raabe, Dr Tucké Royale, Vincent Stefan, Alisa Tretau, Hans Unstern, Anton Weil and others
More informations about the TALKING STRAIGHT: https://talkingstraight.de/statement/