Against the idyll of the silvery ripples of the Zurich lake and a world spinning out of control we grappled to reach a decision. Ultimately, the works we selected show us how vulnerable one can get in the oscillation between despair and hope. In a competitive economics of attention, they hold us in focus against prolonged and muted catastrophes. 

The pieces we chose disrupt the cycle of applaud-and-go-back-to-daily-life. This is theatre that gathers us into a collective body urging us to transform the moment of witnessing into a practice of commoning. These pieces may make us uncomfortable in our present, and yet they propel us to reimagine a future that is undeniably alive with possibility. 

Stephanie Kayal and Abed Kobeissy GALACTIC CRUSH 2: INTO THE COLD

We loved «Galactic Crush 2: Into the Cold» for its honesty about the fatigue and rage of wartime. It is a retrofuturistic exploration of memory and hope in the face of perpetual failure. On board a DIY spaceship, Stéphanie Kayal and Abed Kobeissy take us on an exercise of shared reckoning to an imagined future of coldness and solitude. The artists show us that distance is a privilege when people live not only in different levels of risk, but in fundamentally different time and space dimensions. 

The science fiction and comic genre sits in deliberate contrast to these heavy inquiries. Along with their android companion, Stéphanie and Abed offer playfulness and complexity in a timeloop without escape, watching catastrophes unfolding from  space as resources grow scarce.

The piece withdraws from direct images of nightmares in favor of sounds, fragmented memories, and humour, a strategy that acknowledges the difficulty of continuing artistic practice when homelands are being abandoned and lost. Galactic Crush 2 addresses the turbulence and atrocity unfolding in the world, but it does so from a planetary perspective that extends beyond borders. What if we all were aboard this one spaceship, together, facing an uncertain future?

Aws Al Zubaïdy KAFAN

In «Kafan», named after the white cloth to cover dead bodies as they are ritually prepared for the afterlife, Aws Al-Zubaïdy serves as a shapeshifting master of ceremony with urgency and tenderness. Through his movement language he channels emotions that are often being muted in discourses about the genocide in Gaza: Palestinian joy and Palestinian rage. Crucially, he employs a sharpened tool: humour without escapism in the face of enormous grief. Aws shows us that art can hold a precious space for hopelessness.

In times of the villainisation of Palestinian grief, Kafan stands squarely and bravely before existential questions: What can one stone do and what if a thousand stones are in vain? 

«Kafan» challenges viewers to confront a spectrum of dehumanisation under occupation. Mastering a vigilant observation of his audience and clowning in the face of tragedy, he employs a fragmented, playful dramaturgy between survivor’s guilt and survival skills. Aws ends the piece with an offering of beauty even amidst profound suffering.