Konträr bites

A conversation with Majula Drammeh and Joseph K. Kasau Wa Mambwe, who presented at Konträr the performance installation WHAT IS ALREADY HERE?Majula Drammeh is performer, dancer, dramaturg and performance maker based in Stockholm and Malmö, Sweden with a focus on interactive, participatory immersive work within the fields of dance and performance as well as somatic practices. Joseph K. Kasau Wa Mambwe is an artist and storyteller from Lubumbashi, working across theatre, film, photography, installation, curation, and writing.Together, they created WHAT IS ALREADY HERE?, an Afrofuturist performance installation set in a world where humans have become humanoids, governed by a digital operating system called Virtus. The audience enters a space where time is experienced differently — a state in which sound, movement, speech, and image flow together, shaped by the themes of the work, by encounters along the way, and by what emerges through being together.Rooted in African philosophy and ritual traditions, the work searches for cracks in the system, where the human pulse continues to beat beneath the code.The live soundscape is composed and performed on stage by Franck Moka, whose role in the piece also emerges in the conversation.

A conversation with Freja Hallberg, Swedish playwright and director and one of the founding artistic directors of the independent stage Konträr in Stockholm.She works with performance across different scales and formats. Her practice includes plays, durational works, participatory formats and long-term artistic projects. Her work exists where performance meets philosophy and politics — raw, emotionally precise and formally unexpected.Alongside her artistic practice, Hallberg develops long-term structures for artistic production and presentation. She founded PotatoPotato, co-leads the international platformSWEETS, and runs Konträr.At Konträr, she recently presented the performances BAYWATCH and ART & MONEY.

A conversation with Jasna Žmak, who presented at Konträr the performance THIS IS MY TRUTH, TELL ME YOURS.Jasna Žmak is a Croatian dramaturg, writer, researcher and counselling therapist that in this performance appears on stage in the role of the performer for the first time. Dealing with questions of truthfulness and representation, participation and responsibility, she guide the audience through her dramaturgical and sexual experiences, asking herself and the audience questions about the importance and the meaning of artistic production in the era of wild capitalism.What happens when a dramaturg, after fifteen years in the service of art, begins to suspect that art has ruined her life, and yet cannot stop?

A conversation with Hana Umeda, who presented at Konträr the performance RAPEFLOWER. Hana Umeda is a Japanese-Polish choreographer, performer, and dancer. She is also a Natori (master) of the Jiutamai Hanasaki-ryu school. RAPEFLOWER explores experiences of sexual violence. Umeda approaches rape as a transcultural weapon used to control women’s bodies. In a striking fusion of traditional Japanese jiutamai and contemporary performance, she portrays rape as a psychosomatic condition shaped by trauma, survival strategies, and the possibility of beginning anew.Umeda leads the audience through an emotional journey within her own body, a site of injury and objectification, but also of liberation, exploration, self-determination, and resistance. The performance seeks a language beyond taboo and sensationalism, and asks whether the stage can become a space for emancipation and healing.

What can you expect Konträr bites to be