Making the Intercultural: The Rehearsal Processes of Gintersdorfer/Klassen

This article scrutinizes the collaborative rehearsal practice of the German- Ivorian performance group Gintersdorfer/Klassen. I argue that the group subverts dominant conceptions of art, politics, ethics, and personal commitment by creating a space of opportunity and potential. In interpreting processes of the making, I draw on a growing body of literature from rehearsal studies and the new sociology of art. I conceptualize the rehearsal site as a socio-material spacetime in which dichotomies such as subjectobject and North-South co-exist, at once reflecting, questioning, challenging, and re-assembling the intercultural. In particular, I highlight how Gintersdorfer/Klassen destabilize institutional structures by focusing on simultaneity instead of either-or-logics. Rather than investigating the meaning of the performance per se, I investigate the agential strategies and possibilities that emerge in Gintersdorfer/Klassen’s rehearsal processes. I argue, first, that the use of participant observation of performance and theater rehearsals allows us to locate both the political and the ethical, hence the aesthetical. Second, this article demonstrates how recognizing the material as agential invokes all participants to ‘response-ability’. Finally, I suggest understanding intercultural collaborative practice as a distinctly political act in which collaboration creates a sense of unease and discomfort rather than belonging.