Honji Wang und Oguz Sen: Performance „La La Land – Aufhören anzufangen”

For the Frankfurter Kunstverein, the artist and activist Oguz Sen and the performer and choreographer Honji Wang have jointly developed a participatory work at the interface of drawing and performance. La La Land - Aufhören anzufangen is an open system that thrives on collective participation and continuous transformation.

Over the course of several weeks, a large-format mural will be created in the exhibition Hidden History - Facets of Subculture in Frankfurt Rhine-Main, which will be developed jointly by various groups. Participants include people with experience of addiction, homeless people, people with experience of migration as well as children and young people from supervised contexts. They contribute their own experiences, perspectives and forms of expression.

The process follows a simple principle: each group continues what others have started. Drawings are supplemented, superimposed or continued - a collective image is created that has no fixed conclusion.

At the same time, Sen and Wang develop a performance that activates the space together with pupils from the Rudolf Koch School in Offenbach and dancers Caterina Politi and Marco Di Nardo. Without a fixed choreography, movement arises from presence, encounter and situation. Performers and participants share the space on an equal footing - between action and standstill, decision and openness.

The work creates a temporary, democratic space in which artistic production can be experienced as a collaborative process. The concept is transferable: It can adapt to different places, groups and contexts while remaining the same at its core - start, stop, continue.

Oguz Sen is an activist in public space and intervenes in social discourse. With his large-scale murals, he addresses political issues and social grievances. His well-known works include the mural at Osthafen, which is dedicated to the boy Alan Kurdi, who drowned at sea in 2015 while fleeing from Syria, and a 27-metre-long painting under the Frankfurt Peace Bridge, which commemorates the victims of the racially motivated attack in Hanau and was created together with the "Kollektiv ohne Namen".

He has been friends with the internationally acclaimed and award-winning dancer Honji Wang for many years. Honji Wang is a choreographer and performer influenced by hip-hop underground culture. Growing up in Frankfurt as the daughter of Korean parents, she is a self-taught artist who has developed her practice outside of institutional structures. Her work emerges from lived experience in which movement becomes a form of knowledge, rooted in breakdance, martial arts and the physical realities of discipline, labor and resilience.

Since 2010, she has co-directed the company Wang Ramirez with Sébastien Ramirez. Together they have developed an independent body of work that is shown internationally in theaters, at festivals and in the context of contemporary art. Their practice moves fluidly between underground and mainstream, including collaborations with Madonna (Rebel Heart Tour), while maintaining a clear artistic signature. She has received major international awards for her work, including the Bessie Award. In her choreographic and performative works, Wang is interested in the body as a place of memory, contradiction and transformation.

Admission: €5 (plus advance booking fee and incl. exhibition visit). Tickets are available in advance via Eventbrite: Get your tickets now.