Hate against sexual autonomy is growing on our very doorstep. The city of Szczecin is only 120 km away from Berlin. A pride parade has just taken place there, against a regime that is calling for the so-called »LGBT-free zones«. This hate is nothing more than an emotional drug to numb a deep-seated pain. This hate is the most disgusting painkiller. We have to understand that pain simply is a part of us and all of us have to decide which relationships we want to create with it. Pain is so much more than biology. It is the most complete sensory experience, the ultimate feeling. Nowhere do we experience ourselves more intensely than in this unbearable confrontation with our corporealities. Pain can connect our bodies with our minds. And yet we fear it more than death. Even if we accept that we have to die, it has to be at least painless. But why? And what is precisely the difference to pleasure-pain, a well-orchestrated punishment inflicted on somebody as a reward? Pain forces and allows us to distance ourselves: As anguished people, we see ourselves from the outside as victims, as passive sufferers or as active self-castigators or indeed as pleasurable beings. Ecstatic pain can be deliberately used to mislead the victim-perpetrator fabric. This is the paradox and liberating moment where pain celebrates us and can become its phantom. Break your subjective identity, face your anger and give yourself to the pain.
GEGEN PAIN

Concept courtesy of Mirko Winkel
Grafic by Stefan Fähler

Video teaser by Alessandra Leone