Discussion participants:

Laura Méritt, Berlin
A woman with many merits: activist for women’s and sexual rights, sex expert with own parlour, publisher of a sex dictionary, publications in »Cosmopolitan« and »Marie Claire«. For her dissertation she investigated the subversive act of laughter and humour.

Dirk Bach, Köln
Popular, corpulent actor; his body is his capital: at the age of 14 naked »Prometheus«, at the age of 18 whipped, egg slurping »Herodes«. Coming from nothingness, his way led him via the theatres to become a successful, award-winning TV star.

Ron Athey, Los Angeles
Performance artist and »martyr« for artistic freedom: seeks the liberation of the body through threshold experiences. Nightmarish stylistic device is the real infliction of wounds. The objective is to bring about a kind of cure and catharsis through self-mutilation; the ritual of pain as mean for transcendence.

Günther Heeg, Frankfurt/Main
Theatre scientist and specialist for colonisation history of the body through linguistic phrasing. He teaches among other things at Universität Leipzig. He deals with the methods used to assert body images in society and the strategies of advanced theatre to decompose these models.

Presentation: Martina Bako, Leipzig
Strolling between science and (performance) art; scientific assistant at the School of Dramatics of Universität Leipzig.