“There is only one family: the terrestrial”
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| free admission |
| 14 years and older |
| German |
| Mechanical Arena in the Foyer |
| Belongs to: Given or Chosen?, Family Matters |
“If I were as big as you. Blood beech. You can just grow. No one determines your form. I want to be like you.”
Drawing on the bestseller Blutbuch (2022), Kim de l’Horizon speaks about more-than-human kinships – particularly between humans and trees. At the centre is the delicate copper beech, serving as a figure of thought and experience through which key questions of our present day are revealed: the (in)ability to empathise, processes of growth, and the dynamics of in– and out–grouping.
Kim presents a lecture performance that moves between reading, improvised speech and singing. Drawing on text fragments – from Blutbuch to Donna Haraway and historical church laws – an associative web of research, reflection and voice unfolds.
A particular focus lies on the question of how animism can be discussed from a white, European perspective. For centuries, Christianity has sought to suppress kinships between humans and non-human beings – particularly those with trees, which were closely linked to ancestor cults and magical practices. Against this backdrop, the performance asks how local animistic traces in Europe can be reclaimed without denying the colonial legacy borne by white European subjects.
The lecture unfolds in real time: as free speech emerging from Kim’s research, as a probing thought.
There is only one family: the terrestrial one — those who are born of, shaped by, and returning to the Earth.
Participants
Kim de l’Horizon (no pronouns or they/them), born in 2666 on Gethen, studied German language and literature at the Elfenbeinturm, Literary Weeping in Biel, and witchcraft under Starhawk.
With their debut novel “Sea, Mothers, Swallow, Tongues” (orig. “Blutbuch”), which has been translated into 17 languages, Kim won the German Book Prize and the Swiss Book Prize, among others. Kim’s plays have been invited to the Heidelberger Stückemarkt and have won the Hermann Sudermann Prize, amongst others. Kim also conducts rituals and performs, for example at the Schauspielhaus Zürich. For their performance in “Blutstück”, Kim was nominated for the “Nestroy ORF Audience Award 2024”. They enjoy challenging the images we have of bodies, of humans and non-humans, of ‘naturalness’, and of ‘us’.
Against this backdrop, the performance asks how local animistic traces can be reclaimed in Europe without denying the colonial legacy borne by white European subjects.
The lecture is taking shape in the moment: as a free-flowing discourse emerging from Kim’s research, as tentative thinking in real time.
There is only one family: the terrestrial one – those who come from, of, and to the earth.