by Valeria Gordeev

Winner of the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize 2023

ASMR Performance

On Friday afternoons, Konstantin, a young university student, visits his mother's apartment to clean and look after his little sister Lada. During her long night shifts at the call center, her son devotes himself with passion and contemplation to every bit of grime and grease he finds in the kitchen and  his associative and imaginative mind.

This non-verbal, gentle, slow-motion performance takes its audience on a meditative journey past Clorox and Q-tips, nostalgic VHS tapes and fizzy drinks, exploring themes of care work and (self-)love in a post-unified Germany of the early 1990s.