Joana Tischkau

A sofa and a showbiz staircase leading into nothingness: this is the set for Yo Bro, modelled on family sitcoms from the 1990s. Together with her twin brother Aljoscha Tischkau, the choreographer Joana Tischkau asks how television and how it represents families determines how we live together: is the extraterrestrial Alf one of the family? What position do Black people have when the Kelly Family sing We are the World? How can the traditional image of the family be reconsiled with queerness? Joana Tischkau’s choreographic practice feeds off the interconnections between Black identity in Germany, feminism and popular culture. She samples movement material from a variety of contexts, rewinds, repeats and disassembles it until flaws become visible. Yo Bro zaps through the archive of collective TV-memories, joyously turning them inside out and breaking with normative notions of the family.