Ivan Cheng: Nowadays

Performance: Nowadays

Thu 22. & Fri 23.05., following Where the fuck am I, Austrian premiere, Raktete Festival 2025

Ivan Cheng’s works, which are interested in compression and context, are mostly shown in contemporary art spaces. Working with an interest in making theatrical devices visible and making the audience aware of the space between the material and its interpretation, "Nowadays" is largely informed by two culturally dispersed narratives, which have also had iterations as successful Broadway musicals – "Chicago" and "Spring Awakening". For Cheng, both have narratives that are propelled by forms of misunderstanding or factual obfuscation. Ivan Cheng’s "Nowadays" emerges desultory from the artifice abyss of theatre, using historical and staging references to indicate towards the fragmented contemporary, where the notion of the criminal or dissident is still produced and romanticised by techniques of representation.