The performance Trauerspiel, created by Luzie Meyer, draws on the artist’s interest in the genre of the German tragic drama. The work engages with German history, grief, and the question of the presentness of Baroque modes of thought and action today. Based on an understanding of history as a process marked by ruptures, shifts in power, and political crises, the performance combines personal fictions with references to Daniel Casper von Lohenstein, Andreas Gryphius, and Margarete Mitscherlich’s Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern – a psychoanalytic reading of how experiences of guilt and loss are processed, as well as their aftereffects on the social consciousness of postwar Germany.
Performed by the Meisner actress Leila Gray.
Trauerspiel was commissioned by the Kunstverein für Mecklenburg und Vorpommern in Schwerin and premiered there in June 2026. The performance is closely linked to the installation that Luzie Meyer developed for the exhibition read to/for | I sense the doubling of time at the Kunstverein Bielefeld, whose site-specific references are incorporated into the performance.
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