neco_nart

neco_nart is an open collective consisting of active and inactive members who collaborate in different constellations depending on project requirements. The growing pool of participants allows us to maintain flexible working processes, ensures new influences, and sustains diversity. Artistic direction lies with Björn Fischer, who is responsible for research and idea development. neco_nart are/were and will be: Maren Schwier, Laura Robert, Elisabeth-Marie Leistikow, Richard Millig, Jonathan Kirn, Antonia Kessler, Alexander Reiff, and Björn Fischer.

At our core, we stand for a radically reimagined way of being together, for co-governing with earthworms and microbes. We bring our dogs to rehearsals, embody cliché and contradiction: We are all hypocrites and hypo-critical as well. We work experimentally, multimedia-based, algorithmically, and increasingly hybrid between digital and analog—and always with our own texts. Our projects are preceded by both scientific and artistic research, during which we create our own archives and indulge our fascination with big data collections. We take responsibility for the fact that algorithms, artificial intelligences, and bots are increasingly entrusted with responsibility in our work.

We see ourselves as performing listeners who collect, recycle, and re-sample in order to question our own individual positions, as well as the habit of telling stories primarily about individuals or groups. For us, neco_nart functions like a shell that is filled with many voices and physicalities until something unexpected bursts forth.

With Extreme Love in the Living Room at the End of the World (2021), we began to develop immersive theater formats that renegotiate intimacy, technology, and space. The installation explored the symbiosis of microbes and macro-bodies—between inside and outside, sound and body. In Lying to Myself in Bed (2023), we collaborated with artificial intelligence, chatbots, and algorithms. The performance addressed global exhaustion and the question of whether collective rest can be a form of resistance. Despite positive reception, precarious funding forced us into an artistic pause. During this time, Björn Fischer gained new experience as a dramaturg—among others for Theater der Welt and the Junge Theaterwerkstatt—which further enriched our practice.

With Too Lonely for This World to Stay the Same (premiere 2025), we are consistently continuing our path. We create poetic-philosophical spaces in which perception, time, and proximity are shifted. The performance unites human and machine elements, sound and silence, intimacy and distance—and invites the audience to become part of the experiment. In a world that endlessly repeats itself and normalizes horror, we open small fissures where new experiences and possibilities can emerge.