19. ANTISTATIC: Work Body

With care and understanding of the different situations our audience members find themselves in, in 2026 Antistatic continues the "pay what you can" pricing policy for all tickets to the events in the festival programme with an entry. Each spectator can choose how much to pay for their ticket from three price categories - 11, 15 and 20 euro. 

“Work Body” is the most recent work by Michael Turinsky, premiering on January 24, 2025 at Tanzquartier Wien. Inspired by Pier Paolo Pasolini's poem ‘Le ceneri di Gramsci’, the piece draws on the legacy of Antonio Gramsci — Marxist thinker, co-founder of the Italian Communist Party, and himself a physically disabled man — to explore the political and erotic dimensions of working-class solidarity.

Gramsci always emphasised the 'authentic core', the 'buon senso' in the proletarian experience, yet Turinsky asks how these reflect the sometimes erotic and narcissistic undertones of comradeship and brotherhood — and how communist desire relates to sexual desire.

Through building, singing, speaking, and dancing, the choreographer challenges the capitalist division between mental and manual labour, while blurring the lines between choreography, concert, and political agitation. At its core, “Work Body” creates a space of resonance between the disabled and the working body, bringing marginalised physicalities to the centre of representation.
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Michael Turinsky is a physically disabled artist and theorist based in Vienna, working at the intersection of contemporary dance and performance, disability, and political and aesthetic theory. After studying philosophy at the University of Vienna, he began immersing himself in the world of inclusive dance in 2006, before going on to challenge the very concept of inclusion. He refers to his artistic practice — which, among other things, examines the resistant materiality of the body in processes of subversion — as "crip choreography". His solo Precarious Moves was awarded the Nestroy Prize for Best Off Production in 2021, and in 2023 he won the Outstanding Artist Award of the Federal Ministry of the Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport.
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The international programme of the International festival for contemporary dance and performance "Antistatic" 2026 is organised by the “Brain Store Project” Foundation and the “Nomad Dance” Association with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture, Goethe-Institut Bulgaria, Sofia Municipality – Cultural Events Calendar, the research project “DanceMap”, funded by the “Horizon Europe” programme of the European Union, DANCE ON TOUR Austria – a project by “Tanzquartier” Vienna in cooperation with the Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs, and the Administration of the National Cultural Fund of Romania, as well as in partnership with RCCA Toplocentrala, “Ivan Vazov” National Theatre, and “Derida” Stage.