The performance will be followed by a discussion with Zarina Tadjibaeva, Dr Katharina Ammann (Director and Curator Aargauer Kunsthaus) and Ann-Marie Arioli (Artistic Director Bühne Aarau).

She is part of the system that decides the fate of refugees: The artist Zarina Tadjibaeva has been working as an official interpreter for Persian and Russian in the asylum system for over twenty years. The war in Ukraine and the unequal treatment of refugees from other war-torn regions has plunged her into a personal crisis.

In Neutralised, the artist and asylum interpreter Zarina Tadjibaeva exposes herself to her own hearing and questions the neutrality associated with her role in her performative self-portrait: Am I just a mouthpiece or also an accomplice to a repressive system? A large part of asylum hearings is based on the judgement of the credibility or incredibility of the statements made. If someone doesn’t believe us per se, then we are hurt in our humanity. The evening is an ode to responsible listening, to remembering and forgetting, to all the stories that pass through us and settle in us like fine dust particles.