Transhuman Performance Installation
100'
2025
Premiered 19.9.2025 Maillon Strasbourg (Musica Festival)

Documentation:


Full Piece Recording:


Program Notes
ETERNAL DAWN is a lab for bio-modification for the improved and altered bodies of the future. Witness the children of the future in an unsupervised evolution. Here physical bodies are assembled and taken apart, disembodied and connected again. Discover how the posthuman self is broken down into its components and assembled anew.
The Eternal Dawn Handbook Mission Statement claims that no final / complete body exists. We are fluid, hackable and extendable. A being is not born complete. It is a starting container to be filled, extended and modded. The border of ourselves is not the skin. Through hardware and mental connection we form supra-beings. Except the soft border of the self. Extension into acquired parts is our default mode of Interfacing the world. We are not top-down entities. We are the interplay of sovereign parts. Autonomy to the components.
ETERNAL DAWN is a full-length music theatre project on the subject of transhumanism by Alexander Schubert, co-produced and performed by the Decoder Ensemble, in collaboration with a wide interdisciplinary artistic and scientific team. In a futuristic setting, performers act as a group of individual cyborgs with the help of technical body extensions, bio-modifications and sensors. These actions and interactions determine both the theatrical content of the piece and the musical form of the work.
The work aims to make the discourse on transhumanism tangible and depict its ambiguity. The technological starting point opens up questions about humanity, control, agency, self and body images.




Team
Composition & Direction: Alexander Schubert
Decoder Ensemble: Leopold Hurt, Andrej Koroliov, Sonja Lena Schmid, Jonathan Shapiro Performance: Michael Mahar, Si-Ying Fung, Tasha Hess-Neustadt
Choreography: Colette Sadler
Character Development, Costumes: Felina Levits
Technical Direction: Lars Kracht
Lighting Design: Diego Muhr
Scenography: Christian Wiehle




Production Management: Gregory (Grischa) Popov, Elisabeth Brunmayr
Musical Development: Grame Lyon, Max Bruckert
Choreographic Supervisor: Assaf Hochman
Assistance For Costume, Robotics & Set: Esther Heltschl
Robot Arm Choreography And Production Assistance: Clara Brezinka
Production Assistance: Ludmilla Mercier, Ian Whillock
Design Of Orthoses & Robotic Prostheses: Neue Farben Gbr (Paul Geisler, Fabian Nitschkowski, David Unland)
Support With 3D Printing: Liqtra Gmbh Hamburg, Hofalab Hamburg
Hamburg University Of Technology, Institute For Mechatronics In Mechanics
Robotic Design And Programing - Kyrillos Adeeb, Inderawes Khalil
Automation Design And Programing - Dr. Mohammad Sadeghi
Scientific Outside Eye: Christoph Bublitz
Prothesis Workshop: Bundesverband für PFFD, FFU, Fibula- und Tibiadefekte e.V.
Intern: Benjamin Boresch




Production / Cooperation
Funded by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation), Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. Composition Commission of Musica, Kampnagel, co-financed by Siemens Musikstiftung.
Additional Funding by ZEIT STIFTUNG BUCERIUS, Kampnagel Hamburg, Musica, festival international des musiques d’aujourd’hui de Strasbourg, Le Maillon, Theater von Straßburg — Europäische Bühne, IRCAM Paris, GRAME Lyon, Claussen-Simon-Stiftung, Proberaumfonds des Dachverbands freie darstellende Künste Hamburg (DfdK)
Supported by ligeti zentrum Hamburg, Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg
Presented with Le Maillon, Theater von Straßburg — Europäische Bühne.