In the Last Resort (originally “Wenn alle Stricke reissen,” or “if all ropes would tear apart”) is a multidisciplinary performance project from director Gregor Schuster exploring the expansive and precarious autonomy of lived resistance to capitalism. Drawing inspiration from the life story of German Jewish Expressionist Ernst Toller – a revolutionary social democrat and playwright exiled by the Nazis in 1933 – the piece employs multiple modes of presentation (music, dance, lecture, film screening) to interrogate a central question: when all else fails, what remains?

Featuring a dark, ambient score by L Twills, this in-process performance and screening at NAVEL showcases a section of the work focusing on queer millennial artists who’ve have left their home countries in pursuit of art and community. The evening features local performers Miles Brenninkmeijer, Jasmine Nyende and Heidi Prendergast.

Plus, Gas joins us in the alley before the show with its latest exhibition, Common Survival!

Gregor Schuster is a director and curator whose work has been shown at Kampnagel, Deutsches Schauspielhauses, St. Pauli Theater and the Kaltstart Festival. He is the founder of queer performance collective Cointreau On Ice, and has worked as an assistant for documentary theatermaker Hans Werner Krösinger at HAU. Schuster is a graduate of Free University Berlin and the Theaterakademie (HfMT) Hamburg.

L Twills is a solo audiovisual performance project intimately engaging with the absurd and tragic. Combining avant-pop production with a DIY sensibility, the artist has performed at a number of spaces including the Garbicz Festival, the Fusion Festival, the International Sommerfestival and Live Art Festival Kampnagel, Hallo Festspiele at the Reeperbahn Festival and the Golden Pudel Club. Her EP Young Boys/Too Late for the End is currently available to stream on Bandcamp, and her first LP – funded by Labelförderung Hamburg – will be released this September.

Special thanks to Omid Shahand, Jo Landt, Daniela Aparicio, Meow Wulf and DJ Transterror.

Developmental support provided by Beaux Arts (Paris).