Skip to content

Season start 2025/26 – (Un)gentle Learning

«Pas Moi»
Diana Anselmo

Performance

Based on the development of the first devices for the production, transmission and recording of sound, Diana Anselmo analyses the close link between technological innovation and normative notions of bodies from a Deaf perspective.

  • Fri 12/09 20:00

    Südbühne

  • Sat 13/09 18:00

    Südbühne

Copyright: Pietro Bertora
  • Relaxed Performance
  • Surtitles in DE and ENG
  • Translation in DSGS

«Pas Moi», Diana Anselmo's new dialogic lecture-performance, is the concluding chapter of a documentary and affective research that unravels the web of power and domination woven into the major historiography. If «Je Vous Aime» - which later became a solo exhibition at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo - showed the re-educational implications of the first moving images, «Pas Moi» follows a parallel path and, from a Deaf and signing perspective, explores the genesis of the first instruments of sound recording, transmission and reproduction.

Through minor archives, anti-histories and situated knowledge, transmitted body-to-body, the celebrated devices at the origin of the future film and music industry are revealed to be instruments conceived with an audist and phonocentric intent: to «heal» deafness. A disease to be eradicated or disappeared in the meshes of the hearing world, rather than an identity, a culture with its own language and community.
«Pas Moi» tries to imagine where one can go if another is the starting point. Beyond «the lack of hearing», further ahead.

Information on accessibility and language

  • The performance takes place in LIS (Italian sign language) and with surtitles in English and German as a relaxed performance.

  • The performances will be interpreted into Swiss German Sign Language.

  • The surtitles will be sent directly from the stage by a performer.
    Reading skills are required.

DSGS announcement

Plain language

  • Pas Moi is French.
    It is pronounced pa moa.
    In English, it means not me.

    The play is about deaf people.
    Deaf people have difficulty hearing.
    Or they cannot hear at all.
    They often use hearing aids to help them hear better.
    And they speak in sign language.
    This means they make signs with their hands.
    Diana Anselmo shows that deafness is not an illness.
    It is a culture with a language.

About the artists

  • Diana Anselmo is a Deaf performer and visual artist, activist and improvised human being, bilingual in LIS (Italian Sign Language) and Italian. After studying Theatre and Performing Arts at IUAV in Venice, he debuted with «Autoritratto in tre atti» (2021), presented in Italy and Europe. Abroad, he worked with Xavier Le Roy for «Le Sacre du Printemps» (2022) and recently held his first solo exhibition «Je Vous Aime» at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (2024). Diana is the president of Al.Di.Qua. Artists, Europe's first professional association of and for disabled artists.

Credits

  • Concept, performance and visuals:
    Diana Anselmo
    Performers:
    Diana Anselmo, Daniel Bongioanni, Antonio Dominelli
    Sound & composition:
    Antonio Dominelli
    Text of the Sing-Songs:
    Paddy Ladd
    Dramaturgy:
    Piersandra di Matteo
    Coaching in Research and performance material:
    Saša Asentić
    Executive Producer:
    Chiasma
    Co-produced by:
    Scuola Piccola Zattere, TheaterFormen Festival, Gessnerallee Zürich, FuoriMargine Centro di Produzione di Danza e Arti Performative della Sardegna, Danae Festival
    Deaf Interpreters:
    Kristina Janković, Annemarie Meier

Supported by

  • «Pas Moi» is supported by the network R.O.M (Residencies On the Move) at Reykjavik Dance Festival at the invitation of Santarcangelo Festival. R.O.M is supported by the European Union in the framework of the program Creative Europe, Conseil des arts de Montréal and Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec; realized with the support of Italian Cultural Institute Oslo, Italian Cultural Institute Berlin and Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.

    The programme focus ‘(Un)gentle Learning’ is supported by the Ernst Göhner Foundation.

Copyright: Katrin Ribbe

Copyright: Katrin Ribbe

Copyright: Katrin Ribbe

Copyright: Katrin Ribbe

Copyright: Katrin Ribbe

Gessnerallee season start 2025/26

The programme focus «(Un)gentle Learning» will take place at Gessnerallee from 11 to 21 September to mark the start of the season. It will explore processes of transition, mourning and learning.

«Stars Are Never Sleeping, Dead Ones and the Living»

Theres Indermaur and Stephanie Müller
11/09 - 15/09
18/09 - 21/09
Room installation

«Fourth Eye, 4.40 AM»
Ceylan Öztrük
11/09, 13/09, 14/09, 15/09
Performance

«Pas Moi»
Diana Anselmo

(in LIS, Italian sign language)
12/09, 13/09,
Lecture-Performance

«Muskeln aus Plastik - a crip-queer reading»
Kay Matter
14/09
Reading

«Neutralitätstheater – The myth of Switzerland put to the test!»
Hannan Salamat and Fatima Moumouni

18/09
Talk, Performance

«Sleight of Hand»
Jo Bannon

(in German spoken language)
19/09
Installation, Performance

«Sleight of Hand»
Jo Bannon

(in English spoken language)
20/09
Installation, Performance

«When the Calabash Breaks»
Tiran Willemse and Melika Ngombe Kolongo (Nkisi)
20/09, 21/09
Open-Air-Performance, Music, Dance

«KOMMANDO AJAX»
Cemile Sahin
21/09
Reading

More Shows

To the programme overview