Anastasija Harrowna Bräuniger

The loss of my Russian grandmother in January 2024 marks the personal starting point of this project. With her passing, my last connection to Russia dissolved, and with it, a part of my identity, which I, as an artist living in Europe, continually question – especially against the backdrop of Russia’s war on Ukraine. Now I face the task of clearing out my grandmother’s apartment in Moscow, packed with relics from another era. Though these objects may seem mundane, they symbolically raise the question of which things I wish to inherit and which I’ve inevitably inherited already. Beyond that: which values and cultural legacies, especially in light of the East-West dualism, are worth preserving or reinterpreting.

There’s the expected glass menagerie of kitschy animals with which my grandmother loved to hold conversations. A capsule wardrobe of house aprons. A tasteless tea set that President Putin sent her five years ago for her 90th birthday as a WWII veteran. An atlas she would pull out whenever friends “from abroad” visited, tracing the borders of the USSR with her finger: "Russia is this big! And Gorbachev and Yeltsin ruined it, those idiots." What used to be a funny anecdote now makes me shudder. Among my inheritances are some lovely Soviet crystal glasses and enamel pots, a wildly scribbled notebook of Russian recipes, and a collection of books on astronomy and science fiction magazines that attest to her curiosity about extraterrestrial life until her final days. I may struggle to read them with my limited Russian, yet in them I see what else I’ve inherited from her: my fascination for astronomy and science fiction.

Like many children of immigrants, I grew up between worlds and in a state of inbetween. After moving to Germany, I came to understand my other heritage primarily through art: old Soviet films, visits to the Tretyakov galleries, Dostoevsky, Bulgakov, and contemporary artists and activists. When my theatre professors spoke to me about Chekhov, they seemed to assume I instinctively understood what it meant to have a "Russian soul." This was, in a way, my unique selling point as an actor. Yet during my most recent visits to Moscow, I became aware of the vast distance and uncertainty I felt toward this second homeland.

With my grandmother's death, a rupture formed – not only in my relationship to this ambivalent homeland but also within my family. My grandmother, who as a child and half-orphan removed phosphorus bombs from Moscow’s rooftops and sewed parachutes in factories, passed the weight of her traumatic and loveless childhood directly to my mother, shaping the relationship between her and me.
Intergenerational trauma, shaped by societal events like World War II, compels me to explore the complex links between collective and personal pain.

This exploration is further informed by my breast cancer diagnosis in 2022. Confronting my illness and my body heightened my awareness of the connections between psyche, body, and societal processes, deepening my interest in themes like intergenerational and collective trauma – and the healing processes that can follow.

CAN YOU HEAR ME? | ТЫ МЕНЯ СЛЫШИШЬ? intertwines layers of personal and collective experience, memory, scientific inquiry, (science) fiction storytelling, and multiple artistic disciplines. Drawing from my interdisciplinary work and background in documentary theatre, I aim to blend audiovisual installation, contemporary dance/choreography, spoken theatre, and interactive elements. My goal is to create a space where the boundaries between reality and fiction become fluid, enabling shifts in perspective. The guiding question for this space is: What role does community play in the process of healing, and what implications does this hold for the theatre?