Susanne Kennedy – I AM (a strange loop). Theater als bewusstseinserweiternde Technologie

Susanne Kennedy, I AM (a strange loop). Theater als bewusstseinserweiternde Technologie. Berlin: Alexander Verlag, 2026. Paperback, 128 pp., 13.5 × 21 cm. Text: German / Deutsch. »Das Theater ist wie eine Maschine, die erbarmungslos Bilder erzeugt, die zucken, die keuchen, die wie Alpträume hinter unserem Auge stürmen.« Susanne Kennedy Susanne Kennedy’s Radical Vision of Contemporary Theatre What is theatre capable of changing in us? In I AM (a strange loop), German theatre director Susanne Kennedy opens up the philosophical and artistic foundations of her distinctive approach to contemporary theatre. Based on three public lectures delivered as part of the 11th Saarbrücker Poetikdozentur für Dramatik in 2024, the volume brings together Kennedy’s reflections on her artistic practice, her aesthetic principles and the processes behind her work, complemented by a conversation with the artist. I Am (a strange loop) offers a rare and illuminating insight into the thinking of one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary European theatre. Published by Alexander Verlag Berlin, this new book explores theatre as a consciousness-expanding technology, a space for confronting the fundamental mysteries of human existence. Moving between theatre, performance art, visual art and media art, Kennedy develops a radical vision of the stage as a place where perception can be disrupted, familiar identities destabilised and existential questions brought to the surface. Who are we? Where do we come from? What does it mean to be human in an increasingly digitized world? Susanne Kennedy on Theatre, Consciousness and Digital Culture For Kennedy, theatre is not simply a medium for telling stories or reproducing the visible world. It is an intense, sometimes unsettling journey, confronting audiences with cycles of birth and death, creation and dissolution, repetition and transformation. Drawing on Antonin Artaud’s radical conception of theatre, she also imagines the stage as a form of sacred mathematics: a system of images, bodies and rhythms capable of producing experiences that exceed ordinary perception. In I AM (a strange loop), theatre becomes a site of encounter between the physical body and the digital image, between the individual and the collective, and between the conscious mind and the forces that remain beyond its control. Actors become guides through unfamiliar psychological and existential territories, leading spectators towards questions they might otherwise avoid. Kennedy’s reflections are particularly relevant to a contemporary culture shaped by digital mediation, artificial images and the instability of identity. Rather than offering easy answers, her theatre creates an atmosphere of productive unease, asking what remains of our sense of self when reality itself begins to feel like a constructed loop. From Antonin Artaud to David Lynch: The Intellectual Universe of Susanne Kennedy Kennedy’s artistic thinking emerges from a fascinating constellation of philosophical, literary, cinematic and spiritual references. In this book, she enters into dialogue with Antonin Artaud, Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer and David Lynch, while drawing on films, alchemical writings, the Upanishads, the myth of Dionysus, Parsifal and Douglas R. Hofstadter’s reflections on strange loops and selfhood. These diverse influences illuminate the conceptual depth of Kennedy’s theatre, in which ritual, repetition, dream logic and radical visual composition become ways of approaching questions that resist rational explanation. Her work does not seek to reassure audiences with a coherent picture of reality. Instead, it opens up a space for uncertainty, transformation and the possibility of seeing the familiar differently. A Key Book on Experimental Theatre and Performance Art As a director and playwright whose work challenges conventional ideas of acting, narrative and spectatorship, Susanne Kennedy has established a highly individual artistic language at the intersection of theatre, visual art and digital culture. This new publication makes the ideas underpinning that language accessible in her own words. Part artistic self-reflection, part theoretical exploration and part invitation to rethink the possibilities of live performance, I AM (a strange loop) is essential reading for anyone following Susanne Kennedy’s work, contemporary German theatre, experimental performance and the evolving relationship between theatre and technology.