Three women talk. They talk about propaganda, lullabies, which they sing for their children. They talk about freedom and the future, about ethics, death, theatre, nationalism and moving houses. And misogyny. The women move.They move gracefully, stressfully, angrily, weirdly and worldly. Sometimes like a tree and at other times more like a bulldozer. To the sound of cracking walls and mating whales.

What is time? What is motherhood? What is racism, freedom, envy? Oceans of Notions (swimming) is an artistic attempt to think collectively about some big, abstract topics. The performers dive into a sea of personal reflections, moving along and meandering away from the thinking pathways about complex personal, social and political phenomena.

Together with Anna Mendelssohn, Karin Pauer and Stephan Sperlich, Anna Maria Nowak sets up a protocol of embodied reflecting, of thought care. The metaphor, as a way of thinking, rather than a poetic tool, is crucial here. In Oceans of Notions (swimming) the artists are looking at the ways frames are set up, narratives played out in order to emotionally charge or discharge certain topics.

What happens when we think of ethics in terms of a movement or a map?

What kind of place is solidarity? 

What happens when you frame humans as numbers and numbers as humans?

Sometimes it is easier to move about an issue.