© Thi Thuy Nhi Tran
Money, cars, muscles, dominance: hegemonic masculinity is still sold to us today by Andrew Tate and his allies as a desirable ideal. Interest in these alpha males is growing again and they want one thing above all else: to suppress. Their feelings, their fellow men, their environment.
Our society has been preparing the breeding ground for these role models for a long time. Little by little, the ways of a binary, hierarchical gender system were cemented. Again and again, artists attempt to escape from the prison of masculinity and to question gender roles. Johannes Worms and Nasti search for these places of refuge in the art song and question the power of toxic masculinity in our society. The duo scrutinizes classical representations of masculinity and searches for queer spaces. Through fluidity in word and sound, spaces of engagement with gender are created and a utopia of the in-between space is dreamed up - vulnerable, intimate and playful.
Johannes Worms and Nasti present the lied as a socio-critical art form. Historical repertoire is updated and encounters the listener as an intense experience in the midst of the present. Johannes Worms (he/him) is a baritone and appears as a lied singer, concert soloist and performer in transdisciplinary productions. A founding member of the multi-award-winning concert collective Godot Komplex, he recently made his debut in "Let's play: connection loading" at the Wiener Konzerthaus. He studies lied singing in Hannover and is a scholarship holder of the TONALi Stage Academy. Nasti (they/them) is a pianist. Their career began early with international competition successes and concerts with renowned orchestras. Nasti was influenced early on by chamber music and composition, and later by historical performance practice and improvisation. In recent years they have increasingly participated in transdisciplinary music theater and film projects and are studying lied and keyboard instruments in Hannover.