Natascha Gangl: It is Saturday.

It is Saturday. On Saturdays, I clean. What begins with a damp cloth, a gray bucket, and all-purpose cleaner unfolds into a reflection on time, repetition, and female labor. For the dust that the self repeatedly (more or less) combats quickly becomes a metaphor for memory, history, and body; it becomes a material that connects, preserves, and simultaneously slips away, becoming a factor in class and gender relations.

Language functions here like dust itself: it accumulates, condenses, drifts away - and leaves traces. Through rhythmic repetitions, linguistic deposits, and fragmented images, a texture emerges that continuously dissolves and reforms. A poetic theory of dust that brings the seemingly trivial to the center: the visibility of the invisible.

Natascha Gangl, born in 1986, is a writer, audio piece creator, and theater maker. She studied philosophy at the University of Vienna and dramatic writing at the Drama Forum Graz, assisted Christoph Schlingensief, and developed texts for him. She was a resident author at the Staatstheater Mainz, worked on premieres for events such as the steirischer herbst, the Graz Playwrights Festival, Wien Modern, and performed at numerous international cultural institutions. Her works have received numerous awards and scholarships, including the Literature Promotion Prize from the City of Graz, the Ö1 Prize for Best Original Radio Play in 2020, and the 1st Prize at the Berlin Radio Play Festival in 2018 (with composers Maja Osojnik and Matija Schellander). In 2025, Natascha Gangl was awarded the BKS Audience Prize and the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize at the 49th Days of German-Language Literature. She has numerous publications in magazines and anthologies, as well as books such as "Wendy fährt nach Mexiko" (2015) published by Ritter Verlag and "Das Spiel von der Einverleibung. Frei nach Unica Zürn," starfruit publications, 2020.

Judith Schwarz, born in 1989 in Vienna, studied at the Anton Bruckner Private University in Linz with a focus on composition. After completing her Master's degree in Jazz Drumming at the Anton Bruckner Private University in 2018, Judith Schwarz has been active as a drummer and composer in the fields of jazz and improvised music both nationally and internationally. During her studies, she founded the quintet Chufffdrone, which has performed at numerous international jazz festivals. She is also a member of the 13-member band collective Little Rosies Kindergarten and other formations. Since September 2019, Judith Schwarz has also worked at the Burgtheater in Vienna as a theater musician in Bastian Kraft's production of Mephisto. In 2013, she received the BAWAG Next Generation Jazz Award with Chufffdrone. For the 2018/19 season, she received the Förderpreis The New Austrian Sound of Music with the trio First Gig Never Happened and for the 2020/2021 season with the duo Hofmaninger/Schwarz.

"…when the fabulous writer Natascha Gangl, a two-time prizewinner at the Klagenfurt Bachmann Literature Competition, meets the equally fabulous percussionist Judith Schwarz: […] A poetic fantasy about dust, cleaning on Saturday, patriarchy, and some thematic tributaries […]. A stunningly beautiful performance that elicits both heightened attention and bursts of applause and laughter…" (Andreas Fellinger, Freistil)

"Natascha Gangl is quite experienced in working with musicians and expanding her texts to include various media. She works for the theater, produces audio pieces, writes books, poems, and essays, and creates sound comics […]. The multi-tasker is perhaps more than just a writer 'a professional curious person' […]. The word, language, writing, speaking, and sound - all of this forms the starting point and material of her work. She digs into words and sentences, disassembles, mixes, and reassembles them, revealing connections that seem to have been hidden like secret messages within the language. Entire texts, reports, and sound images - whether her own material or that of others - can always be taken apart and woven back together. […]. Besides the explicit visibility of ideas and connections, rhythm must be mentioned as an outstanding feature. Through the arrangement of letters, words, phrases, and (sub)sentences, Gangl creates a dynamic from which the audience cannot escape.

Judith Schwarz, familiar with the adaptation of literary texts herself ("Du Bleda Bua" Mandelbaum Verlag), is wholly dedicated to the vast field of what rhythm can express. The Viennese percussionist works almost lyrically with sound and places it in a metrical context. The dance-like movements while playing seem to dictate the inner pulse, which she expresses with utmost precision and craftsmanship. Whatever she expresses musically, the result is enhanced by her concentrated ingenuity, a keen ear, and a fine sense of touch.

How the final material of the collaboration between these two artists will turn out, whether improvisational in approach, as strict composition, or in some Janus-faced form, remains open at this point." (Klaus Wohlgemuth, Where Swallows Fly Backwards)

Natascha Gangl: Fresh Appeals & Other Speaking Texts, Ritter, 2025