Natascha Gangl & Judith Schwarz

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. The dust that the self continually (more or less) battles quickly becomes a metaphor for memory, history, body; it transforms into a material that connects, preserves, and simultaneously slips away, becoming a factor in class and gender relations.

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

Natascha Gangl is a writer, audio piece creator, and theater maker. She was a resident author at the Staatstheater Mainz, developed premieres for events such as the steirischer herbst, the Graz Dramatists Festival, Wien Modern, and performed at numerous international cultural institutions. Her works have received several awards and scholarships, including the Literature Promotion Prize from the City of Graz, the Ö1 Prize for Best Original Radio Play 2020, and the 1st Prize at the Berlin Radio Play Festival 2018. In 2025, Natascha Gangl was awarded the BKS Audience Prize and the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize at the 49th Days of German-Language Literature.

Judith Schwarz is 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 band collective Little Rosies Kindergarten and other formations. Since 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.

"When the fabulous writer Natascha Gangl, a two-time award winner 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 hair-raisingly beautiful performance that elicits both heightened attention and bursts of applause and laughter" (Andreas Fellinger, Freistil).

Natascha Gangl: Fresh Appeals & Other Spoken Texts, Ritter, 2025.