It is above all womxn who care: who nurse, educate, clean, cook, do the housework, reassure, conciliate, listen, admonish, and sing lullabies. Who Cares?! – the geriatric caretaker, the single mother, the kindergarten teacher, the nurse. Womxn who care, educate, clean, cook and do the housework sound different, their voices are special voices. The voice’s materiality and its modulation can be used in many ways, is subject to its function and (re)produces gender. In some situations it can even be used as a mask. Consciously or unconsciously, willingly or unwillingly, it often assumes ostensibly feminine roles through timbre, attitude, modulation, tone of voice, pitch, speech tempo and choice of words. Womxn are often confronted with sexist stereotypes and expectations, especially in the field of care work and nursing. “Who Cares?!” listens carefully, listens behind the (vocal) masks and listens to the images of femininity that become visible as a result – images that provide social identity.
“Who Cares?!” is a homage to listening and a feminist approach to how the voice and the way that things are said relate to social expectations and categorizations.
Radio play for International Women’s Day 2018
Nominated for the Juliane Bartel Media Prize 2018
The key to this debut radio play, broadcast by NDR Kultur, is that it questions the function of the voice – particularly the very radio-related factor of the disembodied voice, when the listener lacks visual access to the person speaking. (...) Even the play’s subtitle ("A Polyphonic General Assembly of Care Workers") can be read in multiple ways and in this respect is cleverly chosen. The polyphony not only refers to the original collection of interview material from numerous educators and nurses or women performing unpaid care labor in their private environments. The individual sound bites themselves also become polyphonic.
Project Details
Credits
- Care WorkersTanja Kämper, Laurette Rasch, Camilla Vetters, Billie Wernecke
- SpeakersClaudia Urbschat-Mingues, Daniela Hoffmann, Franziska Kleinert, Birte Schnöink, Susanne Daubner
- CompositionKatharina Pelosi
- Technical RealizationManuel Glowczewski, Sebastian Ohm
- Assistant DirectorEva Solloch
- Directed and Written byKatharina Pelosi, Katharina Speckmann, Rosa Wernecke
- DramaturgyMichael Becker
Co-Producers
Further Care Workers:
Bini Adamzcak, Simone Dede Ayivi, Franziska Haug, Linda Kagerbauer, Anna Kellermann, Esther Schietinger, Konstanze Schmitt, Fraencis Funk, Narjes Gharsallaoui, Ida Kellermann, Anika Pichler, Nadia Quani, Emel Schattner, Johanna Castell, Verena Katz, Anika Marquart Stawrula Panagiotaki, Friederike Schmidt-Collinet, Bernhard Siebert and Lani Tran Duc
A production of the Norddeutsche Rundfunk in cooperation with Deutschlandradio 2018
Project History
Who Cares?!Radio Play
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- Radio PlayPremière