During Berlin Art Week, artist Sophia Süßmilch will premiere Something Terrible Will Happen: The Cannibal Woman at HAU Hebbel am Ufer. The work explores repressed female rage that Süßmilch and her co-performers are ready to unleash: “As a kid, I got punished when I showed anger.” But by slapping on the war paint and leaning into the archetype of the evil clown, Süßmilch channels her idiosyncratic creative force into a gloriously unapologetic performance that refuses to play by the rules. Raised in a “tiny village in Bavaria”, Süßmilch made Berlin home in 2021. Having studied sculpture in Munich and painting in Vienna, Süßmilch has also made performance part of her practice since 2007: “When I first started performing, I was sitting in a big pile of butter. People were like, ‘How long can you sit there?’ I’m like, ‘Oh my god, I’m not Marina Abramoviç.’” Following performances at the Volksbühne’s Roter Salon and Sasarsteig Neukölln, the piece at HAU Hebbel am Ufer will be her debut in a proscenium arch theatre. We met up with Süßmilch in her Berlin studio for a candid conversation about clowns and cannibalism.
This is your first time presenting your work at HAU Hebbel am Ufer. How do you feel about working in a proscenium arch theatre? Are you excited by that potential or dreading the expectation?
Both, of course. One of the issues I’ve faced at HAU, because it has Denkmalschutz status, is that I’m limited by the restrictions and can’t really fuck it up. I can’t remove the seats or even use some liquids. And yeah, I have anxiety. Sometimes I wake up in the night and I have the feeling this show is going to be like school theatre. But it’s always like this when I do something that I’ve never done before.
It’s interesting to explore the border between performance art and theatre, especially for your work.
Yes, absolutely. In the beginning, I was sure I wanted a horse on stage. Then it was 10 pigs. Let me tell you, it’s not going to happen. The horse would’ve been €11,000 and the pigs, €30,000. Of course, you can’t just take any horse and put it on stage. Then a friend said to me, “We can make a horse costume.” I said, “No.” She said, “It’s theatre. It’s all play.” I said, “No, it’s all real.” This is a show about anger; it can’t be fake. So I was very obsessed with my horse and my 10 pigs. Rest in peace, pigs.
When did you arrive on the topic of anger? Was there a specific moment that triggered this research?
The idea of destroying somebody to have them inside you is so beautiful, and so ambivalent, and so very human.
When I started to think about female rage, it was very much about all the frustration, with, let’s say, white cis men. One evening, I was walking my dog on the street outside, and then a guy ran into me because he was looking at his mobile phone. He didn’t even say ‘I’m sorry’ or acknowledge the impact. It made me so angry. He stopped in front of a café, and so I said, “Do you always do that? Run into people and don’t say sorry?” And then he just said, “Please go on,” and dismissed me. I was so mad. That was one example, but when you think about the world, then, you know, everything is so connected and you can get angry about so many things.
Why did you want to foreground that emotion?
As a child, I was punished whenever I showed anger. Now, I find myself wondering who I’d be if I didn’t feel the need for everyone to like me. I’m always asking, ‘Are you comfortable? Do you need some water? A coffee?’ I genuinely enjoy caring for people, but I also wonder: who would I be if I simply didn’t give a fuck? That’s what this anger is tied to, the pressure to perform goodness, to be a good person, the likeable person.
Do you think that the clown makeup you’ll be wearing in the show allows you to explore emotions like anger and rage, or your response to those feelings, in ways that you might not do otherwise?
Well, I think that clowns are allowed to do what everybody else in society isn’t allowed to do. I find that interesting. Also, it’s a great mask which people can project all manner of themes onto. In that sense, it gives me the feeling of having more freedom – and I love masks.
I wanted to ask about the subject of cannibalism. In the show description, it says, “At its heart is the cannibal, who radically reverses the familiar dynamic: she is no longer the object of consumption, but becomes the consuming subject herself.” Could you unpack that for me?
It began in 2023, when I was researching cults and about the family as a cult. Then I wrote a story about a woman, not my mother, who is eating her children with her love. I started thinking and researching about what love means and I stumbled on Munchausen syndrome by proxy, which is generally associated with mothers. I’m very fascinated about it. Then I discovered a book called Sexual Cannibalism by Dr Klaus Beier, a doctor at Charité Hospital.
Cannibalism in general is a topic I know little about.
Beier suggests – I mean, I’m paraphrasing – that cannibals are motivated because they want to eat someone to have them inside them, because they don’t want to be left behind. And during puberty, if people already have those thoughts, it can develop into a paraphilia. It’s a thought I could, like, completely relate to. I mean, I’m not coming up with a thought, like, ‘I want to eat you’, but also, ‘I could eat you up’. We already have those sayings. The idea of destroying somebody to have them in you is so beautiful, and so ambivalent, and so very human. It’s such a metaphor in a way.
And you as the cannibal woman, what can we expect from that?
The cannibal has traditionally been a way of othering people, like the wild, uncivilised ones who eat each other. I wanted to flip that idea. So it’s not the wild ones; it’s us in your living room. It’s your wife sitting next to you. It’s like the danger coming from within.
Something Terrible Will Happen: The Cannibal Woman, Sep 12-16, HAU1, details
