Theater about borders

de dev0id collect1ve

Bâle, Istanbul et Zurich

Listen Aşko! is a queer theater performance about longing, connection, borders and boundaries.
Help us bring this multimedia vision to the stage!

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This is what it's all about.

We, the dev0id collect1ve, a queer and international theater collective, have been working on our first piece, «Listen Aşko!», for over a year. It has been — and continues to be — developed in Switzerland, Turkey, and especially in the digital spaces in between.

Zoom calls, chat conversations, and voice memos are a central part of our creative process — and will also be integral to the final performance.

From extensive research and getting-to-know-you phases last summer, to regular online meetings, work-in-progress showings at Roxy Theater Basel and Zentralwäscherei Zürich — we have now entered the intense stage of writing, set-building, and costume design, steadily approaching the final phase of our debut project.

Listen Aşko! will premiere as part of the Youth Culture Festival on September 5, 2025, at Theater Basel.

Until then, we have one more rehearsal phase planned in Istanbul, followed by final rehearsals in Basel.

Why we need support

We’ve been working on Listen Aşko! since the beginning of 2024. We plan, read, conceptualize, write, choreograph, think, compose, brainstorm, sew, build, film, and photograph. It’s a project close to our hearts, and we’re all happy to invest time and energy — so far, entirely unpaid.

Unfortunately, not all members of our collective can afford to do that, due to the very borders and barriers we’re also addressing in our work. Here, process and content merge — and we’re confronted with the same political boundaries we aim to challenge on stage.

Some of our members need visas to enter the Schengen Area, or simply cannot afford to work for free due to their residency status in Switzerland.

We’ve received support from various Swiss foundations, which has given us a solid starting point for Listen Aşko!, and we’re deeply grateful for that. But it’s not enough to pay everyone a fair wage.

In addition to the usual production costs, we also need funds for:

  • visas
  • insurance
  • flights
  • fair wages for some members

We’ve consciously decided to take on an ambitious project — one that doesn’t shy away from confronting legal and bureaucratic borders. We want to question these borders and push back against political restrictions.

We do this as a collective, just like all of our work. Our vision — on stage, around it, and beyond it — is always a shared one.

If you’re able to contribute, no matter the amount, you’ll be helping to support international artists and resist the quiet acceptance of political barriers.

Help us cross borders — whether through wages or visa funding. We’d be thrilled to have you become part of this journey.

  • Proben in Zürich
    Proben in Zürich
  • Proben in Kaş
    Proben in Kaş
  • Proben in Zürich
    Proben in Zürich
  • Showing im Theater Roxy Basel
    Showing im Theater Roxy Basel
  • Showing Mezze Dinner Performance in der Zentralwäscherei Zürich
    Showing Mezze Dinner Performance in der Zentralwäscherei Zürich
  • composing...
    composing...
  • Proben in Istanbul
    Proben in Istanbul

The dev0id collect1ve and the play «Listen Aşko!»

We are the dev0id collect1ve — a group of six young, interdisciplinary artists: Anaïs Rufer, Mira Guggenbühl, Elif Karcı, Art Novikov, Sofia Westerberg, and Efe Riza Reis. Our paths first crossed in the 20-million-strong metropolis of Istanbul.

Today, we live in Switzerland, Germany, and Turkey — but our biographical and personal connections reach as far as Brazil, the USA, Turkey, Kurdistan, Sweden, Russia, and India. Many of us grew up between several of these worlds.

For our current theater project Listen Aşko!, we are collaborating with Laura Adriana Weibel, Melisa Su Taşkıran, Sultan Çoban, and Joyo Ann — fellow young artists who, like us, navigate between disciplines, languages, and spaces.

To us, Istanbul is a city of longing and homesickness, a place of refuge and a sign of resistance, a memory and a future perspective: it is the meeting point, the crossroads. The collective’s experiences with İstanbul serve as inspiration for a theater project in which thoughts and feelings are presented in multimedia form. Borders are to be revealed, broken through, united, redrawn and dissolved. The aim is to find out together: Is distance an illusion? Can we feel each other without touching? Are boundaries visible? Listen Aşko! imagines a reality that exists both virtually and physically, in presence and absence.

By blurring and transcending the lines between online and offline, virtual and physical, body and machine, it questions the concept of a singular, binary body and illuminates the complexity of identities, focusing on queerness. Istanbul becomes the surface for this artistic exploration.