Smart Nursing: Anna Witt

From June to August, the undergoing shift towards digital healthcare will be explored through the performance series Smart Nursing. Liesel Burisch, Ania Nowak and Anna Witt offer an examination of caring practices with a particular focus on their implications in Austria.

Anna Witt’s The Roof is On Fire
Performance for Smart Nursing
Commissioned and produced by Salzburger Kunstverein

06.07.2024
16:00 Performance
17:00 Artist Talk with Anna Witt and performers
Participants Care: Ulrike Halper, Laura Krok, Petra Lener, Melanie Puchler, Anna Stys
Firefighters: Celina Langwieder, Martina Latraner 
Stunt: Caroline Marek, Joe Toedtling

In cooperation with Uniklinikum Salzburg

The Roof is on Fire is a performance conceptualized by Anna Witt that serves as an imaginative emergency drill for the ongoing crisis in the caregiving sector. This piece brings together an ensemble of caregivers, female firefighters, and a stuntwoman, each integrating their specialized skills into a choreographed narrative that explores themes of emergency response and caregiving.

Developed against the backdrop of the last three decades, during which the caregiving crisis has intensified notably after healthcare systems were liberalized, the performance reflects on the shift towards profit-making at the expense of care quality and the urgency of social rethinking. This period, characterized by significant cost-cutting measures, contributed to the devaluation of caregiving—a field often marginalized due to its association with femininity and perceived unproductivity under neoliberal economic models. In The Roof is on Fire, the precision of medical routines merges with the physicality of firefighting.

In The Roof is on Fire, a jointly developed chorography from the experiences of carers merges with the routines of a fire brigade operation. Caregivers from the Salzburg University Hospital and firefighters collaborate to execute a series of movements that combine first aid with rescue operations, while a stuntwoman alludes to the iconic image of Florence Nightingale as The Lady with the Lamp in a modified reenactment, who is regarded as a reformer and the modern icon of the nursing profession.

Witt’s work addresses the acute urgency and severe conditions encountered by today’s caregivers.

Anna Witt (*1981, Wasserburg, Germany) lives and works in Vienna and Berlin. Her artistic practice is performative, participatory, and political. Witt creates situations that reflect interpersonal relationships and power relations as well as conventions of speech and action.