In my performance and video-based works, I use the technique of montage to associate different materials such as found footage, photos, autobiographical material, live internet research, popular objects, and common cultural topics with each other. I use a daily and domestic imagery to explore the places where the performing of habits, which create the binary of excellence and failure, happen. In my work, I attempt to reveal how this binary is a power tool that performs exclusion and reflect on how to avoid it.

I connect micro-stories, considered private or intimate stories of struggle and failure, to a bigger macro-picture. With my imagery, I unveil these connections to illustrate failures as something that is not given, but invented and performed by the composition of people and societies surrounding us. 

My process is realized through the accumulation of topics or objects with several signifiers which leave space for the spectators to create associations of their own. The subjects I choose echo early feminist artistic practices and are also recalled by the use of autobiographical elements to create a personal level to engage the audience. My research on the societal and historic level creates the basis for the montage, which is realized by a process similar to writing text as it becomes the common thread of the video or performance.

Refusing virtuosity as a practice of excellence through the unveiling of the artistic process, my projects reflect on how and where they are produced. By quoting already-established thoughts my work challenges the ever-present pressure on artistic work of being original and genius. Shifting between found footage, self-created material, and the documentation of the process itself as well as autobiographical and historic material I seek to perform hidden juxtapositions between the artwork itself and its production. What are the habits that I perform and transmit in my artistic work and how can I (not) avoid the desire for excellence?

Theresa Maria Schlichtherle is a director and interdisciplinary artist. She studied Theatre Studies, Musicology, Italian Literature and Performative Arts at LMU Munich and IUAV University Venice. Since 2012 she has developed her own projects as a director, alongside numerous collaborations as an assistant in opera. She co-founded the collective la SHUT (2016–2018), and in 2019 co-founded Call Monica and Extragarbo, remaining a member of Extragarbo until 2024. She won the Young Jury Award (Premio Giuria Giovane) at the Asolo Art Film Festival for her first film ipadriedio – Meine Väter und ich. In 2021 she participated in NASCONDERE by Romeo Castellucci with Triennale Milano and created the performative intervention I REALLY WHITE CUBE, DO U?. In 2023 she co-directed Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s Hanjo at the Bavarian State Opera. Her works include the feature film Children of the Revolution (fucked) (in production), the opera Lady Magnesia (Bavarian State Opera / Brainlab, 2024), and the exhibition Concerto with Extragarbo (Lodi, 2024).As a performer, she appeared in Call Monica by Call Monica and Wash Your Art. Wash Your City by Extragarbo. In 2025 she will appear in Humanity’s Greatest Tragedy by Jacopo Giacomono at Fast Forward Festival in Dresden and at Cubo Teatro in Turin. In 2026 she will direct the world premiere of Isithunzi (composer: Monthati Masebe) for the Munich Biennale for New Music Theatre and the Staatstheater Wiesbaden.