Compagnie Artistique Carrefour / X Perspektiven

European ports are often romanticized as »gates to the world«. Narratives of new beginnings and cosmopolitanism continue to dominate when talking about port cities, while their role in the transatlantic slave trade, imperialism and colonialism is too often ignored. Yet they can be read as focal points for questions about colonialities of consumption, global production chains and unequal distribution of resources.

Port à Port is a translocal theatre project by Compagnie Artistique Carrefour and X Perspektiven with participants from Hamburg and Lomé. Over several months, the two groups embarked on a theatrical research into the historical and contemporary connections between the two port cities. After a stage version was created in Lomé (February 2022), Port à Port now takes the audience on a mobile performance in the port of Hamburg as part of the International Summer Festival to reveal postcolonial entanglements and create new stories between Hamburg and Lomé.