The Hulks Garden

The body fights, stretches, and submits — encountering the voice of the Hulk. A play unfolds between sincerity and irony: the exaggeration of masculine archetypes ultimately exposes their artificiality, until the body mutates into a camp figure. The audience is invited into a surreal world where the ideals of the manosphere unravel and new questions about power, self-staging, and gender roles are raised. The “manosphere” refers to a digital space in which masculinity is celebrated, negotiated, and commodified. This ecosystem spans from moderate discussions about the challenges of modern masculinity to more radical groups that disseminate misogyny and antifeminist rhetoric. The leading figures of the manosphere — whether podcasters, self-proclaimed “alpha males,” or fitness influencers — often embody a caricatured version of masculinity, associating the body with aggressive self-reliance and a tradition of strength and hierarchy. Supplements, fitness programs, and coaching offers are marketed not merely as lifestyle choices, but are interwoven with political narratives. This space is of particular interest because it not only shapes individual identity formation, but also reflects and reproduces societal structures and power dynamics. The ideologies it presents often promote binary gender roles and antifeminist rhetoric, thereby contributing to polarization and hindering an understanding of masculinity as a fluid and evolving concept. Investigating this digital space thus opens up insights into cultural and political mechanisms that extend far beyond the manosphere itself. Figures like Andrew Tate or Tucker Carlson illustrate how such content reaches the mainstream. Fitness and wellness become symbols of supposed moral superiority in a supposedly feminized society. At the same time, this ideology is often marked by insecurity,                    fear of loss, and fragility. 

The Hulk’s Garden picks up on these contradictions by adopting the aesthetics and rhetoric of the 
manosphere and consciously pushing them into the absurd. In doing so, a dialogue emerges about the constructions and consequences of this world. For this, we draw on the figure of the bodybuilder. At first glance, this figure shares many of the aesthetic ideals propagated in manosphere forums — an exaggeratedly masculine body. But upon closer examination, it becomes clear that bodybuilders, despite striving to emulate fictional icons, actually embody entirely different ideals. Bodybuilding is not a symptom of a fascist body cult, but a postmodern phenomenon. Through their exaggerated, almost grotesque forms, bodybuilders transcend conventional norms and enter the realm of camp — a space nourished by excess, exaggeration, and an ironic embrace of what it parodies. In doing so, they challenge and renegotiate our notions of gender roles. While female bodybuilders are often dismissed as “too masculine” and no longer seen as “real women,” male bodybuilders evolve into a kind of drag version of masculinity. Men pursue voluptuous chests, wasp waists, and symmetrical lines. Nearly naked, wearing only a small thong, they pose before an admiring (mostly heterosexual, cis-male) audience. Here, the hypermasculine becomes an ironic reflection of itself — no longer a symbol of strength, but a spectacle, a show tinged with homoerotic undertones and open to consumption. The practice itself culminates in a performance. A bodybuilding contest is not about being truly strong. It’s not about hardening oneself in the supposedly feminized Western world to prepare for the “war on men,” but about embodying the appearance of strength. At the center of the work is this lean male body — powerless and alienated, trapped in the relentless roar of the manosphere: a stream of self-optimization mantras, discipline doctrines, and aggressive marketing promises. This noise offers simple answers: 
if you want to be free, you must reclaim your masculinity. It must be fought for. It must be affirmed. Driven by these narratives, the body begins to train. It sweats, chisels its flesh, tames it. 

The message is internalized: prove to the world that you meet its standards, that you cannot be replaced. He must become strong, impossible to ignore, like his role model — the Hulk. Large, powerful, a shield against everything that might threaten him. But the more he submits to his training routine, the stranger his relationship to his body becomes. The movements feel alien. The machine he clings to becomes a threshold. The body changes — yes, it becomes stronger, but also strangely different. The work between body and machine is not silent — the lifting and lowering carry a voice of their own. The voice of the machine, the monotone squeaks and hums that drive and command him. The voice of the Hulk. His own voice, oscillating between motivation and exhaustion. Digital voices, laced with slogans — a screaming algorithm that moves him yet unsettles him. Training becomes an internal conflict, a dialogue between drive and doubt, between ideal and decay. 

Who is actually speaking here? Who or what controls the body? And what happens if it stops obeying those voices? Through interaction with sculptural elements reminiscent of fitness equipment, choreographies emerge that oscillate between strength, fragility, and comedy. These sculptures influence the movements, dynamics, and intensity of the performance. The body adapts, resists, or merges with the structures — drawn in and repelled by them. They shape the space, suggesting a gym. We segment the body into its individual muscle groups, emphasizing structure and function. This aesthetic research is intertwined with an abstraction of the rituals of the manosphere — from workout routines and looksmaxing to viral internet trends. Movements are examined for their symbolic and physical content. We explore the limits of the body: where does the animalistic or non-human emerge in these movements? Where do they meet physical and ideological barriers? What must a man do to become a Giga-Chad? What even defines a Giga-Chad? Why do men become radicalized? What does it mean to reclaim masculinity? Where does this desire come from today? This work culminates in theatrical choreography fragments, staged as an unconventional workout. This traning serves as the basis for dance sequences inspired by Jumpstyle, Hardstyle, and Krump — styles that emphasize powerful, dynamic movement. At the same time, we search for fluid, body-conscious moments. The resulting choreographic collage combines precise patterns with spontaneous impulses. Movements shift between tension and release,
between control and free expression. Alongside intense, high-energy sequences, there are phases of stillness, where breath and flowing transitions guide the body through space. The body becomes a vessel for internal processes — its movements render rhythm, strength, and transformation visible. A game of repetition and variation emerges, through which the energy of dance becomes tangible. The physical intensity condenses into a moving image that captivates the audience and invites them to immerse themselves in the complexity of physical expression.