MELINDA NADJ ABONJI and Jurczok 1001 have been performing together for the past twenty years, in Switzerland and abroad. Nadj Abonji, born in the Hungarian-speaking region of what is now Serbia, to Yugoslavians who moved their family to Switzerland when she was five, is a novelist whose last two books—Tauben fliegen auf (2010, Fly Away, Pigeon, 2015) and Schildkrötensoldat (Tortoise Soldier, 2017), her account of a soldier embroiled in the Yugoslavian conflict of the 1990s that is also an indictment of Swiss military culture—have met with substantial acclaim. Jurczok 1001 is the stage name of Roland Jurczok, born in Switzerland to German parents, whose numerous CDs and vinyl recordings of his rap and spoken-word texts include Drehscheibe Schweiz (Turntable Switzerland, 1997); in 2018 he published Spoken Beats, a collection of facsimiles of his performance scripts.

In their live stage work the artists typically take turns to perform individually written short texts—in the case of Nadj Abonji often whimsical vignettes or prose poems, or occasionally Hungarian songs, while Jurczok 1001 recites lyrical pieces or humorous mock addresses—and provide musical or audio accompaniment. Nadj Abonji plays the electric violin or whoops rhythmically to underscore Jurczok 1001's recitations, while the latter “beatboxes” to punctuate Nadj Abonji's short pieces. The focus of their performance work ranges from meticulous observations of the dayto- day, often mirrored in objects, to reflections on consumerism, migration, and, repeatedly, the importance of language. They make fun of Swiss foibles, mock local politicians, and lash out at everyday prejudice. Above all, they transform their written texts into a vibrant, rhythmic, and mesmerizing Gesamtkunstwerk through the deployment of their voices and bodies, as well as various forms of audio equipment.

In this chapter we offer an analysis of Nadj Abonji's and Jurczok 1001's performative praxis in individual pieces of short prose from the last twenty years, including some exclusively reproduced here that have been performed but remain unpublished, and drawing substantially on an original interview conducted with the artists in the summer of 2018. Although the texts the two produce are not short stories in the classic form, the artists situate their work in a tradition of telling stories, and their short texts display a narrative drive that is externalized through performance in real time and its insistent musical accompaniment.