Performance on the 30th of November 2023 at Theater Neumarkt Zurich and the Cabaret Voltaire by the artists Dorota Gawฤda and Eglฤ Kulbokaitฤ
Workshop pn the 1st of December 2023 at ZHDK with the guests Dirk Baeker (Senior Professor for Organizational and Social Theory, Zeppelin Universitรคt, Friedrichshafen,Germany), Ulrike Gerhardt (Michael Succow Stiftung / Greifswald Moor Centrum, Germany) and Dorota Sajewska (Professor for Theater Studies, Ruhr University Bochum, Gerยญmany)
The workshop 24/7 Performance: (Re-)Presentation in the Algorithmic Regime (working title) is embedded in my research that aims to explore artistic postdigital presentations as a critical reactions to the algorithmic regime.
The purpose of my research is to sharpen and contour specific terms (like algorithmic regime, postdigital presentations, postdigital image formations, digital images as well as digital image practices).
The purpose of the workshop was to gather and contextualize initial observations and to investigate how artists, in the realm of the algorithmic regime, react to the shift of socio-cultural contexts as well as aesthetic reflections within digital infrastructures and formats.
This workshop had also the purpose to test my hypotheses, as well as to sharpen my conceptual apparatus and achieve initial results that will serve me to further elaborate the method.
It was very important for me, that the workshop explored the guiding question through a transdisciplinary approach i.e. involving the (artistic, theoretical and theatrical) perspectives of the different cooperation partners involved.
For the workshop 24/7 Performance: (Re-)Presentation in the Algorithmic Regime I asked the Theater Neumarkt Zurich and the Cabaret Voltaire to collaborate with me and together we invited the artists Dorota Gawฤda and Eglฤ Kulbokaitฤ to create a performance that took place at the end of November 2023.
The main questions that I wanted to explore were: What characterizes the interrelationship between the production of artistic content (primarily performative in nature) and its modes of (re-)presentation and reception - especially in the realm of an algorithmic regime? For this purpose, Gawฤda and Kulbokaitฤ created a performance for the online/offline space. The site-specific performance was performed live in one of the houses and simultaneously shown as a live stream in the other house. The Perforamnce reveals a new way of using and processing cultural-theoretical texts and text fragments and focuses on the connection between language and non-linguistic systems, on the articulation of an implicit knowledge that is located between articulation and language as well as between body and experience. Texts by authors such as Daisy Hildyard, Rune Graulund and Karen Barad have been incorporated into the script of the performance and the content is narrated by her silently, only through the pure movement of her lips and overwritten by five gender-diverse voices on an audio track. The performer is not a figure with an assignable character: She has no history, present or future, no distinctive trait of being. She acts like a medium haunted by external inspirations, haunted and occupied by an ecological anxiety and ecological lament. This would mean that Ialia's de-subjectified figure and the hauntings she represents symbolize a transition point. In her, the human and geological understanding of time in the Anthropocene merge. Ialia's gestures reveal an interest in transgression and excess, making the Gothic or Neo-Gothic current a form of chronicling the violence of climate change and the human connection to the damaged, uncanny and precarious life on this planet.
As already mentioned, the performance was split between two locations: Theater Neumarkt and Cabaret Voltaire. And the audience was invited to move back and forth between the venues (3 minutes walk) and dive into two parallel worlds.
The performance was also performed twice, so that there was a small break and everyone was actually invited to change once the location and witness the performance twice (live and as a livre-stream).
For me personally, this was very important, because not only did the performer interpret the performance differently but of course my reception of the performance (one mediated through the camera (and letโs say, the images the performer โproducedโ or wanted me to seeโ and once live, were very different and distinct.
So, for instance, in the mediated live-streamm, the body seemed sometimes very cut up - like for instance, where one could only see the legs and feet of the performer โ which created I would say, very strong images.
And then, seeing the performance live, the camera in a sense e became also a very strong performer (which in my opinion was not so obvious to me in the first itineration of the performance, seeing it as a stream)
But those are just a few impressions I wanted to share from the performance.
In the second day of the workshop, we encountered then a rather letโs say traditional setting.
Following the performance that Dorota Gawฤda and Eglฤ Kulbokaitฤ created at Theater Neumarkt Zurich and Cabaret Voltaire the workshop aimed to collect and discuss first thoughts together with the guests Dirk Baeker (Senior Professor for Organizational and Social Theory, Zeppelin Universitรคt, Friedrichshafen,Germany), Ulrike Gerhardt (Michael Succow Stiftung / Greifswald Moor Centrum, Germany) and Dorota Sajewska (Professor for Theater Studies, Ruhr University Bochum, Gerยญmany) in order to sharpen questions about artistic strategies of presentation and artistic practices with images ("image practices") in the context of a world shaped by digital technologies and algorithmic control strategies.
We each shared a short input, that was then discussed in the group.
The workshop was very productive, in the sense that we all shared the experience from the performance the night before and we could always, during the discussion, come back to it and relate our questions or inputs to it.
This was really helpful for everyone to make our arguments more tangible.
In general, this workshop helped me a lot to experiment and test some ideas.
I received very importat feedback, that helped me evaluate my thoughts and especially, helped me formulate new questions and argumenst. That I put to the test once more in a new workshop, that took place on April the 2nd.