“Conference of the Absent“
Imagine a conference to which nobody flies. A performance to which the invited leading scientists do not appear physically, but are represented by one local person each. At the beginning of the performance, the local performers step into a classical conference setting on a theatre stage, they open their script and the show begins. “Conference of the Absent” is a project, Rimini Protokoll is currently researching for. In Lisbon it will be a workshop about global cooperation in a global crisis. But it happens locally – in the name of the world. And it happens offline – with the help of theatre.
This will be a workshop about documentary co-authorship, ghost- and speechwriting. But also about devised performing, instructions and representation.
Telepresence can lead to a kind of political and social process in which the rules of representation are changed. Tele-performance uses the sensory and haptic means of theater instead of the flat-screen aesthetics of PowerPoint presentations.
The advantage of not being there – in general: not having to be everywhere – becomes a theatre game. At the center of this game are people who become carriers of ideas. Their “I” may be comparable to the “I” of a simultaneous translator. Only that they don’t translate from language to language but from body to body. And their text is not just for them but for everybody in the room. It describes this very situation.
Stefan Kaegi
Stefan Kaegi is based in Berlin, produces documentary theatre plays and works in public space in a diverse variety of collaborative partnerships. Kaegi has toured across Europe and Asia with two Bulgarian lorry drivers and a truck which was converted into a mobile audience room (“Cargo Sofia”). He developed “Radio Muezzin” in Cairo – a project about the call to prayer in this age of technical reproduction. At the moment he adapts “Remote X” an audiotour for 50 headphones to Cities like Taipei and Tunis, and he tours the interactive installation “Nachlass” that portrays people who have not much time to live. As well as “Uncanny Valley” – a monologue for a humanoid robot on stage.
Kaegi co-produces works with Helgard Haug and Daniel Wetzel, under the label “Rimini Protokoll”. Using research, public auditions and conceptual processes, they give voice to ‘experts’ who are not trained actors but have something to tell. Recent works include the multi-player-video-piece “Situation Rooms”, “100% São Paulo” with 100 local citizens on stage and the “World Climate Conference”, a simulation of the UN-conference for 650 spectators in Schauspielhaus Hamburg. Currently they perform “Homevisit Europe” as an interactive performance game in hundreds of households across the globe and work on their tetralogy “Staat 1-4” on phenomena of post-democracy. The CCCBarcelona and the MAAT Lisbon recently showed their bio-installation “Win < > win” in Lisbon. Their latest work “Utopolis” for 48 portable loudspeakers opened in Manchester Festival 2019.
www.rimini-protokoll.de
