dominant powers. what is to be done then? starts with the narration of political changes in northern africa and ends in central europe. a collision of three performers, a chorus assembled of two generations and different nations with a chorus of media and texts from antiquity world up to today. orientations, identities, doubts, dialogues with different acoustic objects. one`s own voice, which comes from a strange body.dominant powers. what is to be done then? is a contemporary tragedy, an installation, a concert, an archive, a choreography, a journey through situations, through space and a lot of questions...
after vampires of the 21st century or what is to be done then?, presented in dusseldorf, vienna and new york, claudia bosse continues her theatre series "political hybrids“ in collaboration with sound artist guenther auer. a new artistic format of sprawling speech and sound spaces created with text fragments, auto-fictions, movements and landscapes of documents. a cartography of the present: what is to be done then?
the audience and the performers will move through a de-centred spatial system with listening spots and sound-producers, through a maze of rooms, a labyrinth of information, media and promises. dominant powers. what is to be done then? is an arrangement of realities by facts, documents and fictional events of recent history.
clip: alexander koenig
video: DOMINANT POWERS
by/with: nele jahnke, nora steinig, catherine travelletti, chorus participants: peter-christian dworzak, jessyca r. hauser, bozena kunstek, réka kutas, sandra pascal, susanna peterka, stella reinhold, eva maria schmid, thomas schweitzer, konstantin sieghart, ilse urbanek, eva-maria wall, lisa weber, jana westermann, dana worfolomeeva, daniela zeilinger, concept/direction/space: claudia bosse, sound: guenther auer, technical director/constructions: marco toelzer, communication/artistic assistant: anna feldbein, assistant director: ana mirkovic, coordination choir/costume assistant: luzie stransky, training: caroline decker, production collaboration: nicole delle karth, production management: serena laker, press: SKYunlimited
a production by theatercombinat. supported by wien kultur. research in egypt supported by the goethe-institut. we would like thank andreas goelles, austrian culture forum kairo, nathalie kolbe, as well as the goethe-institut alexandria and daniel stoevesandt.
premiere:
23 november 2011, 8pm
showings:
25/26/27 november 2011, 8pm
1/2/3/4 december 2011, 8pm
how do we produce history? how are events turning into narratives? from a series of talks and interviews, conducted in cairo and alexandria in september/october 2011 and documented per audio and video by claudia bosse and guenther auer, a collection of different narratives about the revolution in egypt will emerge.
how are the current political circumstances and changes?
has life changed?
have laws changed?
how are the narratives about the same event different and why?
who talks about which subject and what is excluded?
to have a voice.
to raise one`s voice.
many voices.
voices which cannonade me with information.
to have no voice.
voices as weapons.
speaking with borrowed voices.
texts
the spoken texts are fragments from antique (theatre-)texts such as oedipus by seneca, as well as texts by heinrich heine, heiner müller, richard wagner, sylvia plath, et.al., theoretical political texts by antonio gramsci, jacques rancière, judith butler, karl marx, et.al., auto-fictions of the performers and the chorus participants, texts by claudia bosse and transcripts of the interviews made in cairo, alexandria and vienna.
from the end of august 2011 a moving speech-chorus of two generations with participants of different nationalities is developed through an ongoing working process with physical and speech training. the members of the choruses are volunteers from the city where the performance takes place. the movement choreography is created in the architecture of the performance space. a moving speech chorus meets an acoustic media chorus - overlays, concentration in the rooms and dialogues with the audience arise.
chorus of media
working notes by claudia bosse
producing history.
from where it`s articulated. who or what am i in reflection of the facts produced by the surrounding media reality (revolution in cairo, civil commotion at the israeli border, riots in england, lybian rebells, "the furious“ in madrid etc.) or which false pretences by media circulate as facts in my language? in what way are the technologies of distribution affecting thinking and speaking itself and are creating it`s own facts which are fiction?
media settings.
space of bodies and voices, of language and media. disembodiment. each setup like a cultural metaphor, a relation of elements. bodies, instruments, voices, sound. perspective of thinking, speaking, listening. location of speaking. composition of action. the settings, situations, media structure are potentiality, contradictory potentiality. relations to each other. and media polemics at the same time.
