While preoccupied with rehearsals for Glühende Rätsel, I couldn't join the first REPLICA outing, performed during 2017's DAT Festival, so the second would have to do: stemming from worldbuilding discussions and workshops with improvised devices during the winter months of 2017-18, we presented an immersive environment at Liebig12 in March of the latter year, composing a series of technological rituals extracted from our imagined future world.
Fog blurred the boundaries between performer and audience in the small, glass-fronted gallery; two performers put on electrodes that rendered their interactions into chords and arpeggios; audience members were invited to take their places. We gathered around a glowing orb which also made music, and synchronised our movement. A projection displayed various textual permutations describing the environment. It was simple, but unearthly.
Conceived and choreographed by Diana Neranti, the core of the material was developed at a workshop she led at (the sadly now-defunct) KunstKooperative with choreographic coder Joana Chicau, who programmed its textual output into the randomly cycling permutations visible behind. The 'body organ' which sonified human contact was built by Body Fool, while the Qiú ball was designed by Régis Lemberthe, who provided additional text. The performance used a quadraphonic speaker setup by Matthew Burnett, and Diana, Régis, Body Fool, Mathew, Fabian Jung (a.k.a. Sad Ed), my friend and FREMT-fellow Maciek Marzec, and yours truly devised and performed the piece.
There is some doubt, perhaps even reasonable doubt, that our history as we conceive it is in fact shared by all of us,…(the Absentites), which alleges this to be the case, that we are living in a new age, not borne of any prior, but totally independent from any former reality. … And from this, some hypothesize that this new age may have been fabricated from the scraps of…with various realities and histories.
…The movement grew, buoyed by the exploding increase in disruptive events as the First Chaos began to take effect. Thus, we know that some of our forefathers were blessed with foresight, certainly more than any one of us can claim today. We try to emulate their example.
…The event frequency remains high…wreaks tremendous strain upon our equipment…
As elsewhere, they are generally referred to as ‘storms’, despite the fact…set the people’s teeth on edge and generate that odd fuzzy feeling where you can’t quite remember your…
Some say there may be pockets where…It is widely agreed that the old methods of navigation, and indeed seemingly all methods of navigation, are of no use any longer. … We tend to prefer almanacs and charts…for the navigator is a light unto itself.
… apocryphally, no one who has followed the sign of the lighthouse has not been led eventually to one. The consequent religious belief of individuals calling themselves ‘signers’ has not, however, caught on, embedded, as it is, within conventional theories regarding the function and dynamics of generated signifiers (cf. Degraal, Saussure & Saucers).… must be rechristened and reeducated, and do frequently manage to become a successful part of their local convivia. As many of us have difficulty fully recalling our earliest lives…the buildings remain mostly intact, but of the people, little trace, effectively vanishing. It is surmised that they lose their all-critical sense of self…
Fragments of “Elluskid's contribution to the EuBWA12 Congress: B-tn Chronicle”
While we wait, we occupy ourselves—for sustenance is relatively easy to come by—with song, dance, remembrance, and preparation. This latter is the most time-intensive and indeed critical of our activities…