AFTER FUTURE

September + October 2019 | Berlin

>> Deutsche Version

In this 2-month-long performance project, and within the frame of the regular Physical Theatre course, we will develop a devised and probably fragmentary performance revolving on the idea of future in present tense.

We live in a world in which all future scenarios have long been fulfilled. Architectures, infrastructures, media and technology have us under control since long time. We inhabit that futuristic world in which everything seemed possible. All our wishes are on the way of being accomplished, it is just a question of time… short time. Knowledge is accessible. You can find the solutions to your problems in the oracle of the Appstore. We can give a like for an action, a campaign, a photo, or a cat (isn’t that democratic?). For each language there is a translation. We live in a user-friendly simulation with many must haves.

In the 80s, there was NO FUTURE
In the 90s, we reached THE END OF HISTORY
In the 00s, ANOTHER WORLD WAS still POSSIBLE
In the end of the 10s, we have to admit that THERE IS NO PLANET B

But who simulates? Who represents? Who imitates? Who is the user?
In the Age of Media, reality has become an incomprehensible phenomenon. It has been replaced by a present future in which you are not even there. A designed future. And who is actually piloting this? The orange thing of the white house? The stars over the indigo blue flag? The corporation? The financial markets? The voters shaped by Cambridge Analytica?
To whom belongs the present?

You say: The future, where cars can fly, is not far off.
I say: So what? We won’t be able to afford it anyway.

In retrospect, we will understand and ask ourselves… was the future yesterday?

• This performance project is open to interested people with and without prior experience
• It requires continuous participation throughout the whole course duration, as well as a commitment to work intensively on a physical level
• Only with previous registration

DURATION
September + October 2019

TIME & LOCATION
Tuesdays, 20h – 22h | Urbanraum
Fridays, 19h – 21:30h | Studio58

FEE 200€ / 170€ concession
LANGUAGE German and English
LEVEL Open for everyone

INFO & REGISTRATION
pt.collactive (at) gmail.com

Some words about the image

The image for this project is a mash-up containing the painting Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer (1818) by Caspar David Friedrich + the house track The Sky Was Pink (2004) by Nathan Fake (remixed by James Holden) + the painting Angelus Novus (1920) by Paul Klee interpreted by Walter Benjamin.
Photo and image by mapp . graphics ©

Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer (1818) – Caspar David Friedrich
For long time, Der Wanderer has been considered the icon of Modernity and its eclosion. In times of technological and industrial burst, it depicts the mankind and the nature at the very same level, face to face… or rather at its feet.

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The Sky Was Pink (2004) – Nathan Fake (James Holden remix)
A minimal-house classic. An anthem of the 2000s that catapulted the dance floors of the most select clubs into the stratosphere.

Angelus Novus (1920) – Paul Klee + The 9th thesis in “Theses on the Philosophy of History” (1940) – Walter Benjamin
Benjamin’s famous Angel of History concept is an angel that walks backwards … towards the future.

“A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.”
Walter Benjamin, 1940

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