“paradise now – echoes from the future” addresses the changed conditions that have arisen in recent decades as a result of digitalization and algorithmic surveying of people and the accompanying shift in power due to the failed promise of disembodiment. It attempts to trace the connection between digital text/signs and the political body along historical forms of physical “resistance”.
The work is an interactive sound and video installation in which visitors physically become part of a theater performance by the group The Living Theatre, which premiered the play “Paradise Now” in Avignon in 1968. Camera tracking allows visitors to synchronize the movement of the historical film footage with their own bodies. The physical movement writes the transcription of the theatre text on a display. The process of approaching the historical theater performance is structured through five scenes. Each of these scenes refers to a historical-political event in which various forms of embodiment were tried out. For each of these scenes, a different performative form is proposed for rehearsal. The proposed topics of the scenes are: synchronicity – break and interrupt – hold out continue and carry on – stand stand still – copy imitate.
Maquinaciones/Machinations at Museo National Centro de Arte Reina Sofia Madrid 2023
