2021 XR-LAB / THE FUTURE PRESENT PAST

A XR-Lab about 9/11, Fukushima and the Covid-pandemic

September 2021

In this second XR-Lab, the artists focus on their personal experiences of September 11, 2001 in New York, the catastrophe of Fukushima on March 11, 2011, and from a particularly hard-hit region of the Covid pandemic in 2021 in 10-year steps. The goal is to find out what these historical events have meant personally and socially in retrospect for the participating artists and what effects they have on the perceived perception of time itself. The catastrophe experienced today is explored here as the “future present past.”

The lab took place in the cored-out Haus der Statistik at Alexanderplatz in Berlin and synchronized in virtual reality. The group already tested this procedure by means of augmented reality in December 2020 in the XR Lab “Shapes of Hamlet” and is now technically enhancing it. The participants are performing live, partly on location, partly as avatars in virtual reality from completely different locations and partly via previously recorded documentary interview material.

How can time and history be explored, experienced and presented differently by means of performance in augmented reality?

What personal and political possibilities lie in this expanded representability of catastrophic, world-changing events?

Is there a journey back from the “future present past” to the now of the catastrophe by means of AR theater, in order to gain a different perspective, to question and to heal?

TEAM

Concept: Felix Meyer-Christian XR & Mapping: Erik Kundt Camera, Edit & Color: Stéphanie Morin Music, Performance: Marcus Thomas Performance: David Pallant, Akemi Nagao Interviewpartner: Felix Meyer-Christian (New York, USA), Akemi Nagao (Fukushima, Japan), Marcus Thomas (Saxony, Germany) 

Supported by the Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.