Black + Forecasting

In this double programme we have a rerun of two short performances that were created for Performatik 2011. The performances were separately created but have much in common. Both are about how it is possible, on stage and using minimal resources, to evoke people and things which acquire a ‘life’ – however invisible – that the audience accepts.

• In Black the Norwegian choreographer Mette Edvardsen – almost like a magician – tries to make several objects appear on stage. She begins to ‘imagine’ a number of objects on an empty stage. She lists them, gives them a name and repeats it eight times in succession. She repeats the word ‘table’ eight times until we actually see the table. The objects are ‘talked’ into life. They are used on stage, play their role in a number of events and then disappear again. Where to? To a different, invisible world, a parallel universe? Or are they absorbed into our memory until we recall them?
  
Black is fascinating performance about creating a world through words and movements, about being present and absent, experiencing and learning, and about consciousness and imagination. About theatre.

• Forecasting is the third part of a performance trilogy about the future, created by Barbara Matijević and Giuseppe Chico (the first parts being I am 1984 and Tracks). Scientists have developed all sorts of methods to predict processes and developments. We, the frightened people of the West, seek safety and security, explain everything and thus deaden life. But chance generates energy. Taking risks and accepting challenges generates vitality. While working on Forecasting, Matijević and Chico collected a number of YouTube videos in which human body parts appear. During the performance Matijević is alone on stage with her laptop and converses 'physically' with these images. She fills in with her own body what is missing from the picture. She creates encounters, intersections between the three-dimensional visual world on stage and the two-dimensional virtual world of the image. Although the short films consist of material discovered by chance, they generate something like a story. There is no narrative in words, only relationships, experiences, and incidents between images and a living body.

Forecasting premiered at our Performatik 2011 festival, was presented at the Festival d'Avignon 2011, and recently at the Festival d'automne in Paris 2012.