FEEDING BACK
The human being in the interplay between social utopia and digital DNA
Photo: Julia Thurnau
Zero and one: it started out so simply. Where does it lead us now? In FEEDING BACK, five performers from different artistic worlds dive into the space between digital DNA and the social fabric. Each develops a choreographic avatar and moves through feelings of manipulation, doubts about identity and deep connection.
The audience is part of the game too, together with rules that stay hidden, like the source code of the evening. What do zeros and ones make of our sense of community?
Instead of putting technology on stage, FEEDING BACK turns to the body. The functions of the digital world – morphing, coding, surfing – are applied to bodies and to the ways people relate. What becomes of them in a shared physical space? And what becomes of our emotions in a digital imagination?
Danser Canal Historique – Thomas Hahn, June 2019
“…to be the parachute that slows the descent and gives the time needed for reflection.”
The video is loaded from Vimeo when you click play.
Artistic statement
FEEDING BACK began in 2017 with a simple unease: the collection of our data and the calculations of algorithms want us to believe that the human being is entirely quantifiable, predictable and controllable. We decided to turn radically towards what cannot be counted: our unpredictability.
The title comes from cybernetics, at the origin of the digital world: feedback, like two mirrors facing each other. On stage, five dancers chase, push, resist and fall, between complicity and mischief, in a danced wrestling drawn from martial arts and contact dance and built on the dramaturgy of the game of Go.
There was a lot of humour, often black humour, full of small insider jokes. One dancer kept announcing in a dramatic voice "I want to cry" – a nod to the WannaCry virus – while another watched, eating an apple. Few in the audience caught it then; today, more would.
We wanted the piece itself to feed back. At many performances a guest – an artist, a philosopher, a sociologist – watched it and answered: during the show, in a conversation with the audience, or in a new version in public space the next day.
At the end, a white parachute is slowly untangled and fills with air. It later became the first of our Unready Mades in ODC : odyssey.
FEEDING BACK was mostly concerned with social media; it did not yet think deeply about artificial intelligence. Since then, the questions have shifted. Who controls artificial intelligence, and what does it control about us? Those questions remain open – and important.
Team & credits
ARTISTIC DIRECTION Malgven Gerbes, David Brandstätter || DANCE, CHOREOGRAPHIC COLLABORATION Hyoung-Min Kim, Aline Landreau, Raphael Hillebrand, Sebastian Elias Kurth, Malgven Gerbes || GUESTS Dominique Boivin, Camille Roth, Alexandros Mistriotis, Bruno Pace, Juliane Rettschlag ||
MUSIC Brendan Dougherty || LIGHT AND STAGE DESIGN Ruth Waldeyer || CONSULTING AND DRAMATURGYHeike Albrecht, Uwe Gössel || COSTUMES Heather MacCrimmon || PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT Alix Pellet, Ann-Christin Görtz PRODUCTION ASSISTANT Clara Debour
PRODUCTION shifts — art in movement || COPRODUCTION Le Phare, National Choreographic Center of Le Havre, Normandy, directed by Emmanuelle Vo-Dinh | Le CCN – Ballet de Lorraine – accueil studio 2018/2019 | fabrik Potsdam: Artists-in-residence |
|| Residences Tanzfabrik – Uferstudios Berlin || WITH THE SUPPORT OF Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin | Direction Régionale des A aires Culturelles de Normandie / Ministère de la Culture | Région Normandie | Touring supported by ODIA Normandie / Artistic Development Office of Normandy / Goethe Institut
Performances
2019 Festival June Event, Cartoucherie de Vincennes, Paris (FR)
2019 Festival Pharenheit, Le Phare – CCN du Havre Normandie (FR)
2019 Festival Pharenheit, MuMa – Musée d'art moderne André Malraux, Le Havre (FR) – in situ version
2019 Open Spaces, Tanzfabrik – Uferstudios Berlin (DE) – premiere
2019 Made in Potsdam festival, fabrik Potsdam (DE) – pre-premiere
2017–18 Open studios of the work in progress: Le Phare – CCN du Havre Normandie (FR) | CCN – Ballet de Lorraine, Nancy (FR)
