The artists and artistic teams for the VRHAM! FORWARD residencies have been selected: In Mai 2021 Zoe Dihaki and Marina Mersiadou (London) and Gustavo Gomes (Cologne) will continue to develop their projects INHIBITION and VOTARY in collaboration with Institut für Zukunftsforschung (ITZ) at Zimmertheater Tübingen.
The immersive performance INHIBITION by Zoe Dihaki and Marina Mersiadou is based on Adolfo Bioy Casares’ novel The Invention of Morel, which questions conventional theatre. In their work the artists, who both come from the field of architecture and are researching in the Interactive Architecture Lab at the Bartlett School in London, combine VR technology with multi-layered audio-visual stimuli and biofeedback as a further artistic-technical element. The audience is invited to interrogate their personal reality and to become performers themselves. In the one-week online residency, they want to expand the prototype of INHIBITION, which so far can only be experienced by three participants at a time, test new tools and get into conversation with artists, audience and experts.
In VOTARY by Gustavo Gomes, the idiom “dance around the golden calf” takes on a new meaning. The Brazilian artist, dancer and choreographer, who lives in Cologne, has created a performance installation that converts the biblical verse from the Book of Exodus into binary codes and transfers them into a choreography. The audience will be able to experience the performance as a connection between dance, film and augmented reality via a QR code on their mobile phones. Gustavo Gomes would like to further develop the project during his residency at ITZ in Tübingen. The cooperation partner for the VRHAM! FORWARD residencies is the Institut für theatrale Zukunftsforschung (ITZ) at Zimmertheater Tübingen. The artistic teams selected by a national jury (Peer Mia Ripberger/Artistic Director at ITZ; Sabrina Schmidt/ Festival Dramaturg, VRHAM; Markus Selg/Artist, Stage Designer, Musician) will present the results at this year’s VRHAM! Festival in Hamburg
About VRHAM! FORWARD:
VRHAM! FORWARD invites artists, creative teams and experts to experiment with virtual and augmented reality in the field of performing arts, to discuss and discover the current developments. The program supported by Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, includes discourse events, panels, workshops and residencies.
