Life Streaming
Two internet cafés are connected. In Europe, twenty visitors chat with twenty performers in Sri Lanka on the beach hit by the 2004 Tsunami. What starts as an innocent chat evolves into a conversation about our empathic brain. The performers question their own victimhood and try to find out what pushes Western buttons.
Interventions in the space transform the conversation into a physical experience. The piece ends when the European internet café is inundated by warm water.
Two internet cafés are connected. In Europe, twenty visitors chat with twenty performers in Sri Lanka on the beach hit by the 2004 Tsunami. What starts as an innocent chat evolves into a conversation about our empathic brain. The performers question their own victimhood and try to find out what pushes Western buttons.
Interventions in the space transform the conversation into a physical experience. The piece ends when the European internet café is inundated by warm water.
Video
Press
"Dries Verhoeven knows, in an exceptional way, to involve the spectator in the play."
‘Chatten met een vreemde over verlies’ ('Chatting with a stranger about loss'), Kester Freriks (12-08-2010)read the review (in Dutch)
"Subtly provocative...Dutch director and artist Dries Verhoeven is a visionary athlete who has taken an extraordinary imaginative leap."
‘The Comedy of Errors; Salome; Lift: Life Streaming’, Kate Kellaway in The Observer (04-07-2010)read the review (in English)
"Your suspicion is very cleverly aroused, instead of your understanding. Brechtian alienation, instead of a ‘unique coalescence’."
Wouter Hillaert op www.commotie.nuread the review (in Dutch)
Background
articles
Andrew Woods wrote an article about Life streaming in the context of joint authorship which on the online platform Metamodernism. In his article ‘Common Authorship: Towards an Authority of Art’ the author states: “Life Streaming can be seen as motor of subjective transformation insofar as it participates in the production of a global vision through networked interaction…through a multiplicity of different cultural, social, geographical and personal layers”.
read the article (in English)
‘Nomadic creation’, that is what Nienke Scholts calls the practises of a number of creators who do not seek out the unknown ‘to abolish the differences but to highlight them and ultimately provide the European public with an insight into them’. Using the practical example, Life Streaming, for which she did the dramaturgy, she wrote the essay ‘Bewegend denken’’ (Thinking in motion) for Etcetera #125.
read the essay (in Dutch)
Credits
direction Dries Verhoeven
direction assistent Caroline Farke and Jake Oorloff
assistent designer Pascal Leboucq
dramaturgy Nienke Scholts
technicians Jeffrey Kranen and Silk BV
software Ingredient Media
photography Tim Mitchell
actors Sasith Kulathunga, Anushad Tharunayana, Dineth Chathuranga, Gerard Lucky, Yasal Ruhunuge, L. H. Athila Ruwan Amarasiri, G.W. Jayantha, Nuwan Silva, Chaminda, Salmon, Upul, Susantha, Chaminda, Rohitha, Dilani, Nimal, Prasad Pereira, Wimal Ranathunga, Imaad Majeed, Surin Merinnage, H. P. Hansika Priyadarshani, Ruhani Perera, Jake Oorlof, Tracy Jayasinghe, Michael Mendis, Ridma Kasun, Anjalie Pieres, Yashoda Suriyapperuma, Sadern Alwis, Kumudithe Perera, Natalie Soysa, Theena Kumaragurunathan, Kasun Dissanayake, Buddima de Mel, Nuwan, Shamira Dissanayake, Waseem Haseem and Zul Karnain
co-commissioned by Uz Arts, Huis and Festival a/d Werf, LIFT Festival London and Schauspielhaus Bochum