We have a situation! is a series of live, trans-border, online-offline participatory performances addressing current cross-cultural European issues.
“There is no use in deceiving ourselves with hope. Our most effective course is to confront the situation as it is, and if it is still bad, to acknowledge the badness, trusting in the truth as the premise of any improvement, and feeling a new security because of the very fact that we have met and verified the worst.” – Clement Greenberg, The collected Essays and Criticism, vol.2, Arrogant Purpose, p192.
During the first quarter of 2013, networked performances will take place at local venues and simultaneously in the online platform UpStage, sharing stories across European national borders and posing questions that creatively frame a specific situation.
After each performance, audiences connecting online in real time will participate in discussions that imagine creative solutions to the situation. This process aims to bring people together in a creative event and foster an understanding of countries as communities of people, with many commonalities.
Four “situations” will be created in four countries – France, Netherlands, UK and Austria – with each “situation” involving a 5-day workshop and the performance. Each “situation” will be transparent and the entire process made available online with the aim of producing a performance model that can be adopted and adapted by other artists and organisations for their own “situations”.
The project is supported by a grant from the European Cultural Foundation and the partners are:
- APO33: interdisciplinary artist-run laboratory and Platforme Intermédia/La Fabrique: Space for experimental arts in Nantes, France
- MAD emergent art center: artist-led laboratory, platform and provider of emergent art in Eindhoven, Netherlands
- Furtherfield: media arts collective and gallery space for art, technology and social change in London, UK
- Schaumbad Freies Atelierhaus: independent artists’ collective in Graz, Austria.
Lead artist Helen Varley Jamieson (Germany/NZ) will work with participants at each location, and developer/artist Martin Eisenbarth (Germany) will provide technical support for the online platform, UpStage, enhancing it to meet the artistic needs of the project.