Chat-Inferno
Photo: Paula Reissig
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The hybrid performance “Chat-Inferno” examines the communication form of chats with all of their emotionalising and social volatility. Inspired by Dante’s “Inferno”, the artist group Interrobang is given a space in HAU2 where the audience can walk around with tablets and headphones and chat with each other. A parallel online audience can also take part in the chat. Together, the participants set off through the circles of hell of our time: the limbo of the indifferent, the sea of flames of deceptions or in the quagmire of wrathful souls.
Gallery
Press
“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here!” is what it says in Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. Interrobang invites us once again to take a tablet and enter HAU 2, where their piece ‘Chat Inferno’ uses Dante’s classic text as a central motif. The piece begins surprisingly unspectacularly but when the chat is fired up, it quickly turns into a blaze. The middle of the space is filled with a large square with four huge screens on which we follow the action. The participants have pseudonyms, the chat activity is ranked and the quantity of posts quickly becomes competitive. At some point the keyboards are a-glow.”
(Iven Yorick Fenker, Nachtkritik, 08.10.22)
“Taking the first part of Dante’s Divine Comedy as its starting point, the performers send the theatre visitors into chat-hell. Every visitor is equipped with a tablet and receives instructions and questions through the screen. A voice warns us ‘From here there is no way back’ and ‘Do you belong to the stingy or the profligate group?’
[…] Interrobang doesn’t leave the course of the performance entirely to chance, on the contrary, through clever comments from so-called influencers, the chat is steered in the desired (hellbound) direction.
[…] What might sound like a simple technology is in fact an ingenious system. […] ‘Chat Inferno’ uses nearly 20 different websites. Eight of them provide the screens that form an apocalyptic stage set. Other websites are for the chat. Surveys and other tools are implemented as websites which are then brought together in a cloud-based solution. Depending on what the participant chooses, the narrative content on the headphones changes. And there it is again, that fear of missing out.”
(Susanne Gietl, Kulturschoxx.de, 04.10.22 )
Credits
Concept: Interrobang By and with: Florian Fischer, Max Gadow, Lisa Großmann, Elisabeth Lindig, Peggy Mädler, Till Müller-Klug, Lajos Talamonti, Nina Tecklenburg Coding: Florian Fischer, Hannes Breul Stage: Sandra Fox Music: Friedrich Greiling Dramaturgical Advise: Selma Böhmelmann, Christiane Kühl Coding-Dramaturgy: Pilar Petropoulos-White, Veronika Risnovska Assistance: Annelie Uhlig Light Design: Dirk Lutz Graphics, Animation: Jürgen Fehrmann, Julia Elger Videotechnics: Marius Bratoveanu Production: ehrliche arbeit, Sandra Klöss PR: Tina Ebert Intern: Aurelia Kraus
Production: Interrobang. Co-production: HAU Hebbel am Ufer. Funded by: Hauptstadtkulturfonds and Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe.
Dates
HAU Hebbel am Ufer
Spy on Me #4
30. September until 03. October 2022 | HAU2 und HAU4