Prophetic performance / Visual arts ritual / steirischer herbst 2015
Falsh Forward - A photolab of things to come... As part of the performance collective FOURDUMMIES, I devised and realised this performance / conceptual Klamauk / participatory happening together with Wilhelm Binder, Stefan Beer, Waltraud Brauner, Johanna Moder, Sissi Noe, Lisa Schwalb and Christoph Szalay for the contemporary arts festival steirischer herbst in 2015.
The oracle predicts that the artist collective FOURDUMMIES will be collecting and safeguarding visions of the future together with residents and festival visitors in Graz, Leoben and Vordernberg. These visions will be turned into a joint visual prophecy in the Double Moment experiment, to await the moment of rediscovery in a time capsule buried in the ground for twenty years.
The Fourdummies collective poses the big questions of the future: what remains, what comes, and what disappears? To examine these questions, the group will be travelling to Graz, Leoben and Vordernberg in the herbst vehicle, in search of residents’ and festival visitors’ visions of the future. They invite, inquire and engage in conversation. Personal stories and local politics lead to visions of social change. Images and scenarios feed on fears of the future and wishful notions, flashing up and manifesting themselves in a joint visual prophecy that confronts vague assumptions with something substantial. But the collective doesn’t leave it at that: as a result of the Double Moment experiment developed by the Fourdummies, the present (2015) and the future (2035) touch for a time-leap. The photolab for things to come thus not only predicts, but joins visitors to pre-determine a scenario of the future. Imagination and fiction coincide in the moment of creating the image. The resulting photo-future montage, to be buried in a specially designed time capsule in Leoben and Vordernberg during a ceremonial procession, carries a promise: in twenty years’ time, in 2035, the image visionaries will return with spades and shovels to dig up the time capsule and see how close they came to the future. Back to the Future or Forward to the Past! Do you remember the future?
Idea and concept Waltraud Brauner & Georg Klüver-Pfandtner
By and with Wilhelm Binder, Waltraud Brauner, Georg Klüver-Pfandtner, Johanna Moder, Sissi Noé Lisa Schwalb Christoph Szalay
Photo montage Stefan Beer & Anthony Gayton
Production
Commissioned by steirischer herbst
steirischer herbst
Dramaturgy Flori Gugger & Petra Pölzl
Project management Jakob Schweighofer
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