Category: Digital Natives

Articles tracking conferences and events as part of the DIGITAL NATIVES cooperation project.

Digital Prophesies Lab

Digital Prophesies Lab

© Schauspiel Köln
© Schauspiel Köln

An Ancient Greek myth tells that Zeus decided to determine where the centre of “Grandmother Earth” or Gaia is. To do that, he sent two eagles to fly in opposite directions – one from the Western extreme and the other one from the Eastern extreme of the sky. Their trajectories crossed over town of Delphi, seated on the slopes of Mount Parnassus. Zeus marked the spot by placing a stone known as omphalos or the naval of Gaia. At that place the most famous and influential temple of Antiquity emerged – The Temple of Apollo, where Pythia spelled her prophesies during certain months of the year.

Yet, in the 21st century we find out that the centre of the Earth has moved, at least temporarily, to Cologne, Germany. At Offenbachplatz to be precise. There the oracles of Delphi meet us at the end of a theatrical journey digi/topia. It involves 30 non-professional actors (with the exception of several elderly actors from the troop of the theatre) between the ages of 13 and 78, whom take their “test subjects”, the members of the audience, into small groups of up to 12 people in every 15-minutes through their performative installation, dedicated to the possible scenarios about the future they can imagine. It lasts about 90 minutes and unfolds between the two buildings of Schauspiel Köln, a significant part of which is undergoing reconstruction at the moment. Like the paths of the two eagles, it also presents two opposite to one another possible trajectories about what might be coming next: the utopian one and the dystopian one. Near the end they come together in a scene, where the audience is standing in a circle, each person showing to the others his or her just created avatar on the tablet, received at the entrance of the room, when two oracles appear to share their prophesies in the form of mystic sentences.

According the digital traces left intentionally on the official Instagram profile of the project, the first rehearsal of the group took place on 25th of February 2019. They worked together with the director and theatre pedagogue Bassam Ghazi, artistic manager Saliha Shagasi and the dramaturge Julia Fischer. And it feels like it has been a well-guided and structured but yet collaborative creative process. A separate journey on its own for the participants themselves, through which a personal performance, reflecting their own present concerns, fears, thoughts and positive anticipations has emerged.

The result of it, which is being presented between 17th and 19th of May to the public, consists of 4 major stages, following one another chronologically, clearly marked and announced within the performance: assumption, utopia, dystopia and digi/topia. The general framework in which digi/topia happens is the one a scientific laboratory, which studies the future, entitled “Laboratory for Future-Oriented Perspective Research (LzP)” – a common image when future is discussed, which implies the belief that what is coming next can be predicted, controlled and even directed, as opposed to be thoroughly chaotic and random. The scientists and the different characters inhibiting this space gently guide the audience through each scene and pass on the group to one another very rhythmically.

The assumption phase begins at the very entrance of the theatre building, right next to the box office, where data, including shoe size, is collected for each “test subject”. Afterwards two researchers in white aprons welcome the participants on the stage of the theatre. There they help them to calibrate and dive into digi/topia’s experiment through VR glasses and a short movie. As a matter of fact, that is the only instance when the audience is situated in a functioning theatre space, though again the theatrical convention is converted, since the viewers are also main actors in this performance. Thus, since everyone in the group is wearing the VR glasses, everyone is focused on the projection screened in them and there is no viewer-viewing situation. It is only the young actors, playing the scientists in the lab, who are actually observing their “test subject” on the stage. And from here on the digi/topia journey continues backstage, thought the other half of theatre building, the spots which are meant to remain invisible for the theatre-goers most of the time: the corridors, makeup, dressing and rehearsal rooms, the basement and the main stage of the building on the other side of the square, which is under construction and closed for the public since 2013.

The second phase of the experiment is the “place too good to be true”, which is the famous utopia – a genre capturing and triggering human imagination with a great strength especially since 1516, when Thomas More best-known work Utopia was printed for a first time. In the performance, the digi/topia’s utopia is introduced to the audience by the character of Dr. Emmett “Doc” Brown, the inventor of the first-time travel machine from the popular American science fiction film from 1985 Back To The Future. This is one of the few direct references in digi/topia, which clearly indicates the intentional choice of the performance to work with images from popular culture.

The visions of a positive future presented discuss topics such as: the choice to continue getting old, instead of taking the opportunity to never age; politics and the very social and equal model of a country that has been achieved in Germany and shall be spread across the world; the possibility to have nice vacations in outer space; ecology in terms of the successful creation of plastic-eating robot and the fact that people have learnt to live with only what is necessary; appearance of the perfect love which is bodiless and totally virtual, with a perfect algorithm, that completely matches the needs of its lover. As a matter of fact, what makes this part utopian is not that the cases presented are not dubious, as some of them are actually quite twofold and seem ironic or as setting questions for further debate, but is that the personages are clearly happy in the situation the audience members encounter them in, their attitude is as if something nice and very positive is happening to them, even in the cases one sees from aside this does not necessary seems to be true.

This tone completely rolls over when the audience is taken into the dystopian phase – the dark counterpart of the utopia, which has prevailed in literature and art of the 20th century. 1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke are among the most obvious titles that come to mind when the term – meaning “a bad-utopia” or “an imagined state or society in which there is great suffering or injustice, typically one that is totalitarian or post-apocalyptic” (according to Oxford dictionary – A/N) – is mentioned. What is also worth noting is that in the recent years, with the quick development of platforms such as Netflix and HBO Go and the TV series produced by them, the dystopian genre is on the rise with productions like Black Mirror, The Handmaid’s Tale (based on Margaret Atwood’s novel from 1985), The Society, West World and many others attracting thousands of viewers. And it feels like those TV shows are part of the closer context in which the digi/topia performance exists and “thinks” about the future. Most of them choose as a narrative strategy the creation of a complete image of the tumbledown world, which is shown bit by bit from within series after series. However, Black Mirror for example opts for presenting different case studies of particular situations, posing ethical questions in each episode, which happen to different people in diverse surroundings. Digi/topia seems to be making a similar dramaturgical choice: it unfolds as a series of separate scenes, where the audience sees each character once and a very particular situation, without a narrative link between them beyond the overall frameworks of the different stages that they are placed into and the general topic of the work.

To enter the dystopian phase of digi/topia, the audience is equipped with prerequisites for construction workers – special shoes with thick soles, helmets and protective vests – emphasizing the peculiarity of what is coming, and taken downstairs, in the gloomy, wet basement, linking the two buildings. Here live the professor and her test subject, that goes insane and asks for more and more broken glass; the librarian, taking good care of the bookworms; the ecologist worried that there is no nature left; the girl, obsessed with likes on social media, who becomes hysterical because she could not finish her latest post due to an empty battery; the paranoiac man, convinced that microchips have been injected into everyone a long time ago; the arrogant female robot, dressed in an evening dress, who let us know that robots are in charge and people are doing what they want for quite some time now; the actress, who reminisces about what it felt like to act live on stage and to be a real human.

When the audience is passing through the dystopian stage of the digi/topia experiment, the scientists, who were the leading figures in most of the scenes during the utopian stage, take a step back and become more like supervisors, escorting the “test subjects” and letting them experience what is there, without interacting with them. Their white aprons are not seen anymore, there are only staff people around, taking care of the security and quietly following the group, while it takes a look at this “exhibition” of cheerless, depressed and dim characters, living in the dark corridor beneath the ground.

They appeared again in the last stage – the digi/topia itself. It begins upstairs, where the light is bright and a few minutes later the oracles of Delphi will dance among the group, spelling their magic words and attempting to somehow connect the two extremes of what is the best possible to happen and the worst possible to come, according to the creators of digi/topia. Their appearance also reminds that the quest for predicting the future is not new at all and what lays ahead is simultaneously unpredictable and up to us.

 

Published 27 June 2019

 

A Space For Everybody

A Space For Everybody

Digital Festival Night at the Volkstheater Wien

The Volkstheater in Vienna opens its virtual doors and together with the participating countries Germany, France, Hungary and Greece, the theatre stage becomes a dance floor for a common future.

I am sitting with other theatregoers and participants in the lovely auditorium of the Volkstheater. The stage is empty except for a cinema screen and four young women who are hosting the evening and are entertaining both the Viennese audience as well as the four participating theatre groups. There is a relaxed atmosphere reminiscent of a theatre rehearsal, all doors are open, people sit where they like. Some are moving around; others are looking at the additional exhibitions. The lighting is cleverly chosen. Dark enough in order to create a feeling of intimacy but also bright enough in order to be able to move around accident-free.

Digital Natives is not just the name of this festival, it also identifies the generation of the participants. They all grew up with the internet and navigate it instinctively. Their approach displays confidence verging on naivety, which they seem to have not only with regards to the internet but also to our future. This evening I can share in the enthusiasm and the faith which these many young people have dedicated to this project. The play Concord Floral by Jordan Tannahill is the junction which brings all participating theatres together. The Junges Volkstheater has already staged the Austrian première in 2018. For the project #digitalnatives19, co-funded by the Creative Europe program of the European Union, Vienna has staged a continuation of the play together with Silver Surver while the other countries have staged new productions of Concord Floral in the recent weeks and months.

Back to the auditorium: the entertaining of the Viennese audience has finished and the live broadcast from the other theatre groups starts. It begins with the Schauspiel Köln. The young actors and actresses explain their approach to the play. They rewrote a lot of the original, appropriating the text anew and adding several choreographies. The subsequently projected trailer shows a futuristic stage setting and many dance performances making the physicality of the play seem palpably close.

The passion for theatre unites them all, as a young actor from the Comédie de Reims puts it in the Making-of the French project. We see the young man laughing and crying during the rehearsals, how he runs against a human wall only to show a tender embrace in the next scene. The live broadcast from France shows however that even if technology for border-free togetherness would theoretically be available it can still fail at in its practical implementation. Unfortunately, we cannot hear the French presentation, but the trailer shows a production which sticks closely to the original. No wonder, considering that the French had only two weeks for preparing their staging. The stage design shows a nearly empty stage with a couch – the play thrives on the text which the actors live intensely. On this point it is very similar to the trailer of the Hungarian Theatre of Cluj. It seems that also here the staging is very much oriented towards the original – instead of the couch we see a greenhouse in the background.

While we are listening to the young people from the other countries, visitors continue meandering through the theatre in Vienna. In one of the theatre boxes people wearing 3D glasses are performing certain tasks, tired guests can have a little rest in a corridor while enjoying a video and sound installation. In the corridors and salons of the Volkstheater, the department of experimental media from the Technical College of St. Pölten is showing projects that encourage an exchange with the viewers by means of digital technologies. I was particularly impressed by the project Infinity frames. If you look in the frame you are suddenly looking at yourself. This project allows the spectator to observe themselves in a way which is otherwise only possible for others. Your own spectrum of experience is being broadened: in this new space we experience ourselves not only from within but for the first time also as our own counterpart.

Back to the theatre hall – now it is Vienna’s turn. A group of the Junges Volkstheater recounts their approach to the play and their decision to translate it into German. Vienna was the only theatre to translate Concord Floral into their own language trying to expand the play using dialect and personal experiences. The stage design has also adopted a very idiosyncratic shape.

In the end we see the National Theatre of Northern Greece. They chose a totally different approach and rather than one staging, they opted for two newly developed workshops based on text extracted from the play. The teenagers are asking each other many questions related to the play in a mixture of interview and interrogation. The spontaneous answers draw a fascinating picture of what it means to grow up in our present day. In the second workshop the participants are addressing their parents as well as the audience. Attempts at explanation are being offered, the actors are pleading for more understanding, but above all for more trust.

After this round of presentations, the five theatre groups continue exchanging views in a relaxed Q & A session. Vienna talks about friendships which formed during the rehearsals and are being reflected in the play. Hungary continues to deliver most laughter. Cologne has already started with the first dance performances, but we still cannot hear France. For me Greece is decently getting lost in the shuffle of the ensuing party. At the end everybody is dancing on their stages celebrating both themselves and the successful closing of their project. Knowingly or unknowingly they also celebrate the European idea which brought them all together. Beyond individual country borders, internet and theatre unite these young people and motivates them to cooperate on something much greater. They are all under the magic spell of theatre and its possibilities of telling stories and taking these out to the world. We need them, these manifold perspectives on our counterparts which produce understanding and address our empathy. We live in difficult times, but on evenings like these all doors appear to be open. Theatre proves to be a space where everything seems possible and everything is possible.

Experience Report – Digital Party Night

Experience Report – Digital Party Night

A report on genuine international exchange at the end of the Digital Natives project

The technicians of the Volkstheater are testing the internet connection for the live connetcion. A vague hissing can be heard from the loudspeakers. “You can just listen to the internet at work”, says an actress of the theatrical production Concord Floral, staged by the Junges Volkstheater – the audience and the teenagers sitting at the front of the stage laugh.

A bit later the teenagers on stage are explaining that the second part of the #digitalnatives19 festival started in March. The theatre groups from the five participating countries met in Vienna and organised a common theatre workshop. The video portraying this meeting does not just reflect the fun the teenagers had while acting, but also how much talent they have.

The first highlight of the evening is about to start: the young theatre groups are being connected and then questioned one by one and recount their own staging of Concord Floral. The guys in Cologne have relocated the play from Canada to their own city. In their version, the action does not take place in a greenhouse but in the House Fühlingen, a notorious abandoned house, allegedly haunted. When asked, they explain that the group loves dancing and that’s why they do that also in their production.
From the production in Reims, I don’t get to see much tonight, unfortunately because there are considerable technical problems with the broadcast from France. I just see the video about their production, which shows along with other things, the teenagers hanging around and rehearsing – and how much fun they have in the process. One of the Hungarian teenagers recounts that the group did not start right away with rehearsals but rather played games and got to know each other. Subsequently it was as much about exploring oneself as the characters. Behind him there is whispering followed by laughter. He quickly turns around, speaks to his colleagues and addresses us again – the audience from the other four countries – saying with dry humour: “I just heard, that I am the cringiest part so far, so I’ll stop talking. Let’s watch the video!“ The audience and the teenagers in Vienna are still laughing when footage of the video comes on. There are moments like these which give the evening a special charm. The teenagers don’t take themselves too seriously, crack jokes and laugh together about the small hitches or that occasionally occur during the evening. That not everything runs perfectly isn’t so bad after all.
Finally, it’s the turn of the group from Austria. The teenagers talk about the way they adapted the text to their own slang and created Instagram accounts for each character. Now and then these were even considered to be genuine profiles, they recount, laughing and somehow proud, too. They also mention that their première of Concord Floral was more than a year ago and how nice it is for them that the other groups have just started with their performances. A lot of appreciation and gratitude resonates at this point. The group from Thessaloniki didn’t work on a proper theatre production but rather organised workshops related to the contents of the play. Initially, this “twist” took me by surprise but then I started thinking about the many difficult subjects being addressed in Concord Floral – for example, growing up as an outsider or bullying.

In the ensuing Q & A session one group asks another one four questions about the developing process of their production. In order to give you an impression I would like to give you an example: When asked if the rehearsal period had any influence on school grades, one teenage girl recounts that she worked on the staging during her final year in high school. She heard from various people that rehearsing five times a week for four hours each time during this period was by no means a good idea. She says that the rehearsal time had no negative influence on her school performance. Turning Ytong aerated concrete blocks into dust during the evening rehearsals was a great balance to the bone-dry everyday school life. In the audience and on stage you see just sympathetic nodding and smiles.

I like the honest and sympathetic exchange between the teenagers: That’s how genuine international exchange looks like, I think to myself. The way the teenagers talk about Concord Floral shows how intensely they dealt with the play and how much they thought about the questions it poses. You can also notice how much it meant for all of them to work on the play and the great joy they had during the performance. It was a really genuine and nice drawing to an end of this international youth project.

 

Published 24 June 2019

 

Exchanges Around Concord Floral

Exchanges around Concord Floral

© Vince Vdh
© Vince Vdh

Elen Riot shares some of her conversations from workshops with teenagers in Reims, France surrounding the performances of Concord Floral.

The most recent presentations of the piece took place on May 28 and 29. I have been struck by a few statements, and I will mention them briefly. A class of students at Lycée Gustave Eiffel were there before the Wednesday morning performance, and we exchanged at the Bar de la Comedie, in the company of Rénilde Gerardin and three of their teachers.

I asked the young people if certain series influenced their judgments about the risks of social networks. I mention a series, “Black Mirror”, which I have already heard about in passing in the classes. One student, who knows the series well (as many of his classmates obviously also do), evokes an infamous blackmail following the distribution of intimate photographs. The young person who talks about this series thinks that “it happens in real life, everyone sees everything…” and a young girl adds:” For example, we send our holiday pictures and immediately, the burglars get ready to come to our house”.

I am thinking of Jacqueline Ryan-Vickery’s (Ryan Vickery, J. (2017). Worried about the wrong things: Youth, risk, and opportunity in the digital world. MIT Press.) book, which refers to the prevailing climate of “moral panic”, particularly the idea that children or families fall prey to predators watching online. She says that the most popular American series present a chain of disasters that exaggerate the dangers and encourage adults to raise barriers between young people and the use of digital tools, especially for young people of modest backgrounds, as a way to give up offering them education in uses and tools that they do not naturally have access to.

A young boy picks up on the theme of rumours and photographs posted online when I ask them for their reaction when they see shocking content or when they disapprove. “A guy, for example, who gets hit, and it’s filmed…” says someone, he says again: “If the video shows the guy I know getting hit, I share.

One of the teachers: “What do you say by sharing that?”

The young person answers: “I just share…”

The teacher: “But with whom do you share?”

The young man: “With my friends, my network, first I share and then we start the conversation, we explain ourselves.”

I am surprised by this laconism. It’s as if, in the reaction, what counts is the scoop, or the enigma, it is the fact of not taking sides on shared information, of waiting to know the reaction of others, as if the spontaneous reaction of others, without influence, at the beginning, guarantees that the dialogue would then continue with detailed information. Is it a form of suspension of judgment, or simply the refusal to use words that would not necessarily be appropriate?

Alberto Casilli describes the condition of digital workers who transmit news, placing captions of photographs online, serial content.

I come back to the amusing anecdote of a young actress from Concord Floral who was astounded that her mother had the nerve not to ask her before posting pictures of her on Facebook, sharing them with her friends when “everyone can see them”. This is followed by comments on the type of photographs that may be problematic. We come to this notion full of implicitness: “embarrassing photos”. We need a reciprocal agreement, say several young people, otherwise “everyone laughs” and a young girl adds: “And then it will never stop, tomorrow, if you delete, in fact it will always be there and your boss can go and see.”

For young people, aesthetic and moral codes (what is done and what is not done) are even clearer and more demanding than for adults, because they seem to fear compromising the present but also the future. Is it the result of parental fears, teacher warnings or the culture change Sherry Turkle (Turkle, S. (2016). Reclaiming conversation: The power of talk in a digital age. Penguin Books, London.) talks about when she exalts the values of conversation, which gives a chance to explain, to nuance and which young people seem to want to avoid with their parades of text messages?

A young girl sighs, when I talk about their generation, the generation of “digital natives”: “And even then, we are not the worst, we, the mobile phone, we had it at 11 years old, now you have six-year-olds with IPhone 6s, they do it “just for the fashion effect”, not to use it.” This young girl seems like a mother worried about her children, appalled by the dangers to which the innocence of youth is exposed. Her neighbour replied: “Well, yes, they are younger than us, but it’s still the same generation as us, in short it’s the same.” This echoes Michel Serres’ (Serres, M. (2015). Petite poucette. Editions Le pommier, Paris) reflections on “Thumbelina” and this generation of the youngest whose ways of learning escape us (at the same time fascinate, worry and soften us), as if they did not live in the same world as us.

Before going to see the play, Rénilde asks them what they expect to discover, by going to see the play. First there is a long thoughtful silence from the class, then a young man answers, very seriously: “We are going to see things that we do not dare to admit.”

What is of the order of the disgraceful and which is common to both digital and theatre, I wonder at this point.

At the edge of the stage, everyone explains a little bit about their vocation, the young actors talk about their experiences, and Alexandra, who composed the music, performs it on stage and also plays, confides: “I am from the MTV generation, that’s how I started playing the guitar. »

Will these young people later say that about an online site they know?

Ferdinand replied, about roles and young people: “I was the one who distributed the roles, because this is my role.” What is the role of the role, I wonder, on the Internet, when there is no director?

At one point, a spectator asks how it feels to play “bad” characters, to which Martin answers: “In fact, you ask us if we’re not assholes? Well, no, we’re not assholes, except for one or two that I think of…”

A little later, a gentleman asked the question differently: “I am not from the social network generation, but it seems to me that this encourages harassment.” This refers to the question of “shaming” that is the subject of debate about the Internet. Is it a way of exerting a form of pressure on behaviour in addition to the official frameworks of political and legal institutions, as Antonio Casilli (Casilli, A. A. (2010). Les Liaisons numériques. Vers une nouvelle sociabilité?: Vers une nouvelle sociabilité?. Le Seuil.)  and Claudine Haroche (Aubert, N., & Haroche, C. (2011). Les tyrannies de la visibilité. Editions Erès, Paris. Haroche, C. (2008). L’avenir du sensible: Les sens et les sentiments en question. Presses universitaires de France.)

suggest, or a way for the intelligence of the crowds to fight against the system and defend new ideas, for example in favour of the environment, as we are witnessing today with an enormous mobilization of young people on an international scale (Jacquet, J. (2014). Is shame necessary?. Penguin Books, London)? In the tone and manner in which these issues are addressed, there is a strong moral commitment on the part of young people, and a very strong attention to these issues insofar as, by asking the question of “is it good, is it bad?”, the question of the moral stature of the person they embody in the eyes of others is already raised for these young people.

This self-presentation (Goffman, E. (1978). The presentation of self in everyday life (p. 56). London: Harmondsworth.) may well include a new facet, that of the self-image given for viewing online (Bullingham, L., & Vasconcelos, A. C. (2013). ‘The presentation of self in the online world’: Goffman and the study of online identities. Journal of information science, 39(1), 101-112.), but in this case, when Martin answers, he asks the same question differently since he is trying to answer a question that concerns the possible confusion between his character on stage (and those of the other actors) and his personality as it appears during the debate on this “stage edge”. This diffraction of self-presentation spaces is one of the most interesting issues to question at the moment, insofar as, unlike previous generations who have rather built by successive additions, the young people we have spoken to sculpt in an already existing material, and in a way, spread out new forms of coexistence and co-presence with oneself.

 

Published on 13 June 2019.

Expedition to the Room Next Door

Expedition to the Room Next Door

© Szentes Zágon
© Szentes Zágon

To me it was the water tower in the castle gardens. A concrete water tower with graffiti on its walls, located along the zigzag paths of a neglected park with lush vegetation. That’s where we went smoking after the acting sessions of our theatre group. Sometimes we drank booze, I have no idea what kind, and of course there were the discussions and the love affairs. I had this supercilious fear that today’s youngsters don’t have these sacral spaces anymore, spaces where the world order is suspended. They were born into something very different that we only try to learn (the internet, let’s name it). This impression may have stemmed from my inferiority complex, perhaps because I will never navigate this digital realm or what as effortlessly as they can. This is their realm, their jungle, where they know the names of plants and trees, where they know which living (?) creature is poisonous and which has curing power.

Jordan Tannahill is a Canadian daredevil from the Y-generation. He writes, directs, films and is deeply involved with North American post-dramatic theatre life. I was fortunate that in this season the Hungarian Theatre of Cluj-Napoca [KÁMSz] adapted Tannahill’s Concord Floral text, a play created in 2014 or 2016, depending on which source you turn to. I was fortunate because of multiple reasons. First, a good author appeared on my radar, i.e. I got to hear about him. Second, finally I could see a performance with fresh, up-to-date drama text, and third, I realized that I have prejudice towards digital inhabitants, for they as well have their sacral spaces, proprietary safe spaces, water towers and Concord Florals.

Well it is more complex than that. The text is about teenagers and in fact it was adapted by the KÁMSz because together with four other theatres from other countries, the Cluj-Napoca theatre was participating in a project organized by the Union of the Theatres of Europe (UTE). All five institutions adapted the same text to stage (the other four were the Volkstheater of Vienna, the Comédie of Reims, the Schauspiel of Cologne and the National Theatre of Thessaloniki), performed by teenagers. There is a fake aspect to this top-down flow of control, when a millennial author writes a play, five others direct it and I write about it, with all of us pretending to know that we don’t know what it means to start one’s adult life, but in fact there is nothing new under the sun, just think of the water tower. But it is futile to whine about it because Tannahill’s text feels authentic even though he himself is not a “digital native”. And based on what I saw at the closing party, the boys and girls definitely liked the text, they could identify with it and adjust it to their own lives and geographical-historical realities.

I watched the Cluj-Napoca performance of the play without any advance knowledge of the project and my first impression was that it was wonderfully refreshing. This freshness did not stem from the false idealization of adolescence, but from authenticity on the one hand and professionalism on the other hand. Do I mean to say that Y-generation actors were the key? No. Instead, it is great that Ferenc Sinkó and his creative associates were able to introduce digital natives into the theatrical profession. It is great that Tannahill was able to write an authentic text, it is great that Noémi László translated it brilliantly and that Krisztina Sípos adapted it to a stage text that sounded credible from the actors. I believe the text itself is refreshing, and so is the fact that a thoroughly postmodern performance finally works with a well-written stage script. (What I mean is that documentarist or jointly produced performances often seem to go into the opposite extreme when it comes to the significance (or insignificance) of the text, allowing the linguistic layer of what is actually said onstage to be the weak point of the performance. But the Concord Floral staged in Cluj-Napoca was not only great because of the original drama, but also because the text was adapted to Cluj-Napoca by local teenagers on a local stage, making it sound natural. The text is great, no doubt about it.)

The Concord Floral is an abandoned, run-down glass house where local youth gathers. In the program booklet, a stylized screen shot illustrates what it is for each character. “For some time, the Concord Floral provided the beauty of roses to the city, but after the florist couple who gardened the flowers deceased, it rendered the beauty of freedom to the new generations.” To some, it is a “concrete bench, a willow”, a walnut tree or the old pool opposite the U Stadium. In reality, it does not matter if the environment is urban or rural. Still, it seems that the members of this generation would seek a hideaway in a village in a group (“we explored it with my pals”) or alone in a city (“this is where I come if I want to be alone, to clean my head or if I just want to be outside”) in an attempt to find their true self. Maybe the difference is not between analogue and digital after all.

During the performance I did not feel for a minute that the actors were non-professionals, let alone children. Quite the opposite: the acting was pure and honest. I keep dwelling on authenticity because I feel this was at stakes here. I think it is always authenticity that is at stake in the case of teenagers. It is their stake, and this was the stake of the performance, too. The performance put no-frill, fresh acting to the fore. Direction, movements and the set were all subordinated to that. Through a tragic story, we could get an insight into a world that used to be ours, too. And we are reminded that treason, excommunication, bullying, sex and drugs were present in that world as well, and that any differences compared to today are only added in our minds in hindsight, because in fact we have the same fear that others would regard us as kids.

The homogeneous crowd of people dancing with their earbuds on first transforms into faces that began to tell a story, then the faces are associated with the characters as the story begins to take shape. The theme of an unjustly killed, returning soul organically fits into the era of immediate contact. The ghost communicating via digital devices stems from the same bad conscience as any other similar character in literature. Here the phone is not a theatre prop that is somehow forced into the play to indicate that it is a contemporary story. Here the phone is the extended member of bodies and the actors use it as any other parts of their body. It is no use to be abhorred by this, let us not be hypocrites. We must be glad that we are shown this in the play by those who are actually capable of showing it. In an especially strong scene, we hear an edited monologue while phone screens are projected to a giant stage screen, and we are asked the question: “Do you know where your child is?” Obviously, the virtual space is meant here.

The story is painful and the pain in this story, too, like elsewhere, is caused by the lack of empathy and openness. How exotic the world of a different generation can be, although they are living in the same space as we do, and how similar their stories are? The performance ends with a dilemma, a common human dilemma between desperation because of cruelty and the relentless search for beauty. It ends with this sentence: “I think people would rather choose to be merciful”.

I for one am happy that the production is not art for art’s sake from a societal viewpoint either, as it does have emancipating power. The play’s approach to LMBTQ identity, alienation and the latent forms of exploitation is liberating, albeit these topics are only addressed briefly. It is liberating for teenagers (and for all other generations for that matter) that they do not need to navigate around taboos. Stock phrase or not, our immediate future is in the hands of “adolescents”.

Digital natives are those for whom the virtual world is a natural environment that they were born into. Ever since anthropology emerged, it has been ruled by the key ethical standard that it should strive to understand the observed community instead of intervening with it either actively or through prejudice.  In this sense, the Concord Floral as staged in Cluj-Napoca offers an anthropological viewpoint to the audience. Still there was a turn in anthropology later when authenticity (also meaning scientific credibility here) became important. At that point, it was difficult to talk about any community without considering it our own, since it is impossible to assess the structure and dynamics of a cultural and sociological system from a purely outside perspective. The performance was anthropological in this sense as well, because the black mask effect could not come to the fore. The actors knew what they were talking about because they are talking about themselves.

Five cities could participate in the UTE’s project: Vienna, Cologne, Reims, Thessaloniki and Cluj-Napoca. The project was closed with a season-ending digital party, with an online broadcast session from each city taking the floor one after the other. Each presented briefly their performances and then the event continued with a common party. My impression was that there were no big cultural or concept-related differences in the approach and tone of the five productions. Some technical solutions were similar, too, even in the short trailers. Each radiated the joy we feel when we can present ourselves in an authentic manner.

Then came the party, at least in theory. The live online broadcast session was sustained but the screens were empty. In Cluj-Napoca, people walked around stiffly, biting on the complimentary food. It was also a little strange that only non-alcoholic drinks and mineral water were offered. The powers that be must sustain the outside image even when they allow discussions of how the same image is broken. You cannot digitalize the party space – that’s what I was thinking. But then I left the world of digital natives. Anthropology, like any other science has the paradox that the object of observation is inevitably changed by observation itself. There are good reasons for the rule that the last intact tribes must not be approached. The current stand anthropology is that untouched aborigine communities must be left as they are. The sole ethical approach is if we stay away from infecting them either biologically or culturally. Digital nomads, however, are not the last but the first tribe of their kind. For them, no element of human civilization that they are interested in is out of reach. Yet as with all closed communities, it is impossible to study them objectively, again because the observed phenomenon is changed by observation itself. I quickly left the online party and the live broadcast sessionsturns, hoping that it is a digital ritual that is only brought to completion when no outside observers are present.

 

Published on 17 June 2019

Feeling at Home Between Two Worlds

Feeling at Home Between Two Worlds

About the Digital Night Festival in Cluj-Napoca: The final event of the Digital Natives cooperation project between five European theatres, through the eyes of Bea Kovács.

© Szentes Zágon
© Szentes Zágon

 

Imagine you are just ready with all preparations for the party that you have been planning for weeks: you have purchased all party items (glasses, plates, confetti), drinks are in the fridge, a host of mini bites are on a tray, latest hits playlist compiled and your party dress is waiting to be put on. Everything is ready, only guests are missing. But even when they arrive, they will not be there physically: This is a digital party where we will not be connected physically, only virtually.

*

Encompassing five theatres from Vienna, Reims, Cologne, Thessaloniki and naturally Cluj-Napoca, the large-scale Digital Natives project organized by the Union of the Theatres of Europe (UTE) ended with a digital closing ceremony on 1 June. The event summed up and crowned this diverse initiative, bringing together theatre teams from these five cities in the virtual realm. The teams spent the last twelve months working on finding the theatrical means of discussing the broad phenomenon of digitalization and its impact on younger generations. Both individually and in a joint effort, the Volsktheater Wien, the Comédie de Reims, the Schauspiel Köln, the National Theatre of Northern Greece and the Hungarian State Theatre of Cluj-Napoca resolved to adapt Concord Floral, a drama written by a contemporary Canadian author, using teenagers with no prior stage experience as actors.  The adapted versions could digress from the original text and were meant to initiate discussions about the changes triggered by global digitalization in society and in the life of individuals.

The Digital Night Festival took place in the studio room of the Hungarian State Theatre of Cluj-Napoca [KÁMsz] on Children’s Day, 1 June. In the 2018/2019 theatrical season, the same room hosted the stage performances of Concord Floral, directed by Ferenc Sinkó. The organizers converted the empty, black space of the studio room into a magic, lively place by putting up a disco globe in it: the tiny glittering lights moving round and round kept the place in motion throughout the evening.

Arriving at a digital party is an exciting experience: Partly because I never attended a digital party before, except for the regular video sessions with my friends and the usual live video streaming, and partly because no party can be fully digital. When I entered the studio, all members of the young team were already there along with the key organizers and the catering staff that provided for a smooth eating and drinking experience. It seems the analogue part of the party must be in place first to give us sufficient energy to join, virtually, the main online party. “You are the first viewer” welcomed me theatre program director Zoltán Csép who is regularly addressed by the Concord Floral cast of 9-11th grade youngsters as “daddy”. I find myself in a cozy and homely atmosphere. In a Peter Brook-ish sense, my presence guarantees that the evening can also be enjoyed and interpreted as a theatrical performance.

*

I had the pleasure of seeing Concord Floral’s debut performance on 18 May and even though I am officially one generation older than the young actors and Tannahill’s characters in the play, I felt being at home and totally understood in the performance. As a teenager, I was not easy to deal with and I guess I caused more headache than necessary to my parents and teachers at the time. The night attracted me and so did restricted areas. I looked down somewhat on the theoretical education I received because I longed for far more practical experiences. During the transition-heavy grammar school years, my lasting and temporary friendships were the colourful aspect of my life: like roses of diverse colours on a black shirt, our shared adventures enabled me to emerge intact from the boring and meagre life at grammar school. Led by Ferenc Sinkó, the young team (Eszter Albert, Andor Balon-Ruff, Kristóf Dimény, Ráhel Csenge Geréb, Deborah Jenei, Ákos Kerekes, Dániel Nițu-Mányoki, Orsolya Rázmán, Bernadette Rus, Áron Sárosi, Márk Szabó, Eszter Szőllősi, Boglárka Török, Ágnes Turós) could recall for me the anxiety that I felt owing to my changing life and body 10-12 years ago. But the performance also brought me relief that the various embarrassments of one’s formative years all disappear over time, but only to be replaced by new, perhaps far more complex ones.

Nevertheless, the performance staged by the KÁMSz pointed out a huge generation difference that I consider absolutely decisive: It is about being a digital native or not. While I was 13 when I set up my first email account in an internet café and explored the joy of online chatting right around that time, these young people (who can talk about the pleasures and hazards of the world that surrounds them with respectable openness and self-criticism) were born when the internet was already a family member in many homes. Just like my contemporaries, I texted love messages on a large handheld mobile phone (my grandpa still has a phone like that: a wonderful relic from a (nearly) past era; “Today’s young people” use cutting edge technology to get closer to each other, and to nearly everything else in the digital realm. While watching the performance staged by Sinkó I could not help wondering what kind of a person I would have become if I had received a tablet instead of a handheld cell phone as a teenager. To what extent would I have been absorbed by the internet, to what extent could I have remain connected to the physical world that continues to amaze me despite all my love for the internet? What dangers would I have been exposed to if after the lights were switched off in the evening, instead of texting messages like “Good night, kisses, see you tomorrow” I would have entered a chat room also used by pedophiles?

Now that I approach my late twenties, I can see what I could not see when I was a teenager: Just because a young person seems to be an adult in terms of bodily appearance, his or her inner world is childlike in many ways. The stubbornness of adolescents that we all have been characterized by at some point may drift an individual into borderline situations where escape may be a dangerously close game. The internet simultaneously brings closer and expands the circumstances where the security of decision-making for a teenager is no longer there. Parents, however, can hardly access the relationship between a teenager and his smartphone, and often it takes only a second for a love affair to turn into bullying.

As a press worker I can see so many viable young people who become victims. Sitting at the Digital Night Festival, I am thinking we are lucky that finally a dialogue started about digitalization in Cluj-Napoca as well.

*

A photo appears on the screen set up on the disco studio stage, showing the Cluj-Napoca team. We are not in live connection yet. On the left side of the room (also the place of one of the most memorable mass scenes of the performance), there are a few beany bags with the team seated on or next to them. All of them wear a red top and it is not only Concord Floral that connects them: Apparently friendships and love affairs have been formed between the young participants. The fourteen grammar school students are enthusiastic and a little anxious: They can’t wait to see the actual festival to begin, to meet the four other teams, see the fruit of the work of others and presenting what they were working on at Cluj-Napoca. They are taking selfies. In the first row of the auditorium sit Zoltán and Emőke Veres, associates of the KÁMSz. They supervise the connection and obviously the team as well. Herself a youngster, too, Emőke’s patient presence can keep these high-energy teenagers under control, who are ready to spar back at any comment, and who perhaps only anticipate the actual party more than meeting the other teams online.

The first team to join online is that of Vienna’s Volkstheater, and albeit the audience at Cluj-Napoca is rather small (is there any kind of live broadcast that could make up for physical presence?), the atmosphere is tangibly becoming electrified. In an instance, we find ourselves in the main hall of Vienna’s wonderful theatre, and the building created by the architects Fellner and Helmer suddenly seems quite anachronistic: Now a team of young people are video chatting from its stage. No costumes, no set, no theatrical properties, only the openness of Austrian teenagers who rejoice when the online connection is finally up. After a brief welcome speech, we watch the video that sums up the workshop held before their rehearsals. Three young participants from each of the five teams travelled from the other European countries to Vienna in order to get the core dialogue of the Digital Natives project started through improvisation sessions, situation exercises, theatrical and non-theatrical sessions. The upbeat footage provides an insight into the workshops, also interviewing young team members who speak about their interest in theatre and acting on stage, about what it means to be an adolescent today and what research and preparation steps were taken before the rehearsals. One of the participants said that they are connected by a shared passion, and this sentence remains valid for the entire evening.

During the international team’s stay in Vienna, the Austrian capital also hosted the Digitalization & Democracy conference, featuring interdisciplinary speakers who addressed the (legal) consequences of relocating into the virtual world.

After the summary video, the teams from Cologne, Reims, Cluj-Napoca, Vienna and Thessaloniki introduced themselves one by one. Each group was dressed in “uniform” red or white tops, indicating that they consider themselves theatrical companies. While there were several common characteristics of the short videos, the most apparent shared attribute was the easiness that radiated from these teenagers. I am sure each community experienced smaller or bigger difficulties behind the scenes, yet the videos suggested they found joy in each other’s company and in working together. The second link between them was their affection for theatre; Although prior stage experience was not a requirement upon casting, it was obvious that the majority of young participants had a genuine in theatre and acting. The third link connecting the five different videos was the Tannahill drama itself: Apparently the young Canadian author’s text touched teenagers from the most diverse nationalities – a tangible proof of the universal nature of theatre performances.

Naturally, the differences I could detect related to the work methods and the nature of stage adaptations: There were contrasts in how each team used the space on stage, the set and the props. There were differences in their costumes and in their approach to the text and the interpretation choices regarding the storyline. E.g. the Cologne team adapted Tannahill’s text to a local environment, linking it to a local ghost house, incorporating own messages and additional text into the original drama. Unfortunately, owing to technical difficulties, the sound of the Reims team’s video was incomprehensible, but the video footage duly showcased their community and joyful work process that also gave room to music and dance. The Vienna team also put Concord Floral into a local framework. In the rehearsal period, they set up Instagram accounts for the actors that expanded the theatre stage by creating a universe across diverse media. Coming from a country that was worst hit by the economic crisis, the Greek team presented a video that had a more pessimistic tone and captured the downside of teenage life.

The Cluj-Napoca team was introduced by Kristóf Dimény in an impromptu speech. In easy-going, fluent English, he explained that the project was important for them as a community. He recalled that the fourteen of them worked well under the director and that the play was received well by the Cluj-Napoca audience. Since the local adaptation of Concord Floral was staged in a studio room and not in the main performance hall, the production turned out to be more intimate and personal, having a greater emotional impact on the audience, explained Kristóf. He said that their team wanted to show who they are, also adding that great friendships and loves were formed during the time that the team spent together. After that we watched an excerpt from the performance and applauded.

Understandably, after the grand introduction, the team’s attention and concentration level dropped. Some laid back on the bean bags, others went over to the foyer for food. Some others were taking selfies with their lips rounded, and others urge team members to stay put and behave respectfully  towards the other communities. The atmosphere is informal, curiosity lasts and soon the music is turned on.

*

In the next, informal part of the Digital Night Festival, the teams asked questions from each other regarding their work process and the resulting performance. Answers from the Cluj-Napoca team revealed that they cut parts of the original text, that director Ferenc Sinkó went out of his way to help the young actors and that the audience have loved the performance. Outside twilight is approaching (although it is difficult to tell inside with the studio’s disco light), and the vivid team disassembles every now and then. At a certain point, I find myself alone in the studio room, contemplating whether it can be regarded as a theatrical situation if I am watching the other teams on the screen alone? I find no answer to my question.

*

The “mandatory” part of the evening is over. The cold plates, fruit juices, cookies and sodas receive the attention, and slowly friends of team members arrive. With a sort of laid-back elegance, they chose to attend the party only. The rest of the festival is all informal. The only set program point is that every 30 minutes one team comes online with a brief flash mob, one after the other. Music soon starts and the studio room of the Hungarian State Theatre of Cluj-Napoca changes its function, turning into a dance floor.

*

Who are today’s young people and who are young people at any given time? How does it feel to be a teenager in 2019 and what will it be like ten years from now? Will our human needs change with our technological development? We feel being close to our German, Austrian, Greek and French friends (after all, we are only a click away from them) and then we enjoy a truly unique experience: Thanks to the internet, we can create a community that could hardly have been created in real life without massive expenditure. We are forming a team digitally, in a one-off situation under non-repeatable circumstances, the same way as ad-hoc theatre audiences do evening by evening. But can virtual connectedness replace physical presence? I don’t think so, but as a genuine Y-generation person balancing between digital worlds, I am aware that all that is digital actually makes up a large part of our reality. I think the path to joy and fulfilment is in finding a balance: Partying digitally with others while also having fun through reaching a common wavelength with those physically present around us, enjoying each other’s presence.

Although I took a French leave from the Digital Night Festival very soon after the party started (after all, I attended in the capacity of a viewer), I think the team managed to enjoy a pleasant fusion of real and virtual partying on Saturday night.

Published on 19 June 2019

Ghosts In Virtual Spaces

Ghosts In Virtual Spaces

 

UTE’s cooperative education project Digital Natives 2nd part “Digi /topia“ and „Digi / love“ premiered in Cologne

Here is what Ana Tasic, part of UTE’s journalist network Conflict Zones, based in Belgrad experienced.

Schauspiel Köln
Schauspiel Köln

As a part of the “Digital Natives” project, created by Union des Théâtres de l’Europe, “Digi/topia” directed by Bassam Ghazi, premiered at Schauspiel Köln on May 17, 2019. The starting point of “Digital Natives”, which started in June 2018 and was closed in June 2019, was to explore the balance between the digital and analogue world. “Digi/topia” was an explorative performance and visionary lab, in which thirty performers aged 13 to 78 took part. They explored utopian and dystopian meanings of living in our digital world and present their investigations in a performative experiment.

Director Ghazi explained in an interview the circumstances of the creative process: ”During the rehearsals, we were mostly talking about the changes in everyday life. Some were saying: Thank God for these changes, while the others were at the opposite side, thinking about wanting to free themselves from the technological progress, close their eyes and die. Some young people were critical towards technological changes, without any difference in regards to the older generations.” This production represents the continuation of Ghazi’s research on social changes in the context of new media: “Before we did “Digi/topia and “Concord Floral”, we had a play which was called “Real Fake”. There was a lot about what’s going in the Internet, how it creates new identities. We are creating new identities to show the outside world what we are like, while we move away from reality. So the question was: how much real and how much fake is in my identity, and in the end, what’s going to make me more human?”

“Digi/topia” is an interactive and ambient play, performed in procession, in different spaces of the construction site of the Cologne theatre, in the halls, little rooms, spacious cellars, but also on the stage (under construction). Each group of about a dozen spectators follows the performers through different fragments of the play. From the first scene with a VR-goggle mask for seeing robots play, through the survey in which we had to answer about our digital and online routines, (and) the scene where we got security clothes and helmets to make a tour of the impressive theatre site under construction. In the last scene of the performance, every spectator got a tablet and had to choose a character, to generate the profile of his own avatar. The performance illustrated challenging fragments of the bright and dark sides of our fast-changing world.

In the fifteenth scene of the play, we followed the performer who was playing the lover, overjoyfully speaking about his virtual love: „My love is perfect. Her algorithms are perfect. Perfect for me. I can do without physicality because everything else is right. It is perfect. I don’t need a body, no flesh and blood. I can finally be me.” The motivation to include the scene in the performance has been, as Ghazi said: “He just speaks with her, nothing more, and that’s enough for him.” Ghazi also explained that the group have been talking a lot about love during rehearsals: the fear of changing the essence of relationships in the future was dominant: “The Tinder and other dating apps phenomenon was present as well as the question about how we meet nowadays. The first contact happens more and more via Internet. This is different than twenty years ago. Young people today consider that their digital identity very important, even if fake moments are widespread. They somehow create a new person… Young people are afraid of how love will look like in the future. They seem to be lost, as relationships change rapidly. Looking at Netflix, one can find many series and movies where people fall in love with robots and artificial intelligence. That is one of the scenarios of the future, where human relationships will not anymore be in the focus. Mixed relationships between humans and machines will be central.”

A day after the “Digi/ topia”-premiere, the conference “Digi/love” was held, as another part of the “Digital Natives” project. The aim of the conference was to explore the changes of love relationships in the digital era: What will tomorrow’s love look like? How do social media change our relationships and our view of sex, body and community? The idea for having a conference was inspired by the creative process of “Digi/topia”, as assistant director Saliha Shagasi explained: “During our first rehearsals, we noticed that the subject of love is a subject that probably preoccupies everybody, whether in a good way or in a bad, who knows, but it is a subject which comes up, again and again. And in the play we couldn’t give that much space to it. There is a scene which explicitly deals with the subject of love, but that doesn’t mean that the entire play deals explicitly with love. That’s why we thought, we should organise a conference precisely on this subject, and because we have so many generations involved, it is exciting to see how loving and love have changed, and how different generations regard these matters, but also how each generation condemns or judges each other in this context.”

The first input was given by Stephan Porombka, professor at Freie Universtität Berlin, author of several books about changes in contemporary love relationships. He spoke about new circumstances in everyday life, in terms of being permanently online, in constant connection with each other: „This is a state only we know, unexperienced to former generations, which  throws us, and that’s important, into a state of permanent experimentation… Regarding  love or romantic relationship, it is absolutely clear: if we can be permanently online, we can be permanently connected. In other words, romantic relationships are permanently under the presence shock, problems occur due to this unique “fabrication” of presence. By developing something that is called spacing in psychology in romantic relationships, we tend to solve it. That means, we are trying to establish roles within which we are moving.”

Psychological relationship aspects in the digital world are in the focus of Sherry Turkle’s books. In “Alone Together” (2011), she writes: “These days, insecure in our relationships and anxious about intimacy, we look to technology for ways to be in relationships and protect ourselves from them at the same time. This can happen when one is finding one’s way through a blizzard of text messages; it can happen when interacting with a robot. I feel witness for a third time to a turning point in our expectations of technology and ourselves. We bend to the inanimate with new solicitude. We fear the risks and disappointments of relationships with our fellow humans. We expect more from technology and less from each other.” Technology is indeed seductive when facing our own vulnerabilities. We are lonely but we fear  intimacy. Digital connections and robots offer illusion of companionship without the real demands. We are more and more connected to each other, but essentially more and more alone, without true love.

This real and dystopic image at the same time, the mirror of our world, is a kind of radicalization of Fromm’s critical discussions about love in the Western civilization. In his seminal book „The Art of Loving“ (1956), Fromm claimed that our Western capitalism does not encourage true love: „No objective observer of our Western life can doubt that love is a relatively rare phenomenon, and that its place is taken by a number of forms of pseudo-love which are in reality so many forms of the disintegration of love.“ He also wrote that modern man was alienated from himself, from his fellow men, and from nature: „While everybody tries to be as close as possible to the rest, everybody remains utterly alone, pervaded by the deep sense of insecurity, anxiety and guilt which always results when human separateness cannot be overcome. Our civilization offers many palliatives which help people to be consciously unaware of this aloneness.“. Related to this, we can conclude that the relationships between men and robots, as well as the virtual substitutions of real love relationships of our times, could be regarded as the Fromm’s palliatives which alienate us from our beings. If they are not mere platforms for building real love, true connections in the material world, virtual relationships are nothing but the shadows of the real ones. They are forms of pseudo-love that Fromm wrote about. Captured ghosts in virtual spaces.

 

Published on 18 June 2019

Teenagers, theatre lovers, and ‘digital natives’

© Lefteris Tsinaris
© Lefteris Tsinaris

Teenagers, theatre lovers, and ‘digital natives’

Thessaloniki’s teenagers became ‘digital natives’ and presented their views and the problems they face to young people from other countries through theatre. The programme, which is entitled “Digital Natives” and co-funded by the EU’s Creative Europe programme, was implemented by the National Theatre of Northern Greece within the framework of the activities of the Union of the Theatres of Europe.

Teens from five European countries took part in the project, presenting the fruit of their joint labours, exchanging views on the things that matter to them, and enjoyed themselves at an interactive party broadcast live online to and from five European cities: Vienna, Rennes, Cluj, Cologne and Thessaloniki.

The teenagers from Vienna, Reims in France, Cluj in Romania, Cologne and Thessaloniki interacted online, expressing their relationship with contemporary technology and speaking about their concerns and interests. Their inspiration was provided by Concord Floral, a play by the young Canadian writer Jordan Tannahil. The NTNG participated in the program with a series of theatre workshops for teens: guided by the theatre educator Komno Krikelikou and in collaboration with the psychologist / drama therapist Foteini Papacharalambous, two groups of teenagers—30 individuals in all—began work on the play’s key themes back in October 2018. Using theatre-game techniques and drama, the groups set out to formulate questions, to tackle issues stemming from online communication, and to achieve a deeper understanding of both the Internet’s potential and its potential traps.

ETHNOS, 4 June 2019

Online party at the NTNG

The online party thrown on Saturday 1 June brought to a close the “Digital Natives” programme, which was co-funded by the EU’s Creative Europe programme. The programme, in which the National Theatre of Northern Greece took part, was run within the framework of the activities of the Union of the Theatres of Europe. Teens from five European countries took part in the project, presenting the results of their joint labours, exchanging views on the issues that concern them and, of course, enjoying themselves together at a party that was broadcast live online to and from five European cities (Vienna, Reims, Cluj, Cologne and Thessaloniki).

TYPOS TIS THESSALONIKI, 4 June 2019

Digital Natives

“I Share, Therefore I Am”

Notes from the 2nd Conference on Digitisation at the Comédie de Reims
article by Elena Galanopoulou from Athens

S.O.S. Encapsulation… or the Soul after Victory III

Interferences in Cluj-Napoca among Seasons, Représentation and the Digital
article by Herwig Lewy from Leipzig

David vs. Goliath

About the premiere of Jordan Tannahill's Concord Floral in Reims
article by Ana Tasić from Belgrade

The Generation of Joyful Knowledge

Silver Sufer, a theatrical experiment, in which the bracket between millenials and silver surfers finds its expression in all their contradictory and appropriate facets
article by Sergio Lo Gatto from Rome

Mixing the languages: personal encounters within a digital framework

A vivid picture of a spring weekend through the workshop and premiere’s experience of 25 teenagers from five different countries
article by Ina Doublekova from Sofia

 

“I Share, Therefore I Am”

“I Share, Therefore I Am”

How to think about digital and analogue communication on European stages in the future. What kind of intergenerational dialogue will be made possible. Notes from the UTE-Conference on Digitisation «Digitization and young people» at the Comédie de Reims, as part of «Digital Natives», a transnational educational UTE-project, from Elena Galanopoulou.

 

“I share therefore I am.” The phrase takes me pleasantly aback for a moment as it leaves the lips of French sociologist Elen Riot. I’m in the Bar de la Comédie in Reims, where UTE,  the Union des Théâtres de l’Europe is staging a conference on «Digitization and young people». A few minutes earlier, I’d uploaded a photo of the panel to my social media accounts. I had already announced my being there… so I really was here, I thought with a smile before sinking back into the speakers’ interesting takes on the subject.

Most of them are no longer in the first blush of youth. They are using their academic tool kits to try and monitor, understand and predict trends relating to an enormously dynamic phenomenon-in-progress: digital living. And with a focus on an age group every bit as volatile: young people.

However, they are still the most suitable to help us better understand of this subject. Patrice Flichy, a researcher and professor of sociology at Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée, is up first. He talks about the internet over the last three decades, dedicating a little time to the broader historical framework and a great deal more to the changes since. There is a huge semantic gulf between the Nineties’ view of the Net as a wonderful tool for democratizing public discourse and the suspicion which we might have towards it today.

These and other aspects of digital life are also rendered transparent in Concord Floral, the play which provided both the impetus for—and fundamental axis of—this meeting and public discussion. Written in 2015, the play was first staged in Canada, where it was a serious success, garnering particular praise for its handling of burning issues such as youth, democracy and the impact of new technologies and social networks on modes of socialization.

Its French première, which features a local amateur cast of young people aged 13 to 17, is to be staged that night. The Comédie de Reims is one of five member theatres participating in this educational and transnational UTE-project. The other four—Thessaloniki’s State Theatre of Northern Greece, Vienna’s Volkstheater, Cologne’s Schauspiel and the Hungarian Theatre in Cluj—have also undertaken to stage either the play itself or workshops and lectures relating to it. Ultimately, simultaneous project parts will unite the five cities and theatres involved via the… Internet, in a celebration which is surely one of most positive ways in which the Internet has impacted our lives. But what about data: all the information which, having been stealthily collected from users, ends up in the hands of powerful commercial giants? Flichy referred to the example of Housing. It started with people who simply wanted to share their sofas with guests, and ended up with platforms like AirBnB dictating the market’s rules.

In her lecture, Géraldine Taillandier, director of Centre Saint-Ex, Reims, dedicated to new ICT technologies, stresses that the Centre educates people aged 6 and up in using digital tools. Young people attending the Centre find themselves in a welcoming and free environment being encouraged to think “outside the box”. Their philosophy is so wide-ranging, it doesn’t even rule out hacking as a concept.

Olivier Nocent, professor of Computer Science at Crestic Laboratory, Reims, praises the work being done at Saint-Ex Centre, before going on to mention the algorithms which, having identified our preferences, undertake to inform and influence us by both redirecting our desires and attempting to foresee them. Simultaneously, the algorithms group us with other users with similar tastes and behaviours.

Jean-Pierre Cahier, professor at Université Technologique, Troyes, speaks about his collaboration project between engineers, systems designers, hackers and creatives. Each of them brings a different point of view. He also describes a project running in rural areas, where tools are brought together for the agro-ecological transition.

In the following public discussion, in answer to a question posed to Cahier about creativity, he uses the example of Wim Wenders’ 3D-movie about Pina Bausch. It is just one hour long, but required thousands of hours of filming. A number of other issues are raised by the fifty or so young people in the audience from YPAL (Young Performing Art Lovers), who previously attended the workshop in question.

How much do we really know about the tools we use on a daily basis? Are we aware of what they can and cannot do? To what extent are we really free in terms of online media and platforms? What sort of abilities and knowledge do we need to enjoy freedom of information and exercise freedom of expression? What are the differences between online practices of different digital generations, especially generations which are and are not “digital natives”? Is it possible to provide an education in new media? And if so, what might be the rules?

In conclusion, I tend to agree with what Elen Riot already noted in her introduction; that we are really mistaken if we think that the “digital natives” can instinctively manage the new technologies that extend everywhere before them (from school through the workplace). Taking everything into consideration, it is clear that only by observing what is really happening into our lives as daily practice we can help and encourage democratic knowledge.

 

Panel participants:

Jean-Pierre Cahier

Roland Flichy

Olivier Nocent

Géraldine Taillandier

Moderator: Elen Riot

 

Published on 7 May 2019

Translation from Greek into English: Michael Eleftheriou