The Empire Strikes Back: Kingdom of the Synthetic

Ariel Efraim Ashbel and friends

Is this what the future will look like? “Nuclear War” – “Radiation” – “Mutation” – “It’s a Motherfucker” – “Don’t You Know”… is all that’s left of language. A black landscape, geometric bodies, remnants of past visions of the future.
The Berlin-based Israeli theatermaker Ariel Efraim Ashbel and his ensemble of artists, musicians, academics, artefacts, and robots set off to reconquer a future unknown – and declare war on identity politics and the violent legacy of humanism.
What new subjectivities can be embodied once we have eliminated the concept of race and the science of difference?
As humanity took its first steps in space in the 1960s, the jazz musician Sun Ra declared the universe a place of liberation for all African Americans. This marked the birth of science fiction from the perspective of the diaspora.
In a live collage loaded with powerful sounds and images that lies amidst ‘Metropolis’, ‘Triadic Ballet’, ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ and ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’, between Afro-Futurism and Science Fiction, the international company’s second piece will deconstruct the body, language, understanding and meaning. What emerges is not a new truth but the search for a humane utopia beyond the reign of the human. ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ risks a gentle optimism amidst an imploding, highly-aestheticized view of the present.

The show on June 17 will be followed by an Artist Talk
Also on 17 June party with Ariel Efraim Ashbel and friends starting at 22 h at the Festival center

ON

Dauer 85’

Tickets can be purchased here

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