ES IST ZU SPÄT
A camera, a microphone, screens: a YouTuber’s studio. Here he films a monologue about the disaster that the world was heading towards and the theatre that could do nothing about it. Are online videos a more effective medium? Or is it time to stop altogether?
Register here up to 1 hour before the performance begins.
You will then be sent all the information and a link to participate by email. If you have not received the link 12 hours before the performance begins, please check your spam folder. In the event of technical problems with the registration, please turn to anmeldung[a]impulsefestival.de. Before and during the events, support is available in a live chat here.
Language: German
“Hello. Hi. It’s nice to see you,” says Arne and beams into the camera. In his video he looks back for his followers on five years of theatre work on political material. Five years of documenting radical social change, five years of clarification, five years of working out his position, five years of living on the poverty line. He talks about the extinction of species, climate change, water shortages, forced migration, poverty, injustice, fortress Europe, war and fascism.
What else could the theatre have done but repeat these narratives of disaster? “The whole world’s a stage,” says Arne. “And watching it collapse is a pleasure.” So he transfers his production to the internet. A new kind of stage is opened. — What was a playful idea when the play was premiered in November 2019 is an enforced reality in spring 2020. Instead of a visiting production that has become impossible internil will therefore adapt ES IST ZU SPÄT into an online stimulus.
Credits
Text and Performance: Arne Vogelgesang
Outside Eye: Marina Miller Dessau
Story: internil
Contact for touring enquiries: internil, interface[a]internil.net
Production
Produced by Theaterdiscounter Berlin as part of the Monologue Festival 2019.
Biografies
internil is a label for research-based and intermedia theatre and performance projects that was founded in 2005. For many years they have worked almost exclusively with material from the internet that they adapt for live events with the aid of digital hard- and software. As a result of their many years investigating post-political phenomena online, internil also operate as consultants. The group’s principal working method is live re-enactments using copy and paste dramaturgies. The presence of an audience is always included as part of the performance in one way or another.
Arne Vogelgesang studied Directing at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna and is a founder member of internil. Alongside his projects with internil he also works as a video artist, gives lectures and workshops on the aesthetics of radical internet propaganda, publishes literary texts and works in cultural education. He experiments with various composites of documentary material, new media and performance. Key themes of his work include political radicalisation, deviant practices and the digitisation of what is human. Since 2020 he has been a fellow at the Academy for Theatre and Digitality in Dortmund.