404-Totlink
People die, but the online content they create lives on. DARUM’s hyperlink installation reveals which virtual remnants continue to tell people about us even after our deaths. An internet archive that evokes death and urban loneliness in an essayistic manner.
Hyperlink installation
Language: German
Millions of websites are not only constantly being created but also taken down again. Initiatives such as the “Internet Archive” pursue the objective of preserving information on the World Wide Web from virtual death. But what happens when the originators die – while their digital legacies continue to live on?
404-DEADLINK is inspired by the largely lost, colourful and often trashy websites of the 90s and early 00s. From a large number of interlinked of individual pages, a complex archive has been created that comprises documents, photographs and videos with evidence of those who have died in solitude in Vienna as well as highlighting issues of urban loneliness and the impenetrable nature of human existence. A sprawling associative labyrinth with a logic of its own, with no beginning and no end, that encourages visitors to search for their own clues and get lost there – while encountering both the familiar and the unexpected.
As part of the project, DARUM has invited numerous guest artists to help them co-devise this labyrinth: writers, musicians, visual artists, scenographers, but also experts such as funeral speakers and cooks extend the network of multiple perspectives on the theme and contribute works using text, images and sound.
In their debut performance in Vienna UNGEBETENE GÄSTE, DARUM examined what had been left behind by the dead: five individual, one-off performances went in search of what had happened to people who were buried without any loved ones present. These focussed not only on the deceased themselves but also the impossibility of reconstructing their life stories. Invited to the Impulse Theater Festival 2020, the work was intended to be performed in 2021 in the world premiere of a specially developed Cologne version, which cannot now be realized due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Credits
A project by DARUM, Artistic realisation and Programming: Victoria Halper, Kai Krösche
Artistic Associates: Laura Andreß, Matthias Krische, Clara Hirschmanner
With guest contributions from: Emre Akal, Shabnam Chamani, Simon Dietersdorfer, Franz Hammerbacher, hoelb/hoeb, Andrea Imler, Nora Jacobs, Kristof Kepler, Hannes Benedetto Pircher, Roland Rauschmeier, Mario Schlembach, Andres Stirn, Simon Windisch et. al.
Game dramaturgy: Philipp Ehmann & Clara Hirschmanner (Play:Vienna)
Concept: Kai Krösche
Production
UNGEBETENE GÄSTE is a production by DARUM in co-operation with WERK X-Petersplatz (Wien). Funded by SHIFT, the City of Vienna's Department of Culture as well as Bezirk Innere Stadt.
The new digital version 404–TOTLINK is a co-production between DARUM and Impulse Theater Festival. Funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Arts and Culture, Civil Service and Sports.
Biographies
The collective DARUM. Darstellende Kunst und Musik
(Performing Arts and Music), founded in 2018, operates at numerous
intersections between artistic disciplines. It is made up by Laura
Andreß, Victoria Halper and Kai Krösche, who have operated in between
independent and institutional structures in the performing arts for
several years. This core team bring together expertise in numerous
artistic disciplines including film and theatre direction, dramaturgy,
music, literature, video and media arts, acting and performance. Der
Formensuche von DARUM’s search for form is always preceded by the big
question “why?” However, questions prove to be the best answers: as a
result in its artistic projects DARUM attempts to fail productively in
its quest for answers. UNGEBETENE GÄSTE (UNINVITED GUESTS) is DARUM’s
debut performance. The performative installation ‘Ausgang: Offen’ was
presented in Vienna in April 2020.
Laura Andreß studied Theatre, Film and Media Studies in Vienna. After working as an intern and assistant at several theatres, performance venues and festivals and for independent theatre productions in Vienna she completed a Masters in Dramaturgy at the HfS Ernst Busch in Berlin. In 2018 her graduation project was given its world premiere as part of the Berlin Performing Arts Festival. Laura Andreß has since worked as a freelance dramaturg and production manager (for artists including Florentina Holzinger). Her work has been presented at venues including the Volksbühne Berlin, Festspielhaus Hellerau and the Münchner Kammerspielen. In 2019 she was awarded a Starting Scholarship for the Performing Arts by the Austrian Federal Chancellor’s Office.
Victoria Halper studied Acting and Directing at the University of Toronto. She emigrated to Austria in 2010 in search of her roots in the Burgenland and worked as an Assistant Director at numerous theatres. From 2013 to 2016 she worked as a director and editor for several films including the detective story ‘Kommissar Taler’, for which she was awarded the City of Traun Prize for Culture in 2015. Since 2016 she has operated as a freelance director in an experimental field between different forms of the performing arts: contemporary circus, essay-performance, video art installations and ludification theatre in public spaces. In 2018 she was awarded a Starting Scholarship for the Performing Arts by the Austrian Federal Chancellor’s Office.
Kai Krösche is a director and musician. He studied Theatre, Film and Media Studies and Philosophy in Vienna. Since 2005 he has worked as a director, musician and video artist on his own theatre projects as well as in the fields of music, video, dramaturgy and performance at venues including Schauspiel Köln, Landestheater Niederösterreich, WUK Vienna, Volkstheater Vienna, WERK X in Vienna and HochX in Munich. As a screenwriter and director he has produced numerous short film projects since 2002. In 2018 he was awarded a Starting Scholarship for the Performing Arts by the Austrian Federal Chancellor’s Office. Between 2010 and 2016 he worked as a theatre and film critic for outlets including nachtkritik.de and the Wiener Zeitung.