Crew?
03/05/2007The birth of new technologies always provokes new questions and deeply influences our perception of man and reality. Our relationship with current technology is of a tense nature; we find ourselves attracted and repulsed at the same time. These tensions can be extrapolated to a relation between technology and theatre, in which man is traditionally at the center.
CREW is a collective wanting to face the new technological condition of man. This 'pool' of artists wants to be a pioneer in setting up experiments that blur the border between theatre and technology. This investigation resulted in a series of performances showing an evolution from a cautious exploration of possibilities to a radical symbiosis with sophisticated technology.
While actor and apparatuses still were assigned equal roles in Kaufhaus, actor Paul Antipoff was completely covered with wires and machinery in Icarus and Philoctetes. In Crash, finally, the spectator takes Antipoffs place and technology penetrates his body almost literally. A recurring element in all performances is the big responsibility the spectator / participant gets. The large amount of stimuli he is bombarded with, can be and has to be interpreted freely so that everybody creates his own performance in the end. On the path CREW follows, the traditional theatre categories are abandoned one after another. This culminates in Crash, where the immersion is complete and where the stage has been moved to the head of the spectator.
The stage is the location par excellence to express the crisis in which we find ourselves at the moment and to explore the possibilities of a new interpretation of man. Nevertheless, the CREW performances are not based on blind worship of so-called 'cyber culture': they approach the technological culture in which they are embedded in a critical way. Technological manipulation is a recurring theme, among others. Furthermore, CREW is constantly in search of a new theatrical language and sets up projects that examine the relationship between different media. That results in a re-definition of theatre and clears the way for a new imagination. The use of new technologies like VR influences the artistic process and the representation of the body on stage more than a little. That way CREW questions the code that constitutes the foundation of theatre, viz. the distinction between reality and fiction.
CREW is a collective wanting to face the new technological condition of man. This 'pool' of artists wants to be a pioneer in setting up experiments that blur the border between theatre and technology. This investigation resulted in a series of performances showing an evolution from a cautious exploration of possibilities to a radical symbiosis with sophisticated technology.
While actor and apparatuses still were assigned equal roles in Kaufhaus, actor Paul Antipoff was completely covered with wires and machinery in Icarus and Philoctetes. In Crash, finally, the spectator takes Antipoffs place and technology penetrates his body almost literally. A recurring element in all performances is the big responsibility the spectator / participant gets. The large amount of stimuli he is bombarded with, can be and has to be interpreted freely so that everybody creates his own performance in the end. On the path CREW follows, the traditional theatre categories are abandoned one after another. This culminates in Crash, where the immersion is complete and where the stage has been moved to the head of the spectator.
The stage is the location par excellence to express the crisis in which we find ourselves at the moment and to explore the possibilities of a new interpretation of man. Nevertheless, the CREW performances are not based on blind worship of so-called 'cyber culture': they approach the technological culture in which they are embedded in a critical way. Technological manipulation is a recurring theme, among others. Furthermore, CREW is constantly in search of a new theatrical language and sets up projects that examine the relationship between different media. That results in a re-definition of theatre and clears the way for a new imagination. The use of new technologies like VR influences the artistic process and the representation of the body on stage more than a little. That way CREW questions the code that constitutes the foundation of theatre, viz. the distinction between reality and fiction.
