migration – Radical Atoms https://ars.electronica.art/radicalatoms/en Ars Electronica Festival 2016 Tue, 28 Jun 2022 13:26:43 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.6 Just Before Paradise https://ars.electronica.art/radicalatoms/en/just-before-paradise/ Mon, 01 Aug 2016 12:39:36 +0000 https://ars.electronica.art/radicalatoms/?p=2019 There were big waves of migration in the Middle East following wars and massacres. With the civil war in Syria, the pace of long-standing dramatic problems changed. We have witnessed the biggest refugee crisis since WW2. But there is a big difference between now and then: today everything happens much more publicly. This experience of witnessing things in real time increases our anxiety that we may, in the future, end up in their position.

In the video we see a group of refugees waist-deep in dark water. These young men seem like they are singing a quiet anthem as the waves lap up against the shore. They all have a proud expression on their faces as they realize the last duty for their lost friends, with whom they shared a common fate. The silence is more of a survival strategy against traumatic experiences in life rather than resignation. The video draws attention to forced migration and the refugee crisis and also depicts the tides between death and life as a boundless crisis instead of a regional one.

Courtesy the artist Cengiz Tekin and Pilot Gallery (Istanbul)

]]> MYGRATION—beget https://ars.electronica.art/radicalatoms/en/mygration-beget/ Mon, 01 Aug 2016 12:14:09 +0000 https://ars.electronica.art/radicalatoms/?p=2555 Migration as a form of multiple affiliation to and identification with life cannot be reduced to a transcultural identity problem. Rather, in a virtual age there is an emergence of complex (dis)information networks, which extend from the virtual into real space and vice versa. The performance piece MYGRATION—beget involves a corporeal dispute on this topic: the body and the soul, which remains in generations throughout its existence and which influences, departs from and invests itself into people’s identities and which repeatedly pours itself into new forms. beget is the first part of the MYGRATION series by SILK Fluegge, which examines the heritage and the aim of places to compress information that needs to be organized in order to create a feeling of security. The fanned out construct of the heritage of four personalities is condensed into a performance using parachute silk to build a pictorial form of the haptic perception of the here and now, which creates a tension between blind flight and down-to-earthness. The venue is a railway station platform: the arrivals and departures; the lingering in the waiting room. It is the snapshot of a thousand possible strings converging by chance that creates a person, their reactions, decisions and the ways in which they act.

Note: Due to nudity the performance MIGRATION-beget Silk Fluegge may offend cultural views.

Concept and choreography: Silke Grabinger; Production management and choreographic assistant: Olga Swietlicka; Dramaturgical advisor: Angela Vadori; Light design/ video projection: Peter Thalhamer; Costumes: Bianca Fladerer; Video: Magdalena Schlesinger

Dance and performance: Veronika Cimborova, Gergely Dudas, Boglarka Heim, Matej Kubuš

This SILK Fluegge production is supported by Linz Kultur, the province of Upper Austria and the Federal Chancellery/Arts. With the kind cooperation of Tabakfabrik Linz.

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