we have a situation!

there was an abrupt en

my current main project is a trans-european collaboration, We have a situation!. it’s a series of live, trans-border, online-offline participatory performances addressing current cross-cultural european issues, and the first “situation” takes place in london, 19-23 march.

the collaborating partners are four arts organisations: Furtherfield in london, APO33 in nantes, MAD emergent art centre in eindhoven & Schaumbad Freies Atelierhaus in graz. apart from Furtherfield who i have had an association with for more than 10 years now, they are all people and groups that i have met through UpStage, who share an open source and experimental philosophy and sense of social justice. we’re also working with developer martin eisenbarth, & the project has funding from the european cultural foundation.

the idea of this project is to use cyberformance as a way to creatively present local issues (situations) to trans-national audiences, to then generate meaningful inter-cultural dialogue around the particular issues and come up with possible solutions. it is based on a belief that people across europe are dealing with crises that have unique local aspects but also share aspects with related issues in other european countries, and that by facilitating conversations between ordinary people through a creative event, better inter-cultural understanding can be achieved. we may even be able to help each other by bringing new perspectives to the problems and proposing creative solutions. click here for the media release.

each “situation” comprises a week-long workshop with local artists to develop the cyberformance, followed by the online and local performance event and discussion. you will be able to join the online events from live links on the web site, http://www.wehaveasituation.net/, and you can check the situations calendar for dates, times and time converters.