eletroni c c ity
according to Falk Richter
Premiere 2019 October 11th, 12th in Artūras Areima theater, Vilnius
Duration 100 min | audience 16+
director/scenographer : Artūras Areima
costume designer : Artūras Areima
composer : π
video design : Kornelijus Jaroševičius, Nidas Kaniušas
actors : Petras Šimonis, Monika Poderytė, Karolis Legenis, Modesta Jakeliūnaitė
Photographer: Laura Vansevičienė
Play translation from German by Jūratė Pieslytė
Supported by Lithuanian Council for Culture
Digital code: Electronic city. In a city like this, a leader is needed, because you cannot exist without one. Electronic city is an inertic city, time does not stop here nor do people living here. This is a city uncategorized, without signs or references where is exists and how it might look. This is a city in a grim desert surrounded by tall walls of the buildings. This is a city where artificial wind blows. In this city there is nothing real but confusion and a feeling of being in “zone zero”. Only people with no selves who are concerned only with completion of tasks work here. Completion of tasks received from “above”. But who is there - “above”? Are they among us?
We know, that it all will collapse one day yet we don’t know when and how excactly. One day we will all start to hate each other and we will poison everything that is around. It will be like a nuclear plant had exploded. But electronic cities are much more alive that us. These cities can excist without us because the way we are is possibly only the way we were in the past.
Artūras Areima: “Let’s bow to the bane of our lives: to the sea of digits, to the inertic tsunami, to the metropoly, to the electronic city. Are we still able to a walk a mile without our phone’s algorhythm counting it? My smart phone knows me better than my mother, my family, my relatives or my friends know me. Maybe it even knows what I want better that I do? It knows how many steps I take a day, which floor I reach, with whom I communicate, what my feelings are, how I react to one thing or another. It knows what I admire, what I record, what I take pictures of… And if I’m ever feeling lonely – I can always talk to Siri. Even death is now handed by professionals, by the technological flow. We handed death to professionals so that it doesn’t disrupt the party of consumerism. We made death banal so that don’t have to have any strong feelings ever again. Digital memory has handed most of us to a shared virtual space where we live according to “others”. This space (or spaces) or “matrix” do not belong to us nor we can control it. If this is only the beginning, where are we headed to next?”
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