Together with FoAM, facilitated by Maja Kuzmanovic from FoAM we used a scenario method to design one or more storyworlds that can be used for a physical narrative and possibly a prehearsal (or the combination of both); the physical narrative should be light and portable, to be used in a hotel room and an exhibition in Austria and Cluj in September and October, and possibly in Belgium in the autumn. As FoAM mentioned in their preparation notes: “this all sounds easy enough, until the second part of the brief is introduced: the process should be akin to lucid dreaming…”
Notes on how it went and how our world looks like can be found in the Future Fabulators section of FoAMs libarynth
Enclosed a first description of the storyworld:
We have landed on the endless peninsula with a shoreline that is neither land nor sea. The shoreline is sometimes smooth, other times rough, with waves breaking on rocks. The atmosphere is thick and woollen in this land of sunrise and twilight. Light is heavy and laden with golden dust that sediments on hidden graves. When darkness comes, the world sparkles. The air fills with mechanical insects collecting the sparkling dust as drugs. Aside from the buzzing of the insects at night, there is an eery noiseless quality to the peninsula. Occasionally the silence is pierced by small, medium and large voices, by faint dripping, drifting and echoing sounds.
Things are built rather than grown, there are canals lit by giant candelabra, the rolling hills are made of shoes. There are very few plants and animals around, and only in secret pockets of nature. Living flora and fauna, as well as and ancient human graves are sought after by mechanical dragon-flies, scanning across fragmented and dispersed nature. An apothecary of species is hovering above the world, swirling through the mist on giant dragonfly-propellers. In the apothecary, intricate nano-machinery works on replicating rapidly disappearing lifeforms and maintain the populations’ health. The world is criss-crossed with helicopters’ landing strips allowing the dragonfly apothecary to circle in on any species in need of replication. One of the endangered species are humans – shabby, clean, healthy and curious creatures that drift aimlessly, often wearing only shoes.
The landscapes are surreal (from the dreamers’ point of view), unnatural and complicated. Everything is in motion. Infrastructure and places float to you. The movement is mechanical, but also fluid – an insectoid dance of machines and liquids. The majority of floating places are bars, saunas (actually hornets’ nests) and huge soft beds shaped like fluffy duvets. The land is covered in scattered tools: both newly built and frequently used, as well as old, rusty, forgotten tools.
Across the floating peninsula hover many roads, all leading from the many gin distilleries to dusty cocktail bars. On the roads drive giant photo-copiers that print spacious two-dimensional cars. One of the strangest contraptions on the peninsula is a floating palace that looks x-rayed under sunlight. From outside it appears like a translucent box standing on an ice-cube. From inside its walls are built of wood and xrays, its windows are covered by leather. Its origins are unclear (there are conspiracy theories about whether it had been discovered or rebuilt). In the present there are only parts of the palace in use. One part is a news-agency, another -of course- a cocktail bar, from which all other bars are replicated.
LOOSE DIARY 