A swarm of 50 people, strangers to each other, wearing headphones, guided by one virtual voice, make their way through parks, churches, the metro, hospitals and spaces hidden in corners across the city. The same public spaces we take for granted when we mindlessly travel from our home to our workplaces and back, suddenly transforms into a larger-than-life canvas in Remote Bangalore , a sound installation and theatre audio walk, where traffic jams seem like a synchronised choreography, where the streets are viewed as a stage, where public spaces are explored in a whole new way.
Remote Bangalore , presented by Rimini Protokoll from Germany, presented by Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, Bangalore with Sandbox Collective being the Bangalore production management, will be conducted over two hours that gets one to experience a range of issues, from the how technology has permeated our lives to how we are remote-controlled by social conditioning, from how our behaviour changes when we act together as a group to how our bodies and minds respond to danger, indecision and threats.
Director Stefan Kaegi, who conceived Remote , and has written the text, says Bangalore was the perfect choice for Remote Bangalore. “It’s not overcrowded like some other cities. The whole image of Bangalore as a Garden City and IT city goes well with looking at the interplay between technology and Nature in our lives,” he says.
The philosophy behind Remote Bangalore , according to Stefan, is to explore what it means to be human and how we are dictated by powerful forces.
“It is about conditioning, about trusting, about the need of sticking together, about the need to withdraw into our ourselves. We brought in the aspect of technology to understand how our lives have been slowly replaced by machines. It is interesting to see how a computer looks at human life from an outside perspective,” adds Stephen.
Remote Bangalore is an immersive experience and unlike any theatre performance you have seen before. “Theatre needn’t be in a closed environment. We want to make theatre a live experience. We have noticed that public spaces aren’t often used for cultural performances,” says Stephen.
So far, Remote has been held in various cities across the world, including Berlin, Avignon, Vienna, Lisbon, Zürich and São Paulo, with every experience being different. “Public spaces are unique to every city. In Brazil, we went into a sports space where we watched so many different kinds of sports. In Avignon, we were stopped mid-way as a Minister was passing by that part of the city that time.”
Jorg Karrenbauer, the co-director, came to Bangalore in October last year to scout for locations. “I looked at every kind of space. With the assistance of Sandbox Collective, we zeroed in on five to six spaces that include parks, hospitals and public transport.”
Niki Neecke, sound designer, has created a sound-scape that plays a vital role in the production: “I recorded atmospheric sounds typical to the city. The traffic is very different from any other city we’ve been to,” says Niki.
Remote Bangalore opens today at Goethe Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan. It will be held everyday till February 16.
Tickets are available on >bookmyshow.com and at the venue. For details call 25205305.
