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plaudercamp by dramazone. or: "I wish to be moved. I cannot feel in life. I must have others do it for me in theater."

Posted: Sunday 7 March 2010 | Posted by k | Labels:

saturday i went and saw plaudercamp IV by dramazone during 100° festival which in its general state of event i've ignored (bad me).
well, the set up of that durational performance was quite interesting. whereas i mainly went because it was them. turned out i stayed for about two and a half hours, and both actively participated and watched.
basically, you had to climb up to the top floor of hau 2 theatre in berlin and would be welcomed by orange edgyness and people that asked you whether you wanted to chat a bit. r. and i came together and he went "in" first. "in" was a seperate room, more specifically a tent inside that room. in that tent both performer/expert and guest sat down without shoes and jackets and talked. their talk was projected in the corridor on said top floor of hau theatre. they would explain to you a little what it was all about - collecting memories, archiving them, maybe as a counteractive impulse against mediatized rapidness and general ignorance. they would "check you in, firstly". could not exactly name my bloodtype. mmh. then performer/expert would, under the motto "es gibt ja kleine und große krisen" (there are small and big crises), share one personal crisis, for example how they hate it when their bike gets stolen, how they felt affected by the rehearsals of a biographic performance, how they missed their partner during a year abroad, how they felt overwhelmed by seeing dead people during their civil service. with the slogan "sie können uns ihre erinnerungen anvertrauen. versprochen" (you can trust us with your memories) they encouraged you to share a moment of your own crises-history. initially they also said they would try to combine or relate the two memories which wasn't always the case, which was good, maybe.
so r. sat inside, i was wrapped in a blanket in the not too hot waiting and public screening area. not so many people, which somehow was a pity. strange to see your friends being projected against a wall and hear them talk about their crises.
somehow, i found, the listening and watching was really remarkably fascinating, as if following a quite voyeuristic desire,

a bit like reality tv ("please, let him elaborate more on that threesome in the sauna and how they were interrupted by people telling them their suicidal friend was lost"),
a bit like getting to know glimpses of people ("i don't have a favourite book", "do you think he's a butcher"),
a bit like therapy (which is, indeed, problematic, as no one of dramazone is a trained psychologist)

intrigued, i was watching in on those rather private moments of (however actual or staged) mutual exchange. it felt, sitting outside, rather intimate, somehow, a somewhat guilty pleasure crawled through me when people actually looked into the camera and thereby stated their awareness of being watched from an "outside".

m. said something, actually in regards to the glasshouse, but that might be valid here, too. how can you try to create a personalized, intimate setting and situation, maybe even feeling between performer and individual audience, and then change the "usual" setting so drastically?
maybe that was not the case with plaudercamp. well, but maybe it was, in the sense that, perhaps there were people like me, who came and knew about the general idea of the project. others, more likely, browsing around the festival, maybe incidentally passing by and being approached by one of the performers/experts, maybe did not know what to expect and then would find themselves in a situation with a total stranger being suddenly exposed.

well, i can say i really enjoyed the process of watching, relating different stories and actually realizing the amount of personal history that was "collected". nobody, to give account of that, was lastingly recorded for plaudercamp IV.

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