Bubble Jam

"Who is on the other end of the Internet and what are the processes between us when communicating online?" Asking this question, Daniel Wetzel, founding member of the internationally acclaimed Rimini Protokoll, sets up, at Onassis Stegi from November 24 to April 21, a performance, both an experiment and play, for the generation that came into this world around the same time as YouTube, and has learnt to communicate primarily on Messenger, Viber and WhatsApp. Bubble Jam is a production that sets out to transform technology into a story, a story for our times. What happens when the algorithms get in the way and start interfering with our communication and our sense of self? Ultimately, who are we communicating with, and what on earth are those things we "like" and "follow"? When you get down to it, who are we and what are we doing here? A production in which the stage belongs to the audience — to teenagers and adults who are searching for something, even if they don't know what it is.

There's no audience in "Bubble Jam". No actors. And no stage, either. And yet, they're all there somehow. A code in place of a stage set, users instead of viewers. The viewer-users get logged in to "Bubble Jam" through the messages they follow on their mobile phones. The mobiles are attached to the users' bodies, and all together they're bound to a cloud that guides them. "Bubble Jam" is a theater platform under construction, and every production is a test run as an interchange with its creators. Depending on their responses and replies, the users chart different courses through a shared story.

All together. And each one separately.

Credits

Concept and Direction: Daniel Wetzel
Written by: Daniel Wetzel, Nikolas Hanakoulas, Giorgos Panagiotakis
Space: Dido Gkogkou
Light: Guy Stefanou
Software system design and implementation: Dimitris Trakas (ViRA)
Graphics: Dimitris Trakas, Renia Papathanasiou (ViRA)
Sound design and programming: Lambros Pigounis
Script editors: Andreas G. Andreou, Kostis Kapidakis
Project coordinator: Nikos Voyatzis
Trainee: Kristin Brechler
Assistant space designer: Iliana Kaladami
Assistant sound designer: Stefanos Siminelakis
Consultant-psychologist: Florentia Bakomitrou
Production management: Juliane Männel (Rimini Protokoll), Yalena Kleidara (Apparat Athen)
Technical director (Rimini Protokoll): Martin Schwemin

In the code: Andreas G. Andreou, Dimitris Trakas
In the crowd: Nikolas Hanakoulas, Kostis Kapidakis

Special thanks to: Daphne Aidoni, Alexandra Bousiou, Sebastian Drews, Barbara Ehnes, Martha Foka, Dimitris Kalakidis, Marilena Katranidou, Eleni Kolovou, Arianna Kontopanou, Dimitris Lianos, Aimilia Panagiotaki, Victoria Panagiotaki, Jean Peters, Ilias Pantazis, Michalis Papantonopoulos, Natasha Tsintikidi, Mary Voyatzaki, Zoi Wetzel

Produced by: Onassis Stegi and Rimini Apparat
Co-producer: The Cultural Schoolbag Norway / DKS Asker (Asker municipality)

Using technology and elements that have been developed for the Rimini Protokoll Project “Dreaming Collectives. Tapping Sheep”, written by Daniel Wetzel and Ioanna Valsamidou (Staatstheater Dresden and others, 2017).

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Greek audiences are already familiar with Athens-based Daniel Wetzel (born 1969), as founding member of the leading European company Rimini Protokoll, who propose alternative formats on stage as well as site specific works.

This is the fourth time Rimini Protokoll collaborates with the Onassis Stegi, presenting their work in Athens. Daniel Wetzel’s previous show at the Onassis Stegi was "Evros Walk Water 1 & 2", an installation based on the narrations and improvisations of unaccompanied immigrant minors. There it was already the audience that performed, instructed over headphones to perform John Cage’s composition "Water Walk".

Daniel Wetzel participated in the production X Apartments Athens (Fast Forward Festival 2), the peripatetic site-specific performance staged in houses in central Athens with his work “Odos Lithis 7” presenting a twin couple performing their piano play in the uncompleted apartment they had planned to live.

In other performances presented in Greece, Rimini Protokoll have brought on stage “experts" like tour guides and archaeological site guards (Hot spots. I was here, Thiseion Theater, 2004); Indian call center operators (Calcutta in a box, Bios, 2009); fired muezins from Cairo (Radio Muezin, Athens Festival 2009); 103 inhabitants of Athens (Prometheus in Athens, Athens Festival, 2011); 20 people whose lives have been shaped by the global arms trade (Situation Rooms, Onassis Stegi - Athens, 2014, Fast Forward Festival 1), international law and human rights specialists, a conservator of old manuscripts, a music producer blind since birth, an Israeli lawyer and a Turkish hip-hop/metalcore artist and ethnologist (Onassis Stegi - Athens, Adolf Hitler: Mein Kampf, volumes I & II, 2016).

"If people are at home is society, then artificial intelligence's natural space is the Internet. Social networks are simultaneously the offspring of the two and the mothers of the digital natives / post-humans / all of us who scan the street in front of us mobile in hand and believe the screen more than our own eyes".

Prodromos Tsiavos, Head of Digital policy and Development, Onassis Stegi