May 2011, a photo flashes onto screens around the world. It shows 13 people in a room. The expressions on their faces speak volumes: triumph, fascination, scorn, horror, scepticism, preoccupation. The photo from the White House “Situation Room” documents the end of a manhunt that was pursued with all possible weapons.
‘Situation Rooms’ gathers together from various continents 20 people whose biographies have been shaped by weapons in a film set that recreates the globalised world of pistols and rocket-propelled grenades, of assault rifles and drones, of rulers and refugees, becoming a parcours of unexpected neighbourhoods and intersections.
With the personal narratives of the ‘inhabitants’, the images start to move and the audience follows the individual trails of the cameras they have been given. They start to inhabit the building, while following what they see and hear on their equipment. The audience does not sit opposite the piece to watch and judge it from the outside; instead, the spectators ensnare themselves in a network of incidents, slipping into the perspectives of the protagonists, whose traces are followed by other spectators.
One spectator sits at the desk of a manager for defence systems. At the same time, another follows the film of a Pakistani lawyer representing victims of American drone attacks in a cramped room with surveillance monitors. On her way there, she sees a third spectator who follows his film into the shooting range of a Berlin gun club, listening Germany's parcours shooting champion. Around the corner stands another spectator in the role of a doctor carrying out amputations in Sierra Leone, while in the room next door a press photographer sorts pictures of German army missions in Afghanistan, only to stand in the shooting range himself a little later to do exactly what he was able to observe in passing just a while ago, thereby becoming a subject for observation himself.
The audience gradually becomes entangled in the film set’s spatial and material labyrinth; each individual becoming part of the re-enactment of a complicatedly elaborated multi-perspective “shooting”.
Situation Rooms is a multiple simultaneous cinema; augmented reality as three-dimensional as only theatre can be!
with:
Abu Abdu Al Homssi, Syrien
Antonio Aguirre, Mexiko
Shahzad Akbar, Pakistan
Jan van Aken, Deutschland
Narendra Divekar, Indien
Nathan Fain, USA
Reto Hürlimann, Schweiz
Maurizio Gambarini, Deutschland
Andreas Geikowski, Deutschland
Marcel Gloor, Schweiz
Barbara Happe, Deutschland
Volker Herzog, Deutschland
Richard Khamis, Süd-Sudan
Wolfgang Ohlert
Irina Panibratowa, Russland
Ulrich Pfaff, Deutschland
Emmanuel Thaunay, Frankreich
Amir Yagel, Israel
Yaoundé Mulamba Nkita, Kongo
Familie R, Lybien
by: Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi, Daniel Wetzel
Scenography: Dominic Huber / blendwerk
Video: Chris Kondek
Sound: Frank Böhle
Technical Director / Light: Sven Nichterlein
Research: Cornelius Puschke / Malte Hildebrand
Director Assistance: Malte Hildebrand / Ann-Kathrin Büdenbender
Production Management: Heidrun Schlegel
Video Assistance: Philip Hochleichter
Scenography Assistance: Claudia Bartel / Ute Freitag / Sophie Reinhard / Leonie Süess Directors trainees: Karen Ameraal / Ann-Kathrin Büdenbender / Sybille Enders / Annabel Hogefeld / Sebastian Klauke / Kirsten Moldenhauer/ Markus Posse / Belle Santos / Yael Sherill / Zofia Smolarska / Thomas Zimmermann / Viktoria Metz / Eva Trummer
Scenography trainees: Till Hörnig / Paulina Januszyk / Laura Rehkuh / David Gieseke
Management workshops: Steffen Fuchs
Light: Hans Leser / Stefan Neumann
Elektronic Effects: Georg Werner
Production management Assistance: Caroline Lippert / Christin Prätor
Interpreters: Amina Orth / Günter Orth / Djengizkhan Hasso / Riad
A coproduction of Rimini Apparat with Ruhrtriennale, Schauspielhaus Zürich, SPIELART festival & Münchner Kammerspiele, Perth Internationl Arts Festival, Grande Halle et Parc de la Villette Paris, HAU – Hebbel am Ufer, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt am Main.
Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the Regierende Bürgermeister of Berlin - Senate Chancellery - Cultural Affairs.
funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation