Barbara Loreck: Blow up 160

interactive performance by Barbara Loreck (2010)
„Delete or keep?" That was the question at the starting point of the performance Blow up 160 because of an insistently blinking warning showing up on the display of my mobile phone: no more storage space for incoming text messages!
Each text message raises the question whether to confer a diary-like status to it and keep it or to state its non-relevance for my life and delete it.
I was intrigued by the fact that text messages are randomly cut out fragments of time and strangely documented moments in a person's life. Equally on my mind was the technical possibility of surveillance of all mobile phone communication and the worldwide discussions and initiatives for extensive preventive data storage. These two elements informed the creation of a multilayered narration: I "enlarge" the picture possibly related to the 160 characters of my received messages by telling the audience about their contexts.
As the narration of my biography unfolds and I turn the messages into fragments of a surveillance scenario a suspicion invades the audience: there is no escape to be considered a criminal subject after all.
Simultaneously the audience takes part actively in its progress as they receive instructions and questions on their mobile phones asking them to text message their own vision of the story live during the performance. Their seemingly private communication space -- not only as the sender of a text message, but also as a listener in a story telling setting -- merges with publicly diffused actions and reactions.
So far Blow up 160 travelled from Brussels to Istanbul on to Bangalore. Each audience gave the performance a new turn.

Barbara Loreck, Berlin December 2011

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• Istanbul
• IMC 5533
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