 Welcome, everybody, back here to Segal Talks at the Monteney Segal Peter Center, the Graduate Center CUNY in Midtown Manhattan. And it's a sunny day here in New York City, slightly cool, and we are experiencing a holiday that is also celebrated around the world. It's the Easter Monday, and it's about resurrection. And we are thinking about today also about theater. As always in our talks and with us, we have the great Thomas Oberender, who started out as a playwright and became a very significant and important thinker and curator in the European scene, especially of course in Germany, but he was a director of the Wienerfest, Wachem Berlinerfest Spiele, where he had the Gropius Bau under his wings, as well as the great immersion series he created, and he did something what we followed very much and thought it was a great contribution actually to global theater. It was his project that was called Down to Earth, and we will talk about it inspired by Bruno Latour and this publication here by Spectre Books and Leipzig talks about it in courage everybody to look at it. And so welcome Thomas, where are you now, and what time is it? I'm in Berlin, and it's half past seven, a sunny day. And most of the people are on the countryside right now, but I think they come back in the evening and I hope some join us in this conversation. So they spend some time in nature, you think? I think so, yes. Yesterday we visited friends on a lake nearby Berlin, and yes, there are so many people in nature right now. I think it's what we call spring, and both we enjoy of course. And I think it is so close to a subject, thinking about it, also writing a book. We come to it later. As is the sublime of this book, they are ideas for cultural sustainability, and you ask in your book how does art connect to ecology and what changes are there in life for us, but also for our cultural institutions for the theaters, and the idea of the Gaia, Earth, God is a Greek term, we will talk about it. You know how can she be represented, Bruno Latour in his work, it is so central about it. Kedric Aitui will talk about it next Friday, and how can we do art without abusing resources? What is important? How can we present work now? What is significant? What is urgent? What shall we do? So thank you really for joining us, Thomas. We also gave this work one of the awards as in last year. We said it's one of the 10 great global projects for all our listeners who do not know, and maybe also I will learn something new. Down to Earth, what was it all about? The Down to Earth project was a mixture of exhibition, community project, and festival for five or four or five weeks, and it was a bit special because it was, I think, first time that sustainability and climate change was not only the issue, it was the way how the format was developed and presented. It means we had some simple rules. We didn't use any kind of airplane transport, not for the artworks, not for the artists. We made all the energy we used transparent, all the materials, and we didn't use beamers, we didn't use microphones, we didn't use spots. It was daylight. It was everything in the same time all in once. It means you could visit the exhibition and at the same time you could see performances, at the same time you could join to conversations or to workshops. So it was a different kind of space that was, in a way, unique because it was all about climate change, our relation between culture and nature, civilization, wilderness, technology, but we didn't use technology. We tried to avoid any kind of resources we could avoid. So also in the internet there was no streaming. There was only black and white design of our website. And we offered some downloads, but we did not use oil paint for the publications. We used old posters to make books out of it. And so we tried to find ways to avoid in our own process what is the subject of the project itself. And it was great fun and we invited a lot of communities, activists, scientists, artists who joined and usually would never meet each other. So I think public spaces are usually a kind of bubble for a certain community. And what we achieved is to bring very different communities together and learn from each other. And yeah, it was a very open and very inspiring place. And I think it was also sustainable in a way because we built something. We did have a repair cafe. We built tiny houses and we built connections between all these initiatives. And we learned a lot about ourselves, about our institution, how it usually works. I didn't know where our air conditioning system was situated in the building. I didn't know so many things. And so we learned all the specialists with their specific qualities and experience. It was a kind also of discovering democracy in your own structure. So that we are all in one level and we have this kind of we're dealing with the same problem, but we have different kind of qualifications. And it was a way to discover the qualifications of other people and to bring them in. Also, if they are all the time around you, but you never ask them for help usually. But in this project, we did. And it was very, it was good for the whole collective of people who work in the building and with the project. How many artists participated? And can you tell us about two, three projects so we have an idea of what people did? I think all together it was around 200 artists. We had a regular exhibition of 2000 square meters with works by Andreas Gruski and so many well-known artists. Julia Strauss was also in the Siegel talks before, I think. So we did have installations, sculptures. We invited in the same time musicians or we invited in the same time theater works. For example, from French or Belgian artist François Chineau. And usually he would perform the music with his laptop. So as a pre-produced sound file. And we paid him extra to bring musicians in the situation to make live music. We didn't use spots. We made colored curtains in front of the windows to give different light. So it was in a way analog experience. And so this was one of the aims to change the way how the audience is welcomed in a space like that. It's not the typical, you buy a ticket and then you know what you get. It was a bit surprising for all of them. And in the same time, some people came 35 times again because it was always different. They discovered that it's all the time different. What they can experience in this project. And so it was not this kind of offering a product that is ready. And you can put it in a box and bring it to the next exhibition hall. And so it was very specific for a time, also for a daytime. In the evenings, there was no light in the exhibition. So people used the flashlight of the mobile phone to see the pictures, the artworks. And so, but this is also an experience of what nature means. It becomes dark and some people really understand what we, for example, we worked with Thomas Araceno and he discovered a spider in the building. And so he protected the spider, the web as artwork. And so the spider could survive in this environment, let's say some month. And we learned that there are all the time animals, all the time other life forms in our environment. And it's the same time their environment. But usually we kick them out, we clean it out. And so I think on many levels, we learned that also art making is a kind of violent process against other life forms and presences in our venues that we don't accept. For example, in theater, you would never accept any kind of insect or any kind of tiny animal that is also living in this building, in this environment, because it's our environment. It's our place of work. And it seems to be quite normal, but it's not. It's our rule. It's what we do with nature, with, yes, with everything that surrounds us. For our listeners, the Kropius Bau is essential in Berlin as perhaps the Whitney or a MoMA in New York City. And I wonder what MoMA or the Whitney would say if you say, let's take off air conditioning, let's take out electricity. You reacted to, if I understood right, what the great French philosopher who left us, how can you make an exhibition on artwork about climate change? But you have the climate control working, even when nobody is in there to keep a certain temperature and humidity. How did your system, your administration, how did they react? How did you make that happen? I think all the people have been very enthusiastic, basically. So nobody has to be convinced that we should do something like that because the idea, everybody loves the idea, and to do something different. There's a certain point of politics that becomes also sensitive for questions of law, of justice. That means we have a tradition of making contracts and insurance systems. So this is not, you can't overcome this with good ideas and good intentions because if you switch off the climate system or the air conditioning system, then you lose your statistic. And this is usually necessary to lend artworks from other institutions or from collectors. So it was very interesting that on this point, of course, it becomes very political. All this, let's say, artwork, because you go into the operation system of all of our institutions that are based on these laws. And so we never expect, we did not expect this. And it was for us, for my colleagues, a wonderful team who did this work. They achieved to make contracts from all the institutions. They accepted that we don't use the air conditioning system. Because it's not necessary for this kind of artworks. So, for example, also we rejected transport offers by doing studio prints. So we don't ask a big transportation company to bring the artworks. We printed them in the city itself and put them on the wall. And this was all easy in a way. But on a certain point, you touched this last ceiling of, let's say, contract politics. And this is a big question for the whole system. In the next years, how we can avoid what you are talking about. All these institutions are air conditioned 365 days a year and around the clock. Also, if no visitor is there, if no exhibition is there, this is something we have to change, of course. Thomas, you started out as a playwright. As I know, you're a great fan of Peter Huntke. Voter Strauss. You were close to the Berlin Folk Schooner, the work of Kastor. But Kennedy, what we see now of the great Norwegians, of Vika Bingari, Inga Miller, and all of it. A lot of work in theater is now looking. How do we rewrite the third act? How are we formally innovative in the writing or in the presenting? Are there new acting methods? You're working also on a new book. And if I understand why you say, we have to radically rethink what we present. Maybe talk a little bit about that. I'm really curious and interested in that. So the basic idea is, I would say, very simple. I think there is a connection to, let's say, this kind of theater form of a black box. That was invented in the Renaissance. So it's still this kind of instrument we use every day if we make in the Western World Theater. But we forget that this was something that some people in South Italy or North Italy invented in a certain period in history. And before there was different theater forms, of course. And I think there is a connection between, let's say, the Anthropocene as a kind of an age of our planet, a certain period in time of our planet that is now formed by us as a species. Like a force of nature, our species transformed the planet itself, the earth, the layers of earth. We can read the layers of earth as an open book of our history of species. This is new. This is something that never happened before. That's why it's called the Anthropocene. And at the same time, I think, in the beginning of the Anthropocene, let's say, if we go a little bit back, there was this period in which, in Europe, a certain kind of new culture was developed. And this culture was basically something that put the humans in the position of the gods, of God, before. So if you think about theater, the ancient theater of the Greek people was a theater that was, of course, done by humans. But it was, let's say, an encounter not only between humans. It was also an encounter between humans and gods. So it was, in a way, with a huge ordinance that it was, the old Greek didn't have a religion. Their religion was theater. The theater was the everyday practice of religion in the ancient Athenian period. So it was not the human who was in the center of it all. There are so many gods, so many influences, so many forces, powers that are non-human. And so in the same way, theater was formed in the medieval period. But in Renaissance, suddenly humans started to put the perspective of gods beside and develop their very own perspective. It's the central perspective in painting. It was preformed in architecture and in the art of creating gardens. And then they took this principle into the way how people like Dürer or Brunelleschi created a new way of presenting an image of the world. And this image of the world was a very specific technique. And with the same technique, on a certain point, they started to build something that never was made before. They built houses without windows. The Atta Olympico and Vicenza was one of the very earliest prototypes of this theater. So theater was, in the times before, mostly outside. Suddenly they brought the theater inside and let the city and the nature and everything outside. And they organized the way how you see what's going on on stage and the way how they organized paintings in this time, with this principle of central perspective. And it's very interesting because in this time, in the very first time, it was the so-called eye point, the point from where the perspective starts. In the medieval time, this perspective on this point was God. And for God, the things had completely different proportions. So if you see medieval paintings, you see small houses, big humans, animals. So it's not this kind of how they organized the world. But in this time, humans started to create, not only in painting also in the theater, a way of artificial world that looks like a world itself. And so they started to make it more rational. They make it more eloquent. So suddenly it was like a l'amour, like a studio, the theater. And this was, I think, an amazing invention. It's like if we use virtual reality glasses, I think it's the same effect. When they entered this very early forms of theater, they saw something they never saw before. It was really humans that are moved in pictures. And pictures and everything is organized to create this kind of image of world that is the world in a way. The very early, the very first play they performed was King Uripus by Sophocles. So they built this kind of artificial world to go back in time into Sophocles' world. But at the same time, it looks like, the set design looked like Vincenza. It was their own city, in a way. So the architecture that was painted on the set. And from this, we learned not only by theater, of course, that we have a new position in the world. And this position is that we are in the center. We are at the decisive position. And everything is related to us. And in this time, suddenly over a period of time, it happened that we started to exclude any different kind of life form from this stage. So theater from this time on meant humans talk to humans. And whatever is represented from the planet, from the world, is only present on stage if it's possible to represent it in people, in the relation of people, how they speak about it, how they behave. So the Anthropocene is, in a way, a scene for the Anthropos. And this became quite normal. So from this point on, we developed a certain kind of playwriting with a specific dramaturgy, with a specific logic. And it's still the logic of 90% of our movies and novels and so on. So it's a development that is very fundamental. And in a way, many people think, okay, if you ask, how would you imagine a theater, they would start to make a drawing of a proscenium and a curtain. And so this is our image of theater. In the same time, of course, theater, as a word, meant so much more all the time. So it was basically theater is everything that is opening a space to inhabit different kind of things. It's not necessarily humans. So you have the memory theater as a great tradition of, since the ancient time, so you put memories into a set or the early planetariums are called Sternen theaters, star theaters, because they present stars or in the anatomy in the university, you have the anatomy theater, or you have a war theater in the history of the military planning of actions. So before they go into the battle, they play the battle on a certain place. And it's called the Kriegsteart, the place where the battle happens. So theater in the same time is a kind of metaphor. And I think we have learned that this, let's say, development from inventing this kind of instrument, this kind of apparatus theater from Renaissance in Europe, is deeply connected to the development that leads to the Anthropocene, to this period in the history of our planet that is so fundamentally influenced by our species. And this becomes more and more problematic. So I started to think from this point on, if we want to change in this climate crisis situation a little bit the way how we talk about the problem, we should go back into the deep structure of this theater construction that is so ecocentric, so anthropocentric. And we have to overcome this to make a step forward in our way how we deal with the climate crisis and climate change. Basically, this was the intention. And so then I started to think about as many people, by the way, do and also you have one great colleague, Una Handuri. It's one of your professors in your university. She's one of you in New York City. Yeah, New York City. And she was one of in the 90s, last century, she started to write beautiful books about relation of animals and stage. And to say that this kind of what we think it's normal, it's not normal. And I think we have to learn from people like Handuri and other theorists, but also from the art world itself that started to go out of the black box and to re-asking the rules and the situations and structures of black box theaters. And this means in the end everything. So it means it's a problem of representation. It's a problem of dramaturgy, of logic, of incorporating what, who is leading the action, what are the rules and new ways of storytelling or is there any story anymore? So this was the starting point of my research. You know, it is such a significant and important contribution. And in a way, perhaps also the time of corona is part of it. We all have to think if we have to really stop and completely rethink what we do. Is it still enough to have the beautiful black boxes? You know, the Italian, Italian or Italian idea. And then we have to include what Latour and others called the critical zone, the plants, the animals. How do we connect to what is so urgent, so necessary and presented on that highly symbolic space of theatre and performance where we say we can no longer just represent inter-human conflicts. We have to think about nature. We have to take it into account. This is not an academic question. It's not an artistic question. It is a fundamental question as in the games of thrones they would say the winter is coming. You know, so something is happening. It's in front of us for our children and grandchildren. What responsibility does the theatre have? And I think your work, The Down to Earth and your upcoming book, I think, and we'll discuss it, has answers. And it's perhaps uncomfortable for us in theatre, for institutions. People are trained in a way of, you know, their playwrights. So what are models? What do you think should be done? Should we do Greek plays outside? Or what are potential forms you see that will work? Yeah, I really avoid to give answers, but I can give some examples. And I think we can split it in three parts. One is, let's say, what is the issue or the subject of theatre? So since a long time, I would say in the meantime, playwrights or theatre makers are interested in bringing in the topic of climate change, of interspecies relations on stage in, let's say, in form of new plays, in form of performances, however. Second thing is, and this is completely different from that, I would say, is if it's not only the content, if it's the form and the way how we practice it itself that becomes different. This is the more radical level of, let's say, the deeper way of questioning the rules of the theatre game. So you have to develop a different understanding of what theatre is that is not the black box thing. It's something else. It has to do with the way how our mindset is constructed and how it dives into a model of world. And this kind of encounter is, in my experience, the most interesting aspect of theatre. And the third thing is, of course, the question of how can we make theatre in any way, however it's produced, more sustainable. How can we avoid to waste energy? So also to go online is not sustainable. It's a way to have a democratic approach to many, many, many communities and individuals, but in itself, it's using a lot of energy. And so the third part is maybe something, there are so many experts on it. I think for me, the second question is, or the second part of this problem is the most interesting, because theatre usually it's done by humans. So there is an anthropogenic level in it, and it's hard to avoid it. Second thing is, usually our tradition of theatre is very exclusive. So it excludes a lot of different life forms and entities who are doing the same game as we do. They also are world builders. So every animal is creating a world around itself. Every micro-bacteria is something that is world-building something. And the question is, if Gaia is not this godness as a kind of character, as a person, if Gaia is this kind of superstructure that connects all the entities who build their own worlds and these worlds are interconnected, and in the constant exchange, and let's say everything is related to everything, if this is the Gaia principle as a kind of superstructure of life, how life gives life to life in the future, it's not the work of one species. It's something that is done by what James Lovellor called the Gaia principle, the principle of this kind of super-organism that is this connection of all the singular agents of life. So if you go into that, then of course it becomes very interesting. How can you create a structure in which the animal or the plant, the tree, a mouse or a spider, how can you invite them, or how can we invite us to their reality and create something in which we don't overrule all these other entities? And I think there are some very good examples and some very interesting approaches, and there are some very old theories about it. So if you think about Atol, for Atol, theater was not this, he speaks about, by the way, also very interesting, he's speaking about virtual reality, so he used this word in the 30s in his talk about theater, or in his book about theater, and the virtuality of theater in his mind was not the representation in the medium of the theater, it was a completely inhuman sphere of existence, and theater is the tool for Atol in which we can make a connection to this sphere that is not human, so it's like Eastern. The day today is all the Christian people, the day in which they remember that something happened that no human can do, only a force or power that is bigger than us, different from us, could do what happened on Eastern. And in a way for Atol, this whole Balinese theater world has nothing to do with our business of representation, it was a closed world of forms, very intense regarding the body, the voice, the movement, the masses, all these things created the presence of something that is not human, and this was a deeper sense of this kind of theater, it was not reproducing our world, so it uses aspects of our world to have a connection to something different. And artists like Philippa Reno, so if we speak about theater we have to have a more brighter perspective and a field of observation, if you think about the artworks of Philippa Reno, or let's say Pierre Yük, or all these artists who created installation in which they included life forms without changing these life forms, so they're containing it and they're reacting on it and let's say the grass, the trees, the bees, whatever is happening there becomes a part of the presence of this kind of artificial space they create, but the question is who is the decision maker, usually it's the human mind who creates this kind of narration and logic that develops everything, and in this field artists start to work with techniques who are more stochastic, it's not random, it's something they can in a way handle, integrate into this structure of how different parts of the artwork are connected to each other and create a kind of super organism, but inside of this organism nobody knows what will happen next, this is in a way the way how it works, also some works of Remedy protocol are organized like this as an encounter between a non, let's say a wild life form like an octopus and his encounter with a dancer and it needs a lot of time, it's a completely different understanding of relation, it's not that we train the animals anything, but we are open for making relations and contact forms between humans and non-humans that are usually not could be translated into scripts like a regular old-fashioned wonderful theater play. Yeah I do agree with you, we are on the steps of a new world, a radical, radical change, perhaps you know often Galileo, Brace Galileo comes up when he used the telescope and so there were other planets and there are many many more and then we discovered, as you also mentioned, the great book, the Dr. Earth's book, you know perhaps the Earth is something very special of the millions and billions of stars and but we understand, as you said Laplac said, we are perhaps a gigantic organism, we all are connected, animal's tree is an old animistic idea in indigenous societies thought for thousands or tens of thousands of years for our listeners, the theater of the Anthropocene, if I understand it right and you correct me if I'm not, is the idea to say humans have done something to this planet that has radically changed it, something it didn't happen in the Holocene 10-12,000 years ago when you started agriculture, it didn't radically change, when it happened isn't clear, is it the Hiroshima bomb, is it the beginning of the industrial revolution, Leibniz is an invention of the fertilizer, who knows, something happened and it's as radical as a change as were the discoveries, you know, of Galileo, we said we have to look differently at the world, actually the sun does not turn around us, we turn around the sun, as Darwin said, actually we come from monkeys, we are not created by God in seven days and as Young and Freud said, you know, 99% of what we think is governed by our subconscious was radically thought at the time by the science and now we are in a place where in significant scientists, writers and thinkers as we are again called to rethink our world and we have to act on it and the question is what can theater do, what does theater do to represent that new world and if the Hamlet's idea was the great idea of theater, it's a mirror like what Shakespeare said, you know, theater is a mirror but if we now see the world differently with the view from the outside, from space that significant, most significant image of the 20th century, the earth from the Apollo, so we have to say how can theater then also really represent that where we understand what Bruno Latour and so many others and you say humans are no longer godlike, we are not the central character, we are not the central casting, we are part of an organism of plants, of viruses, of oxygen, of clouds, water and we have to represent it on our stages in this highly symbolic and thought over space, what do we show, what will New York Theater Workshop show on Broadway or in the University Theater, so to explain and connect us to the world, to explain the past, to be present in the moment but also anticipate a future and to change it and to be called to action, so I think this idea is truly significant, it's changing us as it will change the work of the Cedal Center, we will try to do instead of a prelude festival inside our spaces, perhaps a park festival or maybe we name it down to earth inspired by you, your work and by Latour and my question to you in your research for your book which might come out this year or next year and you mentioned earlier it is the book that has the most reserved on the Theater that side book list, it's not out yet but people are interested, what did you discover, what are you discovering, what surprised you in your research? First of all I developed a completely new perspective on let's say what we call circus, so there is a new interest in circus, I would say it's a theater form but what represents an acrobat, it's a very interesting question, what represents an acrobat? An acrobat, I don't know, he's representing the human being in relation to objects and animals basically and to its own body, so I think the non-human term in theater means that we develop a new openness to the relation of humans and objects and it could be also objects only. I saw a wonderful theater work, Fantasmagoria by Philip Ken who used only objects, only pianos to create a huge kind of theater form that is in a way old fashioned as a scripted kind of performance but in the same time what does it represent? It represents that everything is alive, all these objects one have not been that objects, they are alive, they have a spirit, so I think beside of that my relation to or my recognition of let's say shadow theater in this kind of tradition of theater you can represent everything by it could be an animal, it could be a ghost, it could be humans, it could be mountains whatever could be brought into theater as a kind of let's say shadow of reality that is in itself a kind of symbol or something like that. I also start to be really interested in all these algorithmic artificial intelligence realities that are also driven by something that is not human anymore. The idea of James Lovelock was we are not longer living in the period of Anthropocene, we are living in the period of Nobocene. Nobocene means it's a life form after the biologic life form of humans that is in technological life form and we are let's say on this very thin line in some years I'm convinced we will really observe something that seems to be intelligent because this kind of technology is able to reproduce itself in a way. We know the artificial intelligence is a script, is software, but now we experience that software is writing software. So for Lovelock it was at the beginning of the Nobocene was when machines build machines that humans can't build anymore. In a way he said it started a new age in the moment when we crossed this border and so we should have a very close look on all this what we call artificial life forms because also this old opposition between nature and technology and life biological life form it's melting. We are creating life forms. As humans we create different life forms and this will be radically more intensified in the next years. So it's not about going back in nature, going into the mountain, going with theater in the forest. It's wonderful but in this kind of future we go into the scripts, the DNA of other life forms. Right now we rewriting them, we change their DNA. We as humans do that in the same time like a virus is changing our DNA and make mutations in our organisms and so on. So I think this kind of oppositions are not longer the dialectic structure of Bertolt Brecht's theater that you have oppositions. Now we're living in a symbiotic immersive situation and I think the theater forms will become immersive but not in the sense that we all wear these virtual reality glasses. It means that we are in a kind of ecosystem of theater, of performance and in this ecosystem, performative ecosystem Maximilian Haas is a great theorist in Germany, very, very interesting artist and scientist. He uses this phrase of performative ecosphere and in this ecosphere of performance there are so many different actors included and we will find structures how we play with algorithmic machines with characters who are not humans or also maybe not animals and I think this is something we can learn if we have a closer look to theater, to circus, to all forms of theater and this will be I think a slow process of reframing the black box, going out of it, changing the rules inside of it, taking away the fourth wall. I think this is something that is still going on, it's not that it will come, it happened since decades I think since Robert Wilson did his great Persephone show in the 70s in Iran and I think this is something if we speak about Gaia theater it's not about humans and animals on stage, it's about different understanding what is on stage and what is a kind of dramaturgy that is not scripted in the old way between this kind of actor beings. Yeah absolutely and I think this is the key question that kind of new dramaturgy that is radically different than thinking how do we write a play, how to communicate with the arts of the author or director to the audiences, the idea of what happens here but you said when machines, now program machines, artificial intelligence created by programmers is so brilliant you cannot tell the program to a program, you do not need programmers anymore, an entire species of workers will disappear like the digital, like the book printers, you know who had to enter in the old days into the electronic machines, you know type up a manuscript and then it was printed and what will that mean already now I think in motion picture industries where bodies are filmed and then transferred into animated films machines talk to each other and humans don't understand how they do it they just see a result and the question is what does it mean for us and the idea of what you talked about is mankind then a step in the evolution something that is no longer the godlike self-definition of us is a big question. Thomas what do you think? Theater audiences have 300 or 100, sometimes they have a thousand people looking at it, how can theater communicate, how can performance intervene, what can theater do to raise an awareness of the planet of this Gaia principle, Gaia the Greek it's a Greek term right it's kind of it's not just mother earth but it's kind of the living form life that keeps life we only are alive because someone was alive before us it was plants I think in the botanical garden in Berlin there is the inscription by Linnae it says be respectful of the plant everything lives because of the plant you know so how can theater react to a tv series that has 30 million viewers and with reruns of the tv series friends half a billion a billion what is the role how should we how should we approach that? I'm not an oracle I think every old way of theater that works is good so there's nothing bad with that I like it if people are touched by a very old story by Maudière or whatever so it's a kind of immersion if we go into the characters on stage and we feel with them and they make us cry and laugh and that that's that's it's a great technology of doing something like that and at the same time we see there is something beside on other fields of performance it could be in a exhibition hall it could be in a very kind of experimental festival environment for me it starts with we have this very high cultural perspective on things like let's say circus everything that is not based in text but we learn right now that they don't have this kind of opposition between the artwork and the audience they are surrounded by the audience they have no central perspective so I think we will slowly learn the great advantage of this kind of sometimes very old art forms like we discover now the wisdom of indigenous cosmologies we rediscover other forms of expression of making collective experiences that are not exclusive for black box theater so you can have it on other fields and sometimes it doesn't have to be masses it could be something that is very intimate and I think I see how many contemporary artists right now work in a field that is in the same time the performance and at the same time it's an exhibition it's create it creates environments that invites you to enter and everything is starting to talk to you not only the actor also the objects also the light everything is in a way like in an animistic world everything has in a way its own spirit that is starting to talk to you and I think it doesn't have to be this kind of metaverse fantasy it's more interesting to me if it's based in the world in the real world environment with real bodies with with a clear understanding of the presence of the other as the other and not as a kind of simulation of something that is the other yeah yeah and I think perhaps one Marco that you think also is that audiences are in the idea of this French great philosopher once here emancipated spectator that they are part of something they are invited as participants also and not just as you know in politics we say just the voter in the business they're just the consumer in the theater world we say they're just the audience know that there are new ways we had Aaron Lanzman with us just last week we talked about his project that goes on for many years now where he re-enacts with people from the audience city council meetings and asks people to we say the words that are the the the the foundational elements of democracy when people talk to each other in city council meetings and decide the fate of a city or Michael clean who we had two weeks ago in a social choreography where he asked dancers but also not audiences to be in a room for three four hours on the floor and follow each other's movements and spend time and think about work so they are I think many many ways but I think yeah go ahead it's it's it's it's more than this kind of question of participation I think it's very important and you you should feel yourself invited it becomes for younger generation a quite of a kind of obscure that this kind of heroic relation between stage and audience and so it becomes in a way old-fashioned in interconnected world but in a in a way it becomes also maybe interesting because it's so different but I think it's not about the participation between humans the more a radical question is how can we make the weather be part of the show how can we make the daylight a part of the show how can we invite noises plans the presence of so many other things that are all the time around us and maybe we have to to open the black box for that but it could be also like in the filipareno organism of artworks it could be also done by technology and by sensors or whatever but we should not look only on ourselves how we can invite the audience we should invite the sky and we should invite ghosts and whatever yeah absolutely and that is so right and I think that is the real radical message to pay attention to in our daily lives but also on the stage and in art because it is and I think the question now how do we make something meaningful something that also represents the urgency of how different we have to understand life and what a lot of scientists and artists already have understood how do we practice it and I do believe in the significance of that symbolic imaginary but real space of theater and we have to be very careful what we show and the idea that it's just a product that we just entertain that perhaps ultimately supports systems that do not that do not work I mean some radical people say you know therapy and all these things you know they just teach people how to cope with things instead of asking them to change or looking at a system that produces things that do no longer system that do not work and we have to say that and last night was a big television night in the US and that's TV series succession the old titanic Logan Roy died some capitalist the hyper or capitalist and his children who have no children and they are lost they are you don't see animals you don't see plants into big questions how do you go forward what have they inherited there is this wealth but it has destroyed so much and and the question is also how does theater react to that and I think you and your your your circle artists and friends who you represent as you we have Charles who you mentioned Bruno Latour Frideric who will talk to us Andreas Weber in that idea of a big organism that is thinking that is rethinking things thinking something we really have to pay attention to body orangta wrote also about the theater of ecology Richard Schachner of this ecological theater as you said umas and so many think about it but perhaps it's really time to ask us who produce art or present art what is the most important thing we have to do what can we how can we contribute to help us realize what already has changed and you said that if we're not talking about some idea or some theoretical academic reflection the world we live in has radically changed but we are blind to it we don't see it and just to say we avoid our carbon footprint I don't take this flight and I make a contribution it is not it is not enough and an artistic engagement we're also I think emotions and feelings do come in is is called for and we have to find and research what works what makes an effect and also we do know by observing by a practice of the universe changes experiments and labs show us you know that in quantum physics that just by the way to think about reflect about the change is taking place and I hope and think that our work here in that little tiny skillet the seagulls and but also your brilliant work was the the time is the best spieler and your new project about writing you know will help us to understand better where we are and preserve something that has been lost to reinterpret the old with new technologies and once here always said when all traditions come to new technology something important and significant happens in the art so what are you working on at the moment tell us a little bit about the projects I know you do so much what exhibitions projects houses books theater plays from what are you what's on your mind in 10 days we will open a great exhibition in the national gallery of pristina by albanian artist carlo is his name and I think it's for me very very important experience of eastern europe part of europe that is not part of the european union of people who all experienced war who all experienced colonization in a way and that is a deep and very intense experience I make right now and then I'm writing about language book about language because I think we it's one of the things I'm interested in it because we can't avoid after we are two years old we are entering a system that is for lifetime determining determinative for for our way how we behave how we think how we think what we are and what influence what influences has new words has new ideas how do they change our mind but but how do we change the world by using a kind of new language this is something that I'm I feel very close right now you are collect of words right you collect new words and publish them yes yeah since many years yeah yeah and and I have a good friend in in Athens and try to organize something there and I'm working for a way inspiring man is great visioner entrepreneur yeah a lot of things a lot of things yeah so stay in contact with us and let's see if we can pull off something in the new york city parks for the fall that is maybe a little great idea yeah connected to that and and and so we are in doubt or perhaps we are a little bit at least us at the seagull or the academia or the theater here a little bit behind of that significant discussion America such an abundance of energy and there's so much space it's not as visible as it should be and how significant the crisis truly is and and many argue the point of return has already been crossed and we will be see how we how to live now with what mankind has done and and we need and I think it is really true theater performance has to reflect it it has to be engaged it has to represent it and it has to call us for action and to be part of the change we want to see so this is a very important reminder we hope to read your book so do you know a title or is that which one your new one that you're working on and this is the gaya theater book it's called the gaya theater yeah gaya theater and the other book is called five years but it's it's another story it's because it's the collection of words for five years and all of our crisis and inventions are collected in this in this book but I will to me I will mention that I've got an email today by Nancy Cohen and she is doing on uh Instagram and no yes it's the comment tick tock very nice account it's called climate change theater and I don't know her but I did have a quick look on what they do and it seems to be funny but in the same time serious regarding our topic changing changing changing in the crisis of climate and try to be more aware of our connections to to so many life forms that are not human fantastic so thank you Thomas and to our listeners thank you for taking time out when we started the seagull talks of course they were in Covent on very few talks now there are so many digitally online but we still believe they are go across time zones across nations and there are of significance join us with Frédéric I2E on on Friday on Monday we have Avra with us who created a book it's thinking about what is the tragedy in a 21st century what is it how do you represent it what is the idea of a tragedy and how can we and how should it be shown and she created the book with 30 participants and about and then also Andreas Weber a philosopher who will talk about his understanding of earth and art and life and how it is in a way all connected so thank you Thomas also thank you for giving us the title of the whole earth talks inspired by by earlier works also in there so and thank you for being such a good friend to our center and and this important work what you are doing and I hope we will all stay in close contact bye bye to all listeners thanks to HowlRound, Sia and Vijay and Talia Rosenthal with us here in New York and I hope to hear and see you also thank you yeah Thomas thank you thank you for your work your important work and thank you to the whole team I think it's something very urgent you do and grateful for that thank you thank you Thomas bye bye thank you bye bye