In November, Eva Ursprung and Alexandra Gschiel from the Graz team travelled to Sweden to meet and work with the InterAkt crew.
After introductions and sharing about our individual worlds, the session began with reviewing and discussing the performances from the Mobilise/Demobilise festival held last year in October. We also watched recordings of several presentations about the project given during the last two years. This brought up a lot of interesting thoughts around the theme as well as the technology and performance techniques used, and the possibilities for next performances in UpStage.
One participant, Aman Hussaini, was joining from Paris and this gave a concrete demonstration of how InterAkt are using UpStage and other digital tools to collaborate remotely and maintain their artistic ensemble at a distance. We all refreshed our UpStage skills and learned about some of the recent improvements. Media creation was a particular focus, with Aman and Zahed Yosefi sharing the stages they have created, and Eva and Alex contributing their experience in digital image and audio manipulation.
At the end of the week, we gave a performance in an empty shop in a local mall. An interested audience of InterAkt’s local community and passers-by learned about Mobilise/Demobilise and had the opportunity to meet and discuss with the participating artists.
