DANIEL
WETZEL

/ RIMINI PROTOKOLL
VIRTUAL WORKSPACE

Workspace open for participants: 22 May - 2 June 2020
Meeting online with the artist: 24 June 2020, 7:00pm

IF I WAS WHERE YOU ARE

Since 2000 he forms an author and director-team with Helgard Haug and Stefan Kaegi, running under the name Rimini Protokoll. Their projects in duo or trio-constellations as well as solo works cover the fields of theatre, audio play, film and installation.

Rimini Protokoll is the best known German collective, celebrating 20 years of existence in 2020. Its founders focus their work on constantly developing theatrical tools, facilitating the presentation of reality from unexpected perspectives. They create interventions, performative installations and audio plays, as well as documentary shows involving ordinary people, who co-create the performance scripts and then appear on stage, relating their personal life experiences.
Rimini Protokoll translate social spaces and arrangements into theatrical formats.
Many of their works are characterised by innovative use of interactive technologies.
“It is high time, after 3000 years of existing in a format where one group of people work to delight a second group by performing a range of actions, that theatre began to present things which are interesting, rather than just showing off skills. For it to busy itself with processes which have real influence on our society.” Rimini Protokoll
Over the years, the collective has taken its projects to many festivals and theatres all over the world; in Poland this includes Malta Festival, Krakow Theatrical Reminiscences and Nowy Teatr in Warsaw.
Having received numerous awards, it is the recipient of the European Theatre Award, Silver Lion - La Biennale di Venezia.

If I were where you are is an online workspace led by Daniel Wetzel.

The aim of the workspace is to use current affairs and events of the day in performative experiments.
In a project they have been developing for a couple of months, the format involves conferences in which speakers are replaced by members of the audience, who follow their briefing how to perform their presentation on their behalf. The emphatic interest in the variety of viewpoints and biographic perspectives on our times in the foremost cases of their more than 100 projects is the starting point for this online workspace.
Whatever rules and regulations are imposed upon us in May – we will certainly be expected to stay in our homes, limiting our contact with people who are not in our immediate circle of family and friends. Hence our wish to experiment with conversations and presentations involving people who are “furthest” from us – in all senses of this word.
If you had to leave your own bubble and reach out to somebody else on this planet – whom would you choose to speak with? A beehive farmer in Nigeria? An emergency nurse in LA? A Guru in Kerala or else a ballet dancer in Kazakhstan? And why them indeed? At present, globally we’re all much more radically in our own bubbles than is usually the case.
This workspace aims to explore the potential of a performative parliament of the separated bubbles. What means will you use to represent this person then – and your experiences with the encounter? Let’s create our performative version of the Globe and of the “now” we’ll be in. Let’s enjoy the basic potential of theatre and performance – sharing space and time in reflections which configure our experiences.

DANIEL WETZEL BIO

Since 2000 he forms an author and director-team with Helgard Haug and Stefan Kaegi, running under the name Rimini Protokoll. Their projects in duo or trio-constellations as well as solo works cover the fields of theatre, audio play, film and installation.

Rimini Protokoll is the best known German collective, celebrating 20 years of existence in 2020. Its founders focus their work on constantly developing theatrical tools, facilitating the presentation of reality from unexpected perspectives. They create interventions, performative installations and audio plays, as well as documentary shows involving ordinary people, who co-create the performance scripts and then appear on stage, relating their personal life experiences.

Rimini Protokoll translate social spaces and arrangements into theatrical formats.
Many of their works are characterised by innovative use of interactive technologies.
“It is high time, after 3000 years of existing in a format where one group of people work to delight a second group by performing a range of actions, that theatre began to present things which are interesting, rather than just showing off skills. For it to busy itself with processes which have real influence on our society.” Rimini Protokoll
Over the years, the collective has taken its projects to many festivals and theatres all over the world; in Poland this includes Malta Festival, Krakow Theatrical Reminiscences and Nowy Teatr in Warsaw.
Having received numerous awards, it is the recipient of the European Theatre Award, Silver Lion - La Biennale di Venezia.