In Blue - multimedia, interactive Installation and Radio Feature

In the beginning, however, there was nothing but a poetic text, inspired by the piece "Last Work" by Ohad Naharin, the color blue, and two team members, Justin and Angelina, eager to play instead of following the usual development processes in their fields of action. The topic - "loneliness" - unfolded over time.

The team talked a lot about how life was increasingly characterized by distance, isolation, loneliness, disconnectedness, and relationships of relative duration and depth independently from where to live. The social symptoms: the failure of gestures, the evasive gaze that replaces a nice small talk or the little but essential response of a social smile. As a team of four they followed their hypothesis: If the individual loses his/her ability to think collectively and act socially, this is tantamount to suicide, because he/she will not manage to survive the next crisis alone. The research went on.

In addition to their interest in the symptoms of our time, which also determine our behavioral patterns of the future, another aim was revealed throughout the process of development: to call for participation from a multicultural perspective, at best also not in a preachy mode. The woman in the blue dress, the central character of their narration, traces these (un)fulfilled social needs regarding closeness and distance and draws consequences for the future. In order to do justice to the team's attitude that in a multicultural society the reduction to one language inevitably leads to exclusion, this happens in German, English, Korean and Portuguese.

At the premiere in February 2020, the space for discourse was finally opened. The installation was built up in a big hall bathed in dark blue. The team thus created a protective space for letting go in a public surrounding. For a moment its visitors were able to reflect on their current state of blue. They could get in touch with other visitors while interacting with the story. Their closeness or distance to the speakers, sounds, music and voices made it possible to ultimately find a very own narrative in the loop. To be able to still dive into the story of the woman in the blue dress even after the Installation, the upcoming radio feature will rearrange the already collected material to be published online in 2021.

With this artistic research project, the team hopes to have created something that can build bridges: to create greater awareness of critical behavioral patterns caused by our postmodern lifestyle, to break down stigmas towards the topic of "loneliness" and to contribute there, where a broader, institutional debate still struggles to find its words. They say: "In the end loneliness came upon us all with the onset of the Corona crisis. From now on an overall social confrontation with it became indispensable."

Project lead: Angelina Urbanczyk

Team

• Idea, script, director, production manager: Angelina Urbanczyk
• Idea, co-director, assistant producer, composition, music recording, voice recording, sound design, sound mixing: Justin Robinson
• Animation: André Correia
• Set design: Hyerim Lee