Cork Mid Summer Festival was a great success bringing together a combination of commissioned and programmed work, there was a strawberry ripple of international companies through a programme of homegrown work. I was only there for two days each of the weekends, so I missed other festival highlights like Jérôme Bel and Mike Daisy.
But I had my own two highlights, the first of which was Rimini Prokoll’s, Best Before.
I am a fan of their work ordinarily and this show was no let down.
Best Before pulls the multi-player video game out of the virtual realm and plugs it into an intimate theatre setting. Each audience member navigates an anonymous avatar, interacting with a panel of on-stage experts – an electronic artist, a game tester, a lobbyist and a traffic flagger. A simulated city, Best-Land, gradually develops as each audience member adds their personal touch with game controller in hand. Taking its inspiration from Vancouver’s gaming industry, Best Land evolves and devolves as the audience clashes and collaborates while making personal, social and political decisions.
The show, decisions and outcomes percolated through my brain for many a day after.
Next up was Superflex – Check them out – Click link below
SUPERFLEX is a Danish art collective, founded in 1993 whose interventionist practice deals with economic markets, power structures, self-organisation and environmentalism. They understand their artistic practice as a set of tools, or as an invitation to positive action and participation rather than in terms of discrete works of art. Viewers often become co-producers, shifting the focus away from objects to relationships where the artworks can be redefined and modified by users.
More recently Superflex have been working with legal contracts, challenging public and private copyright laws which led to complex legal negotiations. By investigating the function of a contract, Superflex has created new works that are statements and proposals and can be understood as political acts redefining particular contexts and situations.
