HAU Digital Art Showcase

Since 2020, HAU’s digital stage HAU4 offers a platform for performance, technology and games culture. On 15 May, outstanding HAU4 artists will present their work in a seven-hour showing, including hybrid performances, XR experiments and digital games that deal with the influence of commercial technology and authoritarian politics on society.

Since 2020, HAU Hebbel am Ufer has had the digital stage HAU4 in addition to the analogue stages HAU1, HAU2 and HAU3. This is a platform for combining performance, technology and gaming culture with programmes that are presented both online and on the theatre stages. On 15 May, HAU will display outstanding HAU4 artists in a seven-hour showing. The audience will be immersed in hybrid performances, interactive extended reality (XR) experiments and various game worlds. At the centre is the question of how an artistic perspective can be productive in dealing with social change, in which commercial technology and authoritarian politics are becoming increasingly intertwined. Anan Fries, Interrobang, Janne Kummer and onlinetheater.live show excerpts from their performances created in 2023 and 2024. Theresa Reiwer provides insights into her current AI installation. Choy Ka Fai, Keiken and machina eX will be presenting their digital and analogue games. Many of these can be tried out on site. In addition, allapopp and Lena Biresch  invite you to move around the theatre with their XR works. Patrick Blenkarn & Milton Lim will give an insight into their transnational works in a video presentation.

Stage Programme
16:00 – 21:15
Moderation: Sarah Reimann

16:05 – 16:35 Excerpt from “Dis-AI-Dentification” by Janne Kummer
The performative sketch is part of an open research into artificial intelligence and the ideological concepts that are inscribed in it. Berlin-based performance artist Janne Kummer explores how AI-generated images reproduce stereotypical bodies and shape social notions of identity and embodiment.

Intermission

16:50 – 17:20 Excerpt from “Lasting Generation” by Theresa Reiwer
In 2024, Berlin-based (post)digital artist Theresa Reiwer developed a spatial installation in which artificial intelligences come together for a symposium on climate justice. Following the premiere at HAU Hebbel am Ufer and presentations at Art Basel in Miami, among others, we are now showing an excerpt as a 1-channel video work. The AIs want us humans to take responsibility for the future of the planet. A debate begins. What if AI acted neither as our assistant nor as a competitor, but as an ally? How can we reinterpret the technology once designed for war and control in a utopian way?

Intermission

17:40 – 18:10 Excerpt from “Chatbot Challenge” by Interrobang
HAU has been working with the Berlin-based group Interrobang since 2016. They specialise in participatory formats that incorporate digital technology. Performers Christiane Kühl, Nina Tecklenburg, an AI and a creative coder will be showing selected scenes from their production at HAU1, which asks: How much theatre is actually in AI and how much AI theatre have people already internalised? Starting from the basic situation of theatre – the live performance – an intimate encounter with AI systems, their spaces of possibility and strategies of disguise begins. “Chatbot Challenge” celebrated its premiere at HAU last year and has already been successfully performed internationally.

Intermission

18:30 – 19.00 Excerpt from “Myke” by onlinetheater.live
onlinetheater.live is a transdisciplinary group that aims to actively shape post-digital reality through emancipatory and interventionist formats. In “Myke”, the artists have set themselves the task of doing something about radicalisation processes on social media. This is because the targeted online radicalisation of boys and men has fatal consequences. The number of violent offences against FLINTA and queers has been rising for years. How does masculinist radicalisation on social media work, where does it begin and how can it be interrupted as early as possible? In a lecture performance, the group will present their TikTok campaign, which they used to infiltrate anti-feminist content bubbles. Their game app ‘Loulu’, which was awarded the ‘Brave Fair’ innovation prize, can be downloaded at HAU4.

Intermission

19:20 – 19:50 Excerpt from “RIP” by Anan Fries
Anan Fries, an artist at the interface of digital art and performing arts who has been closely associated with HAU for many years, presents another funeral for a bird after a successful revival during Berlin Art Week 2024. The passenger pigeon was wiped out more than a hundred years ago, now it is being bid farewell. In the midst of the first species extinction caused by humans, “R.I.P.” honours the finite nature of all existences and questions the political potential of a possible revival. In selected sequences of the one-hour performance, performers use motion capture to become masters of ceremony in a farewell ritual. Their bodies connect the physical and the virtual, the absent and the present.

Intermission

20:15 – 21:15 Panel talk
with Maike Thies, Marek Tusynski, Sarah Reimann (Curator HAU4), Moderation: Emily Thomey
At the end of the day, we come together again and discuss: What did we experience in the showcase? What focal points can be identified? How do the various projects fit into the current discourse? And how do we see the future of artistic-critical working with digital technology?

Maike Thies (Zurich) is a Research Fellow and Curator in the Department of Design at Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). Her research and teaching activities focus on Interactive Theatre, Narrative Spaces, Immersive Arts, Digital Play and Speculative Design. She is responsible for the festival “REFRESH”, initiated by the ZHdK. In 2023 Thies co-curated the exhibition “Game Design Today” at the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich.

Marek Tuszynski (Berlin) is Executive Director and co-founder of Tactical Tech, is an artist, designer and curator working at the intersection of technology and activism. Tactical Tech is a creative international non-profit dedicated to exploring the socio-political and environmental impacts of technology on society. 

Emily Thomey (Berlin) is an art and media scholar and cultural journalist. For WDR Cosmo, 1Live, Deutschlandfunk, taz and others she writes about pop, sub and net culture. 

INSTALLATIONS
15:00 – 22:00 (open throughout)

allapopp “Hyperlove”
For “Hyperlove”, Berlin-based artist allapopp has developed a digital clone of themselves. The performative augmented reality project explores today’s phygital (physical and digital) everyday life. How do human emotions and artificial intelligence combine in it? allapopp’s avatar sings songs, replicates movements and is sometimes in a lingering, sometimes in agitated and excited states. “Hyperlove”, first presented in 2024 at HAU, raises questions about how digital technologies influence the way people love, create things and care for themselves and others under hyper-capitalist and technocratic conditions.

Anan Fries “Posthuman Wombs”
After a successful tour, the installation “Posthuman Wombs” returns to the HAU. It is a tender journey into an immersive landscape inhabited by pregnant ‘posthumans’. Nature and technology are not opposites here, but directly connected. The artist Anan Fries explores a non-binary pregnancy and the desire to find a community in plurality. The ‘posthumans’ living in the landscape are virtual images of people who are connected to the topic of pregnancy in a personal, artistic and activist way. The work questions common norms and role models and speculates on a possible future in which pregnancy is a technological hack that can be applied to all bodies.

Choy Ka Fai “The Third Prince – The Game”
The artist Choy Ka Fai, who works in Singapore and Berlin, now presents his first game. His performative projects are located at the interface of choreography, design and technology and have already been presented at Tanz im August and Tanzplattform. They share an abiding interest in shamanism and East Asian cosmologies. In the single-player game, an android shaman in Taiwan rediscovers ancient spiritual wisdom. Her goal is to prove the presence of the third prince, a synonym for the Chinese deity Nezha. The question arises: is the third prince a Chinese or a Taiwanese deity? The game has already been presented at HAU as a performative Let's play and can still be downloaded from HAU4.

Keiken “Morphogenic Angels”
The internationally successful trio Keiken, who work between Berlin and London, released the first episode of a multi-part game “Morphogenic Angels” in 2023. It explores a future in which humans acquire transhuman abilities through organic changes. These new beings are known as angels. They can live for hundreds of years and possess the consciousness of all species. The project is now being shown as a video presentation at HAU1. The playthrough with the Berlin drag character Hungry aka Johannes J. Jaruraak can still be viewed on HAU4.

Lena Biresch “Me, Myself & My Avatars: Sequel 2”
In a performative VR installation, Hamburg-based artist Lena Biresch invites two people at a time to enter a world using VR glasses in which they can try out new connections between their own and the virtual body. At the beginning, the players are stuck in a body for both people, which they can only control through collaboration. This is followed by a race in which the avatar has a human appearance but the physique of a horse.

machina eX “Intranet // Home Office“ + “adaptor:ex“
machina eX, regulars at HAU since 2011, develops participatory game theatre that combines the practices of computer games with the means of theatre. The group is presenting two current projects at HAU1. In “Intranet // Home Office”, visitors research on a cyberattack on a local newspaper. This gives players an insight into a production that premiered as a performance on stage in 2024 and was then developed into a game that can be played at home. machina eX use the adaptor:ex software to develop interactive experience spaces. It connects and visualises the elements of interactive performances, theatre games, chatbot adventures and escape rooms. adaptor:ex is now also used by other theatre makers. The software can be tested here.

Patrick Blenkarn & Milton Lim “asses.masses – an insight”
In 2024, Canadian artists Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim presented the video game “asses.masses” for the first time in Germany, which is played on stage by a live audience. In this video, Blenkarn and Lim talk about the genesis of the project, how the artists use games to challenge traditional forms of performance and how “asses.masses” has shaped their work.

HAUtie
HAUtie is a communicative medium. Conceptualised and designed by allapopp and Philisha Kay for dgtl fmnsm, realized with HAU and The Brettinghams. On HAU4, HAUtie offers program information and at the same time an artistic examination of artificial intelligence.