The Future lies in the Past
CHEZ COMPANY
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| free of charge |
| Adults, Youth |
| German |
| Ground Floor, Schlüter Courtyard |
| Belongs to: Meet the palace |
A machine will land in the Schlüter Courtyard. A UFO, a Robur bus, and a post-post-office for processing memories. Multimedia artist collective Chez Company will be prospecting for memories for the future. Humblodt Forum visitors are invited to join the prospectors in this playful installation: the nuggets are genuine, personal and collective memories of the Palace of the Republic. Who celebrated in the palace and how, who worked there, sat in the audience of the ‘Ein Kessel Buntes’ TV shows, or deliberately refused to enter the building?
We will ask questions, listen to the answers, and send the memories back to the Humboldt Forum’s visitors. Short, serendipitous interviews and more in-depth conversations, together with documentary material both old and new, will all be combined into a live radio broadcast that visitors can listen to in the Schlüter Courtyard. Pick up a personalised postcard of the day, postmarked and franked with the date of your visit, from the UFO Post Office. The Robur’s ticker will collect all the individual memories, turning them into a collective stream of scrolling text.
Is there one truth – or many – about this site, which answers the ‘how’ of reunification, the question of what history we tell, what remains, and what manner of material, situational, musical and social reminders we need to facilitate recollection and work through for the future? Where exactly was this palace?
Source soundtracks: Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv, rbb / Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg, PROGRESS Film, Landesarchiv Berlin, Bundesarchiv – Filmarchiv
CHEZ COMPANY is a multimedia collective of Berlin artists; its core members are theatre producers Gesine Danckwart and Sabrina Zwach, and audio drama and podcast producer Fabian Kühlein.
With its roots in theatre, CHEZ COMPANY has spent many years creating projects in media and performance intersectional spaces: projects which move beyond the usual theatre experience to redefine the relationship between artists and audience.
Their intensive investigations have led to some highly notable formats:
In 2011, in collaboration with the Hebbel-Theater and Raumlabor, CHEZ COMPANY developed the highly successful analogue digital bar Chez Icke, which made guest appearances in numerous locations and festivals.
CHEZ COMPANY developed an avatar project for Schweizer Rundfunk Radio, in which listeners could navigate a human avatar across the Alps, or walk through Beijing’s 798 Art Zone with the Goethe Institut.
Most recent guest appearances include the performance play Chezpoly at the Hybrid Play Festival in Dresden/Hellerau and the hybrid format ChezNu ‘Mobility, Work and The Body’ at the Tools Festival in Stuttgart.
Many of these projects had – and have – a special focus on narration via audio track, and have additionally been broadcast as audio plays on various radio stations.