Blur | THEATER DER WELT

In the organizer's words:

With VR goggles through unknown worlds of perception: the extended reality performance lets you experience closeness, the dissolution of boundaries and the instability of life.

In times of biohacking, cloning and artificial intelligence, the boundaries of life, death and finiteness are shifting. BLUR explores this border area and makes tangible what theater can also be. The audience is invited to immerse themselves in a virtual world. This appeals to all the senses and creates the feeling of a new way of being, but also shakes up certainties. Each visitor is given a pair of virtual reality glasses and enters an artificially created world. In this world, everyone acts as an avatar: movements are translated into the digital world with the help of motion capture software. Body, voice and orientation in space exist simultaneously in the real and digital worlds. Presence becomes something fragile and not quite tangible.

Entertaining and precise, this experience of virtual reality leads to an eternally topical question of humanity: how do we perceive finiteness at a time when biotechnologies and artificial intelligence are trying to abolish an end? BLUR, which means blurred or out of focus in German, addresses this question in a sensory and experiential way without providing an explanation. The participants traverse surreal scenarios in which memory, loss and identity become physically tangible.

The performance, which was created in Taipei and Montreal, does not speculate about the future. The audience experiences a moment in the here and now and yet is in another world. In this way, theater makes it possible to engage in a fleeting state and to physically experience ethical, emotional and existential questions of a possible future. This groundbreaking experience does not provide answers, it shifts perception and invites us to ask new questions. Technology does not remain an effect in this theater, but becomes the narrative itself. It creates proximity and distance at the same time and entices us to experience a world space that is as fascinating as it is uncanny. The international group of artists Riverbed Theatre has been working at the interface of science, technology and art since 1998. BLUR was a hit with audiences at last year's Venice Art Biennale.

Location: Spinnbau - Hall 2
Duration: 45 min
Information: In English language. German surtitles will be displayed in the VR glasses.

All further information at: https://www.theaterderwelt.de/programm/

A festival of the German Centre of the International Theatre Institute e.V.
Organized by Chemnitz Theatres, the Festival Academy Brussels and the European Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025 GmbH.

Price information:

Tickets at: theaterderwelt.de/blur | 35% discount with festival pass. More information at: theaterderwelt.de/service/tickets