2022 SEOUL PERFORMING ARTS FESTIVAL

We need a representative!
Everyone is absent, yet also present.
A conference of the absent made available by Rimini Protokoll and the audiences who are present in the theater

An internationally staffed conference which no one travels to, and which – please, not again – is not supposed to simply take place digitally. How should that work? Here is a proposal: The speakers simply hand over their presentations to those who are there and who do not have to travel from afar: to citizens from the very city in which this conference of the absent takes place. Is there a more suitable space for such an experimental arrangement than the theater? The directing and writing team Rimini Protokoll, together with the audience, dare exactly this experiment.

Everything it needs: a kind of play manual, the prepared conference presentations and the technical support on site. And, of course, audience members. The advantage, by the way: This conference can be attended several times, is a bit different each time, is relatively environmentally friendly, and can take place in a wide variety of locations around the world – even at the same time. In this way, the diverse biographies, stories, thoughts and positions of those who themselves are not there and cannot be, find new bodies every evening. And at the same time absence itself is the theme: What are different forms of absence? Where and when are we absent? What does absence do to us? When is absence a curse and when perhaps a blessing? The experts at this conference have all had their own experiences.