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  • Dance
  • SPRING coproduction
  • NL premiere

Una Isla

Agrupación Señor Serrano
Date
Fri 31 May 2024 19:00
Location
Stadsschouwburg Grote Zaal
Duration
70 min
Language
English
Country
Spain
Price
€25,50 / €18,-
Themes
Performing speculations, New technologies, Staging climate
Edition
SPRING 2024
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This performance features light flashes.

New creation by this Catalan collective that has received the Silver Lion for innovation in performing arts at the Venice Biennale. Since we’ve failed so many times to create a “better world”, let’s ask Artificial Intelligence for help this time. Will the technology we created to improve our lives help us finally design an “utopian paradise”? Or will it decide that we ourselves are the obstacle preventing us from ever achieving it?

Video

We need to find a new way of living together. It is hard not to agree with this statement. We must overcome the current phase of cultural conflict and seek a new coexistence where “me” gives way to “us”, where individual well-being cannot be conceived without common well-being. 

These statements are irresistible. And yet, like any matter that appears unquestionable, these claims are riddled with problematic elements. Who fits into this “us” that’s so attractive? How do we go from “me” to “us”, from the individual to the community? Does this “us” include the people we don’t like? What percentage of the population does this “us” that we dream of comprise? Can there be “us” without “the others”? What do we do with things that bother us? Do mosquitoes fit into “us”? Do viruses? Plankton? And poisonous plants? What about artificial plants? And what about artificial intelligences? Since the 1950s, when studies on artificial intelligence as we understand it today began, fictions have portrayed artificial intelligences as a threat. As in any mythology, the creator’s fear of being overtaken and annihilated by his creation has fed the dilemma of coexistence between humans and artificial intelligences. Fear of the other, of the unknown. Does it really need to be this way? Who is to imagine the new myths? And our future? What if we invite artificial intelligences to imagine “us”? What if we invite them to imagine a place for this “us”? What if we ask them to help us imagine Una isla?

https://www.srserrano.com/una-isla/

Awards

  • 2023: Digital Tools Award from Premis de la Crítica 2023
  • 2015: Silver Lion from the Venice Biennale (Italy)

Review

Annette Embrechts wrote about Una Isla for De Volkskrant: “‘Una Isla,’ about a castaway found by AI, is as fascinating as it is curious.” Read the entire review here.

In Theaterkrant, Javier López Piñón wrote about Una Isla: “An island, a chatbot, and an ode to poetry”. Read the full review here.

Interview

Elise de Leede, head of SPRING Academy, interviewed Pau Palacios, artistic director of Agrupación Señor Serrano, about Una Isla. Read the interview here.

Agrupación Señor Serrano go where other theatre-makers fear to tread. They are always one step ahead in recognising that form is content and it’s not about what you do but how you do it that performance’s potency lies. Una isla / An Island, the company’s most recent work, is no exception.

Maria Delgado, The Theatre Times, 27 october 2023

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Artist

Agrupación Señor Serrano

Credits

Team

Direction and dramaturgy: Àlex Serrano and Pau Palacios / Direction and dramaturgy assistant: Carlota Grau / Performers: Carlota Grau, Lia Vohlgemuth, Sara Montalvão, Bartosz Ostrowski and nine local performers / Holographic performer: Eva Torróntegui / Choreography: Núria Guiu (in collaboration with the performers) / Set design and costumes: Xesca Salvà / Light design: Cube.bz / Music: Nico Roig / Holographic videos: David Negrão / Video morphing: Boris Ramírez / Video Programming: David Muñiz / Stage manager and performer: Camille Latron / Artificial intelligences used during the creation of the piece: GPT-3, Bloom, DALL·E, Stable Diffusion, Midjourney and FILM / Production coordinator: Barbara Bloin / Executive producer: Paula S. Viteri / Management: Art Republic

Dancers : Anna Miluka, George Pelagrias, Emma Versluys, Anne Willsemsem, Carolina Wolkinson, Paola Martire, Arturo Francisco Vargas Lencina, Yashasvi Shrotriya

Kid on stage: Margarita

 

A production by

GREC Festival de Barcelona / Câmara Municipal de Setúbal / Rota Clandestina / Festival Internacional de Teatro de Expressão Iberica (FITEI) / Centro Cultural CondeDuque / Laboratorio de las Artes de Valladolid (LAVA) / CSS Teatro Stabile di Innovazione del Friuli-Venezia Giulia / TPE – Festival delle Colline Torinesi / SPRING Performing Arts Festival / Feikes Huis / Departament de Cultura de la Generalitat

 

With the support of

Ajuntament de Terrassa / Fabra i Coats Fàbrica de creació de Barcelona

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