Stefan Kaegi 25th of August - 8th of September Cargo Ready-Made Machine - Intervention Lab In the northernmost village of South Korea, they say, there is an open-air grandstand from which spectators from the capitalist south are given a glimpse of their northern neighbours beyond the border.

Stefan Kaegi

As the communist neighbours are aware of their audience, they are said to be outfitted with exceptionally nice clothes: a 'fence' theatre. These days the fear of surveillance cameras has been replaced by the fear of not-being-observed. The society of the spectacle has rid itself of the last hiding places in order to create a mise-en-scène for consumerism. Here public space has become part of a continuation of the life of the customer, whose future public space project can be seen as the manifestation of a digital architectural model.

In the film The Matrix, the entire city is frozen for a moment. Walking amongst its petrified pedestrians, the protagonists of the film reveal life to be a simulation. Artistic interventions can be such pause-buttons: for moments, the theatrical gaze slows down the confused flow of capital and special interests, the architecture of the urban sociotope is deconstructed into snapshots. In contrast to the flaneur - the purposeless observer - the intervention-spectator is more of a voyeur who focuses on the public theatre. This zooming-out gesture from public life contains the impulse of context art which, in lieu of reproducing reality, frames and focuses on it instead. A cargo of content instead of a cargo of goods.

The Cargo Ready-Made Machine is the flipside of a protected rehearsal room. It is a custom-rebuilt Bulgarian truck that transports gazes instead of goods: a container on wheels with a big window. A mobile audience space that focuses on cities like a microscope. Wherever the truck stops, the city becomes a stage, a performance, the patient on the couch of analysis, the topic of discussion, the subject of criticism. The Cargo Ready-Made Machine can fictionalize cities and gives them a soundtrack. The intervention lab goes on a search for the theatre of the streets, where the street theatre is created by everyday life. The intervention lab is always only one step away from the city; the fourth wall of this theatre is a window, a pedestal and a frame, and every passer-by in front of it becomes an actor. It is a mobile research unit, exploring relevance and interference with every face of the city. The course will take place in the truck itself and will seek out sites of intervention in Warsaw.

www.rimini-protokoll.de

Polskie Wydawnictwo Audiowizualne will realize a documentary on the Intervention Lab.

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