LORECORE
Anan Fries
Artwork Description:
Even when we sleep, we transmit data. We are surrounded by systems that count, catalogue, compare and calculate us. Algorithmic oracles promise security and provide control. But what myths surround these systems? The performance “LORECORE” is a live-generated computer game essay brought to life by three performers and a robot cat and accompanied by a live musician and a gamer. The immersive performance delves into the machinery of myth-making surrounding the powerful tech companies and looks into the reflective surfaces of the gadgets that surround us in order to convey what is happening in plain sight: the creeping convergence of algorithmic control and far-right ideology, the death of the old internet and the rise of techno-fascism. The title borrows from a concept coined by Shumon Basar: in an era of collapsing grand narratives and rampant digital capitalism, lorecore names our compulsive need to perform and mythologize ourselves — the very impulse these systems exploit. This work is the result of an extensive research on technofascism. As an artist working with digital media and often working with techno-utopian, leftist-accelerationist and xenofeminist concepts, after Trump started his second term I felt like I could no longer ignore the degree to which the technological infrastructures I had been inhabiting were actively enabling the consolidation of authoritarian power.
Project Collaborators:
Artistic direction, Text: Anan Fries / Research & concept: Jette Büchsenschütz, Anan Fries, Cenk Güzelis / Performance: Ronald Alonso Berger, Emil Ertl, Elvan Tekin / XR-design: Me AndOther Me / Dramaturgy: Jette Büchsenschütz / Composition, sound design: Ricardo Eizirik / auto_timer / Costumes: Freya Herrmann / Costume assistant: Melissa Hebold / Light design: Simona Bieksaite / Additional text: Morgane Billuart / Production management: Sina Kießling / Production assistant: Hannah Borghese / Thanks to: Payal Arora, Maik Fielitz, Ana Teixera Pinto, Paul Feigelfeld, Cornelia Sollfrank, Jee Chan, Lemohang Mosese Production: Hairygaze GbR. Co-production: HAU Hebbel am Ufer. Funded by: Berlin Senate Department Culture and Social Cohesion, Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
