O-Team + Antje Töpfer (DE)

“Wetware” is machine dance theatre or musical Figurentheater, a poetic approach to the emotional life of the techno-self. The performance uses images, rhythm, music and language to explore the malleability of bodies and the self in the context of technology, drugs, sex and biopolitics. It is a play with opposites and dependencies between hardware and wetware, love and death, machine precision and human feeling. “Wetware” does not intend to be a rational analysis, but irrational, emotional and libidinous, like our relationship to technology and the body. Like a long poem, the performance tells of the reinvention of nature, electro-cellular circuits, intimate desires, chemical reactions and the technology of the soul.

“The term wetware, in reference to the terms hardware or software, refers to biological material from the perspective of technology. The starting point of the performance is our own ambivalent relationship to the possibilities of self-optimization, transformation and stimulation through technology and chemistry. Our fascination and dependence on these possibilities are countered by doubt, fear, and disgust.”

Note: Strobe effects are used in the performance.