Wetware

on the technology of the soul

Premiere: 09.10.2020, FITZ! Stuttgart

The term Wetware refers to biological material from the perspective of technology. The project Wetware examines our self and body image in the context of the capitalistically driven technologisation of life. The starting point of the performance is our own ambiguous relationship to the possibilities of self-optimization, transformation and stimulation through technology and chemistry.

Wetware is a performative self-experiment on the own body, mechanized dance theater or musical puppet theater. The project works with images and rhythm, and largely dispenses with language: a poetic approach to the emotional life of the techno-self. In addition to the human bodies of the two performers, (animated) machines appear on stage as protagonists. With them a variety of interaction, connection and lustful fusion are tried. It’s a game of contrasts and connections between hardware and wetware, sexuality and death, machine precision and human inaccuracy, data and emotion. Wetware does not want to be a rational analysis but irrational, emotional and libidinal like our relationship to technology and body.

Wetware continues our artistic exploration of technology and life and is embedded in the project series “Crash”, which investigates the accident as the repressed part of technology and progress. Thus the accident in Wetware is celebrated as a perverse fusion of meat and machine, as a dissolution of the categories of the technical and the human.

Artistic Director: Samuel Hof
Stage- and Costume-Design: Nina Malotta
Music: Harry Delgas
Puppet Design and Performance: Antje Töpfer
Performance: Folkert Dücker
Dramaturgy: Antonia Beermann
Technical Director: Robin Burkhardt
Production: Isabelle Gatterburg
PR/ÖA: Kathrin Schäfer (Kultur PR)
Grafic Design: Markus Niessner

Oct 2020 FITZ Stuttgart and Theater Aalen
Oct 2021 BAFF! Festival Basel, Switzerland
Jan 2022 Hoch X Munich
March 2022 FITZ Stuttgart
Sept 2022, Re:Festival, Tafelhalle, Nürnberg
Nov 2022, Theater der Dinge, Schaubude, Berlin
Feb 2023 Imaginale Festival Mannheim
May 2023 Internationales Figurentheaterfestival Erlangen
Feb 2023 Imaginale Festival Mannheim

WETWARE ist ein Projekt von O-Team in Koproduktion mit HochX Theater und Live Art und Theater der Stadt Aalen. Gefördert im Fonds Doppelpass der Kulturstiftung des Bundes und durch die Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart.