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The Prix Ars Electronica Archive is a collection enabling search and viewing of all the submissions since 1987. The award-winning projects are documented with catalogue texts and audio-visual media. All other submissions can be searched by title/artist and displayed with year, category in list form. Please cite the credits (artwork name, artist and photographer) and only use the materials if your article is related to Ars Electronica.
Call Cutta in a box
Helgard Haug,
Daniel Wetzel,
Stefan Kaegi
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Imagine you are buying a ticket at the box office for an individual show on a specific day, but are not led to the auditorium of the theater. Instead, you get the key for a room and a sketch of how to get there. It might be a room in the theater, an office, or an apartment somewhere close by. You open the door and you find a phone ringing. You pick up the phone and a person with a strange accent strikes up a conversation with you. The person seems to know the room you are sitting in, even though he is about 10,000 km away.
The voice belongs to a call-center agent from Calcutta, India. He and his colleagues usually sell credit cards and insurance on the phone to people on the other side of the globe or provide navigational help in cities that they have never been to themselves. But this time you are not supposed to buy anything. By now, you are standing at the window and your transcontinental conversation partner is pointing out to you some curious people in the building opposite. On the notebook desktop in your room, images and videos are opening up out of nowhere. A story is about to develop and you realize that the callcenter agent and you and your city are the very first protagonists of the plot.
Links: http://www.rimini-protokoll.de/website/de/project_2766.html
The voice belongs to a call-center agent from Calcutta, India. He and his colleagues usually sell credit cards and insurance on the phone to people on the other side of the globe or provide navigational help in cities that they have never been to themselves. But this time you are not supposed to buy anything. By now, you are standing at the window and your transcontinental conversation partner is pointing out to you some curious people in the building opposite. On the notebook desktop in your room, images and videos are opening up out of nowhere. A story is about to develop and you realize that the callcenter agent and you and your city are the very first protagonists of the plot.
Links: http://www.rimini-protokoll.de/website/de/project_2766.html
Collaboration: Sebastian Brünger, Almut Rembges; Digital Interface Design: Florian Fischer; Physical Interface Design: Georg Werner; Production Management: Heidrun Schlegel/Kathrin Veser; Assistant Directors India: Almut Rembges, Philipp Widmann, Maria Ochs, Martin Baierlein; Production Management India: Madhusree Mukherjee; Production: Rimini Apparat in collaboration with the call center Descon Limited in Kolkata. (http://www. desconsoft.com). Coproduction Baltic Circle Helsinki and Helsinki Festival; Camp X Kopenhagen; HAU Berlin; Kunstenfestivaldesarts Brussels; Nationaltheater Mannheim; Schauspielhaus Zürich; 104 Centquatre Paris. Supported by the European Cultural Foundation and Mayor of Berlin - Senatskanzlei - Kulturelle Angelegenheiten.
Helgard Haug (1969), Stefan Kaegi (1972) and Daniel Wetzel (1969) studied at the Institute of Applied Theater Studies in Giessen and work together (in various combinations) under the name of Rimini Protokoll. They are recognized as being among the leaders and creators of the theater movement known as “Reality Trend” (Theater der Zeit), which has exerted a powerful influence on the alternative theater scene. Since 2000, Rimini Protokoll has brought its “theatre of experts” to the stage and into city spaces, interpreted by non-professional actors who for that very reason are called “experts”.