GPS
first performed on May 11, 2019
Kurfurstenstraße, Berlin, Germany
performed once in 2019
SEAN SMUDA
Kosta Bogievski, Agnes Von Burkleo, Jack Hogan, Jonathan Zorn
Berlin, Germany, USA, Belgium
seansmuda.com
GPS
SEAN SMUDA
“GPS” is based on a dream about Stephen Hawking and rewriting the EU Constitution. It embodies interactions between the individual and the state. Differences between them are analog and digital, and their averaging can determine and control consumer and political action. A performer in a wheelchair is pushed down a city street by an attendant. The street transitions from housing, shops, and galleries, to a red-light district. The performer makes online purchases with a smartphone that include the constitution and books on the Monte Carlo Method, quantum physics, and psychology. The attendant scrambles to locate the purchases beneath paving stones and trash. When they reach a busy intersection, the performer gets up to cross it, then trades places with the attendant in front of a discount store.
The second part of the performance is its presence in the digital realm as a video record where cognitive labor lives as commodity fetish. Libretto, sound-score, print, photogrammetry, and additional performance oscillate between analog and virtual worlds and shape their paths.