Rimini Protokoll (DE)
Camp X / Urban Space
Rimini Protokoll
Helgard Haug, born in 1969 in Sindelfingen, Germany. Lives in Berlin
Stefan Kaegi, born in 1972 in Wil, Switzerland. Lives in Berlin and Buenos Aires
Daniel Wetzel,born in 1969 in Kontanz, Germany. Lives in Athens and Berlin
You find yourself in an unfamiliar room, the phone rings and you answer it. In the other end, a phone worker at an Indian call centre begins a conversation with you. Calling from Calcutta, she asks you to look in the drawer, under the table, under a corner of the carpet and in the document folder on the computer. She tells you stories, asks you questions and perhaps asks you to complete a task.
Call Cutta in a Box (2008) takes place simultaneously in Copenhagen and five
other major European cities. In each case, every single member of the audience
is connected to a person located in a Calcutta call centre and thus everyone in
the audience is presented with a personal and unique trans-national show. The
German artist group Rimini Protokoll has instructed 12 Indian call centre workers, normally doing telemarketing and technical support for western companies, in how to participate in the project. Once every hour Call Cutta in a Box hooks up a telemarketing worker in Calcutta with an exhibition guest in a room in Copenhagen. The content changes back and forth between the premeditated and the unforeseen in the conversation between the two people. It will be hard, however, for the audience to tell where the rehearsed program ends and the personal, more spontaneous contact begins. It is a game in many different layers - blind date, chat line, support line, stage play or merely a conversation between two people from very different cultures.
Since 2000, the three stage directors that make up Rimini Protokoll have been
producing a kind of realistic theatre, performed by what they call 'experts', i.e. nonprofessional actors who, like the call centre workers, act the role they perform in reality. In Call Cutta in a Box , yet another layer is added to this idea, because the normal job of these experts includes a kind of acting. By speaking with a British or an American accent and by assuming a fabricated name that sounds vaguely English, they are meant to give customers the impression of speaking to somebody who could have been the girl from next door.
-NH
Stefan Kaegi, born in 1972 in Wil, Switzerland. Lives in Berlin and Buenos Aires
Daniel Wetzel,born in 1969 in Kontanz, Germany. Lives in Athens and Berlin
You find yourself in an unfamiliar room, the phone rings and you answer it. In the other end, a phone worker at an Indian call centre begins a conversation with you. Calling from Calcutta, she asks you to look in the drawer, under the table, under a corner of the carpet and in the document folder on the computer. She tells you stories, asks you questions and perhaps asks you to complete a task.
Call Cutta in a Box (2008) takes place simultaneously in Copenhagen and five
other major European cities. In each case, every single member of the audience
is connected to a person located in a Calcutta call centre and thus everyone in
the audience is presented with a personal and unique trans-national show. The
German artist group Rimini Protokoll has instructed 12 Indian call centre workers, normally doing telemarketing and technical support for western companies, in how to participate in the project. Once every hour Call Cutta in a Box hooks up a telemarketing worker in Calcutta with an exhibition guest in a room in Copenhagen. The content changes back and forth between the premeditated and the unforeseen in the conversation between the two people. It will be hard, however, for the audience to tell where the rehearsed program ends and the personal, more spontaneous contact begins. It is a game in many different layers - blind date, chat line, support line, stage play or merely a conversation between two people from very different cultures.
Since 2000, the three stage directors that make up Rimini Protokoll have been
producing a kind of realistic theatre, performed by what they call 'experts', i.e. nonprofessional actors who, like the call centre workers, act the role they perform in reality. In Call Cutta in a Box , yet another layer is added to this idea, because the normal job of these experts includes a kind of acting. By speaking with a British or an American accent and by assuming a fabricated name that sounds vaguely English, they are meant to give customers the impression of speaking to somebody who could have been the girl from next door.
-NH