UpStage Festival of Cyberformance begins this Wednesday

Media Release:

The 121212 UpStage Festival of Cyberformance begins this Wednesday,
5 December, with a retrospective programme entitled "Walking
Backwards into the Future."

Proverbs from many cultures express the concept of "walking
backwards into the future" (in Maori, "ka mura, ka muri"), to learn
from those who have gone before us as we forge new paths; it is also
a quote from media theorist Marshall McLuhan. In this spirit, the
first part of the 121212 UpStage Festival seeks to acknowledge and
celebrate the body of cyberformance work that has been created since
the first UpStage festival in 2007.

Walking Backwards into the
Future(http://upstage.org.nz/blog/?page_id=3430) takes place from
5-11 December, and is followed by a programme of new works, Testing
1 2, 1 2, 1 2 (http://upstage.org.nz/blog/?page_id=3447), over 27
hours on Wednesday 12 December (with a bit on the 11th and 13th,
depending on your time zome).

Opening the festival is /Come and Go/by Avatar Body /Collision/, the
cyberformance troupe who initiated UpStage in 2003. In this
cyberformance the group faithfully represent's Samuel Beckett's
short play /Come and Go/in the online environment. The avatars'
words and actions adhere strictly to the script, under the watchful
eye of a tyrannical director and with comments from Beckett himself.

Other highlights from 070707 are: /Baba Yaga/, incorporating shadow
puppet techniques into a beautiful cyberformance: /Freeze Flight or
Fight/, which invites audiences to share their experiences of
dealing with rejection; /Learn to Hear Through the Lies of Your
Eyes: The Cyberforming Hybridization of Tuxedomoon/, which
"addresses the position of the contemporary musician in a relation
to predominantly scopophilic regime of the Artworld based on
information technology"; and /Interface/, a playful face-to-face
meeting on the surface of the interface.

From the 080808 UpStage Festival, there is: /Calling Home: The Big
Get-Together,/the show which spawned the cyberformance troupe
Activelayers; RxEgo-go, exploring the role of medi(c)ation in a
symptomatized, technologized society; /Mysterious Mali's Drawings/,
a super-hero tale by children in Brisbane; and /Veni! ????! Dodji!
to the Zapata Private/Pirate Birthday Party. And, Vice Versa ?/a
cyberformance celebration of the birthday of Mexican revolutionary
Emilio Zapata.

A "kitchen of the future" is the setting for /The Dish/, originally
presented at the 090909 festival. From 101010, /MASS-MESS /explores
the meaning of symbols in a world of mass production, and /S/Zports:
A Training for the Possible Wor(l)ds///applies the vocabulary of
sports to alternative social relations. And from last year's
festival, 11:11:11, we have /Flat Earth/- a poetic journey on the
source of ideas - and /Magfalda Meets the World in Pieces/- a
journey of discovery.

All of the performances are accessible to online audiences via a
standard web browser: visit www.upstage.org.nz to find live links to
the stages at the performance time.

On Thursday 6 December there will be a "node" - screening of
performances at a physical venue - at Odin Teatret in Holstebro,
Denmark, from 4pm-6pm CET.

The 121212 UpStage Festival of Cyberformance is organised by
Festival Architects Vicki Smith and Helen Varley Jamieson, with a
team of dedicated volunteers and the talented artists. It is the
sixth annual festival of cyberformance - live online interactive
events created and presented for online audiences.

Download the full release and schedule here:
http://upstage.org.nz/blog/wp-content/uploads/121212_WBIFRelease.pdf

www.upstage.org.nz

ENDS

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