SOS
Description:
An action media performance exploring futureness, survivalism, revolutionary movements and contemporary rituals, the performance examines the notion of sacrifice to make space for a new beginning.
SOS began as an investigation into the nature of sacrifice within a supersaturated, hyper-acquisitive society. Set in a forest of technology the performance unwinds through overlapping abstract narratives. Animals lost in their native habitat turn on each other in a hopeless contest for survival. Revolutionaries broadcasting from a skeletal studio implode under the pressure of their own rhetoric, and technology addicts enmeshed in a self-created universe seek escape from a tightening web of perception. As these environments collide and overturn, the stage transforms into a celebration of chaos verging towards the freedom of annihilation.
SOS continues and advances Big Art Group’s Real-Time Film technique, a conceptual model conflating performance, television and movies. Using live performance and video, Real-Time Film plays cinematic composition and controlled perspective against the verity of TV broadcast and the immediacy of live performance. In SOS, a multi-camera and multi-screen forest of technology located within a landscape of refuse gives the audience a corrupted panoptic view of colliding narratives. Unlike traditional theatrical performance, Big Art Group’s extended mediated performances reposition viewers into active editors, challenging audience members to problem-solve complex issues of sexuality, race, narrative and truth as a theatrical mirror to the process of navigation through contemporary society.
Creation History:
2008
Wiener Festwochen (Vienna, Austria)
Théâtre Garonne (Toulouse, France)
Touring 2009
Temps d’Image Festival (Montreal, Canada)
The Kitchen (NYC, USA)
REDCAT (Los Angeles, USA)
Yerba Buena Arts Center (San Fransisco, USA)
Prospettiva 09 (Turin, Italy)
Press:
“Big Art Group, makes a touchstone out of synthesizing media elements. SOS, their 2009 show at the Kitchen, offered a spiraling series of hallucinations of consumer catastrophe—simultaneously humorous and apocalyptic.”
— Village Voice
“The show is outrageous, brilliantly designed, and incredibly smart.”
— L Magazine
“Yes! Here is something with enough smarts, humor, speed, and daring for this moment: Big Art Group’s new hybrid production, SOS.”
— NY Theater
“Big Art Group mixes video and mystical rites for its mesmerizing spectacle SOS.”
— NY Time Out
“The final moment, was the single most visually compelling thing we have seen on stage, maybe ever, and likely worth the price of admission in and of itself. To that end, it also served as a reminder that Big Art Group remains one of the boldest crews around, and their work at the intersection of video and performance persists as uniquely important. ”
— Artcat Zine
“It’s like standing in the big-screen-TV section of a Best Buy, but with the volume on every set cranked to “maximum.”
— New York Times
Big Art Group, makes a touchstone out of synthesizing media elements. SOS, their 2009 show at the Kitchen, offered a spiraling series of hallucinations of consumer catastrophe—simultaneously humorous and apocalyptic.
Co-Producers:
Wiener Festwochen, The Kitchen. Developed with the facilities and support of the Digital Performance Institute and The Abrons Arts Center’s Artist Workspace.