During the past year, the home has become the be-all and end-all, a place for work, social interaction, extracurriculars, and rest. A flexible unit to encompass all these things, never committed solely to a single function, thereby being fragments of everything, always. But perhaps the most defining trait of our new working environment has been the amount of time spent alone. We meet face-to-face via screens, yet we remain separated.
The call for social distancing and flexibility that was established because of the pandemic also reflects overall societal tendencies: individualism, generalization, and the rhetoric of these systems. Sustainability, flexibility, having a project-oriented mindset, being able and willing to adapt ad hoc. We recognize many of these mechanisms from the independent performing arts field, where adaptability is considered a necessary attribute.
Although humans are adaptable creatures, we rely on collaboration to survive and thrive. This past year has been challenging for many of us and has stifled our natural impulse and need for socialization and self-organization. The act of gathering holds political potential. Even without an explicit motivation or cause, the act of gathering often leads to change.
We believe that the exchange of knowledge and experience across disciplines and established structures often leads to very exciting things. But to be able to do so, we need a context or frame it can happen within, a shell that can adapt to its inhabitants.
Throughout METEOR 2021 we take a crack at it, and welcome you to an open house, a conglomerate of welcoming spaces that are available to all, without prior experience from the performing arts field. The discourse program consists of events in a wide range of formats, with spaces in between for improvised gatherings and new acquaintances.
We look forward to bringing together local, national, and international collaborative partners for eleven days with performances, encounters, discussions and exchanges, and hope that you will be part of it.
