There Is No Here, Here

A music-video performance, on living our lives through screens.

Lost in digital realities

Artist Gisle Martens Meyer (Ugress) performs his songs live, while creating and existing in the music videos at the same time. The musician gets increasingly lost in the endless digital realities he encounters: Reaching out from wall posts, hunting for the right emoji in video games, labyrinthic chats on dating platforms, disappearing in operating systems, breaking up with the future through vintage sci-fi and eloping with VR to the clouds….

The artist is performing, creating and filtering his reality in realtime. As an audience we can always see the reality and the edited version of reality. Where do we look, where is the conversation taking place?

Background

The performance explores the realities, possibilities and visions of ourselves as modern digital personas and profiles. It questions how this constant and endless editing of reality affects us, as individuals, as relationships, as society. Is social media and digital technology enabling or disabling us? How do we separate between real and fake, when everything can always be edited? And does it even matter… since we can always undo?

The title “There Is No Here, Here” is a rewrite of the quote “there is no there, there”, originating from Gertrude Stein in her autobiography describing her childhood place. The quote was given a second meaning by William Gibson, using the exact same phrase as a description of the first cyberspace, The Matrix, in his novel Neuromancer (1984).

We are in Gibson’s futures now. We live our personal matrixes. We brand our fragmented, scattered attention as “multitasking”, our armies of digital clones perform “us” in endless echo chambers of social media platforms, algorithms decide for us, deep dreams and neural networks categorizes us, mobile cameras remember for us, motion chips doctors us.

“There Is No Here, Here” springs from Gibson’s dystopian futures of lonely hackers, struggling with their multiple realities. It’s not fiction any more.

Production partners

The project is produced through artist’s company Uncanny Planet, with current co-producers and funders:

BIT Teatergarasjen / Octoberdance, Bergen, Norway
BEK, Bergen Center For Electronic Arts, Bergen, Norway
Tanzhaus NRW, Düsseldorf, Germany
Sala Hiroshima, Barcelona, Spain
Kulturrådet (Arts Council Norway)
Komponistens Vederlagsfond
Bergen Municipality, Norway

Project personel

Gisle Martens Meyer (artist), performer, composer, visuals, editor
Anne Marthe Dyvi (BEK, Bergen Center for Electronic Arts), artistic advisor
Lars Ove Toft (Bergen Center Electronic Arts), artistic advisor
Stephan Schwarz (Tanzhaus NRW), co-producer, dramaturgy, advisor
Sven Åge Birkeland (BIT Teatergaragen), dramaturgy, co-producer, advisor
Per Mygland (Music Arts Drama Entertainment), management/advisor

Performances

Temps d’Images, Tanzhaus NRW, Düsseldorf, Germany
Sala Hiroshima, Barcelona, Spain
Octoberdance, Bergen, Norway
InShadows Festival, Lisbon, Portugal
LichtCampus Festival, Hildesheim, Germany
Østre, BIT Teatergarasjen, Bergen, Norway
TechnArte, Bilbao, Spain
ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany