Situation Rooms

- A multiplayer video piece

By Haug / Kaegi / Wetzel

May 2011, a photo flashes onto screens around the world. It shows 13 people in a room. The expressions on their faces speak volumes: triumph, fascination, scorn, horror, scepticism, preoccupation. The photo from the White House “Situation Room” documents the end of a manhunt that was pursued with all possible weapons.

‘Situation Rooms’ gathers together from various continents 20 people whose biographies have been shaped by weapons in a film set that recreates the globalised world of pistols and rocket-propelled grenades, of assault rifles and drones, of rulers and refugees, becoming a parcours of unexpected neighbourhoods and intersections.
With the personal narratives of the ‘inhabitants’, the images start to move and the audience follows the individual trails of the cameras they have been given. They start to inhabit the building, while following what they see and hear on their equipment. The audience does not sit opposite the piece to watch and judge it from the outside; instead, the spectators ensnare themselves in a network of incidents, slipping into the perspectives of the protagonists, whose traces are followed by other spectators.

One spectator sits at the desk of a manager for defence systems. At the same time, another follows the film of a Pakistani lawyer representing victims of American drone attacks in a cramped room with surveillance monitors. On her way there, she sees a third spectator who follows his film into the shooting range of a Berlin gun club, listening Germany's parcours shooting champion. Around the corner stands another spectator in the role of a doctor carrying out amputations in Sierra Leone, while in the room next door a press photographer sorts pictures of German army missions in Afghanistan, only to stand in the shooting range himself a little later to do exactly what he was able to observe in passing just a while ago, thereby becoming a subject for observation himself.
The audience gradually becomes entangled in the film set’s spatial and material labyrinth; each individual becoming part of the re-enactment of a complicatedly elaborated multi-perspective “shooting”.

"Situation Rooms" is a multiple simultaneous cinema; augmented reality as three-dimensional as only theatre can be!

 

"Interweaving reality into an event in this way is the art of Rimini Protokoll. Everyone there is involved and yet the technique maintains a distance".
"A gripping theatre experience: its fascinating immediacy makes an individual impact on all those taking part".
Annete Stiekele aus "Im Zauberwald der Theatermagie", Die Welt am 08.08.2014


"Situation Rooms" was awarded with the Children's Choice Award from the Ruhrtriennale 2013 in the following categories: "Best of the Best" and "Most intense show that was so intense that I didn't want to miss a second".

In addition, Rimini Protokoll received the Excellence Award of the 17th Japanese Media Arts Festival on 05th February 2014 in Tokyo.

The virtual tt of nachtkritik.de voted "Situation Rooms" to the top ten theater productions of the year 2013, and also the Theatertreffen of the Berliner Festspiele selected "Situation Rooms" from 395 productions.

 

with:
Abu Abdu Al Homssi, Syria
Shahzad Akbar, Pakistan
Jan van Aken, Germany
Narendra Divekar, India
Nathan Fain, USA
Reto Hürlimann, Switzerland
Maurizio Gambarini, Germany
Andreas Geikowski, Germany
Marcel Gloor, Switzerland
Barbara Happe, Germany
Volker Herzog, Germany
Richard Khamis, South-Sudan
Wolfgang Ohlert, Germany
Irina Panibratowa, Russia
Ulrich Pfaff, Germany
Emmanuel Thaunay, France
Amir Yagel, Israel
Yaoundé Mulamba Nkita, Kongo
Familie R, Lybia
Alberto, Mexico
and: Christopher Dell, Alexander Lurz, Karen Admiraal


by: Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi, Daniel Wetzel
Scenography: Dominic Huber / blendwerk
Video: Chris Kondek
Sound Design: Frank Böhle
Technical Director / Light: Sven Nichterlein
Research: Cornelius Puschke / Malte Hildebrand
Director Assistance: Malte Hildebrand / Ann-Kathrin Büdenbender
Production Management: Heidrun Schlegel
Scenography Assistance: Claudia Bartel / Ute Freitag / Sophie Reinhard / Leonie Süess
Video Assistance: Philipp Hochleichter
Directors trainees: Karen Admiraal / Ann-Kathrin Büdenbender / Sybille Enders / Annabel Hogefeld / Sebastian Klauke / Kirsten Moldenhauer/ Markus Posse / Belle Santos / Yael Sherill / Zofia Smolarska / Thomas Zimmermann / Viktoria Metz / Eva Trummer
Scenography trainees: Till Hörnig / Paulina Januszyk / Laura Rehkuh / David Gieseke
Set-up: Thomas Alperstädt / Florian Altenburger / Rosemarie Becker / Markus Bernhard / Marcel Blechschmidt / Chris Cockrell / Jörg Fischer / Bodo Herrmann / Chris Kärgel / Steffen Knauf / Jennifer Mäurer / Tomoko Okada / Robert Price / Marianne Schwarzbach / Uwe Sprenger / Patrick Voss
Management workshops: Steffen Fuchs
Lightning Design: Hans Leser / Stefan Neumann
Elektronic Effects: Georg Werner
Production management Assistance: Caroline Gentz / Christin Prätor / Daniela Bellm
Interpreters: Amina Orth / Günter Orth / Djengizkhan Hasso / Riad Ben Ammar / Othman Saeed / Nahal Saeed
Translation and subtitles: KITA Berlin
Voice over: Christoph Bovermann, Stephan Brynner, Jordan Smith, Michael Norton, René Stäbler a.o.

Touring Team: Markus Bernhard / Ute Freitag / Steffen Fuchs / Bodo Gottschalk / Bodo Herrmann / Elisabeth Krefta / Hans Leser / Stefan Neumann / Sven Nichterlein / Skadi Schulz / Martin Schwemin / Hanke Wilsmann

 

A production of Rimini Apparat and Ruhrtriennale, in coproduction with Schauspielhaus Zürich, SPIELART festival & Münchner Kammerspiele, Perth International Arts Festival, Grande Halle et Parc de la Villette Paris, HAU – Hebbel am Ufer, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt am Main, Onassis Cultural Center-Athens.
Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the Regierende Bürgermeister of Berlin - Senate Chancellery - Cultural Affairs.

With the generous support of os-cillation GmbH

funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation

 

Movie Maker Christine Cynn and her team were producing their documentary "Shooting Ourselves" during our workingdays at March 2013 in Berlin. The movie is based on our project, trailer and further details here