Ein Haus / A House

Participatory performance and resulting film and installation
as part of Das Spiel des Lebens / The Game of Life, Murau, Austria (September/October 2021)

in cooperation with STUBENrein 2021 – neue horizonte
and supported by steirischer herbst ’21

The Playing Field is a house in transition.

The project is a tribute to a house in its present state and, through an artistic intervention, speculates simultaneously on its past and its future life experience.

We are witnesses to fleeting moments in people’s lives, stimulating our imagination and inventing narratives about their existence. The impressions we receive are snapshots or still-lives that tempt us to piece together evidence of a stranger’s lived experience, but the imaginings we impose also reflect our own stories and references.

The Game:

The audience is invited to participate in the game, creating scenes in the spaces of a house that was once inhabited and is now being reinvented.

Scenes in nearly empty rooms ask us to enter the settings of a once inhabited house, interact with wrapped objects, and speculate new scenarios.

Upon entering the house, each person who wishes to participate in the game selects a card with instructions. Rooms are activated and experiences documented.

The result is a storyboard of images and a video.

For the duration of the festival, the audience can view an installation in an outdoor space of the house and contribute to it with captions and comments.

About Das Spiel des Lebens:

The Game of Life consists of six playing fields distributed in public places in Murau. The goal is to develop a story with participatory means. Seven artists have worked on seven themes, which flow from field to field.

The Game of Life unites seven fields, which are played on by seven local and international artists: Bronwyn Lace, Susanne Schweiger, Vivian Simbürger, Karin Reinprecht, Marcus Neustetter, Reinhard Simbürger and Armin Seidl. The playgrounds, for which the artists have developed their own themes, are distributed throughout the public space of the city of Murau.

The games are performed together with the audience, which in most cases can get involved in the performance or execution. Each playfield can be visited during the duration of the Styrian Autumn even if there is no performance taking place at the moment – that is, on the playfield you can find information about the corresponding play and you can usually contribute to it yourself with texts and pictures.

The Game of Life stands for individual art that emphasizes the principle of communal creation in times of separation and isolation.

Website: Das Spiel des Lebens

The Experience:

 

The House:

 

 

 

 

The Playing Cards:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Players:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Props:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Installation:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Masks: