2347年釘付けにされた告解場
(Operable PC Games / Theatre)
In 「Confessional Nailed Down in 2347」, I attempt to record feelings and assumptions during early stages of the pandemic through self-narration and imagination. This is not a creation with a traditional division of labor. To some extent, everyone involved is the main body of this creation.
At the same time, the inability to move outside freely and closed theaters forced dramatists to consider a performance form that fit the current situation.
My first choice was online theatre, for its speed and convenience. However, there have always been doubts about online drama. If a performance intended for the theatre is shown solely online, it becomes a product of compromise, losing its meaning.
Drama is the art of presence. The meaning of presence here is always evolving, but the importance of the "sense of presence" is constant. The double synchronization of space and time is also one of the reasons why drama can present the so-called "illusion of elsewhere.”
However, if the drama is placed behind a screen, this synchronization will be eliminated, and the drama will become an independent image such as film. Thus interrupting the connection between the performance and the audience. Therefore, I hoped to create an echo within the screen, taking an audience that does not yet exist as the main axis of performance, and letting the performers act with this as the focus, so as to connect the audience and actors in different fields through lines and actions.
Although this attempt can build the so-called "fictional presence," that is, simulate the nonexistent reality, it still can not solve the sense of difference caused by drawing together different fields. The fracture of time and space still exists, blocking emotion. Then, “the game” occurred to me.
Using games for drama creation is not a new idea. As early as in games deeply affected by TRPG, such as Dungeons and Dragons and World of Warcraft, there existed playing servers. Playing their own roles and with their own role logic on a huge stage, all players become actors. In recent games such as Final Fantasy 14, players even set up societies and create scripts to role play with their own game characters. This forms an interesting drama structure. Players enter the same virtual field through their game roles in different fields. In this virtual field, some game roles are transformed into actors to play other roles, while others are played as spectators. Through a virtual stage, players share the same space and time. This provided great inspiration, but the current game genre has difficulty in supporting dramatic performance. Thus the actors and I made a virtual field ourselves.
We attempted to enter the actors’ room and sound sources into the virtual field during the epidemic, so as to achieve resonance with the field of the image. As nonprofessionals, the final finished product was beyond our own expectations. To some extent, it may no longer be called drama. Nor is it a game, but rather another viewing medium. Though not without its flaws, I still believe that this attempt was meaningful.
Finally, I named this work「Confessional Nailed Down in 2347」. I hope that it is not a unique narrative of a certain period, but the fantasy of all people in a closed room during a pandemic. At the same time, I hope that when the actors confess their fantasies, the audience can listen as if next door and in the same virtual field.
The ongoing pandemic has reduced the overall density of external space, and the forces between bodies have largely dissipated. It can be seen that without the power of the other, the human body in the internal space is sleeping, frozen, or aphasic, crazy and disordered. Human beings begin to miss the impact that makes the body nervous, but enough to bear.
Scroll, close the chat box, and click start. The participants exchange their isolation experience. The dilemma of describing their internal experience is broken. We speak the same language and share the same presence. From the collection of personal experience to the writing of scripts to the construction of virtual space, a mobile network rehangs the lost connection and sense of home, a network instead of the city highway, a network of desire and a network of confession. Here, the space-time tunnel leads to every room, which is full of dislocation, distortion, and self contraction, swallowing the rover into unknown space.
At the same time, the confession field itself is also asking: can we put aside the power of knowledge, put aside the main axis of rationality, and just follow the eyes and hearts to share and listen to a special period of time, connect all closed rooms together, and build a decentralized and isolated community with clear focus? To whom and why, the direction of desire will always be difficult to find. The end of the universe? The end of the confession field? Perhaps we can only enter the last "quarry" to find that the "golden ball" is a mirror
「Confessional Nailed Down in 2347」 by Swimming
・ 2020.10.2
・ Japan : : Tokyo University of the Arts - OPEN STUDIO 2020 - ONLINE
・ Performers /Guyu Liu/Joy Li/Ran Yan/Shilo/Shengnan Xu/Yue Xia/Zihan Zhang
・ Screenwriter / swimming/Youfang Su/Xing Xing
・ Director / Engineer: swimming
