eˉlektron

Although we haven‘t overcome this worldwide pandemic yet, it seems like there is already a world before and after Covid-19 when we are thinking about things supposed to be on this planet. Before Corona the estonian team of eˉlektron planned the uncomfortably aptly titled festival »Of Spooky Action At A Distance«. The inventing and building of their platform »eˉlektron.live« saved the festival from cancellation.

Until the beginning of this strange year we were used to meet friends at galleries, visited vernissages and museums, went to theaters, concerts and performances – Covid-19 changed that all.

With more or less the entire planet locked down earlier this year, audiences and performers found themselves in a completely new situation. At that time one of the only options for participating in a cultural event was taking part at a Facebook, Instagram or YouTube live-event. The platform »eˉlektron.live« was born out of this situation and created something that no other live-platform was capable of : an intense online interaction between the performer and the viewer.

The team of eˉlektron noticed the great loss of energy exchange between the performers and audience quite early. They started to look for solutions to keep up this energy even though social distancing and locked downs were a thing from then on. In only two weeks they created an online environment »[…] where people could enter the virtual venue, leaving their webcams on and be visible for both the performers and other viewers.«. This way performers can act with the viewers, they can see their reactions and even the viewers are able to interact with each other.

Originally the festival »Of Spooky Action At A Distance« should have marked the beginning of eˉlektron. The aim was to show examples of transdisciplinary and other intellectually challenging approaches in performing arts. During the festival from April 3rd to April 5th the fundamental question wasn‘t any longer what to show but how to show it. For the festival eˉlektron invited even more artists and tried to create a familiarity within the big world wide web - an intimate space. With more than 3000 visitors and hundreds of people leaving their webcams turned on, the festival turned out to be a great success.

After this successful start-up in april eˉlektron was busy planning a program for the colder months that deals with questions around the fusion of art and science. The serie of events »fruitful misunderstanding. Art+science« will happen from September to December 2020 and we are really happy that the coordinators of the Hybrid Plattform, Ewelina Dobrzalski and Nina Horstmann, will be opening the program tomorrow, September 15th at 6 p.m. (Berlin time) with an online discussion together with eˉlektron itself.

The discussion will be dealing with the themes of the whole program, it will explore the possible forms of collaborations between artists and scientists and tries to cover both research and practice while taking a look at the projects and structures from both the Hybrid Plattform and eˉlektron.

»eˉlektron.live«  is realised in cooperation with MIMproject and Kanuti Gildi SAAL. Financial supporter is Estonian Ministry of Culture.

- Rosa