I'll be Gone Again: Documenting the Virtual Body

Ruth Benschop

I’ll be gone was a project in which two groups of students from different backgrounds and theatre traditions worked together with artist Peter Missotten to create a performance at the Maastricht Theatre School. In the project they explored virtual technologies as part of a larger project called The Virtual Body. In order to research the way in which virtuality was at stake in the project, a documentation of the working process was made. The documentation aims to discuss as well as embody issues that are also at stake in performance and virtuality – such as the relationship between real/non-real and live/non-live. Moreover, the documentation tries to take seriously questions about why, how and for whom one would want to maintain what to all intents and purposes has gone: I’ll be gone.

‘The best documentation always is memory. There should be something, not a video registration, but something that reminds you of it each year. That something is turned on in your brain. Maybe that is a better document. That I am suddenly there again. Of course that happens, that you remember, but you also forget a lot. That you have to remember. I would like that.’

‘I would not like to be contacted in reference to the I'll Be Gone project I'm afraid. I have no interest in having any further links to the project.’

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ILLBEGONE is part of the SIA RAAK research project THEVIRTUALBODY.ORG by The Maastricht Theatre Academy

‘What should be kept? The people, the students, and what they will do with what they have learnt in I’ll be Gone.’

Dear participant of the I’ll be Gone project,

heed this counsel:

Remember

Forget

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