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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Press announcement of I’ll be Gone:

I lie most of the time.
Thinking backward, I always lie.
So when I tell you I'll be there, I'll be Gone.
You will enter an empty space. And I'll be there.
Knowing everything I just told you, you will look around thinking: 'It's a lie.'
And I'll be Gone.

Regie: Peter Missotten
Performers: Lourens van den Akker, Thomas Dudkiewicsz, Jack Dale, Richard Green, Karel van Laere, Davy Pieters, Nick Steur, Florence Wheeler, Lisa Williams, De studenten van de Toneelacademie Maastricht zijn derde- en tweedejaars acteurs, theatraal performers en regisseurs, de engelse studenten zijn van The Department of Contemporary Arts at MMU Cheshire Manchester (Manchester Metropolitan University)

www.toneelacademie.nl

 

Do you feel in need of some coordinates? Want to know what holiday destination you have arrived at?

Quick and dirty: I am Ruth Benschop, senior researcher at the Research centre Autonomy and the Public Sphere in the Arts / Zuyd University. I was asked by Peter Missotten (performance artist, teacher at the Maastricht theatre school and artistic director of the SIA-RAAK project The Virtual Body) to document a project executed by theatre students called I’ll be Gone. The project had been a difficult one and he wanted an external view on how it had become such a “cesspit.” So I did some research of this project, which in itself was considered, it turned out, at least by some, to be research also. My investigation of the project was empirical research intended to create insight into I’ll be Gone. But it also aimed to contribute to the conceptual and practical thinking in another project called the Artistic Research Catalogue, which is interested in how to document artistic research. So, in all these projects, in one way or another, research questions are at stake such as: What is (artistic) research? How and why can we document it? What role does the virtual play? This document is an attempt to tease out what the entanglement of these projects and questions produced. Now go choose who you are.

 

 

I’ll be Gone Again

 

Documenting the Virtual Body

 

Please choose who you are:


The rules of this game: After you have chosen your one appropriate identity, you cannot take on another. And once you have indicated who you are, you should only visit the documentation belonging to that identity. Like in life, really. You only get one life to live. In this way, this documentation attempts to replicate the audience encounter of the live performance of I’ll be Gone: it only happens now. - But you have to want to play.

 

So, who are you?

 

I am:

 

-          a participant of the I’ll be Gone project

 

-          a member of the audience (then and/or now)

 

-          a representative of a theatre school

 

-          someone who is interested in the SIA-RAAK project The Virtual Body

 

-          someone who is interested in issues around documentation and the legitimation of the documentation of I’ll be Gone