Here’s an excerpt from the screen recording of the recent “London Situation”, addressing the issue of e-waste as part of the project We have a situation! which is pioneering live streaming in UpStage:

The audience at Furtherfield in London played a game of “pass the parcel” to illustrate and expose the journey of short-life electronics, designed to fail and become obsolete, from the original manufacturer to recycling schemes and finally to toxic waste sites in West Africa.

The London participants were Anthony Berry, Abbie Clarke, Hedva Eltanani, Alexandra Gschiel, Katy Griffiths, Amelia Hallsworth, Ioanna Haritou, Katerina Hayek, Tom Keene, Olga P Massanet, Danny McNally, Lucy Mills, Christina Papagiannouli, Marie Agnes Pottier, Cyril Pointurier, Alessandra Scapin, Alexandra Reynolds, Gabriella Silvagnoli and Eva Ursprung, with lead artist Helen Varley Jamieson, research input from Diye Wariebi, ONeil Howell and the team at Bright Sparks, and very importantly the streaming programming by Martin Eisenbarth. Music used is the e-waste song from Greenpeace and “we didn’t own an ipad”.

We have a situation! is funded by the European Cultural Foundation and is a networked performance collaboration between APO33 (France), Furtherfield (UK), MAD emergent art centre (Eindhoven) and Schaumbad Freies Atelierhaus (Austria). These four organisations all have a long history of involvement with and support for UpStage, so we are delighted that they have come together to collaborate in this first-ever live streaming project in UpStage!