UpStage and Mobilise/Demobilise will be presented at the Stuttgart Filmwinter on 17 January 2021, as part of the matinee event “Jenseits der neuen Normalität” (Beyond the new normal). January 17th is also “Art’s Birthday”, a celebration that UpStage has sometimes participated in since 2010, so we are happy to mark the occasion again.

The session looks at how artists are using innovative open source tools in order to redefine the structures that dominate digital technology and gain agency in the “new normal” digital world. More broadly, the impact of new technologies on our daily lives will be explored – something that is also central to the theme of Mobilise/Demobilise.

A year ago at the 2020 Stuttgart Filmwinter, Helen Varley Jamieson gave a talk titled “Making Absence Present” (the festival’s theme was “Absent Presence”) in which she discussed cyberformance and presented UpStage. Since then, thanks to the Creative Europe funding for Mobilise/Demobilise, we have been able to begin rebuilding the platform. This year Helen’s presentation will offer a sneak preview of the new platform as well as introducing Mobilise/Demobilise to the Filmwinter audience.

The development team have made a demo stage, which will be shown to the Mobilise/Demobilise artistic team on 12 January, ahead of its appearance at Filmwinter.