Extraterritorial Zoöperations is an immersive speculative narrative experience exploring conflicts arising as a more-than-human community attempts to survive op the open sea in the late 21st century.
What: Workshop, Experimental design research, Narrative design, Performance, Experiential scenario, Co-creative design.
With: Klaas Kuitenbrouwer, Marc Bergwerff
For: Studio Jonas Staal / Ruhrtrienniale / Het Nieuwe Instituut
The experience is designed to work with up to 50 participants, and consists of workshop sessions that are built into an overarching storyline, tasking participants with resolving conflicts introduced as plot points in the narrative. A simple form of role-playing is designed to raise the suspension of disbelief, allowing participants to more intensively and creatively engagement with the issues raised and problems posed to them in the workshop.
The workshop uses a future setting, created through audio soundscape, overhead visuals and facilitator narration, to explore the idea of non-human representation. This immersion in the story world gives participants a “lived” non-human perspective aligned with the ideas of social representation and ecological regeneration engendered by the Zoöp collective. Log sheets and audio recordings are used to turn the workshop experience into a research tool, giving input for the Zoöp project at Het Nieuwe Instituut.
Extraterritorial Zoöperations was commissioned by Studio Jonas Staal for the Ruhrtrienniealle 2019 in Bochum.
Photography by Ruben Hamelink