Why Why Always is a new multidisciplinary project by Shaun Irons & Lauren Petty that will take place in the Underground Theater at Abrons Arts Center, April 29th and 30th. The project embraces a potent interplay between live performance, video installation, sound art, and technology. The piece is a re-imagining of Jean-Luc Godard’s seminal film Alphaville, a philosophical treatise on politics, alienation and cinema set in a future overrun by technology, where feelings (and the words that describe them) are not only against the law but considered obsolete. Trapped in a world of deep suspicion and isolation, citizens exist in a society with no use for art, poetry, love, or autonomy, and no concept of the word Why.
Why Why Always, will re-conjure this film of shadows and subterfuge as a unique, genre bending live cine-performance through the use of multiple screens, cameras and live-processed video and sound. The goal is to create a work that is wildly funny, unpredictable and yet deeply disturbing, spelling out apocalyptic doubts about the future of a technology obsessed society, where memory is increasingly outsourced to the digital realm. Although mining Alphaville for inspiration, the film will be approached as a cultural artifact, subject to reinterpretation and alteration, with the goal of crafting a multifaceted meditation on the ever-evolving relationship between technology, art, privacy, surveillance, and free will.
