Emre Akal

After a long day, the familiar voice makes all worries fade away. An encouraging wink and the anger vanishes. Add a tender touch, perhaps a gentle kiss, and everything else retreats into the background. The latter is still to come. But interpersonal closeness and physical distance are at least no longer a contradiction. Digital media and social networks are now proven instruments of social contact. For people who live in long-distance relationships or have family on the other side of the world, it is a matter of course. Despite great distances, we can now not only chat directly with each other, we can even look each other in the eye. At least via the respective screen.
It becomes more difficult when the missing person can no longer dial into a video chat: When a person dies, it is still an unalterable fact. With every death, relatives are faced with the challenge of having to accept something that is emotionally incomprehensible. A loved one is gone forever. Even though they are more alive than ever in our memories.
All the more so when their digital presence persists, smiling from selfies on the wall, giving smart or precocious advice aka lifehacks or recommending the reading of this or that well-researched background report. Lush legacies of data are left behind, which in turn can make a person tangible and alive. But can they also make them live on? AIs that algorithmically animate a character on the basis of chat logs, likes and posts are no longer a mere fantasy of the future. Do we now have an unprecedented opportunity to have missed debates? Or even to stay in touch? But who has a right to the data legacy left behind? The family or the platform in whose cloud this personal treasure is stored?

In his commissioned work for the Leipzig theatre, Emre Akal embarks on a search for forms of digital mourning in all its facets. Embedded in various play moments, he traces the opportunities and dangers of these technological developments. This scenic installation is thus dedicated to the experience of a future on whose threshold we already find ourselves. (Schauspiel Leipzig)