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"Digitalization deobjectifies the world by rendering it information. It is also abolishing memories. Instead of pursuing memories, we store vast amounts of data. (...) We do not live in a reign of violence, but in a reign of information masquerading as freedom." ⎯ Byung-Chul Han

Hard to be a God is based on the dystopian novel Island of Lost Memory by the Japanese author Yoko Ogawa, which serves as inspiration for an autonomous physical-sensual translation free of classical narrative constraints. In it, an anonymous dictatorship has things and memories banished by the so-called memory police. Those who pursue them are arrested, deported, or killed. Until everything dissolves ⎯ landscapes, possessions, bodies ⎯ first in parts, then in its entirety.

Hard to be a God focuses on the thematic complex of remembering/forgetting/ disappearing and understands Ogawa's novel as an analogy of our present, in which countless data are stored and disembody our world in bits and byts, which ultimately make us forget the past and our physicality.

Credits

Artistic Direction
Moritz Ostruschnjak

With
Daniel Conant, David Cahier, Guido Badalamenti, Magdalena Agata Wójcik, Miyuki Shimizu, Roberto Provenzano

Co-production in Residency
O Espaço do Tempo

In his works, Moritz Ostruschnjak dwells upon the transformations in physical and social experiences in times of digitization and virtualization. His pieces are spaces made up of hyperlinks which utilize the media-machinery of the 21st century as a motif as well as an archive, thus mirroring and reflecting social processes. Following the principle of pick & mix and cut & paste, highly heterogeneous elements and connections form the narrative of a reality in which the boundaries between politics, entertainment and populism become increasingly indistinct.

As an active member of the graffiti sprayer scene, Moritz Ostruschnjak developed his interest in contemporary dance through breakdancing. He studied at Iwanson International in Munich and completed his training with Maurice Béjart in Lausanne. After this, he worked as a dancer at home and abroad. 

Moritz Ostruzschanjak (DE)

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