WHAT: CALL 2 PRESENCE, an Interactive Live Cinema Performance

WHEN: Thursday, February 25, 2010

• Doors open at 7:30 pm, Live Cinema starts at 8:00 pm, Live music by v:shal kanwar and more visuals 9:00 pm – 11:00 pm

 

WHERE: The Fridge DC art gallery, Rear Alley, 516 8th Street, SE, DC 20003

 

Limited number of ticket ($10, no surcharge) available online, http://lailashereen.com/call2presence/advance-tickets.php

 

 

In this performance, audience members collectively choose how the story about Arabic-speaking cyborgs proceeds using cell phones. On a second screen, they are also able to text in key words that are visualized in real-time. In this 30- minute performance, VJ Um Amel (Arabic for ‘Mother of Hope’), an animated cyborg who is also a mother, invites the audience to get present with our post- 911 world. According to her, she believes that "a shared procedural literacy among collaborators in digital and new media productions might provide a key to 21st century democratic practices." Um Amel, along with her robot companions, Femme Bot and Shashi, move in and out of media from 1950s Egyptan cinema to present day video games, full-length films, and the Internet in search of Um Amel’s child. As if at the turn if the 21st century, all that is left in Pandora's box is hope: what does ‘hope’ look like in the 21st century?