Dear visitors to Gessnerallee, dear artists
At the beginning of May the performance ‘In Case of Emergency’ will be staged for the first time in Gessnerallees’ large hall. In this week's newsletter, Ben Burger and Mona De Weerdt provide an insight into the processes of the piece, which highlights the ‘poetic paradox of disaster prevention’ and in which the theatre apparatus virtually performs itself on stage.
Ben Burger, your work often deals with the connection between capitalism and catastrophe. In the project ‘In Case of Emergency’, you and your artistic team look at Gessnerallee as a theatre in the event of a disaster and question the premises of disaster prevention. What inspired you to do this?
Ben Burger: The idea for the project came about in 2020 in a conversation with the technical director of Gessnerallee at the time. We learned that the Gessnerallee is located in the flood plain of the Sihl and that if the Sihldam burst, an eight-metre-high flood wave would hit the building. This surprised and frightened us. I have been living on the Sihl near Manegg for two years now. The Sihl is a supposedly harmless and calm river; we would never have imagined that it would pose such a devastating threat. We also came across a poetic paradox of disaster prevention: Before it can be prevented a disaster has to happen first - in the mind's eye of the person responsible for safety. For an adequate risk assessment, this person must always assume the worst. This is where things suddenly become theatrical in a terribly fascinating way - the catastrophe takes place in this person's mind and raises questions of reality about its potential for danger and escalation. In our present time of polycrises, this takes on an oppressive topicality: the destabilisation of the climate and, of course, the political world situation go hand in hand with a creeping erosion of our sense of security - suddenly worst-case scenarios are lurking everywhere.
Experts consider the risk of a dam bursting on Lake Sihl to be very low, yet the consequences of this have been a recurring topic of discussion in Zurich for years. Why is the danger of such a dam bursting so fascinating here? And what did your research reveal?
Ben Burger and Mona De Weerdt: That's right. The dam failure itself is not a probable event - the dam is literally bomb-proof. But disasters do not arise from a single incident, but are an accumulation of various unfavourable events that gradually break safety-relevant boundaries. We all probably still remember the flood disaster in the Ahr valley in Germany. Excessively high temperatures in the Mediterranean evaporated more water into rain clouds, a slowdown in atmospheric cloud movement due to climate change and a sudden drift in the weather led to the Ahr Valley region being disproportionately affected by heavy rainfall for several days in the summer of 2021. The soil could no longer absorb water, the built-up steep slopes acted like water slides and a flood wave rushed through the valley at an incredible speed. In the end, the crisis management team failed, unable to imagine that the worst-case scenario would actually materialise, despite precise warnings. The whole thing cost many people their lives. The politician in charge had his red Sunday Porsche rescued, but not the 12 people with disabilities in the Lebenshilfehaus who fell victim to the floods unprepared. This shows that vulnerable people such as those with limited mobility, visual or hearing impairments are particularly at risk in the event of a disaster, and that social and economic injustices manifest themselves in an emergency. In short: disasters are not democratic.
You describe the format as a walk-through audiovisual installation. In it, a choreography unfolds along prevailing safety regulations, escape routes, fire safety regulations and potential hazards. The audience experiences the performance through the perspective of disaster prevention. What exactly can the audience expect?
Ben Burger and Mona De Weerdt: ‘We have the great opportunity to perform in the entire double hall of the Gessnerallee. The audience enters the hall and can move around freely. The guests are given headphones and follow a narrative, while at the same time the room transforms more and more. As we are working on the basis of safety regulations, this evening will not be organised by performers, but by the people who usually ensure that everything runs smoothly behind the scenes. The technicians and evening managers carry out open reconstructions in the room, simulate evacuations and imagine a disruption in the theatre. The theatre apparatus performs itself, so to speak, and questions, based on its own safety aspects, how safe we as a society actually still are today and on which (old) premises this safety is built. Extreme weather events and natural disasters are on the increase, the climate is spiralling out of control and we are seeing a political shift to the right worldwide. Security guarantees and certainties are crumbling, democracies are collapsing and a general destabilisation is manifesting itself on many levels. What once seemed safe is no longer so. ‘In Case of Emergency’ is therefore a poetic reflection on the uncertain and contradictory times in which we live.
