YOU ARE OUT THERE

The Internet has long since been the place where people encounter us for the first time. We all constantly create new digital profiles and avatars, we register domains, user IDs and passwords under the most original names. Our doubles are out there – and they are active.

In the performance "YOU ARE OUT THERE", the multimedia and digital arts ensemble surrounding Chris Kondek and Christiane Kühl confront our ubiquitous self-images with their growing exploitation by industry and organisations who make our digital doubles work for their own purposes. Birth certificates, driver’s licences, health cards, passports, visas, work permits and biometric photos: in the databases of administrative offices, our doubles live off us. Thanks to our wealth of profiles, the possibility of being identified is widespread and not guaranteed in equal measure. Our digital self-images on social media have long been colluding with those from state security systems, and are gaining more and more control over our physical existence. Our doubles are turning into doppelgängers, pursuing their own agenda.

"YOU ARE OUT THERE" depicts a world in which selfies are turned into ID cards and are sometimes more important than the people they represent. And so in the performance, the doppelgängers of the audience are turned into accomplices of a multimedia ghost story, to explore the scope for identity manipulation on both sides of the law with the help of experimental IT technology.