Rimini Protokoll’s performance art ‘Remote Abu Dhabi’ explores how we move through the city

If you happen to see a group of people walking around the capital with headphones on, all moving in the same direction – or making the same gesture – don’t be alarmed. It isn’t some return of the flash mob. It’s part of a sensitive and probing project by the Berlin-based theatre group Rimini Protokoll, who are doing a series of performances in the city.

Rimini Protokoll’s Remote Abu Dhabi is part of Durub Al Tawaya, the strand of performance events that take place alongside Abu Dhabi Art, the fair that runs from Wednesday until Saturday at Manarat Al Saadiyat. Al Tawaya curator Tarek Abou El Fetouh explains that with this programme he seeks to exploit the capacity of artists to think differently about heritage and the future of places such as Abu Dhabi.

“The city has a vision,” he says, “And that’s one of the future and extension. Contemporary art can help explore the possibilities of this future and how it reveals itself in the urban fabric.”

Remote Abu Dhabi takes this idea and looks at the city and the people as they move within it. Every participant on the tour – it is limited to 50 people – is given a set of headphones through which they hear instructions on where to go and what to do. The headphones, plugged into music players or smart phones, atomise the group, placing each person in his or her own world.

At the same time, the shared instructions, which ask the group to do the same things at the same time, unite them together – making them into, as the Rimini Protokoll soundtrack calls it, a horde.

Original article by Melissa Gronlund

Continue reading at The National:

Rimini Protokoll’s performance art ‘Remote Abu Dhabi’ explores how we move through the city