Kundura Sahne’s sold-out production, organized in partnership with one of Europe’s leading art collectives, Rimini Protokoll​, drew enormous interest from audiences: the Istanbul adaptation of “Remote X,” which has been staged in more than 50 cities from London to Taipei and from New York to Buenos Aires, the performance Remote İstanbul gave participants a truly unique experience.

Accompanied and guided by an artificial intelligence named İpek, the piece takes participants on a surprising tour through the streets of Kadıköy. As it encourages us to observe our individual decisions and behavior in the company of AI, and invites us to look at our bond with the city and with life through new eyes by pointing out the details we miss in the daily rush, it creates “different encounters in the city.”

Bahar ÇUHADAR’s REMOTE ISTANBUL experience review is now on our blog!

‘Remote İstanbul,’ the Istanbul leg of the ‘Remote X’ project, which has been adapted for 50 cities from London to Abu Dhabi, offers its participants the chance to make a different kind of contact with the city over the course of a two-hour walk. Guided by an artificial voice coming through your headphones, you are invited on a mental, physical and emotional exercise of a kind you are not used to, from Koşuyolu to Bahariye. Don’t forget to wear your sneakers when you go to the show.
 

Are you up for a walk through the streets of a city you know well, of a kind you have probably never taken before? The walk follows a set route with specific stops and offers an experience designed for you in advance, but how you react, what you witness in the moment and how far you let yourself into the ‘game’ are up to you. As is the kind of emotional/physical communication you will establish with the city… So what awaits each participant is a one-of-a-kind experience.

‘Remote İstanbul,’ the Istanbul leg of the ‘Remote X’ project that the German documentary theater collective Rimini Protokoll has adapted for a total of 50 cities from London to Abu Dhabi, invites its participants to just such an experience. Beginning with a meeting in a neighborhood park in Koşuyolu, the project, accompanied by an ‘artificial’ voice in the headphones handed out to participants, offers a kind of group performance in which you spend two hours in the city walking, stopping, riding the metro, running, climbing ramps, dancing, listening, and looking at things both near and far.
It is a work that sets out to break the memorized city you carry in your body and mind by bringing you into contact with the city’s fixed and/or moving fabric in ways you never do in your daily routine.
A call that promises other kinds of encounters with the city, with streets and buildings you may know very well, and with your fellow city dwellers.
The Istanbul adaptation of ‘Remote X,’ conceived and directed by Stefan Kaegi, was prepared in collaboration with Kundura Sahne, which I had announced earlier and had been planning to attend for some time, and it bears the signature of Jörg Karrenbauer. Throughout the tour, planned yet by its very nature open to surprises, which unfolded across the city under the direction of the voice in my ear, I focused on two things: What is the voice in my ear (the text written for the piece) trying to tell me? And what different kind of communication am I experiencing right now with the city’s ‘limbs’ (especially when, during the metro ride, I realized we were heading toward the neighborhood where I live)?

When projects of this kind, which lead the participant through a space, fall short of weaving the physical experience and the narrative together, the impact of the piece may not get beyond ‘What an interesting thing we just experienced.’ ‘Remote İstanbul,’ which sets out to focus on how artificial intelligence has settled into our lives and on our relationship with the city, certainly gives its participants ‘interesting moments,’ but it also struggles to convey what its real concern is.
At some point I found myself thinking that the artificial intelligence reaching me through my headphones was confused. From then on, although I kept listening to what the voice was saying, I turned my attention to the path it opened up for me in terms of my contact with the city.

I kept on walking, focusing on the different experience the directions provided, because I could not work out exactly what the speaking voice was inviting me to ponder. For instance, if we were walking while thinking about artificial intelligence and our lives, we could have taken our steps concentrating on how we are already being steered by artificial intelligence in the city. The text we heard could also have ‘nudged’ us mainly from that angle.
Instead, what we had in our ears was a text undecided about what it was trying to ‘provoke’ the participant about, and how. With the voice being unclear, my choice was to focus, while following the ‘instructions,’ on sensing how I responded to the city (and to people), and how people responded to me.

Especially during an ‘instruction’ at the metro station, the piece managed to bring me to a powerful feeling. Coincidentally encountering, several times, the very human profiles and movements the voice was talking about made the sense of ‘play’ even more vivid. (Like a mother, father and child walking past me hand in hand, as if deliberately placed on the ‘stage,’ at the very moment the voice was talking about the life cycle and starting a family…)
‘Remote İstanbul’ is a fitting choice for experiencing a piece that invites the audience on a guided walk through a route/space. Building a relationship of a kind we have never tried before with the city we are trapped in by our routines, and, what is more, experiencing the broad possibilities of theater, is valuable. On the other hand, it is also certain that the piece’s artificial intelligence needs to pull its train of thought together a little…

***To read the full article CLICK HERE – Bahar ÇUHADAR / hurriyet.com.tr (Source)