- Info
Dark Ride II: They are us revisited
»All ages are ages of transition; but this is an awful moment of transition.« Lord Alfred Tennyson: In Memoriam A.H.H.
In 2005, about 150 local residents dressed up as zombies met up in a park located in northeastern Minneapolis in search of diversion. Every year since then, an exponentially expanding zombie horde has appeared in the Twin Cities, people from outlying suburbs no one had thought about for years. Fourteen years later, thirty-thousand zombies come crawling into the city on a single night and break Guinness World Records. Moving slowly, they stagger in the direction of what they feed on: the living; beer; things they want to buy. Every year, Google, Amazon, mega-brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev, and of course George A. Romero grant them / us (they are us!) permission to symbolically take over the streets and awaken dead city centers to “life.” Quite a few of us are disgusted by Pub Crawls and flee from Zombie Walks that take place in the inner cities of São Paulo, Paris, Minneapolis and, soon, Manila. But let’s remember what a survivor in Dawn of the Dead says to the others as they watch with horror the zombie hordes advance in the mall where they found refuge, “They are us!”
Dear D.,
How are you?
I miss you and the soothing darkness as we open our eyes to go hunting. There was a time when people’s freedom was marked by the distance between them and us at night. Now we must realize that the vampire’s age has faded and given way to the age of the zombie.
The zombie is considered an undead creature that feeds on the flesh of living humans and transforms them into its own kind. The ambivalent nature of the relationship between death and new (perverted) life, connects them to us. …
So we’re gradually turning into zombies. I view this zombification as a kind of becoming human. We are virtually transforming ourselves (back) into ourselves. We finally stand by our hunger and our FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). Our externally driven hunger is an expression of our freedom. No more fear of misrepresentation! We represent ourselves and only ourselves as a consuming, melancholic mass. For me, it is a time of sadness and farewell to the myth of a fair vampirism and a modernism that has long nourished me, but also deceived and excluded many others. It is good that this old “New World,” with its monopolies of violence, is disappearing. Do you also believe, like most people, that in twenty years the world will be much worse off, but you will personally be doing much better? How much violence will we use in the future to secure our personal “happiness?” It will also be about that.
Greetings from Minneapolis. R.
***
Concept & Vestimentaire: Roseline Rannoch
Vestimentaire: Philipp Rupp
Music: Felix Profos
Performers: Sabrina Diehl, Lydia Egge, Christina M. Karr, Jessie Lee-Bauder
- Info
Dark Ride II: They are us revisited
»All ages are ages of transition; but this is an awful moment of transition.« Lord Alfred Tennyson: In Memoriam A.H.H.
In 2005, about 150 local residents dressed up as zombies met up in a park located in northeastern Minneapolis in search of diversion. Every year since then, an exponentially expanding zombie horde has appeared in the Twin Cities, people from outlying suburbs no one had thought about for years. Fourteen years later, thirty-thousand zombies come crawling into the city on a single night and break Guinness World Records. Moving slowly, they stagger in the direction of what they feed on: the living; beer; things they want to buy. Every year, Google, Amazon, mega-brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev, and of course George A. Romero grant them / us (they are us!) permission to symbolically take over the streets and awaken dead city centers to “life.” Quite a few of us are disgusted by Pub Crawls and flee from Zombie Walks that take place in the inner cities of São Paulo, Paris, Minneapolis and, soon, Manila. But let’s remember what a survivor in Dawn of the Dead says to the others as they watch with horror the zombie hordes advance in the mall where they found refuge, “They are us!”
Dear D.,
How are you?
I miss you and the soothing darkness as we open our eyes to go hunting. There was a time when people’s freedom was marked by the distance between them and us at night. Now we must realize that the vampire’s age has faded and given way to the age of the zombie.
The zombie is considered an undead creature that feeds on the flesh of living humans and transforms them into its own kind. The ambivalent nature of the relationship between death and new (perverted) life, connects them to us. …
So we’re gradually turning into zombies. I view this zombification as a kind of becoming human. We are virtually transforming ourselves (back) into ourselves. We finally stand by our hunger and our FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). Our externally driven hunger is an expression of our freedom. No more fear of misrepresentation! We represent ourselves and only ourselves as a consuming, melancholic mass. For me, it is a time of sadness and farewell to the myth of a fair vampirism and a modernism that has long nourished me, but also deceived and excluded many others. It is good that this old “New World,” with its monopolies of violence, is disappearing. Do you also believe, like most people, that in twenty years the world will be much worse off, but you will personally be doing much better? How much violence will we use in the future to secure our personal “happiness?” It will also be about that.
Greetings from Minneapolis. R.
***
Concept & Vestimentaire: Roseline Rannoch
Vestimentaire: Philipp Rupp
Music: Felix Profos
Performers: Sabrina Diehl, Lydia Egge, Christina M. Karr, Jessie Lee-Bauder
Roseline Rannoch with Felix Profos and Philipp Rupp
Roseline Rannoch (lives and works in Berlin) studied Latin American Literature and Philosophy at FU Berlin before graduating in Fine Arts and Media Theory from Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design.
Her work has been shown most recently at Qingdao Sculpture Museum, Qingdao (2017), Künstlerhäuser Worpswede (2017), Künstlerhaus Bremen (2016), Arthur Boskamp-Stiftung, Hohenlockstedt (2014), Galerie Gregor Staiger, Zuerich, CH (2012), Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes (2011), Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach (2011/2010), CAPC Bordeaux (2010), Kunstverein Wolfsburg (2010), Galeria do Lago/Museu da Republica, Rio de Janeiro (2010)
Rannoch has performed Doom Spa VII: Shower for Humans and Horses/Sounds and Songs for Sun Creatures at Künstlerhäuser Worpswede, (w. Felix Profos/Linda Spjut, 2017), DARK RIDE Ku’damm Karree Berlin (w. Philipp Rupp/Felix Profos, 2017), and Doom Spa V: GOOD LUCK TO US ALL at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (w. Felix Profos, 2015), amongst others.
Felix Profos is a composer, classically trained pianist, and since 2002 lecturer in music theory and composition at the Zurich University of the Arts.
He has performed in Doom Spa (2013), MaxMSP- and Javascript-based projects like Eastern Shore and performed with his own band “Forcemajeure” from 2009 to 2011. Profos has written numerous compositions for classical orchestras, ensembles, and hardcore noise formations as well as sound installations and has created recordings for labels such as Grob, Deszpot, Not Two and Musiques Suisses. He performed at festivals (Gaudeamus Amsterdam, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Jazzfestival Willisau, Berliner Festspiele) and at the Year of the City of Zurich for composition 2010.
From 1990 to 2000 Profos played classical concert as pianist (soloist and chamber musician, focus on 19th century and new music).
Philipp Rupp (born in Germany) is a Berlin-based fashion and textile designer who is interested in appropriating and integrating urban imagery, such as logos of sausage stands or shop signs, into his designs reflecting on notions of class, fashion history, and the mechanisms of the fashion industry itself. Especially the phenomenon of cross-class-dressing, which happened amongst others with the Mods in England in the 1960s, who as working-class kids wore the clothes of higher social classes, is one of Rupp’s main research fields. An analogy today, though vice versa, are middle-class kids who appropriate a working-class chav aesthetic, a vestimentary strategy that fashion journalist Aleks Error calls “class tourism.”
After a career in the fashion industry in Antwerp, New York, and Berlin, as well as several teaching positions at the Art Academy Berlin (UdK) and weissensee academy of art Berlin (khw) Rupp now teaches Fashion Design at the University of Applied Sciences in Bielefeld/Germany.