TALKING STRAIGHT CENTER
2017—2018
Concept, Performance: houaïda, Antje Prust, Alicia Agustín
Set Design: Shahrzad Rahmani
Video & Animation: Camille Lacadée
Since April 2017 Talking Straight was Artist in Residence in Maxim Gorki's Studio Я. With their long-term project TALKING STRAIGHT CENTER—a series of immersive transmedia performances—they aimed at the liquefaction of the innate power structures of economies, politics, and science. The first performance TALKING STRAIGHT: RELEASE was launched as a start-up. In an eventful evening, where the spectators became sponsors and Studio Я their incubator, the companies’ enormous innovation-talent and foresight vision was released to the public.
During the 2017 federal elections in Germany, the start-up’s simulation continued and developed into a PR Agency. Regardless of political content, the agency TS Public Relations presented the tools necessary for a maximum impact. Their strategies are guaranteed to lead to success when electoral migration and policy fatigue threaten one’s ability to reach a majority. Always in view: the political centre. Is the centre a balanced position between political extremes in society; or is the centre slipping more and more through a nationalising discourse? The successful party convention TALKING STRAIGHT: PARTEITAG took place at the Marmorsaal of the Palais am Festungsgraben. The audience was claimed into being members of different parties and potential clients who attended the event as consumers.
The species Homo Sapiens has prevailed over other humanoids through its ability to imagine ‘non-existent phenomena’, such as gods or the economy. In 2018 TALKING STRAIGHT established the TALKING STRAIGHT WORLD SCIENCE CENTER, focusing on the emotional distillate of the cognitive revolution in a series of labs. This third branch of the multicomplex mega-company network TALKING STRAIGHT CENTER, simulates a think tank that researches the emotional distillate that makes us human. Speculativity of emotions, hierarchies, and privilege was scientifically dissected, as were the belief of a western secular society free of ritual and superstition. In reference to Genesis’ seven-day myth and speculative research as a method, seven formats were developed. These included two labs: TS LIFE LAB_1 SWÅT and TS LIFE LAB_2 DNA. In addition to the labs, other documentations and research results were published. The scientific publication TS LIFE LAB_3 PUBLIKATION, the podcast TS LIFE LAB_4 SOUND REMEDY, the digital performance TS LIFE LAB_5 OUT THERE, and the film TS LIFE LAB_6 FEATURE were revealed subsequently. The lab series ended in the durational performance TALKING STRAIGHT LIFE.
