Sunset: A Techno Elegy
by The Hinterlands and Renee Willoughby
“Will You Miss Me” Photo credit: Milena Dabova
A mythic telling of loss, transformation, and enchantment for the digital age.
Down into the Digital Otherworld journeys virtuosic Orpheus in search of his lost Eurydice, enchanted away by the mischievous Faery King…like a body and its soul rent in two - one party frozen outside of time in a world of illusion, the other desperate to return things to how they once were. But how to become whole again?
Inspired by medieval retellings of the Orpheus myth and our collective internet-driven madness, Sunset weaves technologies old and new — mask performance, live video mixing, AI chatbots, electronic music, lamentations, spirit talking, automata, Victorian illusion and more — into a music-driven terrifyingly embodied work that mythologizes our relationship with technology, and how it has changed and shaped our imagination.
Join The Hinterlands and video artist Renee Willoughby in the Otherworld of ones and zeroes as they wrestle our souls back from the trickster in the black box and break the spell that traps us in the algorithm.
About the Artists
Photo by Paul Biundo
The Hinterlands is a Detroit-based company creating performances and public events that are equal parts playful and surreal. From their original touring pieces to the events they curate in their Detroit neighborhood, their work is built around pressing into the unknown areas of personal and collective history with fearless physicality and a sense of humor. Their performances smash seemingly disparate images and ideas together, culminating in new, highly layered meanings that are greater than the sum of their parts. They create a space for audiences to be in this unknown hinterland with the performers through techniques that disarm and disorient, short-circuiting expectations and luring them into unexpected interactions.
The company has an ongoing physical and vocal training practice that is both a foundation of their collaborative devising process, and a means of conducting exchanges across disciplines and contexts. Since forming in 2009, their work has been seen at the Shanghai Biennale, the Berlinale, Alverno Presents, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Flynn Center, The Detroit Institute of Arts, Charlestown Working Theater, Double Edge Theatre, Goodyear Arts, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, among many others.