Rich kids : a history of shopping malls in Tehran and the believers are but brothers - digital lack and excess in a postdigital age

Abstract

This article addresses two recent performances by Javaad Alipoor and Kirsty Housley - Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran (2019) and The Believers are but Brothers (2017). It argues that they represent a fresh, stripped back and interrogative mode of intermedial performance, marking a clear departure from practices that employ the digital as a spectacular scenographic tool - where the visual excesses of large scale mapped and projected images are there for us to enjoy - as well as from sited, active and playful uses of handheld devices and networked engagements in mixed reality performance. Particularly focusing on the use of audience members’ smartphones and platforms such as Whatsapp and Instagram, I contend that the prompting of these types of interactions in a theatre space generates a productive uneasiness at the intersection of human action and digital process. The article explores these qualities of unease and critical positionings that emerge within the contained spaces created in the performances and how they reveal and heighten the dual lack and excess of contemporary digital content and processes in our lives. In exploring these ideas, I make reference to postdigital theories, discourses of intermediality and critical writing around digital computation