Forecast (LX23)

Ari Benjamin Meyers (US, 1972, based in Berlin) seeks to redefine the performative, social and ephemeral nature of music. His compositions, installations, exhibitions and performances question the relationship between performer and audience, between performance and the real world, blurring and mixing the respective worlds and languages of music and the visual arts. Interested in public and civic contexts, he also imagines community rituals and new types of orchestras.

Forecast (LX23) analyses meteorological phenomena, the notion of predictability and the insatiable human need to predict the future, to believe in progress and to dominate the planet. Designed as a reflection on the climate crisis and the increasingly critical and irrational relationship between humans and nature, his performance traverses the history of forecasting and weather phenomena, starting with the true story of David Buckel, an American lawyer who set himself on fire in New York in 2018 in protest against the fossil fuel industry. Forecast (LX23) is based on an idea developed in another form for the Volksbühne Berlin, but which could not be presented to the public because of the pandemic.