Residencies

• 05.08 > 10.08.2024
• 17.06 > 22.06.2024

In Endgame Assembly spec­ta­tors gather in the the­a­tre in order to expe­rien­ce the end. 

Endgame Assembly intends to cri­ti­cally enga­ge and take a stan­ce on pre­vai­ling dis­cour­ses around eco­lo­gy and iden­ti­ty. The dis­cus­si­ons about cli­ma­te chan­ge and mass extinc­ti­on and the pro­mi­se of the apo­ca­lyp­se they gene­ra­te have been pro­mi­nent in Western aca­de­mic and artis­tic cir­cles for at least two deca­des, per­me­a­ting main­stream cul­tu­ral pro­duc­ti­ons. Examples inclu­de films as Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011), all the work of Roland Emmerich, and more recent­ly the Netflix pro­duc­ti­ons Don’t Look Up (2021) and Leave the World Behind (2023). These nar­ra­ti­ves often emer­ge from rela­ti­ve­ly secu­re spa­ces, pre­sen­ting a some­what uni­fied and roman­ti­ci­zed visi­on of (futu­re) endings. Other cul­tu­res den­oun­ce this pri­vi­le­ged posi­ti­on and affirm that colo­ni­za­ti­on and its after­math have alrea­dy con­sti­tu­ted apo­ca­lyp­tic events for indi­ge­nous and colo­ni­zed peo­p­les. Reasons are the destruc­ti­on of indi­ge­nous cul­tu­res, eco­lo­gi­cal degra­da­ti­on, ine­qua­li­ties and soci­al injus­ti­ces that repre­sen­ted a total deva­sta­ti­on of their worlds. These voi­ces emp­ha­si­ze that they are alrea­dy living in a post-apo­ca­lyp­tic rea­li­ty, den­oun­cing the Western-cen­tric nar­ra­ti­ves that may not ful­ly cap­tu­re the lived expe­rien­ces of diver­se communities.

Endgame Assembly starts from the­se dif­fe­rent per­spec­ti­ves on the apo­ca­lyp­se. Rather than sim­ply recon­fir­ming this dicho­to­my, howe­ver, it attempts to reflect upon and pro­du­ce new ways to brid­ge the gap and look for the pos­si­bi­li­ty of a sha­red hope.